 Good evening, everybody. I'm Evan Teach. I'm the town and village manager tonight. April 5th is the reorganization meeting of the town select board. So I am going to start tonight's meeting. Our first order of business before we approve the agenda and public to be heard is the annual reorganization of the town select board. Greg is muted everybody. So please make sure you stay muted until you are called upon except for the board members. And so every year the select board nominates its own chair. And then once that chair is selected, seconded and and elected, the chair does the vice chair and the clerk position on the board and then runs the meeting. The way this works is I will take a nomination from the members of the board. I will then take a moment to ask if there are any other nominations. I will then ask for a second and then we will take a vote. Is that clear to everybody? I can go with nods or thumbs. Okay, with that, I will take a nomination or nominations for select board chair. Mr Murray. I would like to nominate Andy Watts as select board chair. Select board members. Are there any other nominations for select board chair in the fashion of others before me going once. Going twice. Do I have a second for Andy Watts as select board chair? I will second that motion. Tracy Delphi has seconds. All those in favor of Andy Watts being select board chair, please say aye. Aye. Any nays. Hearing none that was five zero. Mr Watts, the meeting is now yours. Those are the first words. Okay. I guess I will open the floor for nominations for vice chair. Do we have any nominations for vice chair? Vince, go ahead. Yeah, I would like to nominate Pat Murray for vice chair. Second. Oh, we have to wait for other nominations. No problem following with what Evan did on the prior previously. Are there any other nominations for vice chair? Hearing none. We have a second. Yep. Okay, we are voting for whether to approve Pat Murray as vice chair of the select board for the coming year. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed. Passes unanimously. Congratulations, Pat. Thank you kindly. And now we have the clerk position. Historically, we've, the newest member has often been elected to that position. I know Vince didn't really get a fair shake at performing all of the duties this past year because we've been remote. The duties of the clerk are to sign the minutes and also chase the rest of the select put around to get signatures when we're having actual in person signatures. So I guess I will open the floor to nominations for clerk. I will follow typical Essex Select Board practice and nominate Tracy Delfia for clerk. Any other nominations or volunteers for that matter? Hearing none, do we have a second? Second. Thank you, Don. All those in favor of Tracy Delfia to be clerk of the select board for the coming year, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, unanimous. Congratulations, Tracy. Okay, moving on to the next agenda item. I'm looking forward to working with all of you in the coming year, not just those, not just the officers, but all the others. I should have said thank you first instead of yikes. Although I am a little terrified of this whole situation, but we'll get through. I'm sure we'll get through. Okay, moving on to the next agenda item, agenda additions and changes. Are there any changes from staff? I do want to point out there was a typo that a couple of you caught on the consent agenda. It was for items 7B and 7C, the Paving Grants. The memos erroneously said Sandhill Road instead of Essex Way and Old Stage Road. Beyond that, there's no other issues or no discrepancies in those memos. So I will leave it to the board if you want to pull those off consent to discuss further or just leave it on the consent knowing what the issue is. Either way is fine by staff. Any preference from the board? I think as long as staff is aware, we can leave them right where they are. Okay, Tracy, your events. I'm good with that. Fine with me. Thumbs up, Pat. All right. Okay, so we will. Any other changes from select board members? Anything you want to pull out of consent? Looks like no, so okay, so we don't need to approve the agenda. I'm moving on to item number five in the agenda, public to be heard. This is the time for public to speak to the select board on things that are not on the agenda. If you want to speak, raise your hand using the raise your hand feature in Microsoft Teams or put a comment in the chat. I'm trying to figure out how to see all these different things at once. I got myself a second monitor, but it's not really doing what I was hoping it would. Andy, Betsy Dunn has her hand raised. If you scroll down, the teams are set up, so usually select board members and staff are at the top. If you scroll down a little bit, you can see that there or up at the top. You'll be able to see when there's a hand raise and the icon pops up, showing that there's a one or two, however many people have their hand raised. And then just for fun, the phone calls are usually at the absolute bottom, but I don't see any phone call people yet. Okay, Betsy. Okay. Hi, thank you. I have a question. And I'm not sure if it's, it is on the agenda. I will admit that, but it's on the agenda for you guys to have in closed session. So is it okay for me to comment on that? Mr. Chair, I guess it depends on what the question is. Okay, so let me ask a question. You're going to discuss the salaries and the raises that our unionized group is going to get this next three years. And I'm wondering if you don't want to hold that discussion till after we have the vote next week, because if you approve it, and then we end up having a separation, it's just going to possibly create a lot of havoc. And I'm just wondering if you want to hold it. That's all. So whether we do or don't separate, we'll have time employees. So I think we're, I don't think there's, I'm not sure there's a conflict there. We can, we can think about that. Okay, thank you. I just, yep. Thank you for the question. Okay, I see Adam Newhart has his hand up. Hey, can you all hear me? Yes. Great. So this comment is actually for you, Andy. So I live in the town outside the village. And I certainly want to comment on one of your front porch forum posts from March 31st titled missing information about separation. So in it, you led people to believe that the $2.7 million to be budget deficit calculated by the finance director wasn't anywhere near accurate. You called it, and I quote, so called $2.7 million shortfall and stated that the calculations. Again, a quote significantly overstated the amount that would need to be cut from the town budget to keep the tax rates the same. Now, you made these statements without supplying really any concrete evidence to back up those statements. And so here's my concern. And of course, obviously you can respond when I'm done if you would. So when you speculate on ideas and don't provide people with specifics, you give them an excuse to ignore facts and further cement them in their views regardless of which way they're leaning on merger. So this prevents a genuine conversation among town residents about merger and separation. It also undermines the hard work of town employees, bringing them unjust scrutiny simply for doing their job. When you describe their work the way you did. What I'm most concerned about is how people use what you said to make their decision on the merger, you know $2.7 million is a big deficit. It's about 25% of that projected budget for the to be and to make up that gap taxes have to go up quickly and services are going to be cut. And when I think about taxes going up quickly and services cut. I really truly genuinely think about all those people who are living on fixed incomes paycheck to paycheck, or who rely on wick. You know, they will bear the brunt of those statements in the event we separate, and not only will their wallets be hit the hardest, but the services they rely on, like the senior center buses and the library will likely be the first to be cut. And now I appreciate that you stated that your comments were your own. But I don't think that that's a free pass for any select board member to publicly speculate the thousands of their constituents on from porch forum. I think it was misleading, unprofessional, and it's a pattern I've noticed in other posts you've made. And I would really appreciate if you would check what you're saying before you send those things out, because you certainly represent all of the town of Essex. Thank you. Yeah, I'll respond to that briefly on the second page of the memo that I was referring to, or that that the town staff published there was this very explicit list and I actually quoted that that paragraph verbatim in the In my post that listed out all the things that were not included that were not set that were not pulled out and then I offered a few examples of it. I guess that's thank you for your comments. It's it's a it's a definitely something that weighs heavily on me. Whether whether to to post and as you if you've read all my posts you see that I did agonize over many of the earlier posts as well. It's it's it's a challenging position to be in. Okay, I see any Cooper has her hand up. I'm so I'm so angry that I'm giving myself a second before I speak. What what I just heard and a new hard speed to are also my thoughts. And your response should have been a public apology. But I look forward to your public apology going up to every single front porch forum for the confusion and indecision that you as a leader has thrown out in our in our into our community. You undermine Sarah Macy. You undermine her role her position our staff, our entire management team. I guess someone publicly and you have an opportunity you have a tool as a select board member that you know full well how to use where you ask the town manager to set up a workshop and find out your answers to your questions there. I'm totally speculating to 22,000 people who are currently trying to vote on the most important vote in the history of Essex somewhere in between, having lost complete and utter faith and respecting you as a leader, and wanting to ask for your resignation. I'm hopeful that Patrick's leadership here this evening to nominate you as chair and Patrick's leadership here this evening in sitting confidently beside you shows you some form of how to be a leader, because right now I do not have faith in your leadership and that is a very strong thing for me to say our community needs clear understanding from our leadership about the choices we are making. Patrick, I'm sorry, I realized that your hand going up maybe told me I went too far I will, I will, I will slow myself down a little bit. I am simply frustrated that our community needs information. I don't mind which way the vote goes voting is personal to people, but your leadership has to help people form their judgments. And I ask that the five people sitting here before us, representing the entirety of the town of Essex stand somewhere, get off the fence. The fence does not help us. We need your leadership, and we need you to stand firmly and confidently somewhere. A stand set yes on merger is a yes on merger. A stand set no on merger is a yes to complete separation by the village. Please choose one. We need to hear it. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for your comments, Annie. I did see Patrick's hand go up before Elise. I don't know. Patrick, you want to go or should I let public continue? Yeah, no, I'll go. Certainly with absolute and all due respect for the process of public to be heard. You know, I do think that, you know, Andy has been chair for five minutes. The specific personal attacks against him, while, you know, we can certainly critique any one of us as select board members and the job, you know, in particular that we do. You know, just I think all of us, you know, certainly come to these meetings and, you know, try to, if anyone has a critique against us as select board members or individuals, you know, certainly levy the critique but I think that we can try to avoid any personal attacks that may be crossing the line. Just a reminder for individuals, you know, we as select board members sign up for this. So I don't think anyone's going to be too upset if I get called out at some point. But, you know, just we all know that, you know, it's also hard to sit in the chair. So that's that's it. We can keep going. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Patrick. Yeah, you're you're you're right. Criticized or comments about elected officials are certainly protected speech. And yeah, we should hear it. I'm sorry, any you're you're asking again. I may extend an apology Andy because Patrick is absolutely correct. I'm very sorry that I didn't have the wherewithal to temper my statement and make it more mildly inclusive of all and speak more directly to the cause and not the person I apologize deeply from my heart about personally speaking to that way and I only meant to convey my strong feelings and got a little lost in the process. Thank you, Patrick. When I saw his hand go up, I did wonder if that was part of it. And so I appreciate your dedication to task. I appreciate your hard work. And I sincerely apologize for bringing personal items into our conversation. Oh, one more thing we probably should have read this ability thing just as a reminder for next time it would have it would have put me in a good place to for next time maybe thank you all very much for your time. And thank you for this discussion. Thank you, Annie. At least certain. Yes, thank you. Can you hear me okay. Yes. Oh, great. Thank you. So this is also in regards to Chairman Watts posting on from porch forum, and I would bring this to every select board member. And I would say this to the trustees to, if you are posting as a resident and as a personal opinion which Andy I believe that's what you stated. Remember that you post that under a personal from porch forum account, not your select board account because actually that does carry weight. And people do look to that in Andy, you know that that's a responsibility that I know you said you struggle with but there would be a great way to do it would be to use your own personal account, because I think that does make a difference when you hold a position in this community and your disclaimer doesn't really work when it comes in under your from porch forum select board. Also, I'd like to say Andy you were had mentioned that you were responding to questions from the public which I think is awesome Thank you so much for that. I did post a question to you also on from porch forum that asked for you to clarify for us your stand on yes for merger or no for merger. It's very important because right now, as a village resident, I'm not clear about where you stand and I'm also not clear if you actually represent me. So if you clarify that at some point. Thank you. Yeah, I'll answer that question right now I have said many times that I am not against merger, but I just do not like the plan that's going forward. It's the plan that I'm against that the current one we're voting on not the not the concept of merger. I've said that many times. And also I guess to respond to another thing that at least said it's interesting that I'm being asked to only post on. It would be the Essex Center from porch forum, because previously when I my my my first post my first many posts, that's how I posted them and I was criticized for doing that is for for doing it only on that one. And so it it it's a I understand and some people like it one way some people like it the other and that's that's understandable. Let's see I see Betty pulling with her hand up. Hi I just have a general question. How does the town communicate real time election results to voters. In recent elections. It seems like I've gotten the information, either through the Essex reporter. Sometimes I see the candidates who run for office posts the results, or sometimes even the village does so does the town post results real time on the website or that. So just a clarification for that would be appreciated thanks. I don't know the answer that I know that candidates will often stay at the polls until the count is is a until a preliminary count is available. And they'll often if because we have two polling places will have a friend or someone else at the other polling station so that they can get both numbers together but I don't know. Evan I don't know if you know what our you know what do we do we don't post this. Unfortunately we don't have people on staff that time of night. The clerk has to take all the votes. She gives a preliminary total to the poll watchers. Usually the media is there. The candidates are there. Then she has to go back to the office and do a whole lot of paperwork that is related to the election. This year was a lot more paperwork than in previous years. But I take the comment that maybe we can work on getting a posting on to our website that night with at least what is preliminary election results. Usually preliminary usually ends up being exactly what they end up being. But we had some very close election totals, but I can talk with the clerk and with the people who do our website and see what we can post these next elections. Great. I appreciate that. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for the question. I see Adam Newhart's hand is your hand still up or are you wanting to talk again? I'm sorry. Dark forces are putting my hand up. That was an accident. I'll put it down. Thank you. Okay. I don't see any other hands up. I don't see anybody on the phone either. Is there anybody else who would like to speak? Go ahead and jump in. Okay. Now I see the chat. Okay. Mr. Chair, Irene Renner has her hand up now. Okay. Irene, go ahead. Thanks very much. Congratulations to all the people who have just been elected to fill those official positions. I think anyone who's watched the meetings for a few months has seen how Andy agonized over posting things townwide received permission from his board to do that and then was called up by the chair anyway at a subsequent meeting. So I think when somebody works as hard as Andy does to follow the protocol, the last thing that should happen is for the public to come on this meeting or any meeting and castigate him. I'm sorry, Sarah. Last I knew that we're presented at the prior select board meeting did not take into account that half of the population if there were a separation would not need to be provided services. It was a last minute memo that the public did not get to see and I think that's unfortunate and I would hope that this new select board would make sure that the rules of engagement are followed and that is that no one gets a memo at a meeting without talking about it or deciding on it without the public and without them having several days to look at it. That should be the rare exception, not the rule. And I don't appreciate members of the public conflating the merger vote, which is merely a revote a yes or no on merger with a survey question on the village ballot about separation. Thanks so much. Bye. Thank you, Irene. I do want to mention, though, that if folks are interested in our communications policy this on the agenda later. So if you want to hang around till business item six H. You can certainly comment on the communication policy at that point as well. Okay, any other. I see any Cooper's hand is back up again. Yeah, go ahead. Thanks. Um, I just want to be clear that we are sitting at a select board meeting. And we're, we're literally in a historic moment of a vote. And yes on merger is the yes on merger and no on merger. Any are you talking any are you arguing with Irene or you're making a point. I'm speaking to, I'm sorry. And select chair Watts, I'm speaking to our select board. I feel that if something's not clear, it should be made clear. So, I guess, I'm just a little confused about your, this, we're voting on this current plan of merger. This is the only plan of merger we're voting on. We're not voting on a future plan. So we're voting on a plan of merger. As a village resident, I also have a ballot item that if this current plan of merger fails. We're voting to separate on complete separation. And I think that to pretend that that's not true is not comfortable. So anyway, thank you for listening. Any other comments, comments, questions, concerns, complaints, compliments. All right. Thank you. Thank you for all of that. I certainly do listen to and agonize over a lot of these kind of questions and keep keep the comments coming. They're, they are helpful. Moving on to business item 6a presentation of across the dotted line community connections and Essex. And we have Gabrielle Smith and Henry Wu. Hi, before we get started, we were hoping Henry, are you able to share your screen. And if not, is that able to happen. Right now I'm not able to. Is there a way that I could. I don't think we can do it on the fly. Henry, if you want to send me the information or the presentation you have, I can pull it up and you can just tell me when to flip through the slides. It's G Duggan G D U G G an at Essex.org. I don't think we we don't have slides so. Oh, okay. Craig, I think I just made him a presenter. Oh, I guess we can do it on the fly. I'm glad we have a technologically savvy person with us. Thank you, Vince. Thank you. All right, Henry. Thanks for your patience, everyone. So, thank you for having us tonight. We're here to provide you with an overview of a new initiative across the dotted line, community connections in Essex. This is a story initiative is created and organized by the heart and soul of Essex. For those of you who aren't familiar with us, the heart and soul of Essex is a nonprofit created nine years ago to manage a grant from the Orton Family Foundation to implement their community heart and soul model here in Essex. The project has continued since the end of that project in 2014 with the purpose of stewarding and highlighting the six community values that were identified through the project with input from over 1000 residents of Essex. Those values are local economy, health and recreation, community connections, education, thoughtful growth and safety. If you want to know more about those values and information on the activities and outreach to gather the data that went into them, please visit our website at heartandsoulofessex.org. Across the dotted line is designed to engage residents of the town of Essex to post photos and story captions that describe a connection you share across the dotted line that is the border of the village within the town. Essex residents are invited to submit a photo and a caption with a short story about the people in the photo, their connection across the dotted line, and if they're inclined something they both love about Essex. Photos and story captions can be submitted via email or with hashtag across the dotted line on Facebook or Instagram and I'll show you briefly what those look like. We actually just created an Instagram page today. Information on participating and more details on the project as well as a growing photo gallery can be found on our website at www.heartandsoulofessex.org. And briefly, you can see more details about the project and how to participate here on our website. This is also another opportunity we hope to help get out the vote. Residents who are interested in helping get out the vote for the town of Essex article, the Essex Westford School District ballot and the village of Essex Junction ballot are invited to hold up a sign in their photo that simply says vote on April 13th. No other messages related to the upcoming ballot will be allowed. Heart and Soul of Essex has no position on any of the ballot questions and is not sharing any links to voter information. Existing photos are also terrific submissions. There's no need to take a photo specifically for the initiative. Share one you already have. Just be sure that all people in the photo agree to have it posted and shared publicly. Additional details on submission guidelines can be found on our website. This initiative has no other costs than the time that Henry and I are putting into it. We are not requesting any funds or time of the select board or staff. Our current plan is to maintain the growing photo gallery and keep it up for a period of time after the vote is over at the discretion of the Board of Heart and Soul of Essex to manage the social media hashtags during the initiative and see where the community takes us. We hope to have many photos and stories on our website for the community to see whether this project takes off ultimately depends on residents participating. Why is it now the time to promote our shared value of community connections? While there are many voices in the community sharing information and differing points of view, especially about the revote on the merger, Heart and Soul of Essex is offering a reminder that we are connected by our history, our economy, our schools, our social networks, our faith communities, our volunteerism, our landscape, and so much more. Relationships are an easy way for people to think about and actualize this. A photo is a powerful storyteller. The Heart and Soul of Essex project sought to ensure that as Essex continues to grow and change, we hold on to what is special about our community and that decisions reflect what matters to the people who live and work here. This initiative is a continuation of that purpose. We hope that many residents will participate, submit photos and captions of no more than 100 words, and enjoy viewing the gallery at HeartandSoulofEssex.org and photos as they are shared on Facebook and Instagram. Thanks, Henry. We're happy to answer any questions. Any questions from the board? Oh, and I have a compliment. Thank you so much to Andy and Pat for sharing a photo and that's been, Andy may want to pop on that one, so. And as you can see for it's like board and the public that those are the story captions we're referring to those are written by the submitters of the photo. And that there's a 100 word limit there. Thank you, Gabrielle. Patrick. Thanks, Gabrielle. I was going to say I'm really glad I was actually going to wear that shirt. Tonight at the meeting and I'm glad I didn't because it looked really awkward. I have more than two shirts. But I do think that this is a good initiative. You know, I think it's no secret that we're, you know, clearly going through some change we have a new board member new board chair. Andy and I had a chance to talk a little bit and I think that, you know, it's, there's a clear need in our community right now to lower the temperature, you know, a significant amount. Certainly not to say that we don't all have our very strong opinions on how we feel about merger and separation and whatever they're going to be. But the long and short of it is that no matter what happens at the vote going forward, we're still going to be linked for an extended period of time, both Essex Junction and the TOV. And ultimately, I think that while it's a law has been said about, you know, kind of the different communities that exist, quite simply, we are in a six by six square mile area. You know, it's 36 square miles of land and it's not that much. You know, I am sure I will get flack for saying this and I apologize in advance. But, you know, I gotta take my Northeast Kingdom cred and say that there's no part of rural Essex that anyone from the Northeast Kingdom would look at and say, that's rural. I think that most people would probably look at rural Essex and think that we're all city folk. You know, it's kind of a, it's, you know, it's all about perspective. You know, none of us live all that far from one another, and it's absolutely the time to kind of take a deep breath and realize, you know, how much damage some of the words that are out there are having. So, I guess really kind of in conclusion, it was me being on a soapbox a little bit, but also this initiative is coming at, I think, a really good time and I hope you guys see a lot of participation. I was more than happy to do it with Andy and look forward to a lot of other similar pictures to come. Thanks, Pat. Okay. Thanks, Pat. Any other board member comments questions. Thanks, Pat. Thumb it up pretty nicely. So you're done nodding Vince, any comments? Yeah, I'll just, I just want to extend my appreciation to both Gabrielle and Henry for their presentation and the work they do in the community. I wholeheartedly agree with, you know, crossing those dotted lines. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. I see Ken Signarillo in the public has his hands up. Thank you. I think the cross dotted line idea is great. And if we're allowed to and the timing is right, the dark room gallery is certainly is available for a reception if you ever get that far. The other thing is Essex seems to be shrinking. Essex is in fact 39 square miles, not 36. Thank you. Okay, any any other comments. Yes, I guess to ask a question, you're not asking for anything here. You're just you're just offering this as information about what you're what you're up to. Okay, great. Yeah, I felt it was important that and the board as well felt it was important that you all and the whole community have this clear and understanding of what this project is about and what it is not about. And it is, it is our intention to be as, as impartial in this space as, as, as we are indeed impartial as a as a board and as a nonprofit. And, and, and for all of us, we felt that this was something that that we were able to do and see how the community responds and see if it's something that that resonates and fills and fills a need and and it's okay if it doesn't because, you know, there isn't any money going into this and thankfully Henry has been willing to step into this space with me and and it couldn't have happened without him and without the support of the rest of the board of Heart and Soul of Essex. So just thank you all for your time and I know you have a full agenda so if there aren't any questions I think you know where to find me and please let us know if there's anything more we can do to support support the community at this time. Okay, great. Thank you Gabrielle and Henry for your presentation. All right. Okay, moving on to business items 6b. Consider approval of first and third class liquor license renewals including outdoor consumption permits. Greg, you want to share this. There's a few more liquor license applicants renewals in this case for the first item that have come in since the last time you saw them. The clerk's office and the police have both vetted the applications and are comfortable with the select board giving the approvals. That's the gist. I'm happy to try to answer any questions about them if there are any. Okay, any questions from select board members? If not, does anybody have the the motion available? Patrick. I am curious. There were two recommendations listed here for two memos and I apologize. I'm looking at them and I'm not sure which of the two you would prefer. I see that they're at least in the packet. The second one lists some specific business names. Do we need to do both of those because they're both titled regarding liquor license applications? Let me share the memo pat on my screen. Yeah, so there's this first one is to for some renewals. I think they were they were out of order in the others. There's two B and C are both in the same. Agenda item. Okay, I get it. So yes, the first one is for the renewals. Then we have a few couple of new applications and then there's the second class renewals after that. And yeah, Andy just nailed it. The first memo covers B and C. So the one I have pulled up right now will suffice for item B, the renewals, first and third class renewals. Okay, perfect. That's what I was looking for. Then I will make a motion to approve the first third class liquor license renewals listed in the March 31st memorandum regarding liquor license applications. Okay, thank you pat to have a second second. Thank you, Vince. Okay we have a motion and a second for approval. All those in favor please say aye. Oh, sorry any other any other comments I should ask for their comments first sorry sorry sorry. Okay hearing none. Sorry, all those in favor. Please say aye. Opposed? Okay, the liquor license renewals passes, moving on to agenda item 6C, which is the next page of that same agenda item, the new first and third class liquor licenses without our consumption permits. And I believe we typically do specifically list them for a first for new ones. I think that's why they're listed here. Correct. For the first, for the new applications, we typically list them out. In this case, we have RRBL, LLC doing business as barnyard, one David Drive. We also have FRG, Essex, LLC doing business as the scale. I believe I saw one of the applicants from the barnyard in the list of participants here tonight. I am not sure if anybody is here from the scale. But yeah, similar process, the select board, excuse me, the police and the clerk have vetted the applications. They're comfortable with select board approval. But if the select board has any questions, again, I can try to answer and at least one of the applicants is here as well. Okay, so any questions from board members? Patrick. No specific questions, but I certainly would like to meet the applicants if they are here and available. Certainly feel free to speak up if you're in attendance. I see you up here. So we have Perry Farr. Yeah. Yeah, hi up. It's Neil and Perry. We're here. Could you share information about your establishment and are you open? What are your plans for your business? All right, so we are the scale. We have a location in Wilson and we opened a location on Pearl Street in Essex Junction in November of last year. We are full operation. We have outdoor seating. And we are looking to get a, you know, alcohol license to serve beer and wine and outdoor consumption, things of that nature. Okay, great. Thank you. And so your business, you're already open and serving. Yeah, because I've been there. I've been there. Thank you. Welcome to town. Your food's great. Thank you very much. We're very happy to be in Essex. We love it. Are there any other new license applicants in the audience? Yes, my name is Paul Handy and we're with the Barnyard Group currently open in South Burlington looking to open in Essex Junction in the next month, month and a half. And same thing. We're looking to get our first and third class liquor and beer wine license. Okay, great. Are you open yet? We're currently not open in Essex. We do have a location open in South Burlington now. Do you have a date when you want to open? I would say May 4th around there. We're looking to get beyond, I think the Monday is the second or third. So it might actually, I think it's the third, Monday the third. Okay, great. Anyone else? So Barnyard and Scale is just the two, right? Okay. Okay, any other comments or questions from board members? No, okay. I just want to say thank you to the owners of the scale. I absolutely love your food. It's a regular haunt for me and my girlfriend. We get take out from you almost every week. Thank you very much. That's very much appreciated. We love customers like you that give us feedback. All right, there's no other comments. I'll take a motion. I will motion the select board approve the first third and third class new liquor license applications for RRBL, LLC, doing business as Barnyard, and FRG Essex, LLC, doing business as the Scale Essex. These are listed in the March 31st memorandum regarding liquor license applications. So including outdoor consumption permits. Do we need to say that? Yes. Okay, including outdoor consumption permits. I will still second that. Thank you, Tracy. Any other comments? If not, okay. Do you have the admonishment handy? I don't have the admonishment. Can't do it from memory? I could win, I suppose. I'd be happy to do it for you. Let's do your best, Andy. Let's give it a try. So we as a select board enacting as the liquor control board take the issuance of liquor license very seriously, and we expect you to also. We expect you not to serve minors or obviously inebriated folks to follow all the regulations required by Vermont State statute and liquor control board. And thank you for opening your business, establishing a business in Essex, and we wish you the best of luck. I've heard it a lot, many times. Thanks for bailing out staff, Andy. Yeah, all right. Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, passes unanimously. Thank you. Okay, moving on to business item 6D. Consider approval of second class liquor license renewals. 6D, there's a few second class liquor license renewals that are up for renewal have applied. Once again, the clerk's office and the police department have reviewed the applications and are comfortable with select board approval. Any questions or comments from board members? I'll get right to it. I motion a select board approve the second class renewals for Westco Inc. doing business as Champlain Farms at 25 Jericho Road and 56 Pearl Street. Liquor license renewals are listed in the April 1st memorandum regarding liquor license applications. Okay, thank you, Pat. Do I have a second? I'll second that. Can I hear Tracy first? Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, that passes unanimously. Thank you. It's funny, I'm finding as chair, I'm forgetting to say aye. I don't know why. Okay, moving on to business items 6E, consider reconstitution of the town, village, stormwater, coordinating committee and appointment of a select board member to the committee. Who's presenting for this? Is that Dennis? That's me. Good evening all. I'll try to be as quick at this as I can because you have a long meeting and I'm aware that there's a basketball game on later tonight. So things have to be kind of put in perspective. Back in 2013, the select board at that time, based upon staff urging formed a stormwater coordinating committee. I was made up of a select board member, a trustee member, two members of large from the public and the staff, as well as the manager. And that committee was instrumental because we had a permit that was issued. We've had a number of permits in the state on stormwater, the MS4 permits. But that was that committee was really instrumental in solving a couple problems that were able to be done by the committee with staff help that would then went back to both boards so that we could proceed with meeting our obligations under the permit. And then it was flow restoration, which is trying to get our streams cleaned up. And there was a lot of independent developments in the town that had individual stormwater permits that were kind of on their own. And through the ordinance that the boards passed through work by everyone, we're able to get all those permits under the town's permit so that there was a universal coverage for the flow portion of that. So that was critical. So we've basically built three out of four projects. We hope to go to the fourth one next year. So for our 2013 permit, we've really done remarkably well. With all these things, a new permit came out in 2017. This one related to the lake and removing phosphorus from both communities. Our streams, irrespective of town and village boundaries, our streams don't recognize political boundaries. And so most of our waters start in the town, fall into the village and in some cases fall back through the town before they make it to the lake. It's important that we work together, both now and into the future. One of the biggest items that we have facing both communities is this requirement for us to remove phosphorus from the lake. And it's a 20 year plan. In your reading file, there was a document that was put together for you that kind of brought you up real quick speed on the phosphorus control plan. It's a lengthy, complicated document technically. We had a consultant perform it, perform the study. As we've done in the past, the village got the grant, but it was a joint process with the town and the village to look at both our communities and how we meet this obligation. It's in draft form. The permit required that we submit a plan to the state by April 1. Because it's so complicated, our consultant could not get it to us in time to get it to the board to go through the whole ramifications of the involvement of that. So the decision was made that we would send that draft to the state with our comments and tell them it was a draft because at some point, both the select board and the trustees will have to adopt a plan. And part of that plan and the most difficult part isn't so necessarily the technical piece, but how we pay for it. And that's a critical component. We have 20 years to do this, but it involves everything from improving our gravel roads, putting stone out there, outfalls, on a lot of areas in the town, building facilities, rebuilding facilities, all aimed at foster removal, sweeping our streets more, year round, other than obviously when it snows. But right now we do fall and spring and we're going to end up doing that mostly year round. So there's a lot of things on the table. We felt that this is the point where once the coordinating committee kind of met what it was intended to do under the directive given by the previous board, we kind of didn't hold meetings because we were just staff and just carrying out what the board said they wanted us to carry out and what the committee said they wanted us to carry out. But now it's a different ballgame. Now we've got to kind of recalibrate, look at phosphorus, look at things that have to change in some of our zoning ordinances that relate to stormwater. And that's partially planning commission, but it's also partially going to end up at some point in the board's hands as to what's required. And so we redid the policy on the stormwater coordinating committee to kind of take that original purpose, reword it, get it to the board so that there was direction for this committee. We talked to the people who are previously on the committee and all have agreed to continue to serve. The only exception is that in the previous committee, the member from the select board was Mike Plagin. And Mike is no longer on the select board. And we really think that it's important to have a select board member there just as it's important to have a trustee member there, because it works both ways they can kind of have input from the board to us as to what might be acceptable. And so we would very much like the reconstitutes committee with the policy that we've given in that memo, but more important we'd like to have one of you serve as on the committee and this is a committee that doesn't meet on a set date. So in the past has been about once every four to six weeks. As we get into adopting the plan, it probably will be much less because at that point, it's going to be up to staff to carry through and build what's got to be built. But it's going to take us time to get there. The memo requests that the board appoint someone. I'm not asking that you appoint someone tonight. It's a lot on the agenda and it's a brand new board and you probably want to think about this. If you have someone that wants to volunteer and wants to get into this and do it. It's great. If in fact you want to postpone it and think about it for future meeting. I'm going to be back on the 19th with water sewer budget. And I think a sewer allocation and a couple of other things that we've got scheduled for that meeting and I'm perfectly want to come back then. You know, discuss it more if that's what you'd like. But it is important. We feel that we get this committee going again. It's going to be expensive. I'm not trying to kid anyone. It's going to be an expensive. We have a long time to pay for it so we can figure it out. But how do we pay for it. And so that's probably the most critical part. But also how we do it. What are we going to build? Where are we going to build it? We have a joint effort. We both have targets in the village in the town, but the way to get there is to work collectively together. And I see that as a future need whether we merge or don't merge. It's a combined effort if we're ever going to make it because what comes out of the town in terms of water goes into the village or comes out of the village goes into the town is water. So we've got to work together on this into the future. That's it. That's my pitch. I'll answer any questions you have. Okay. Thanks Dennis. Anybody have any questions for Dennis? Dennis, for, you know, obviously this is stretching so far into the future. I know it might be hesitant to really put any dollar figures or anything on it. But is this going to be very similar to the previous stormwater plan where there are like multiple big projects, like retaining pools, that sort of thing, like at the LDS or what's, you know, has gone in there. Or are we looking at something that's more than just, you know, four or five sites with, you know, phosphorus, you know, phosphorus draining. Yeah, I don't probably have the right terminology. I guess I'm just trying to get an idea for you said, you know, I recognize that there's going to be a large amount of finances that need to be put towards this but I guess I'm trying to ballpark if we're thinking, do we need to worry about millions of dollars or do we need to worry about hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'll scare you. It's a combination and the problem is we can't do it alone with a couple of large projects. A couple of large projects that we've got planned or looked at in the report would get us a good way there. Street sweeping, increasing that would get us a good way there doing more than we've done there. Street sweeping is a very tentative issue right now with the state because they've adopted a particular policy. If that changes, that takes the contribution that we can use to remove phosphorus way down and makes us do more. And I'm not sure that that's settled yet. So that's a concern we all have. There's just there's a lot of other projects that need to be done that are spread all over the town in the village, and a lot of them are small. And at this point, we haven't costed them out. We've costed out some of the larger ones. We know the back roads. We're going to have to do a lot of ditch work and stone line ditches and we've got culverts. And I can think of a couple that are way undersized. So I'm not handling a Catella up in that area of the town that to put in the right size culvert we're talking almost box culverts with concrete as opposed to metal culverts. So there's a lot of cost expenses to report at this point using current dollars says about 3.75 million. I think it's closer to 5 million over 20 years. Right now we're putting $150,000 a year away into a joint account at the village in the town share for stormwater $150,000 a year over 20 years doesn't give you $5 million. Now we're going to go actively after grants. We're going to try to grab whatever we can. So it's a hard target. But it is real money. It's not the hundreds of thousands of dollars that it's it's real money. Okay. All right. Thanks Dennis. Appreciate it. Any other questions from or members curious if anyone has any interest in being on the committee. You know if we can give Dennis an answer tonight. I'm not sure if anyone has any burning desire or not. I'm happy to have a discussion later anyway but I thought I might at least offer someone really love stormwater. Are you interested Patrick. I've got to be a stormwater is not in my top five things that interest me about local government but it's close Tracy's got her Tracy's got her hand up. I was going to ask Dennis if there any knowledge or skills that would be helpful from a select board member on the committee. I think interest. Technology is understandable and the projects that we build you know I think we can we've we've learned a lot. When I got out of college the last thing I was going to be doing was looking at stormwater systems and how to remove phosphorus. So it's it you can learn it's not hard to learn. And we're not looking for necessary technical expertise. It's more of how how do we accomplish this stay within our permit. We need our obligations and do that in a way that the community can absorb the financial impact. You know what's the right way to do this. And it's not like we've got to do it all in year one we've got 20 years but we can't do it in your 20 either so how do we how do we spread this out. And so a lot of the issues to me are going to be more financial impact and what are some of the best options that we might do. Do we have a project by project basis. Do we photo bond for some of these. Do we go after increase in the two cents on the capital tax because it might be shared between both communities. I don't I don't have any answer. I've got ideas but I don't have any answer. And so I think we need to look at the types of projects where we might fund them. We might want to fund some of some of the operational budgets every year. A lot of the road work we could do. I think a person who has an interest and especially an interest in how we make this work and save taxpayers money but still get the job done is probably the biggest factor in wanting to be on and it just an interest in it because it's very interesting in terms of stuff that we can do. There are low scale to get phosphorus out. So it's for me it's kind of fun. But not for everybody. I guess that's I'm an engineer so I appreciate some of that stuff. Is he having his hands up you want to add anything. Thanks. Yeah, I would say someone with interest but also objectivity, creativity, and a willingness to be open minded about all the options that are going to be thrown out on the table to be able to deal with a five plus million dollar price tag over X amount of years. There's also going to be a need to work with staff and work with our legislators on trying to obtain funding for said projects we've been very good over the last several years getting that grant funding. But you never know. So if that helps you make your decision. There's only five of you. So one of you will need to step up one would hope. But thank you. Anything else Tracy. No, that was it. If I would also like to get Dennis an answer tonight, if possible, I would be willing to spend the time to devote to this. Okay, thank you for that Tracy Vince or Don any comments or questions. Tracy's interested and wants to learn I'd say later have it. All right. So Dennis the recommended motion that we have before us also includes a comment about the revised policy document. It's being revised in the policy document. Is it just the names of the participants? I rewrote the policy document because the old one contained and I included in the package but it is a lot of reading the old one contained. Excuse me full restoration plan permit consolidation. This one changed the direction and wanted to get that clear that, you know, we may still end up with doing some of those earlier things but I just tried to change the direction of it in the what we're going to what you're expecting that committee to do and come back to you with with answers for the future. I think we've got the answers on the one that was in 2013. Now we've got to get answers to this part. Okay. All right, so I see one hand up from the public board members okay with the public and then circling back to a board discussion. All right, Betsy done. Thanks Andy. And this goes I guess sort of to a Dennis. Is this also including the PFOAs that are in Indian Brook? The short answer is no. And I'll give it slightly longer one but not a much longer one. There are pollutants out there that get into our waterway. And they have an impact. Chlorides have an impact. We're not going to start to stop stop salting the roads, but chlorides have an impact and they have an impact in some areas greater than another areas. That's something that down the road is is a consideration. There is a whole series of unique things that are out there in the environment that we're just coming to grips with. And good, bad or indifferent. The science is far ahead of us as far as testing for these critters and animals and different pollutants than we are at solving the problem. So is it going to rest with phosphorus? No, you know, my best guess is that some board in the future, probably long after we're all gone or doing other things, we'll have to face with some other level pollutant pollutant in our water that we're going to have to deal with. I'm not aware of direct testing on our streams that would show that the PFOA is a problem in any particular stream. But there's a lot of stuff out there that over the long term as our testing gets better and we start going from parts per million to parts per billion to parts per trillion. That we're going to have a requirement to clean up things more and more as we go forward. It's the nature of the beast. I think we've got a 20 year plan to clean up the lake and I think EPA and the state is satisfied with that. But that doesn't mean there isn't more to come. And that's the best answer I can give you. I just at this point we don't know. We know what's in the permit. We don't know what's in the next permit that comes at us in 10 years. And just to follow up on that, the issue we have here on Fernwood with the stormwater there, is that also a part of this project that you're talking about? Yeah, that would be a typical example and the actual, we had a public meeting on a particular project that we've come up with some solutions. We think it's a good solution. The engineers putting that together. We have basically assembled a solution, which I think is a great solution considering all the input we had from the public. But a portion of that deals with treating phosphorus. And that's the kind of piece, you know, we might do some road work. We might do some storm drainage improvements. We might do some other things. But there's going to be a piece of that project that's going to be required to take out some phosphorus. That's the piece that would come under this program. The other pieces would be operational and normal operating budgets. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, thanks. Is he Patty has her hand up? Yeah, can you hear me? Yes. Oh, great. I mean, I'm on my husband's computer. I couldn't get on my tablet to save my life 40 minutes later. Anyway, Dennis, I love hearing you speak about this. And I wondered if a public, you know, if public members can help the select board member that you choose. And I wonder what you think of a multi prong approach, because you know that the ETC next plan has been approved and transportation and, you know, we're trying to improve kind of everything multi prong wise. And I'm very, very interested in mitigating our wetlands when it comes to chemicals and phosphorus. And, you know, it's really a multi prong approach. I feel and wonder what you think about the environmental laws. I know you think 10 years down the road, but maybe we can take this approach multi prong wise with nature, preserving our animals and our wetlands and all that while we're building ETC next, for example, and then work with you on doing it, building all this stuff the right way initially so we don't have to redo it to get rid of phosphorus for the next 20 years. Anyway, that's my thought. I could make a very quick comment. Yes, I agree with you. And that's one of the things that part of the phosphorus control plan is going to be looking at our development standards to ensure that whatever we put in for new development also contains the phosphorus removal component. And with all these chemicals, I mean, when we did the full restoration, just by taking suspended solid, and I'm going to get a little technical, but just quick, just by taking suspended solids out of the waste stream. Some of the phosphorus is tied up with the suspended solids. So you get a little bit of a bang for the buck if you just handle your flow better and settle stuff out. Same with phosphorus. If phosphorus, the solution of phosphorus in a lot of cases is some treatment and filtration. Well, when you filter stuff, you pick up stuff other than just the phosphorus and in which you're in your end product. So yes, so it's whatever we do, we want to do a system that's looking not just at what's out there today, but what's into the future. The hard part is that some of those things in the future, when you start getting down to things like PFOA and you're testing to parts per trillion, you're almost beyond the range of current solutions. The technology is there to find this stuff. But the current solutions may not be in place to handle things that are down to that level. Where you're, you're trying to find that, that bit of sand and a swimming pool. And it's just, it's hard. Yeah. Okay, thanks. Yep. Okay, thank you, Patty. Any other comments or questions from the public? Okay, I don't see any, but Patty, your hand is still up. I'm so sorry. I don't know how to do this. Is it gone now? Yep. Okay. Okay, so Tracy has expressed interest in participating in this committee. So if someone is willing to pose a motion to dominate Tracy and approve the policy document. I will give it a go. Make sure I'm on the right page. Let's see. I motion that the Essex Select Board create a joint stormwater policy coordination committee for the primary purpose of providing. So I think, I think you're on, I think you're on the earlier, the one that established the earlier. Oh, yep. So it's 6E1 is the, it's numbered in the document. Yeah, looks like Craig has it up now. Thank you, Greg. It saves me from scrolling. I motion that the select board appoint Tracy Delfia to serve on the joint stormwater coordinating committee and approve the revised policy document for the committee. Thank you, Pat. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded. Thanks, Don. Any other comments? Okay, hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Motion is approved. Thank you very much. Thank you, Tracy. It should be fine, Tracy. All right. Okay. Moving on to the next agenda item. Consider approval of rules and regulations for orderly conduct of business. Greg. Sure. So for every year, the select board at its reorganizational meeting approves or re-approves a few of its policies for board business throughout the year. The first one is the rules and regulations for orderly conduct of business. Staff does have a couple of proposed changes this year. I'll just pull them up. Basically, this is a document that defines meetings, set standards for when the meeting should take place, how they should take place, speaks to public participation at the meetings, public hearings, informational meetings, communications, it talks about conduct at the meetings, you know, processes for taking motions and votes, and basically just the rules and regulations to operate. Staff's proposed changes for this year fall under the agenda deadline. This is section four of under the participation. And the first one is the agenda item. We have a meeting schedule ahead that items need to come in from the board members by four days before the scheduled meeting date. Since meetings are typically on Mondays, occasionally on Tuesdays, based on holiday schedules. And with a number of meetings that staff is trying to support, it's going to be really helpful for us to have information in by noon on Wednesdays. In terms of helping us get the packets put together, deal with any last minute changes, and hopefully get out by the end of day on Friday. So a proposed change there, instead of four business days or four working days, excuse me. Also specifying there might be some exceptions permitted for special meetings. Tracy had caught a typo after the packet went out under conduct of meetings, changing insurer to ensure. And those are the proposed changes so happy to speak to those or take any other suggestions. I've got a Word document up so I can do track changes life if there are any. Okay, thanks Greg. You got all my questions answered there with the the the getting content for the memo or for the the agenda was in the computer use. Tracy and we'll talk about that later. We're moving it from there to here so that just puts it, I think in the right place. It makes it consistent. Anybody else have any other comments or questions about the policy. Tracy. Yeah, I wanted to suggest some language for the board's approval, adding a number 10 under conduct of meetings. This is to Greg. I'd like to read it aloud if if possible quote cell phones or other electronic handheld devices shall only be used during meetings for purposes related to the meeting. Phones or devices should either be turned off or placed on a setting that does not utilize an audible ring, such as silent or vibrate. Additionally, board members shall not post a social media respond to email or similar actions during meetings specifically required for the purposes of the meeting. For example, reaching a staff member or member of the public who is meeting needed during the meeting. Okay. Thank you, Tracy. Anyone else have any comments about this change or any other suggested changes or is anything at all about this document. Pat, I think you're right your hands up Pat. I'll mute myself. There we go. Yeah, that I'm down with that change. Seems absolutely relevant to me so I'm okay with including it. I think specifically one thing that I wanted to at least touch upon. Let me make sure I get the number correct. Apologies. So I have like three windows open. We could scroll up to participation in public hearings. Greg, I think it's number two. There we go. I know I brought it up earlier tonight about keeping the temperature down. I think that we should as a select board just kind of all be aware during the meetings that this also is relevant to not just us but also members of the public when it comes up because over the last year I think that we've definitely had instances where we've had individuals who have come to present items that certainly are not given without their share of ridicule or availed or sometimes even not so availed insult. I just want to make sure now that we're starting a new year and hopefully trying to be a little bit more careful about the respect levels that we're all going to try to treat each other with that. We all make note of this number two that it is within our policy for a conduct of business. And that it's not just going to be a select board, but you know all of us members of the public as well attending these meetings need to make sure that we're abiding by these sort of basic tenets. But other than that, that's all I have. I have a little bit of concern about doing that Pat, and I'm just one member of the board expressing my opinion. Criticism of elected officials is protected speech. I'd be a little concerned about putting something in our policy that limits the public's ability to say whatever they want. Sorry, I'm not looking to change any language that's not already there. I'm just trying to highlight the specifics that are already in this. Okay. Okay, you're not asking to make any changes to the language. Okay. Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, no, just right. I think specifically all comments should be germane to the issue and shall be presented in a productive manner without ridicule or insults free from tumultuous or threatening remarks. Or gestures. I think we can all agree that over the last year we've had, you know, individuals who have come that have certainly kind of crossed that, you know, we've towed that line. And I think that's probably from both sides of certainly the merger conversation. But I think overall in general, it's just something that, you know, we as a board are going to want to be sure that we're being careful about tolerating. Everyone absolutely deserves to speak what's on their mind. But yeah, just the level of acceptance that we have just need to make sure that everyone feels respected. And to say it is part of our, you know, the rules and regulations that we follow. Okay. Thanks, Pat. Tracy, I see your hand up again. Yeah, I think I had a copy and paste issue when I sent that language to Greg. Greg, the first part of that about cell phones is under motions and votes under number 10. So if you can just strike that from after it should start out members of the body shall not post a social media. Apologies for that. Thank you. Did I catch that right Tracy? Yeah, just trying to avoid redundancy the cell phone bit was was later on so there's no need to have it in two places. Okay. Thanks. Okay, Vince or Don, any comments? I think both. I think everything is reasonable. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you both Patrick and Tracy and Tracy I'm glad you fixed that because I thought I had read that cell phone thing somewhere else. Thank you. Yeah, we're doing some editing this weekend and I just got mixed around. I guess a procedure question here. Greg, typically if we have major changes to policy we need to it takes two meetings to completely approve it. I don't I don't view that addition as a major change to policy. I would not consider that a major change but I will leave it up to the board if the board wants to see it again to digest it after tonight's meeting or if you're comfortable approving those changes tonight that is totally fine by staff. Well, maybe so maybe not. No, no, same I'm echoing that I don't see it as a major change. I think Mr chair you could pull the board. And then move on. So I guess that's the question to the board is. We do have a policy that if to change a policy we need to introduce it in one meeting and to make a major change to a policy or introduce a new policy we need to introduce it in one meeting and then vote out in the next. If it's not a major change then we can introduce and vote in the same meeting. Any thoughts on whether this needs to be voted on or whether we can approve it tonight. I'm fine with approving it tonight. I'm also fine with approving it tonight. I'm a favor of approving it tonight. I'm good I don't see these as major changes either. Okay. Board has had their say any comments from the public on this document. I thought I saw petty Davis's hand up, but I think it went down again. Oops. Okay, so I don't see any hands up. Andy, I think Patty does want to speak. Patty, do you want to speak? Oh, go for it. Go for it. I just want you to know that, you know, everything you're doing, I think it's great. The rules and regulations and it's a good system that you have. And I'm really excited about our new board makeup and all of you have such good strengths. And I've gotten to know Tracy personally campaigning for her with my dog, Zoe, who wore her sign on her back. And I want you to know she is the most open minded, the best listener, the best. She's just great. I'm so, so happy that you guys are going to be working with her. And Andy, I know it's great agenda item. That's I'm sorry. Yeah, but the agenda item go for it. Okay, thank you. Okay, I see Scott Moore's hand up. Hi, Andy. First of all, congratulations. And my, my quick question is in these communication policies. Is there any paragraph or section or should there be, especially in the COVID age about electronic meetings versus in person meetings? I don't know that we need to necessarily, but I just wanted to toss it out there. So with this kind of thing, I know in my industry we were shut down because there was a rule saying we had to be in person. And there was nothing, no ability to do things electronically. So just tossing out there if there's anything that you want to put in there at this point in time about electronic versus in person meetings. Yeah, I think I think we're relying on the authorization to do so from the state legislature and the Secretary of State's office. And so, rather than have a potentially conflicting policy if changes are made at the state level, I think, I think are, I, I, that's just my opinion. I guess we could see if others have other comments as well on the board. I see Evan sand up. Thanks, Mr. Chair. We're operating virtual under the guidance from the governor and the state. I think that once they give us new guidance, then it would be appropriate to address what the board may want to do with virtual meetings and in person meetings and keeping in mind that your attendance is way up. Yeah, that's right. Virtually. Yeah, yeah, that's it. Staff is also working on a solution to be able to try to do both at the same time. Yeah, so Scott, I think that the attack would be if we're allowed to do this permanently. You know, to do a, you know, some in person, some online or allow participation from online, then at that point we would, we would incorporate that in our own policy and other board members any other thoughts on that. All right. Thank you. Yep. Yep. Thanks. Thanks for the question, Scott. I see Betsy done question and up. Andy, I was just going to take my hand down and kind of answered it. I hope that even when we're able to get together, we still do have the option of having a zoom meeting or Microsoft, because I think it does help with attendance and more people know what's going on is great. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks Betsy. Okay, any other comments? Okay, if not, I will enter, I will entertain a motion to approve with the as amended. So moved. One thing, one thing that we don't actually specify in this document is that I'd like to get away from the so moved phrase. So that we're not so that we're not forcing our recording secretary to go figure out what was actually moved. So if, if, and I know it's it's a little more work for all of us, but if you could go find the, the recommended wording and try to use that as that's fair enough. I moved that the select board approves the rules and regulations of orderly conductive business as amended. Okay, do I have a second. Second. Okay, I heard done. Thank you, Vincent Don all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay, motion passes. Move on to conflict of interest policy. Greg. So conflict of interest policy is the next one on the list of the select board, the select board to review and approve each year. Staff does not have any proposed changes to the policy this year. Although once again, I have a word file up in case any of the board members have anything they'd like to take a look at. I can do track changes and we can follow along. If there are any suggested changes. Okay, any board members have any suggested changes or comments or questions about the document. Okay, and I've seen any, the only comment I want to make is that I have for the past many years, since the ownership of the big factory and sx junction changed hands have been recusing myself from specific topics at the request of the legal team of my former employer and I'm no longer employed there so I don't have to do that anymore. I just wanted to bring that up again. And I think that may be the last time I have to bring it up. So that was the document that I used to his guidance. I did have one question on this in article 10. Section a it talks about a public official as accused oneself of proceeding shall not sit with the board deliberate with the board participate in that proceeding as a board member and capacity nor main physically present in the room should we add something for digital meetings there. So something something like the elected official must like end their digital meeting or something like that. So if you're using teams you would log out of teams until someone let you back in. Yeah, I don't know if this if we want to leave that for the same comment as before that once we get to a point where we're allowed to do this permanently then we could make the change. I don't know if you haven't got his hand up. Yeah, I was just going to say I would think for now. One of the things that I would recommend that if you do recuse yourself. You mute your microphone and you take your camera off so that people cannot see your facial expressions. And then you would be considered in our minutes that you were not participating. And then you would make it very clear that you're recusing yourself that would be in the minutes and then again turn your mic off and your camera while that is being discussed and then come back after the motion. I've I've I've handled this in two ways. In the past one is I've completely logged out of the meeting so that I also couldn't hear what was being said. I asked that I be texted to rejoin when the subject was over. The other way that I've handled it is to ask for that particular agenda item to be moved to last on the agenda and then I would just leave and not come back. That way it wasn't even listening to the to the content. Which I think which which sounds to me like is the intent here. Because even if you have your your microphone muted and your camera off you can still listen and that's I don't want to say that's participating but you're you're kind of still with the discussion. I don't know I just I think it's cleaner if you leave the meeting. Well, you can. I'm some somewhat worried sometimes with teams or zoom. If it's one of those times when you just have trouble getting back in but that is it's it's either way. But I don't know if it's required. I think from conversations I've had the intent is is recused and remove so that you're not hearing the conversation you're not participating in any way possible. I agree with Andy and Evan that I think it's the statute for meetings during COVID covers it. We do also allow members to participate. We have I mean I have participated before COVID remotely. You know by phone. So I guess there are situations where we potentially even if even beyond COVID and without authorization to do remote meeting I think the way the way it's been handled as long as you have I think a quorum in the room. Other participants can participate remotely. So yeah, I guess Vince there might be a valid reason to do it. Yeah, I mean I do. You know, drop from the meeting if attending remotely or something like that. Yeah, well the other thing is do we need to, you know, I think it's I think it's fine as present. Like do we need to do it tonight or can we work on that at some date in the future and then have that up for next year. Or approve it later or approve an amendment to this policy later. My my my experience with that is we are busy doing many other things we never come back to it. All right. Yeah, I would say sorry I probably should have worded something before I something out there but let's say. Yeah. So like if present. The digital communications. I think I think Greg's right for you. Oh, is he? Oh, Greg, you. I wrote something. I think it's a suggestion. Yeah, that's for members participating remotely shall leave the meeting during the item for which they have recused themselves. That sounds good to me. Okay, thanks, Vince. Thanks, Greg. Any other comments on this document? Does the public have any comments? Questions, concerns? Okay, I don't see any hands up. So the board member would like to make a motion. I will move that the select board approve the town of Essex conflict of interest policy with the amendment to article 10a. Second. Thank you, Tracy and Don. Any other comments before we vote? Okay, hearing none. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes. Thank you. Okay, on to 6G. Consider approval. No, 6H. Consider approval of the communication policy. Greg. Next up, communications policy. One small proposed change this year, something that Andy had brought up. It's under section one for public communication for the select board, adding the words or social media. So that elected and appointed board committee and commission members must be mindful to prevent email or social media conversations from inadvertently violating open meeting law. The only change so far to the communications policy unless the rest of the board has any other thoughts? Any comments from anybody? We have in the past talked about putting together a separate social media policy. The recommended document from the League of Cities and Towns is a 12 page document. And rather than try to wrestle with that this evening. We have a very small compromise here to add this comment in here. Patrick. Yeah, I think it's great. I think it codifies what we should kind of be doing anyway. So absolutely no problems with having that in here. Okay, anybody else have any questions or concerns, comments about anything in the document? I know earlier in the meeting there were some members of the public that expressed concern about our communications policy. Any comments or questions from the public? Annie Cooper. I feel confident that both my email and my words were powerful enough that y'all would I just wanted to make sure that I'm clear that I feel confident in your respect with my sharing that you would do whatever you felt was correct. Based on that, would you like me to say out loud what I think? I feel as though my words and the words of others that spoke with me and my email lends itself to what the board should do in that regard. Would you disagree? Can I, maybe I'll ask a question to clarify where the concern is with posting in places like front porch forum or potentially letters to the editor and the reporter or things like that, individual members of the select board. And how that may be perceived? Is that your concern? Yeah, and I guess if I could just frankly state what I learned today from others just through organic conversation that occurred is that it sounded like people were mostly concerned that an individual only use an individual platform for that output. I'm trying to articulate, I feel like we were all clear and you understand and I feel like you're going to sort it out appropriately. Am I correct? There's a section in the communication policy that says that any member that's posing or posting their own opinion needs to make it clear that they are doing so. There's also a point in there that says that an individual select board member cannot present the position of the board that's the select board chairs obligation to do that. Another member can't do it unless authorized by the entire select board to do so or by a majority of the select board to do so. In the case that has raised a lot of concern I did post a number of times my own front porch forum and many members of the public asked me to share it across all of the forums including the current select board chair. And so I came to the select board asking for permission to do that. And so it doesn't specifically say in here that an individual member can't post in a media that goes to the entire town. Because I could have written letters to the editor, to the letters to the editor, the Essex reporter, which goes to whomever goes to look at it. So I don't know, I don't know that we adequately address your concern in this document. First of all I have to say I really greatly deeply value that you outreach to the to the meeting to ask this. I really feel very respected and valued and thank you for that. I appreciate the time that you're taking to clarify with with me. In particular, I feel that the, the front porch forum situation is such that it lands an individual in boxes. And there was, if I can figure I'm just trying to find a clear articulation, it was prolific from only one person. And I guess if it was prolific from, you know, all the board members, which it isn't. So I guess, I don't know how to say, I think it's only, and I was very Andy, I encouraged you also to do so. I guess I just figured there would be a limit I didn't expect it to be something that was a regular feature in my inbox. And yeah, anyway, I don't know, I don't know, I don't, I don't want to tell the select board what to do either my, my, my personal opinion is that I could go back in time and restate my opinion. I always welcome your opinion. I think it's great that you give it. I think it's maybe too much that it's landing an individual inboxes with that much regularity from only one person with very strong opinions and very long. I don't know. So maybe, maybe that, maybe that front porch forum lives back where, you know, back where we first thought it should. That's my input. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. To be clear, a select board member can only post twice a month. So though, there, there were only two posts in a given month. So I don't know that it was constantly in your inbox, unless others were posting it, it's possible that others were posting my words and I can't control that. But I, but I understand and I, and I, as a, you know, as I said in the meeting where I came to ask for permission to do this, I really agonized over whether it was appropriate to do so. And I will, I will certainly continue to reconsider that and but it's hard to put a, a content in our policy document specific to a single platform. So maybe we need to think about that more. I don't know. I really honestly feel so valued. Thank you. And I was there and said to you, I also said it to you. So I, I am in this with you in that way. I was there. Thank you for your time. Thanks, Annie. Ken Signarillo. Thank you. To me, dissenting views are very important. Even our Supreme Court United States publishes a dissenting view and it's published in the same fashion as the original decision is. So certainly I'm interested to hear dissenting views. I think that it does need to be moderated in such a way that if it's just twice a month, that certainly seems reasonable. But I value it and would encourage select board members in whatever way you folks decided it's appropriate to express their dissenting views when they have them. Thanks, Ken. Petty Davis. Petty, you're muted. Sorry, I did owe exactly what Ken said. I was going to bring the same thing up. So that's, that's it. Thanks. Thank you, Petty. Any other comments? Oh, Harlan Smith has his hand up, but he's up in the presenters block. Harlan. Hi, congratulations, Andy. So, when Greg had that up, I kept rereading it and obviously an email you can tell if you're presenting a quorum if there were other people in there. I guess I was reading it and I'm looking through it and it was like, in order for you to make sure that you're not inadvertently being in a quorum. How would you know that on a social media platform? How, because I mean, if you put it in here, couldn't you potentially get a select board member burned by inadvertently being on a conversation? How would you track that as a select board member on whether or not you might be a quorum? Would you have to read all comments and see if two other members? So I guess that's where I'm kind of heading with this. Maybe there's a reason for a 12 page document. And that you could potentially, by putting this in here, tell all select board members that they can't go on social media or they can't be a member of one of the public groups. So it's just food for thought. Like I said, maybe there's a reason for a 12 page document because I almost feel like you're banning select board members from social media here. That would be wrong. But as I continue to read it, I'm trying to wrap my head around it. So those are my comments, something for you guys to consider. Yeah. So, so Harlan, that is a very tough, tough question to make. I am not a member of any of those, those communities. I am on Facebook. I post about my mom when I'm doing with her all the time I post on a lot of personal things, but I do not ever post anything about town business. And the issue is exactly what you say is that you have no, no way to knowing who sees your post and and Harlan is not just who comments on your post. It's who sees it because there's there's there's case law that says that you can have passive participation, which means if you hear a discussion, you're participating in that discussion. And so the same, I believe, and this is this is my interpretation of the open meeting loss. So others may have different opinions. But this is this is the way I view it is that it is totally inappropriate for any select board member to post anything on social media about town business. That's my opinion. And I said, as I said, others may may have a different opinion. The case law that's out there actually involves email discussions. You can be a passive part participant in an email discussion and still violate by not responding, but you're still violating open meeting law because you've seen it. There's no case law specific to social media, but I don't think we want to be the first, the first one. Again, that's my my interpretation. And I know that others have maybe maybe you differently. I see Patrick has his hand up to right. So maybe thrown. I'm sorry, I'm just going to follow up just a little bit. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Again, so putting the social media and without any case law, I mean, maybe you consider having legal take a look at it before you you make these changes or maybe you make the changes and and then have legal take a look at it. I'm not sure which way to go with it. I'm just, like I said, social media is a tricky one, really tricky. So it's probably something we should be looking at deeper. Thanks. Thanks, Arlen. See Patrick had your hands up. Yeah, I don't know if it's helpful at all Harlan, but I mean, as Andy mentioned, I do take a slightly differing view of it. Although I think not too far a field from what he holds. But I do before entering a conversation on social media check to see throughout the thread who has responded and who has not. And if there is a select board member, multiple select board members, then I will avoid commenting. I generally try to avoid, you know, in general, massive like town business, but sometimes I feel it's unavoidable. You know, there can be a critical issue that can get raised on social media that people may feel they need an answer to right away. So their social media obviously is a fantastic tool for that. But, you know, it is incumbent on us to sometimes go that extra two or three steps to take a look and see who's contributed so far, you know, what we're allowed to say. Just how I end up going through and taking a look at the post and how I decide what I should and should not chime in on. Any events. Yeah, so I've veiled CT's 12 page thingy open for social media compliance I can read the section 12 which is open meeting law compliance if you don't mind. It just kind of outlines like what their recommendations are so municipal officials must comply with Vermont's open meeting law when using municipal social media. All posts by members of the municipalities public body that relate to me minutes of municipal business are subject to the open meeting law. If elected or appointed of any municipal public body should refrain from using municipal social media to discuss the business of the public body or to take official action in violation of open meeting law. The number of a public body who likes shares tweets or otherwise engages in other members content on municipal social media, maybe communicating municipal business, and that open meeting law may apply. The number of members of the public body should refrain from posting content on or responding to inquiries related to quasi quasi judicial matters with within the subject matter jurisdiction of their respective public bodies. Public bodies may utilize municipal social media for gathering public input and fostering public discussion related to the role with the role with which the public body has been charged by statute or the select board council village trustees etc provided that they use is authorized in accordance with the Vermont law and conforms this policy. Information posted by the municipality on its social media will supplement not replace required notices and standard methods for approving warnings postings and notifications that are required to be made with regard to public meetings and hearings under Vermont law. I don't really see a lot about the personal accounts but I think you know like the gist of what they're getting at here is that like is kind of like don't interact and don't interact more to build build public, you know discussion or to gauge public input, rather than speaking about town business amongst each other. That's my take on it but yeah. Tracy. Yeah, I did take an open meeting training refresher with BLCT last week and the guidance was basically you know community pages can be a wealth of information, but you should overall refrain from commenting or posting and interacting to avoid any potential breaches of open meeting law. Thanks Tracy. The other challenging piece is if there's a public records request related to a specific topic you wouldn't even need to be able to produce all of your postings for the public for the public records request so we don't we don't again we don't we don't have that policy in place around that yet but it may be good practice that if you do post things about town business that you keep a copy of it because you can't always retrieve those things from Facebook or others. That's that's the other the other concern I have so if you get your hand back up again. Oh sorry that's a leftover. Okay, okay. Okay any any other comments. I see a couple public hands up. Ken is yours still. Is it still up or is it up again. Hello. Not hearing anything from Ken so Aaron Dickinson. Hi, yep. This is just an informational question because I recently rejoined the six community Facebook page after taking a year off and I'm kind of sometimes wondering why I did that. Why I rejoined because it's been quite active and actually a village trustee had posted a post on that page that was very interactive about merger and it dawned on me. Is there any quorum issues, you know between the trustees and select board combined if there's a combination of them being involved in discussion or is that not. I was surprised to have seen it in that venue and so active and anyhow so I was really curious because I know that there's been some questioning about you posting in the front page forum or from porch forum and then I saw that and I was like well that's very interactive so I was surprised to see that so I didn't know if there was any quorum issues or that type of thing. It's not between boards now. Okay, great. Thanks. Thanks for the question. Ken Signorillo your hand is up. Is it a leftover? Or are you wanting to comment again? Okay, I am going to assume it is a leftover hand. Any other comments from anyone? Okay, so let's see. So which policy are we talking about now? Communications. Did we already approve that? No. Okay. Oh, yes. We've got a did we get a motion and a second? Yeah, we're having discussion first. Okay, I guess I have this written down on. I'm glad I asked the question. Okay. If there's no other discussion, entertain a motion to approve as amended. I make the motion. Go ahead, Tracy. I move that the select board approve the town of Essex communication policy with the change as presented by Greg. Second. Okay, thanks Tracy. Thanks, Don. So it turns out I had it written down right just hadn't happened yet. Any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes. Thank you. Moving on to the computer use policy. Greg. Last policy of the night, the select board's computer use policy. One small change I think proposed by staff. Okay. So I think we have 11 submissions of materials for packet have been in the computer use policy with the change in addition to the rules and regulations for orderly conduct of procedures. I think it makes sense to strike this from the computer use policy, keep it in one place, make sure we're just having it in one area so we don't lose track of updating it and one of the other and have one place to point to for the select board. Greg, any comments or questions on this document? Okay, no board member comments, any comments from the public? I don't see any hands up other than the one that's thought from Ken. Okay. Hearing no comments, entertain a motion to approve as amended. Motion, the select board approved the town of Essex select board computer use policy as amended. Second. Thank you, Pat. Thank you, Don. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes. Thank you. Okay, next agenda item 6J, consider approval of select board meeting schedule. Is you again, Greg? This is me. So the other thing the select board does at its reorg meeting each year, in addition to adopting and approving the policies for the year is to set its meeting schedule. Meetings typically are the first and third Monday of the month for the select board. Linda has put together an agenda or excuse me proposed schedule for your packet. She's made some adjustments for holidays. We're usually moving the meeting to a Tuesday. I believe we have one conflict in February where that Tuesday would be a trustee meeting. So she proposed staff is proposing a Wednesday meeting that that week in February. And also one of you I forget which I'm sorry pointed out that Bennington battle day is on August 16 this year. That's a state holiday town staff is off so would propose that this become August 17 to accommodate that holiday. The other change you'll see is that we have removed the joint meetings with the trustees that have been happening for the past couple of years or so. The strategic meeting strategic planning session scheduled for June might be a good time to talk about how you want to handle joint business. We do certainly still have a lot of joint business between the select board and the trustees. But for the time being looking to take those joint meetings out and just approve the regularly scheduled meetings for the select board each month. Happy to answer questions about that or take any feedback. Okay. Any board member comments questions. Tracy. Yeah I was wondering if the board would be willing to consider a change based on the fact that agendas typically come out at the end of the day on Friday. The select board members typically read them over the weekend get their questions and staff then has one day which is Monday to respond to those questions. So is curious what other members thought about possibly moving it to Tuesday, just to give staff more time to answer those questions that come in. And it would also allow the public to know that, you know, meeting, be at the trustees or the select board always happen on Tuesday. Just for discussion. Anybody have any other comments or response to that. I would just like to hear staff's thoughts on that real quick. I would have a hard time making Tuesdays but also concerned because I believe that the first and third Tuesdays of the month are select board meet or sorry not select board school board meetings for EWSD. So we would have right I would rather avoid a constant regular conflict with Essex Westford and the select board if we can avoid it. Any other comments on that? The other challenges the trustees meet on this. I guess it would work out. Withdraw my comment. Evan. If you're asking for staff's input. My input is I've long been a proponent of moving to Tuesdays for exactly what Tracy has mentioned. It's probably also particularly why Essex Westford is on a Tuesday and the village is on a Tuesday. If you we appreciate your comments over the weekend, but more times than not, we don't answer them until Monday and whatever changes need to occur, then need to occur that day before the meeting. If there are any changes so I can't. I don't have the exact number but at least half of all holidays occur on a Monday. And then there are the times when Christmas is on a month. It could be somewhere in that weekend. The other thing is now that you know we look to have some virtual and in person meetings both for the board members. There is the ability for board members to actually go away for the weekend and not have to bust to get back and whatever happens to their flight. In the weather, etc. So it is certainly up to you but it would. It's out there we've been a proponent of it. And we very rarely. I mean again with with virtual. If the school board is meeting that night the school board is meeting that night. We have different functions. If there's something hot, maybe we could one of us moves it but remind me I think they have 10 members. So you choose, but it would it would make for a smoother packet and then answer of questions. I'm a stick in the mud. I like Mondays because I guess we've always done on Mondays but it no real reason I guess. Yeah, to be clear I I mean I don't I'm not wholly against the I could probably make Tuesday's work but I do think that we do hear when there are two important issues that come up and they both happen to be on you know when we have had those instances but we've had to move to a Tuesday and we happen to clash with the school board meeting. We hear why didn't someone take a look at this and change the meetings. So we set ourselves up to automatically always be going up against the school board. I just think that it's it's a difficult kind of so not not just for necessarily us and what we do. So I appreciate the need for staff to have that extra time. It's just, you know, we're asking our public to pick one or the other. And I don't think that's really necessarily a fair position to put them in. So in that vein with Wednesday's work. No, let's just stick with just stick with what we got. And just to be clear, I wasn't formally, you know, moving that we change it is just for the discussion. Yeah, I have the same feelings as Pat about making people choose between select board meetings or school board meetings if there's each of them has a important issue that people want to participate in. I know we we think we've we have had instances where people were on two different computers and we could hear a different meeting going on at the same time. Because people wanted to attend both. Don any thoughts? I'm flexible, but I don't like being in conflict with the school board because I know a lot of people that watch school board meetings also watch our meeting. Sounds like consensus is to stay on Monday. You certainly have the discussion more at some point. We certainly at some point we'll have we'll be having a discussion about when to have joint meetings. So this just may may come up again since we had the the trustees were having to do many times back to back meetings or joint meeting and then the regular meeting. This past year, I was going to propose that we do our joint meetings on Tuesday so that we're the ones that are doing the back to back meetings this coming year, but we'll have to have that discussion. We ran up with the same conflict. I guess we would have here with school school board. Tony give some love to Wednesday. Is there is there a logistical problem with Wednesday just just for my own curiosity. I'm at work on Wednesdays. Yeah, I mean I've I certainly can and do attend these meetings on occasion during times that I'm at work, but it's it's probably not something that I could change at this point. Okay, Greg, I noticed on the budget calendar has changed dramatically. We've moved from January to November. I did see the the email from Sarah saying that that's an intentional change to allow more time for closing the budget my only concern with the November nine date is that as Sarah confirmed we won't won't have full knowledge of the fund balance at that point. I don't know if that's a concern for others or not, or maybe something we address when we get there. Go ahead, Greg. Sure. Just to fill in some of the other board members. Andy asked about the November board meeting for the budget. Sarah responded that she is trying to like Andy said get get the budget presented a little bit earlier this year. So the fund balance is she's not hoping that the November meeting will be the one and done. It's over and done with the other opportunities to look at the budget and weigh in on the budget before it's approved. But Sarah is hoping to move up the presentation date by a couple months, most in the case this year. So that is what's proposed and happy to take feedback on it. So we're hoping that this way we'll allow for some more meaningful discussion budget view is drawn out over a few more weeks by starting in November. This doesn't change the date that we need to warn the vote on just allows us more time to discuss it. So if we need to fill in with more information we can correct as the calendar moves. We will still it's just to allow Andy just said that the town meeting warning needs to be warned 30 to 40 days before time meeting. That's typically when we finalize the budget and get the information out. Final information out. And also we're putting together two budgets at the same time we have the village budget and the town budget. And so by kind of starting a little bit earlier just in case there's any issues between the two budgets and the fundings that go in between the two budgets in the town were able to know that a little bit earlier and work on things of that nature. But the warning stay the same for approvals. Okay, then the other the other question that I had raised is the the second meeting in February. It's a unique year that the town meeting is not. It's actually in February it's not in March right there the informational meeting. So the one on the 23rd that's a Wednesday, the 21st is a holiday the 22nd is the village board meeting. So you've proposed the 23rd and I know that week is I assume that week is likely pretty hectic getting ready for town meeting the following Monday. So my question there is the 23rd or the 14th the right place to move it or are we getting into people's Valentine Day celebrations if we try to move that meeting earlier to avoid the cramming that last week. You could eliminate it or just eliminate the meeting. Keep it on until we need to remove it or keep it on. Okay, I'm not a big Valentine's Day celebrator in my family. I strongly suggest you keep the Valentine's Day off. You know what, you can do anything but if you eliminated then we won't fill it until we need to. How about that for a winter gift. So leave it on the calendar but don't put anything on the agenda unless we need to. Is that what you're saying? I'd like to have you remove it and then we won't fill it and we will only bring it back if necessary. I won't remember eight months from now what we said about February 22nd. Yeah, my concern is that we'll find something that we need to address before the informational meeting that Monday and then we won't have a meeting, you know, the three weeks between the 7th and the 28th. Yeah, but I get what you're saying. If it's not on the calendar you won't plan anything for it. But if we need a meeting we can have a special meeting. Correct. What do others think? I'm okay just leaving this all as it is and then if we need to make specific changes later on at some point then we can if we feel in February we don't need it. We can pull it off but for now at least just for the sake of getting a calendar created I'm happy to go with what's been presented. Any other comments? I'm in agreement with Pat. Same. Okay, so the only change is moving August 16th to the 17th to avoid Bennington Battle Day. It's probably something that doesn't need to be discussed with the public so I'm ready to hear a motion. I'll make a motion that the select board approve the proposed meeting schedule for 2021-2022 with the change of August 16th, 2001 to August 17th, 2001. Seconded. Okay, we have a motion on second. Don, were you saying 22? Right. No, never mind. It's 2021-2022. I thought she had never mind. Go ahead. We're good. Call the vote. Yeah, yeah, so I understand this year. Yeah, yeah. Okay, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes. Thank you. Okay, on to the next agenda item, which is appoint a select board member to the cannabis study committee. Greg, are you covering that? I am. So the community development departments have been tasked with doing some outreach and research into legal cannabis and what that means for the community. Previously, you know, well currently a town needs to opt in to be able to do retail cannabis. There's just recently been some draft legislation passed by the Vermont Senate that would require towns to opt out by I believe it's 2023, although I forget the exact date. Otherwise, they will be automatically opted in. So that puts a little bit more onus on the municipalities if that passes through and becomes full off. Either way, it's been a topic of interest for both the select board and the trustees of how the community wants to handle cannabis in Essex. And so the community development department is forming a study committee search group to do some research, get feedback from the community from our residents or businesses and make a recommendation to the boards of how to proceed and whether to put this on a ballot at some point. I'm hoping to put together a committee with the select board member or trustee, somebody from the police department, somebody from the Economic Development Commission, somebody from the planning commissions and the zoning boards and each of the comm dev directors so I can try to answer any questions about the committee or the statute tonight might have to bring some information back to you if you get too deep into the weeds. I'm not an expert on it at this point, but certainly just looking for see if one of the board members wants to step up and be part of that committee that's going to be looking into cannabis. Okay, any questions from board members or any volunteers. I like to volunteer. Okay. Most of volunteer to We get to do canal. I think Pat wants to do it too for them. That's fine. Don you go first. No, that's all right. I just followed this issue. I'm very interested in this is the first started back. If that's something you want to do events that's fine. I have other things I can find to do so. Now you're making me feel guilty Don. This is a an issue that's kind of near and dear to my heart. I went through. I had a herniated disk and without cannabis I don't know where I'd be. So, yeah, it's something I'm really passionate about and something I'd really like to help bring into the community. I don't kind of wonder if Greg's deep in the weeds comment was on purpose or not, but you know. But no, that was a an accidental pun. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. You just feeding me softballs tonight. Yeah, so I'd really, I'd really love to be part of this. So Don, you okay with that? Or do you want to do it out? Should we have a discussion? I'm fine. Let it do it. No problem. All right. Greg, I do have one one question with regard to the implementation or statute or whatever the the town in the in the village can have have to each have a vote, right? So they they don't need they're not I guess my question is if the if the town votes. Does that include the village or if the village chooses not to vote or do they also have to vote? Or do you not know or do you know that? I do not know, Andy. That's a good question though. My non legal opinion or thought would probably be that if the town makes a decision that I'll stand townwide unless the village decides to go a different route. Call me to that, but that's my. Yeah, yeah, they may want to vote anyway. I'm not I'm not trying to set a position or anything like that and just just asking for clarification if there is any if there is any yet. Okay, okay. But that is certainly something this committee can also look to see what guidance there is. And I get you know that the questions that come to my mind are do you develop the zoning ordinances first or do you decide whether you want to opt in before you develop the zoning ordinances right those kind of questions I guess are other things that. Need to be discussed right you do all the work to figure out how to how to zone for it, not knowing whether or not the community will accept it or. And what and I guess what is the what is the process for updating the zoning is it is it a regular ordinance process. Public hearings and so forth. Yeah, I think there's a lot of ways to hand if I may. Yeah, go ahead. I think there's a lot of ways to handle that and approach that. If you opt in or opt out at this point, my understanding is that it applies to retail, it does not apply to commercial or growing wholesale operations, I believe, zoning wise those are handled differently. Or they handle this agriculture or industrial operations versus retail, if you're going to do retail, are you going to handle it like any old retail business, are you going to create a conditional use which means it needs to go to the has an extra layer of review. I know the trustees have talked a little bit about creating safe routes to school zones, keeping it a certain distance from schools for retail operations if that's the case. So I think there's a lot of different ways it could happen through zoning or through ordinance or through a townwide vote depending on what kind of restrictions are proposed or put into place. The zoning update process, the village right now is updating its land development code. The town comm dev department starting to take a look at its zoning regulations and go through that review process. Generally speaking, the update the zoning regulation that starts with the planning commission. Once it's approved by the planning commission, it goes up to the select board and there's at least one, maybe two I can't remember off the top of my head. The zoning hearings before anything gets approved and adopted so it is a really lengthy public review process that certainly gets the chair of attention. And then my only comment to add to that is since the state hasn't really finished their their legislative oversight. One of the things that we're hearing is the town slash village regulations are going to be minimal. They are, they are giving very little latitude other than maybe some some leeway to school zones and other things they are doing all the regulating and very much what it's being. There is a little bit of public input locally, but a lot of it is being state driven and giving a wide berth to the industry, including revenue and licensing fees and operating issues of when they can and can't operate as you as Greg just mentioned it completely excludes any of the agricultural or manufacturing elements of it. Those are going to be permitted permitted. So, at least that's what it looks like. Patrick you got your hand up. Yeah, I had some specific questions about local option tax which we know we need to adopt if we're going to see any financial, you know, windfall from this. So, I'm just trying to think of at least how does staff and vision that coming together I know that the EDC has started to have some discussions about looking at the local option. So, we are playing a handful of times before I'm imagining we're going to want to take it up sooner rather than later. Are you imagining it like staff wise that we would potentially be putting the local option at the same time as an opt in how cannabis vote to kind of marry the two together. I mean I'm not sure it makes a ton of sense as a community for us to host this if we're, you know, we have no ability to cover the costs that are going to come with it as well. And then I guess more specifically as far as the local option goes like how much leeway do we have in assessing you know what gets placed on to cannabis is it a flat like do we get like one penny for every dollar of sale or are we allowed to put more than that is there. I guess I, you know, there's there's a lot of unknowns and I'm not sure how much of this is going to be the committee and how much of this we need to look at completely independently because I'm not sure that they're necessarily going to take up local option. That's a much bigger conversation than just cannabis, but obviously it needs to be addressed if we're looking at this at the same time. Sorry, that was like a lot of big questions, I think. So, I hope we just start wherever. Well, Mr. Chair, since Greg has his hands up, I'll let him go first and whatever he doesn't cover. I know he knows it pretty well. Oh, I'm sure you can fill in some blank seven. So, Pat, to answer your first question, you're absolutely right. The only direct financial benefit from having retail cannabis in the town would be if there's a local option tax. At this point, it would be the 1% on the sales tax. Unless the state changes its guidance or its available taxation policy on cannabis, that is what's proposed right now. Certainly I'm sure somebody can make an argument that having these shops in town will bring in other customers for other reasons to shop here. But whether or not that's a valid argument, I'll let someone else decide. As for the timing, good question, nothing has been decided yet. Certainly these, you know, studying the local option tax that the EDC and staff are doing. It's going to be happening pretty much concurrently with studying cannabis and how to roll that out. You'll have community development working on both at the same time. Managers office will be involved in both at the same time. So we can certainly an EDC for that matter is going to have a representative economic development commission. We'll have a representative on this cannabis study committee too. So there'll be enough overlap there to probably understand the pros and cons of doing something together or separately. Whenever the recommendations come up to the select board and trustees as to how you might want to proceed, whether it's recommendations just information on how to decide the timing of it. Did I answer everything? Yes, I think so. So Evan, you're off the hook. Can't answer any better. Any other select board comments? Questions. Okay, I see any Cooper has her hand up any. Just an opinion, as the chair of the economic development commission, I feel like the, I feel like the two conversations happening. What's that word? We're at the same time, but it's not together, right? Exactly. I think that there's going to be a organic and organic kind of flow where my mother didn't stop when I declined the button. I'm so sorry. I don't know if you can hear that. Yeah. So I think that if we just tell my mother to stop calling me right now. I'm sorry. Thank you for your patience. I didn't know how to stop it. I think that there will be an organic like flow. And I think that the two conversations kind of happening at the same time will meander into like a thing where they don't land at the same place at the same time at all. But that it's important and valuable that the discussions. I don't know if this is helping, but this is the thought I had when the question was asked. I think it will be a kind of an organic forward experience where, where the timing of each thing just figures its way through the community through the hands of the surveys and onto your table in a way that's comfortable. That's what I want to say. I don't know if that helps, but that's my, my insight. Thank you. Thanks, Annie. Any other comments from the public? Don't see any hands up. So, Tracy. Yeah, just as an FYI, I did reach out to our state house delegation with the question about whether there were conversations happening about adding in a candidate's local option tax similar to the meals and rooms and alcohol, as opposed to combining it all into sales tax. I haven't heard a definitive answer back, but I also think that that's a valid discussion for this group as well in coordination with what the EDC is talking about. Annie, I see your hand again. Go ahead. Tracy makes an excellent point. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to involve myself like I'm there with you at the table, but Tracy's point was also discussion in discussion at our meeting. And also I heard something randomly about the legislator and then someone else was talking about a THC tax. I'm saying that correctly. And so I agree that, that conversation needs to take place. And Tracy, if you don't mind, how do you, is it okay if I borrow this piece and throw it into conversation at the EDC or do you want me to leave it be so that that, I don't want to take something from you that you're on a path about? You're good. Go for it. Thank you very much. Sorry to interrupt you guys. Okay. Any other comments? Questions? Okay, if not, someone like to make a motion to appoint Vince. I make the motion that we appoint Vince Franco to the cannabis study board. We're calling it second debt. Tracy seconds. Thank you. Any other discussion? Okay, all those in favor signify fix to this signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay, motion passes. Okay, the next two agenda items are executive sessions. So we will come back to those. We're moving on to consent with somebody like to move approval of the consent agenda. That we approve the consent agenda. To have a second. Second. Okay, any comments? The consent agenda. Okay, hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay, motion passes. Moving on to reading file. Any comments on reading file? Any of the components in there? Okay, I did want to make one comment. Pat and I did have some discussions about whether there was a possibility of sharing responsibility for leadership on the select board. I would like to review the charter and specifically say that we'll elect a chair and a vice chair and a clerk. And it specifically says that in our charter that chair will run all meetings that the chair is present at. But Patrick Pat and I are still talking about how we may on a topic by topic basis. So I would like to assign Pat to be the chair for that topic and run that portion of the meeting. We haven't haven't settled on anything yet, but we're still having those discussions. Also did have some discussions with staff about this concept. And they are saying that as long as we make it very clear who owns which topics that we can that they would support it. I would like to join in discussions for setting agendas. So that would be the point, I think where we would likely decide who's going to run which, you know, which parts of each meeting will probably there are. There are municipalities that alternate weeks or alternate meetings. I was concerned with having topics that cross meetings. Getting discontinuous of the same person isn't running that that particular topic. So that's that's something Pat and I are are talking about. If there's others that have any comments about how you think it might work or contribute to that conversation and be happy to hear those comments. That's not a warned warned item here so I don't really want to have the discussion here but if it's appropriate we could we could potentially have a future discussion about this. But if you if you have any any comments, send them to either Pat or I don't send them to both of us because that becomes a three way discussion. So we can we can go forward from there. I don't know if Pat if you wanted to add anything else to that. No, I think you covered it really well. The candy and I both, you know, it goes back to a lot what I mentioned the earlier parts of the meeting. You know, we both recognize that we have a really divided town. We have an advantage and, you know, be it while we're represented, you know, the select board to represent all of Essex, you know, does happen. I live in the village Andy lives in the to be, you know, and on the board, you know, hoping that we can pattern some working together, you know, collaboratively is going to be something that the community can look to going forward and, you know, something that Andy was very gracious in in talking about. So it's, yeah, I think it's definitely kind of a new thing, but I think it's potentially really cool. So look forward to talking more about it. Okay, any other reading file comments. I'm also. All right. Tracy, thank you for your service on the ZBA. Very welcome. Okay, so then let's circle back to the executive session. There's two of them. So I think we have four motions that need to be made and approved. I believe we need to come back to approve something or to authorize if we if we agree to to authorize the manager to execute something or am I You're correct. If the board is comfortable with the AFSCME contract, you'll have to come back into public session to authorize the manager to execute that contract. Okay. And so would we come back to this meeting or I guess we would have to. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So it looks like Greg has the motions up. There's two topics. There's a pending improbable civil litigation and the possible action to execute the AFSCME contract. So if somebody's willing to make the two motions that are shown. Take a stab at it. I moved it to select board make a specific finding the general public knowledge of pending or probable litigation to which the body is or maybe a party replace the town or the substantial disadvantage. And also move. Yeah. And second, said Don. That's Tracy Tracy. Yep. Sorry. Any other discussion. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay. Motion passes. Oh, if somebody else wants to do a motion to the public body, I'll go for it first. Alrighty. I moved it to select board enter into executive session to discuss pending or probable civil litigation to which the public body is or maybe party pursuant to one VSA 313 a one e to include the unified manager deputy manager and HR director. Second. Thank you. Any other discussion. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay. Now the next executive session, two more motions. I move that the select board make the specific finding that premature general public knowledge of the town's position concerning ongoing contract negotiations and labor relations agreements with employees would place the town at a substantial disadvantage. Second. Okay, thank you Tracy and Don. Any further discussion. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Hi. Hi. Opposed. Whenever you're done this, sorry. Okay. Okay. All right. Okay Tracy would like to do the second motion. Sure. I wanted to jump in. Finish the first motion. Sorry. Second motion. You just need the unified manager, the HR director and the deputy manager. You do not need the assistant to the manager or the town engineer. Okay, cool. Second. Thank you Tracy and Don. Any further discussion. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. to come back and re-click on the executive session. See you in executive session. All right. All right. Execute a contract with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, ASME, for 2021 to 2024. Thank you, Don. Do I have a second? Second. Thanks, Tracy. Any other discussion? Okay, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes. Thank you. Yes, thank you. Thank you. You know, at the risk of taking one extra minute for the people who are in the audience, a lot of very good discussion in the executive session can't get into too many details, but I'd like to thank the negotiating team that was on the town side and the negotiating team on the ASME side for keeping it professional, pointed. And we felt that when both sides come to a ratification, it's a good thing and labor harmony is a good thing. And as we mentioned many times before, we are not just looking at this contract, we look out into the future and this contract is overall in benefit to the town in the long-term future. As it takes care of a couple of long-standing issues that needed, we felt attention. So thank you all for your time and attention and thanks for your ratifications. Okay, great. I guess we just have one more matter of business here. Mr. Chair, I think we should be adjourned. All right, thank you, Don. Is there a second? Seconded. Okay, thanks Vance. Motions to adjourn are not debatable. So those in favor of adjourn, we say aye. Aye, opposed. All right, good night everybody. Great job Travis, Greg, team. Thank you all. Good night.