 Welcome to the Essex Junction Trustees Meeting. Please join us for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Welcome everybody and if you haven't signed in please do so by chance. Evan, do we have a manager? We have the, should be a little more formal, additions to our changes to the agenda. Evan's fine and no, believe it or not we do not. All right, thank you. So we'll just proceed with the agenda as it is. First order of business. Anyone from the audience have a comment or question about something that's not on the agenda tonight? Okay, hearing none will proceed to the public hearing on the Vermont Housing Data Community Profile Report. Leslie Black Plumeau. So I'm. Welcome, Leslie. No, so my name is Mia Watson. Oh, okay. Leslie should be here very soon. I think she's just running a little bit late. Do you want to wait, would you prefer to wait for her or are you okay going on by yourself? I prefer waiting if that's okay. I think we might be able to, if you wouldn't mind, we can probably, it might be about five, might be about ten or so. I think that's fine. Okay. So I will mention that we move up the business item for presentation of the FYE. Actually, I'm wondering how long the audit report is going to take. Is that going to be longer? Five minutes. Five minutes. Okay, let's, let's, I'll make a motion and we move up the presentation to FYE 18 audit by Casey Skandor. Second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Okay. You okay, Casey, with that? I'm good with that. All right, thank you. Watch out for the courts. And welcome. Thank you. I'm Casey Skandori. I'm a manager at Pelt Brand Union Sergeant and we've performed your financial audit for the past three years. I assume everyone's already gone through the financial report. Yes. So just to start off, our opinion you can have so we didn't have any issues or any findings during the year, the village had $1.3 million of federal expenditures, which means you're also required to have a single audit. And that also was clean, no deficiencies, no material weaknesses or findings. The financials themselves are pretty consistent with the prior year. The only new items to note are the new village acquired, the rec department. Yes. So that is showing, there's a put note on that on page 33. And on page two, it shows the transfer of operations. So the fixed assets and the debt came over as is. And a cash was recorded as contribution income. Other than that, it went on page 33, which is GASB 77, which is just a required disclosure for abatements. Disclosure only, no adjustments required for that. Other than that, the financials are consistent with the prior year. Everything all good, your equity is all in line with your policies. And the audit went well. We are at the offices for a week doing both the town and the village. And didn't know any issues, so. Fantastic. Does anyone has questions, specific questions on the financials around it? I'll lead off. I had a question on, I'm looking for it now and I noted it and it was just a curious phrase and I'm sure it's, but you said the S-extruction is a high risk auditee. Yes. What does that mean? So for single audit purposes, you're considered either high risk or low risk. And if you haven't had single audits performed, clean single audits for two consecutive years, you have to be high risk. So because the village didn't need a single audit in 2016, this is your second year. So if you have one next year, you're going to be low risk. And the only difference between high risk and low risk is the amount of testing we have to do. And in your case, your program was just one major, the construction project, so it had no effect on you. Yeah, I have a question. I know one of the things that we've heard just as a village in town have continued to consolidate from some residences. Are there any concerns around any commingling of the books to ensure that a village check goes to village stuff, and a town check goes to town stuff? No, we didn't know any issues. As you know from the past, the cash doesn't show on the village. It shows more as a due to due from. But we go through, you know, it's two separate audits. So we are auditing them as if they're separate entities. So we're making sure that all the town expenses are in the town records in the village, are on the village side. So Casey, I asked you this at the town meeting as well since you're the town auditor. We talk a lot about controls. You know, people may not understand it, but financial controls and the policies and procedures that we follow to make sure the funds don't get commingled, to make sure there's no fraud. Can you tell me about your processes in the audit and what you found? Yep, so we do a substantive testing approach for the audit. We're basically testing balances and transactions more so than the controls. But we do get a general understanding of the controls and walk through several transactions just to make sure that they are operating as documented and as they should. So during that process, you know, finding consistencies, I definitely think that you have enough staff. Segregation of duties is one of the most important, you know, controls. So you definitely have enough staff to properly implement that. Thank you. I'm assuming you were pleased with the audit since you were intimately involved with the whole thing. It was. I look forward to a day where we only have to do one. They're here for a week, but that's not all. Staff has to prepare probably a couple weeks in advance. We do not know what documents they're going to ask for. Then once they do, we have to find the document. Most of all of our documents are a good percentage of paper still, which we are looking to change that a bit. And then so they're there and staff, they direct staff to see this. Where is this? And we go get it for them. And then they interview staff and the manager and other people if they have other questions. So we had a nice relationship. But, you know, it's in depth. Yes. We definitely appreciate how prepared the staff always is for us. It makes our job a lot easier if we come in and things are ready, because otherwise it would be a lot longer than a week. One of the things that we said is we combined Village and Town. We have about $30, $32 million to get moved around every year, depending on more if you're talking about federal funds and grant projects. So you have $32 million running through our system with invoices, payments, audits, state projects, finance, and our auditor looks at it. We appreciate it, but you are a lot. Any other questions for Casey? Casey, thank you so much for coming and for the very clear and succinct presentation. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Careful of course. And so are we ready to switch back and have the public hearing for the Vermont Housing Data? Yes. Profile report. And Leslie? Yes. Welcome. Thank you. I'm sorry if I had the time. That's perfectly fine. Thank you so much for having us. We are so appreciative. Well, thank you for coming. For your help with your support and help with this redesign, website redesign project that to give you a little background, I'm Leslie Blacklamot, Mia Watson, BHFA, and our colleague, Maura Collins reached out to you all a couple of years ago to see if you'd be willing to be the municipal conduit for our application for a Vermont Community Development Program Planning Grant. And that grant allowed us to redesign this very popular, but very outdated website that communities around Vermont have been using to find out more about the people that live in the towns and about the housing stock. And ultimately to identify the needs that need to be met in those towns. And so with your support and Vermont Community Development Program, we were able to redesign this site and we wanted to give you a little glimpse into it today. Fantastic. And we are going to talk to you mostly about the community profiles piece of this website. That was what you all helped us support. And we have been shopping it around to the state and making sure that the people that can use it know about it over the last couple of months. Mia Watson has been the primary engine behind creating all the visualizations that are on this site and really make the data so much more accessible. Good job, Ian. To people who just want to look something up or want to take a deeper dive. We've been working with Darren in the town planning office a little bit. We gave him the same data reports in December. And he's been using it to help him move forward with the housing needs assessment. You're going to hear a lot more about that next month. So I'm going to turn it over to Mia and she's going to just, actually, we do have a little handout. I wasn't sure if we would have the site up, but just a little bit of something to get you started if you're looking for it. And she's going to just take you on a quick, quick tour of one of our vizes. I'm thinking a lot. Sure. So let me navigate towards the community profiles, which, as Leslie mentioned, is the part of the site that received the biggest facelift. So we revamped the website using an interactive software that does data visualizations that we have up. And get more data points and get more information. And you can use filters and download data. And so I'm going to start on the visualization that's featured in your handout. And it's about cost burden. I'm going to navigate to the section of our site that contains that visualization. The new site is organized by area of interest and subject matter rather than geography. I don't know if anyone is familiar with the old site. And this has made it a lot easier to compare geographies, which has been really useful in planning for Essex, where Essex can see where it stacks up to its closest municipal counterparts. So using the filters, I can select Essex and the village. I'm going to pull up both of those. I'm also going to pull up Coolchester. The visualization shows households by housing costs as a percentage of household income, or in other words, cost burden. And cost burden occurs when households spend more than 30% of their income towards housing costs, including rent, mortgage, or utilities. And when households pay 30% or more, they're considered cost burdened. And when they pay 50% or more of their income, they're considered severely cost burdened. And when households are severely cost burdened, it makes it extremely difficult for them to afford other basic necessities like food, healthcare, and childcare, and transportation. So when we look at Essex, we found that it was really striking that in Essex Junction, nearly one in five households are paying more than 30% of their income. And that means that, you know, out of one in every five families is probably really struggling to make basic ends meet. And from that point, I think the site provides a lot of other ways to explore this data. In terms of cost burden, it tends to be either on the side of housing costs as in they're too expensive for people to afford, or incomes, where incomes are too low. And then obviously these factors are very much interconnected. When we looked at the data for Essex Junction, and this is all in your packet, we found that in Essex Junction, rents tended to be fairly similar to the rest of Chittenden County. And housing costs for homeowners were slightly lower, but incomes tended to be lower than the rest of Chittenden County, suggesting that a lot of that pressure in Essex Junction tends to be on the income side. We only got the cost burden. So nothing, no deeper a dive than that. Okay. I wasn't sure how much time you all would have for us. So we really just wanted to keep a little peak, and there's just so much more going on that you can decipher through the site. So you see this, and this doesn't even tell you about renters and owners. This just tells you about the whole population. So now, if it were me and I was curious, I would really want to look at the renters and look at the owners. And as Mia said, look at incomes, look at housing costs, and kind of try to figure out where maybe the community can make some inroads to help. The households that are here that are, it's not an unusual problem, but Essex, like other towns, has a lot of residents who are just sending so much of their income for housing that it makes them so vulnerable to eviction or foreclosure, or just so dependent on things being very consistent. And then if they had some surprising unanticipated expense, could even be a home repair that can really throw people into a period of a lot of instability. And so that's just a little bit of a peak for you all. And Darren is going to be presenting you with, he's taken this data, another step to really hone in on what could next steps be for Essex. And we have certainly seen other communities have success with doing a housing needs assessment, and then handing that needs assessment to a municipal housing commission to sort through if there are recommendations, figure out how to take them forward. There's a lot, usually a housing needs assessment stops, and then there's a pretty big chunk of work that needs to happen before those findings can become like policy lovers for you all to use, because you do have policy lovers at your control here in the municipal office. And so we're excited for you all to be taking your next steps, and I want to just let you know that we're a resource. The VHFA has staff that live in Essex assumption. Mia walked here, so we are happy to continue to support you all as you go forward in this exploration. Just one more question. I see that the top theory, 2017 is the data, that's the most up to date. Right, that's from the US Census Bureau, and obviously they're on quite a lag once they compile all the data. So 2017 is the most recent year for all of that data, which is about half the site, but we do have more recent data on home sales from property transfer tax records. And basically as data appears it gets added to the site. Yeah, you won't see a lot of changes from year to year. In fact, when we did this report for you all in December, 2016 was the most recent data available from ACS, and one of the nice things about the redesign is we can so much more quickly import the new data each year as it becomes available from the different sources. And so we now have even more recent data than you all have in the packet that I handed around. And there is, like I said, things don't change too much in Vermont from year to year. Some consistency in terms of the level of housing cost burden among the residents. And the new site lets us pivot a lot more easily between different years of geographies and different filter options. So you can choose what level of cost burden, for instance, you want to look at this visualization. So that's very dynamic. I'll give you a clarification on this chart. If you click back on the paying 50%, is this saying that, is the 50% also a part of those paying 30% or are these two mutually exclusive? They're a part of it. Okay, so it's not that 56% of our population is paying? No. Well, no, exactly. The 48% are paying what we consider an unaffordable amount of their income for housing, which is 30% or are their income. But a subset of those are paying really portion of their income. And the visualizations usually on the bottom have a description of clarifying what we mean when we need different terms. Interesting. This is great. Elaine, did you have a question? I did, but I didn't want to take up too much time. I wonder if we could see one more visualization. Did you have anything in mind? Can you show us rental housing costs? Sure. Please. Did you want to look at median rent? Median rent. And the Census Bureau tabulates Essex and Essex Junction separately, although Essex is inclusive of Essex Junction, so you wouldn't want to add those together. The state of Vermont doesn't include Essex Junction as a separate entity from most of their data. So they're pretty similar. This is median. Wait, this is the median gross rent, so this is all of the rents. If you scroll down on the same page, we do have median gross rents by number of bedrooms. Oh, scroll down so we can see, yeah. Can you do the Essex Junction thing on that, too? I can. Thank you. Yeah, I know. You'll know what you'll be doing later. Oh, that's so interesting. Right. It has tabulated some of them just because the sample size was likely too small to capture those. Doesn't mean they don't exist, just that the Census couldn't do a median. Okay. And this is rental of homes, apartments. Right. And this is everything. It's not just certain kinds of units. No, this is any housing unit where the occupants said they were a renter. It's less inclusive of subsidized. Yeah. And utilities. Any includes utilities? Yeah, this is gross rent. Okay. Yeah. That's a great tool. I'm very impressed with how the technology, it's very impressive. It's really wonderful. This is Tableau software. Wow. I don't know if any of you have played around with it. But it takes a lot of learning. Amia is an expert in speaking Tableau, but it took a long time. It's a deep learning curve, but it was worth it once you get one. This is amazing. Does that include accessory apartments as well? Yeah. If the occupant answering the survey said they were renter, then it would include that. If it was like, you know, my parents who maybe aren't paying me rent, they might not have said that. They might not have been included. Other questions from staff? Anyone? Everyone good? I'll actually, anyone in the audience have a question? Any, okay. This is really fascinating stuff. And I am so glad that we could have been a small part of it to help enable this to happen. Thank you. Go ahead. Before you leave, you want to give a little scroll back up to where the top is, so that way for those of us, for those who didn't see in the beginning where they can access this information? Sure. It's www.housingdata.org, and it is under the community profiles section of the website. And from there, you can navigate to the subject matter that you're interested in and the community that you're interested in. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Leslie and Mia, thank you so much. Thank you for coming. Thank you. So next up, we have a presentation on a parking study by Rick Bryant. I'm standing. Welcome. Thank you. We have a presentation on some drive, and there's also a PDF center earlier in the day. I'll ask Sarah if she has it. Sarah, did we have that lined up? Is that okay? Is it okay if I scroll in? Sorry. You can get in there. That's dangerous. You good? Yeah. Sorry. This is the same. The one we have is dated February 26. Are there any substantial differences? I think it's the same. It's supposed to be the same. I think it's the same. It's the same report. Yours is dated March 12th up on the screen. Are there any changes from the 26th? Please stop. Not a lot, but... Welcome. Thank you once again for having us here. I'm Rick Bryant with StandTech. Justin LaPearl is with me in the back. I'll put this study in. We'll be taking notes. We're here at the request of Robin Pierce. Right. And Peter Keating of the Chittany County Regional Planning Commission. Hi, Peter. We were asked to assess parking conditions in the village, take a look into the future, what may happen in the near term, and offer recommendations. Okay. And we have completed the debt cookies, have done some analysis. There's some fine-tuning left to happen, but we've learned enough that it's valuable, I think, to share what we know at this point. Yes. And get some of your feedback that leads to wrapping things up. Yeah. So in public speaking, they tell you tell them what you're going to tell them, and then tell them what you told them. That's what I learned. So here's our summary. Based on the work that we've done, you have an adequate parking supply in the village. In spite of what people may say when they show up trying to get to a particular business and can't park at the front door, there is parking out there. There are a few hot spots. We did a very granular assessment of parking, so we know where the areas where people might complain about. We, looking at future conditions, think there could be a new hot spot to come up. And we'll talk about that. And remedies that don't necessarily involve spending a lot of money building new structures, which I think is the goodness. So what we did, I'm short-handed, and I tell people in the traffic engineers that I count cars. Yes. And we did a lot of that. We're out there with our clipboards, walking through every lot, several laps over the course of an afternoon and two evenings, and figure out where people were parking and how many people were parked. We spent time talking to Robin and some of the developers to figure out what's going to happen in the future and what that means to parking and projected a future condition and, as I said, came up with some recommendations. So our study area is sort of defined by that red boundary. I guess it defines the village core. The five corners is the middle and I use it on the TV. Trust me. So there's a five-way intersection, the middle that you know is five corners. And what we did, and what's shown here is a map that we've got from Robin that tells us green areas are private parking, blue areas are public parking. We went out and first did an inventory. All those blue areas, there's labels you can't read, but we basically have... We gave a name to each of those lots and a count of the cars, and each of those lots are all blue areas and all the green areas, same thing. Again, those are the private spots and you'll see at least that there's different color patterns used in this figure and the heavy black lines to find the five corners. What we did in our data collection and our data summary is we looked at each of the wedges comprised of the five corners and the separate zones. Premise for that, and you may disagree with this, but if you have business in one wedge, you'd like to park there and not have to cross one of the major streets that constitutes the five corners. And from a traffic perspective, with the congestion levels you have, certainly you don't want to interrupt the hit field traffic with more pedestrian crossings than you need. So we approached it as five wedges should be self-sustaining from a park perspective. They don't have to be. You can certainly park in one and walk through the other. That's from safety perspective. That is what we viewed as an ideal scenario. We did, as I said, multiple surveys. We get out there in August so that we capture farmers' market when some public spaces are out of service for the market itself and demand spikes because of the market. We did, we then wanted to look at evening and weekday conditions, so we have a typical weekday evening, midday, I'm sorry. When business is active, when the town hall is full, what's going on? So we have that midday picture as the first study, the farmers' market in the second, and then when the restaurants are busy on Friday evening, we went out and caught the restaurant activity as well. There are different chart areas that you see here. The first one on the left, the Wednesday, is the midday condition that we looked at. So this is not farmers' market day. And you see by time of day study, left to right, 10.30 to 1.00 p.m. There are different cycles that we didn't count in cars. And don't be scared by the blue bars reaching the top of the graph. The top of the graph is 60% occupied. That's about 100%. So what you're seeing is that public spaces are more heavily used midday than they are in the evening hours that we surveyed, spiking at 57% at 12.30 p.m. But the private spaces aren't quite so busy peaking at about 32%. So when I told you at the beginning there's lots of extra parking out there, this is your most telling evidence. Overall, you're nowhere near full up on parking. You see the next Wednesday is the afternoon period coinciding with the farmers' market. The private, the restaurants are starting to pick up a little bit so you see those red bars which are the private parking climb up the evening hours and they're about the same level on Friday evening. But the people who work here have gone home and the public parking space demand those blue bars go down. So that's kind of your time-day trends that we observe. And again, the overall looks good but there are particular hot spots during the daytime. What we saw are spaces around this building in the library tend to fill up the, I'm not forgetting street names. A couple of on-street areas are red in the drawing. Also, get operating close to capacity. Again, those are single blocks or half blocks even. The other side of the road isn't so full. So those don't worry us so much. It's really in and around the library that the parking to me tends to be. And again, it's a mid-day condition when we look to the evening Friday evening, farmers' market evening the hot spots show up around McGill and Cuddy's restaurant where we believe to the Lincoln Inn. Some of that demand on that side obviously is theirs but rumor has it people may cross the street to get from one restaurant to parking it together. So looking to the future, again we tried to understand what was going to happen out here that could affect parking supply and demand. And there are two types of projects we were tracking. There were roadway projects that may or may not add parking to the roadway system. And then there's development projects that add parking and also add some demand because they're bringing new people into the village. So the projects are shown on the map here to the right is to press some connector or new roadway project going to add some takes out some parking down at the park street but adds some new parking over by the antique shop demonstration place. The second project list that is again another roadway project that possible closure of the last leg of main street simplify the five corners doesn't happen unless the connector is built and again that's not a certainty but that takes away some on street parking we see where they may be able to fill in some replacement parking but we're going to lose some numbers there. Number three is the senior housing project that Andy is building which I think is going up not sure the timetable to complete but that's housing with on-site parking he's got a second lot he's been talking about developing we're also closing on the floor and on-site parking likewise is a kind of sister project next door that Pinsdale is looking at similar program and then Chittenden Crossing you see three components kind of the big triangle to the south mostly residential some commercial a lot of on-site parking that looks like it's pretty much self-contained the top piece on Maple Street first look at numbers on that not quite is balanced we think there there may be some issues there we'll talk about that and then the other triangle that fronts on Park Street is up in the air right now so we don't have a final answer to that Rick can I just interrupt you really quick so when you're saying these future projects you mean that these are going to be accessible make more parking available is that what you're implying with these we look different from this perspective this is just a master plan we're told this is a data master plan but this for example Chittenden Crossing what we did is we have spaces lost and added so the building program has a footprint and of all the spaces we survey how many spaces get taken out of service by that footprint I see and if those spaces are being used by somebody today and what was a building in that footprint that is generating park demand we took that out of the demand side and then we add back in the areas they're going to build so the building 40 housing units and we assigned one parked vehicle for a housing unit we add that back in if they're building 50 spaces the support those we add those back in so we went project by project and did the plus minus on each of them and we carried them through kind of sequentially if one of them broke up we could delete that from our so that's the math that we did to go through and again to come back to the situation are we above below do we have out spots so when we do that again another summary by by those five zones or wedges that we talked about but the overalls on the left we looked at Friday we looked at both midday and Friday evening Friday evening is the more critical which is I'm showing here 36% utilization on the Friday evening in the public spaces again plenty of reserve capacity and even the private spaces maxed out at 64% plenty of spaces and if you go around the circle to each of the five zones that south zone for the same reason we made five zones we looked at that one in the lower right said well wait a second you got two rail lines in there and that chitin crossing thing is really split in three what's happening over by the renovation warehouse there the antique shop that parking doesn't really serve Lincoln in very well not if you have to cross the tracks same thing with the chitin crossing piece south of the tracks those don't connect very well so we drilled a little deeper and broke that one zone into three smaller zones and we did see everything is fine except in that Lincoln in piece where the numbers we had for their program showed that they weren't providing enough parking on that Naples street building and the initial numbers on the other building in front of Park Street looked shy as well we've had conversations I apologize I knew we were supposed to be here two weeks ago I misread my schedule that's okay two weeks gave us time to talk to developers we're still communicating back and forth with them to get the latest information things may not be as severe as what we're showing on this graphic but we do believe there's still merits discussion to understand what they were really proposing and confirm that at the end of the day there's going to be balance on that site so I mentioned the hot spots I mentioned there's some remedies the library is the first one that's the mid-day condition the reality is there are on-street spaces nearby it can be used for the overflow there is a lot to the top left circle and green we call that the school lot there's thirty to thirty five spaces out there there's a lot of people there in the evening they're half full during the day there's a steep staircase to get down to the library a better staircase might make their spaces more viable as library parking and maybe it's employees or all-day parkers who aren't coming and going a lot use those spaces and freeing up the spaces near the building for the library patrons who are in and out I could be wrong but I think that lot is owned by the school district okay I'm not sure but I believe it is because right on the other side of that that big empty space that's an elementary school and I don't know that it would be available because I think that's a drop-off area I'm just not sure I know what my kids are a little like I'm not sure right we're aware that pointing out the possibilities there may be some legal issues one of the things we have a written report that will go with this you have TD Bank across the street that has all kinds of parking that's not being used yes we did a parking study like this in Waterbury with TD Bank right across the street for the prohibition pig without that parking the prohibition pig would suffer there was sort of an informal arrangement for that to happen try to formalize that those kind of legal issues to explore but this parking that's right across the street from the library again there's on-street parking available and there's the farmers market block which we showed at 5% occupied for in the day so there are public spaces nearby that you don't have to do anything to get access to again you may be able to demand a little bit push the long-term park that is out away from the building and leave the folks who are just in for a little bit let them park closer in that's a good idea the other hot spot again was McGillicuddies and again parts of the Lincoln Inn lot fill up and the issue there seems to be people just don't want to walk there is empty space the back end of the McGillic the Lincoln Inn lot it's only half full in the evening the school park street the former school I guess Park Street School 30 spaces there that are empty so a quick and perhaps very easy solution at the McGillicuddies is to let customers know that if they're willing to take a few extra steps they can readily find parking the same side of the street is the restaurant on half cross Park Street if they're sneaking into the Lincoln Inn a lot of parties and gives you a little more walk time to assess your ability to drive after a couple of genesis so it might be good all around and the other thing we mentioned in the rear report is that surface lot if you're resident in that building I think you can park there but there's also a garage we didn't fully survey the garage it was dark private property we did poke our heads into the survey and the garage was virtually empty so if you're living there and you're parking in the surface lot out of convenience maybe management can talk to those folks and say move your car downstairs in the evening so the restaurant every apartment gets two parking tags two spots one down below and then they're allowed to use upstairs too so there's a lot of them two cars so there's maybe a discussion maybe employees get to park in the basement if they drive those sorts of things zone 3 north as we're calling it the number is still kind of up in the air looking around there's enough empty spaces maybe you do nothing maybe it's okay to have it be under park knowing that this public parking nearby things are in a state where you could look at the building program maybe you build fewer units maybe you haven't built more parking in terms of managing the supply the park demand in terms of if you've got spaces for residents that are going to be available for them at night do you make those available to commercial activities during the day or even into the evening maybe your reserve residential space doesn't kick in until 10 o'clock when the restaurant traffic is gone so there's ways to manage supply and you'll constrain demands even at least as you could tell people you get one spot or your second spot costs an exorbitant amount so as you create incentive to keep the demand down so public speaking 101 we'll review what we told you there's plenty of supply out there the hot spots are manageable and the one that could become a problem in the future is it's still a state of flux and I think there's time to work with that developer to get things right on that piece of property thank you rick thank you I'll lead up with a question we as you are probably aware people tend not to question electrical engineers or chemical engineers or HPEC engineers but traffic engineers for some reason everyone is a traffic engineer and people question your authority but even though so we've got objective data but despite the objective data that says there's plenty of parking available you have people's perceptions and people's perceptions are that there's not so what do you having dealt with this sort of thing before what are some of the recommendations for changing people's perceptions do you have any sort of general ideas about how you approach that? I think the key there is education and communication but when you commend them and you're exasperated because it took you so long to find a parking space what you should be able to explain to you you know the park school has plenty of parking did you check there first or do you know that there's a farmers market lot across the street that information if you can share it with the customer a website so that when you're logging in to make your dinner reservation it tells you where's the best place to park at this particular time does more public street signage help? I think that if it's a public lot you need to have wayfinding signage so yeah the standard green and white big P sign tells you where the lot is if you don't have those then certainly you want to place those where they belong the yellow cut he actually does have I know the owner he actually has a map of the village center and it denotes the areas where people can park other than the lot over there so he's already taken that advice and put it in place there as you come in the front door also the parking situation here I think and getting people where and like George said just getting people willing to walk a little bit more further distance go down into Burlington and people will walk several blocks just to get to the restaurant or go to Boston or Montreal and you'll walk a mile but the other thing is I think there's opportunities like you were saying with the use of the TD bank lot down in Waterbury down on Lake Street they have a right where Foam the brewery is down on Lake Street beside that, I forget the business I think it's a financial investment broker or something they have signage that indicates that the lot is open to the public use after hours on weekends and everything and I brought up that that we need to pursue more off the village like the MOUs with existing businesses and have some kind of signage that we'd be willing to pay for or whatever to just get access City of Burlington has pursued that following the example set in Portland, Maine where in fact there is a parking vendor or operator who manages all the private lots in the evening and collects fees for that so that if you have an office building and an empty lot that's convenient to restaurants, you can collect revenue from that by having it used in the evening I understand that the way it's being done in Burlington isn't ideal that if you overstay your limit the penalties are rather severe so that's something to think about you don't have a paid parking situation here so bring in that operator today as an example of the notion of getting MOUs waiving liability for people who are using a lot after hours certainly opens up as you saw the private supply out there is way more than adequate there's plenty of empty space as well and space that would be more convenient for the restaurants in the evening Any one from the audience have a question? Patrick Murray I'm a president of SxJunction I'm curious you did this review and you did it on those specific dates made it generally when I'm looking at a data set I like to see a number of dates to make sure that we're not drawing conclusions from one particularly light night or one particularly heavy night was thought that maybe you might need to go about more than one time to get the sort of a proper data set or do you feel in your opinion that just going out the one time was sufficient Well, we were out three times not once Right, but I know it's like three times we're surveying different times of the day so you need to look at say three or four Friday evenings We would go out on every night if we could but the budgets and do it make sense we try to get our surveys done in the August, September time frame because we just know with that's the peak activity period we do a lot of traffic work in the state we know looking at traffic volume data the summer months or the busy months that's when people are out and about that's when the tourists they hear that's when the numbers go up so we're trying to get the time of year we're in South Burlington we have employees who helped in the surveys that actually live in Essex Junction as well and had them involved in the surveys and they're sort of our eyes and ears to say so you saw we did the counts you lived there this looked typical so we have that feedback as well and we think we captured typical conditions if we miss something we're certainly open to going to spot counts there's a big event coming out for a big date that we're concerned about we could go back and do it a quicker survey Rick could you go back to your slide that says future utilization Friday evening one of your zones has a public at 420% and private can you please explain so looking at the building programs and the number of residential units that are proposed the amount of commercial space that's going to be proposed in estimating parking demand for those two uses what we're seeing is there's going to be more demand for parking than there is parking proposed now the 420 sounds extreme but that's the public spaces in that zone are very small and to get to that I remember only like four or five spaces looking at what we know of those projects that are still in flux we said okay if it's 40 housing units in your building 45 spaces and you're going to assign one space per resident unit then you only have all of those public spaces which are part of the commercial program they're tight they're like so we started with a very small number about five so at 420 we have 20 cars that want to fit into five spaces so the percentage number is a huge deficit but five versus 20 isn't such a big deficit finding 15 spaces is a lot easier I think than the concept of solving 420% shortfall and back to your comment if the village were to look at parking you suggest looking at an in quadrants and staying on the same side of the street for logical reasons it can be very difficult to cross park street and you should think we're near the interstate we should like where parking park terrorists come together but you're saying stay do your parking look on the same side of the street that's our recommendation and again and in the short term we talked about the library situation if you're at the farmers market you could be which we need to say where our camera is vacant there's spaces there every day, all day all night up and down there's a crosswalk right out here park street that you'd have to use to get in that plot if that's the strategy then that crosswalk probably wants to be upgraded you could use rapid flash and peak or something to make it look out for excuse me but gentlemen there is necessarily in the quadrant they generally are right now I mean by each other than that Lincoln in piece what we're seeing is each quadrant has enough parking but you want to keep it that way going forward just like I say the Chittenden Crossing project needs a little closer look to make sure that you're going to be able to keep that going forward with each zone having its own parking am I last question where do you see pedestrian and bike utilization in any of these projections the existing demand is well-measured there's people using bikes while we're not counting them but it's reflected in the numbers that we're seeing the forecasting we use industry standard parking demand rates but even inch those down a little bit with the understanding that it is a village center the new development that's being proposed is residential above commercial so you've got a built-in market of people that will be able to walk to these destinations and not have to drive so that car that's in a residential space doesn't need a customer space as well if it just stays where it is so we're being aggressive I guess in saying that we know there's going to be travel by other modes and we really haven't pushed the parking estimates real high and again that's to reflect the existing conditions in the back of our mind and we're a big company we're 20,000 people worldwide we've got a number of people who are thought leaders in the vehicle realm talk to on a regular basis and they're very fearful of telling anybody to build the parking just with the trends in demographics that younger people aren't getting licenses they'd rather be on the phone than behind the wheel of a car they'd rather sit in an Uber on a bus than have to drive themselves and the autonomous vehicle that's just going to take you to the door and then disappear says you don't need parking so we'd be very cautious to say oh yeah you've got a 10 car shortfall here you'd better build a garage because in 10, 15 years you'd be scrapping heads why did we do that just curious that you bring up the autonomous vehicles and Uber and such with the millennial generation and onward do you foresee that really being realistic in a very rural date you don't have the transit density well to major metropolitan areas Boston, New York, Chicago areas where that autonomous vehicles maybe would be much more realistic whereas here you've got people that come in from Fairfax I don't foresee us ever having mass transit like you do in major metropolitan areas so people really it's kind of a necessary evil in the community like Vermont to have a vehicle to be able to get around beyond maybe elderly or something that doesn't need to go to work on a daily basis or have children at school bring their children to their friends with body schools and union schools with the going distances just to get to the school and such I think this autonomous is going to first germinate in the bigger cities and already has in the application for the economics of the density as with other technologies the rideshare the car share of Vermont those kinds of things started in the big city but they've made it to Vermont and again we don't know exactly how this is going to play out but I would not be surprised that the economies that it can be viable at some level of penetration up here as well and yeah it could happen to some extent other questions please well for now I think I want to say thank you very much thank you great presentation and very thought provoking really appreciate it thank you next we're going to hear a presentation about potential green mountain transportation green mountain transit route changes from John Moore do you guys need the computer no it's very well good evening everybody welcome I'm John Moore and the director of transportation at Green Mountain Transit he's a long time GMT commissioner from the town of Essex Paul Bowdoin he's the other commissioner who's in sunny Florida as we speak so thanks for the invite we just wanted to get in front of you folks and give you some updates to bring to a outreach process before we do that we're meeting with municipal staff we met with Evan and his team a few weeks ago we were sitting by these and trying to get some feedback before we kind of moved towards the public process just some background on this I think you folks got a memo with some brief information last summer we completed a multi-year comprehensive service analysis looking at all of our services we operate in a five-county region in north-west Vermont we operate about 50 total bus routes so we hired Nelson Nygaard who's a well-known transportation consultant they came in they did an in-depth analysis of all of our routes and they also looked at market analysis and potential demand where we can provide better service with the same amount of resources meaning that we're going to have to look at trade-offs we want to try to concentrate on limited resources and maximize return on investment and transit what you guys pay into town of Essex is about a quarter million dollars a year so it's a substantial investment we want to try to maximize the return on that through increased ridership reduced congestion and greenhouse gases so really looking comprehensively at our services and trying to be as efficient as possible as we can with the main goal of increasing ridership as much as we can within our service area so just a quick background for the routes that operate within Essex and Essex Junction there's currently three routes there's the Essex Junction route that operates from downtown Brownington back to Brownington the number one ridership route in our system almost half a million people a year take that bus it's about 1900 on a daily average weekday out of that roughly one-third border of Lake and Essex Junction so besides very productive route really high ridership then we also operate the number four the number ten route over here on Amtrak the four goes up to Essex Outlets back to Amtrak and the number ten operates from Amtrak out to tax corners and back so looking at making changes to basically every route we operate out 50 different levels of changes based on ridership and density and other factors so hopefully go through the thought process and some of the actual changes we're proposing and I'd love to leave a few minutes for any feedback or questions you guys have but for the Essex Junction route probably that the main change we're looking at making is increasing the frequency how often that bus runs for the most part right now it operates every 15 minutes during the peak rush hour times and every 30 minutes during the base periods we're proposing to operate that every 20 minutes from 8am to 6pm we feel that it makes it more convenient to schedule what you're just going to know what stuff you're going to get on and you kind of just know when that bus is coming and if you miss it you're only going to wait 15 no more than 20 minutes for the next one we're also looking at improving evening service that's something that we hear a lot about we do a lot of onboard surveys a lot of non-rider surveys kind of asking what would it take for you to get on the bus one thing we hear quite a bit is evening service right now during the basically Monday through Friday we've got parts downtown Burlington's at 9.40pm so if you want to go out and get dinner or other activities or you work retail or off-hour shifts you can't really get back to Essex so we're proposing to operate the number 2 bus it would operate at 11pm from downtown Burlington back into Essex Junction that's Monday through Saturday that's a big benefit improving Sunday service we started Sunday service out to the village a few years ago I've seen pretty healthy ridership on that the bus is only operating every 75 minutes not very convenient we want to cut that in half and run that bus every 45 minutes on Sunday the other big kind of plan we're looking at is interlining the Essex Junction route with the Shubham Road route then doing the same thing with the Williston route in the North Ave essentially what that means is every bus that leaves Amtrak it will go down to our transit center in downtown Burlington it will always turn into the number 6 route so if you needed to travel from Essex to Shelburne you don't have to worry about a transfer you stay on that bus and you're able to make that seamless trip and then you closely will do that same thing with the bus that travels on North Ave in Burlington and then out to Taft Corners creating a kind of a rapid transit system if you would two main routes and you can get that just anywhere on those main doors with no more than one van number of transfers and make our service as convenient as possible to increase ridership so again to make some of these improvements there's got to be trade-offs initially when we did this study we were looking at cost neutral kind of scenario as you may have heard we've experienced some budget challenges for this upcoming fiscal year so we've had to scale back the plan a little bit to kind of meet our budgetary realities so a few things we're looking at doing is to pay for some of these improvements number one the number two bus that travels into Amtrak currently takes a right on the south summit street and serves west and south street we're proposing to route that bus directly to Amtrak by the five corners for the most part we're trying to save some time we've had that frequency but we also feel that for the most part of that neighborhood off the south summit street it's very walkable out to Pearl Street it's actually the neighborhood I live in when I take the bus it's actually quicker to walk out to Pearl Street because if you get on in that Indian Acres neighborhood number one you have to travel to Amtrak but then the bus sits there for ten minutes so for folks that are trying to have the quickest trip they're walking out to Pearl Street anyways our ridership shows that only about two percent of the total route ridership gets on in those areas in about half of that's at global foundries the other proposal in the number two would be to eliminate the global foundries bus stop and then we'd actually replace that with the next route combination we'll talk about so those are kind of the two geographic service changes you know from our perspective and we'd love to get your thoughts and then of course the public's thoughts but the improvements are worth those trade-offs so then the other two routes I mentioned are the lower ridership you know those routes are both under 20,000 annually so just from the perspective the Essex Junction is in about 40,000 a month so again low ridership but still valuable routes that we want to maintain and provide service to Essex so a few larger scale changes I guess but again some improvements we think are worth the trade-off so the underlying thought is to combine the Essex Center in the number ten route that would be one bus that would operate all day long right now the number four has about a three hour gap in the middle of the day that does not operate any service so under this combination we would have all day service from the outlets to tax corners so all that new development at the outlets would be served well as well as new Saturday service right now there's no Saturday service to the outlets are up 15 I'm tracking the outlets so all those new services again trade-offs involved the first trade-off would be that that route would terminate out the outlets so any service east of the outlets would no longer be served on this proposal one thing we're working through and we worked with Evan and his team and talked about this and GMD's had some subsequent conversations with the school district this school year we entered into an agreement with the school district where high school and middle school kids ride the bus for free and then rebuild the school district so that number four route which has historically been our lowest ridership route in the system is up 60% for this fiscal year so still trying to work through that we certainly want to again be as efficient as possible maybe counterproductive to cut a route that's up 60% so we're trying to get creative and maintain as much of that service as we can again when we started the study we didn't have an agreement in place and ridership was much more so hopefully there's some creative way to maintain some level of service out to Sand Hill Road and then River Road as well the other thing I'll quickly mention on the number four while there's no Saturday service and there's that gap in the midday that does operate every 30 minutes under this proposal would operate every hour so it's another thing to know so in addition to these service change proposals we're also going to be proposing to increase the base cash fare we have not had a cash fare increase since 2005 so obviously a lot of inflation and cost increases in that time so right now it's $1.25 for the full fare to ride the bus we are proposing to increase that to $1.50 with that there'll be two different options on the monthly pass so we do offer an unlimited ride monthly pass which certainly costs $50 but we're also going to maintain that $50 price while there's no fare to $1.50 the other proposal will actually be to reduce that to $40 with the hope of incentivizing people to go to the high volume pass there's other benefits speed of boarding our fare box equipment takes less of a hit and there's some maintenance savings there we'll bring both of those options out to the public and try to get feedback but we're hoping that we can mitigate the increase in the base fare of the high volume pass which financially is a benefit to our high volume riders so in terms of next steps we do have a public meeting schedule April 8th here in this building so you guys are all certainly invited and we're starting to advertise those now so we'll have a pretty strong outreach on those meetings we're holding I think 7 or 8 total public meetings in the next 4 to 6 weeks trying to get as much feedback as we can our internal processes will bring feedback we get from stakeholders and municipalities and of course the public to our board we'll do that right now plan the April 16th board meeting and then they'll approve or not approve changes based on the comments we receive and then at this point we're looking at making the implementations for our next passenger schedule which would be on June 17th so kind of in a nutshell for changes and then the next step to get there and like I said I'd love to get any feedback you folks have or any questions you might have I have a few questions I think you were saying that with the number 2 line about 3% of the people coming on or off are using either global and or south summon in the Summit Street area? Correct Is that reason it's only 3%? Yeah so it's about 2.5 in about half of that so I doubt that the combination of the number 4 and the number 9 would continue to serve global foundries so those folks would still have bus service they would have to either walk from Park Street or they'd have to transfer to Amtrak so half of that 2.5% would still have service and that number 4 and number 10 combination would become an hourly route? Correct so they'd have to transfer and then once an hour get the bus out there or just walk take a Uber or something like that for them Have there been any conversations about adding in an express plus and think about how other communities will have an express plus we'll talk 2, 3, maybe 4 times in some of the bigger areas like in Amtrak and St. Mike's and then downtown? We've had some internal discussions with that obviously it costs a little bit more money to do that if you're adding service if you've ever taken the number bus and you want to get from to downtown Bronte you know it's a lot longer than it actually takes because you are traveling to Forties and Allen and up to the hospital which is a kind of a unnatural routing so there's no plans in this study to add express buses but in the future if we can identify park and ride locations that's a key to express bus service some of the weeds are going to be open into looking at it I live a mile from five corners and I have to travel a fair amount so I do take the bus periodically in the 40 to 45 or so minutes it'll take you a good day let alone the hour hour and 15 in the snowy days it just frankly is what it is I can understand one of the other questions is as we look to as a state as a community to try to reduce our carbon footprint in what not ways that we can be more environmentally friendly to use things like mass transit and to not have so many parking spaces has there been any kind of analysis or to make certain lines for some of how it works now in Addison County two or three rooms are free so we part of this study there was a fair analysis which is kind of related on that increase to $1.50 about 2.3 million was our fair revenue so we could certainly we love to go fair free there's all sorts of studies in transit literature that's how you increase ridership obviously but to do that without decreasing service we would have to have a backfill of about $2.3 million to keep current service levels and right now that just doesn't exist but there's certainly a desire by the board to continually look at ways to go fair free just that revenue kind of replacement that's kind of like the biggest barricade right now I would be curious as there's a test case of even what it would cost to say for everybody who boards Amtrak we need to go people board Amtrak it's a free product so if you board next time you come up to Amtrak what that kind of a cost would be in terms of just a test case we could sort of think about that on a pilot project but that's the way to get people on buses it would make it convenient and cheap as possible clearly the number four of us increasing ridership by 60% regardless of what's going on in the school district and busing the fact that that's free is a significant increase in ridership Are you having some changes made at the Amtrak I read something in the Essex reporter one of those wondering if by any chance if we get something like this for us you would want to have a place where people could wait and that kind of thing that might be so there might be something I guess in there that could be transportation related and if you have something you can certainly let us know that goes along with that maybe facilitate something the changes that are going to happen there are there Amtrak is building a improving the platform, the outdoor platform for boarding the train and then we have a plan to have the basically improve the traffic flow to optimize it for buses one way traffic going down railroad we are going to lose a couple of spots on railroad parking spots on railroad so there are some changes but we'd love to see the building change to have more waiting space for it that's one of our biggest desires but we have a revenue backfill as well I hope to term revenue backfill those are my questions each year that you guys come to talk to us I have asked to get a route from Amtrak to the Richmond parking right and I'm just wondering if that is in any I would take the bus to Montpelier every day I work there if there were a bus but going to the parking right from here I'm halfway there I might as well just keep going there's a lot of Essex residents at the parking right so that's a great point so the next gen study that this kind of all stems from there was three phases there was a cost neutral there was a moderate increase of like 10% in cost and then a 20% kind of major expansion and the parking right shuttle from starting in Essex was included in both phase two and three we've had multiple conversations so those conversations have happened again the State of Vermont is in a backfill but but they've been going on for 3-4 years I don't have any short term good news about it but I think there is the demand and there's interest at the state level who's a key funder of ours so we can certainly progress that and one of the reasons we put that in the study is documentation kind of showing the need for that so I think one day that will be an existing route I just need to give you an answer yes it's been many years it just seems like such a no other questions Virgil? I know you're going to make a lot of people happy by eliminating the South Street passage there we've had some of them visit us so it's yeah that's we've had to make it too great no, John you've had the conversations with the school district which I know they come a lot now on route four in Essex Center up route 15 so you've had those good conversations that's why you but it's still going to stop at Essex Center the number four? that's where it's terminus so under this proposal it would stop at the outlets if we can work with the school district or other funding partners we would like to continue that route down Santel if we can but as it stands right now it would terminate at the outlets and do the school kids actually ride for free they ride for free on your bus but is the school district playing? we build the school district for a ride yes yeah you you know I wake up every morning and go over on Riverside and I see the CCTA or I mean Green Mount Transit buses stopping picking up kids now that the same type of scenario that you're talking about and the other aspect I've had concern about this with kids unlike a traditional school bus they don't have red lights from passing it as well as for most of the year with snow banks and such and other things the risk to the children the vehicles they get backed up because there's no they're stopping traffic the width of the bus and people are going around these vehicles I don't know it's just something to think about yeah so similar to Essex Junction the City of Wellington School District does not provide school transportation what's called neighborhood trippers so they're open to the public they only operate on school days and they all terminate at a school so they're essentially school type services but you're right we don't have the stop sign or the red flashing lights so they are open to the public those are other questions thank you very much thank you very informative thanks John thanks for being open to the comments of staff and the board absolutely I appreciate it you guys updated next up we have an update on a school resource officer and program good evening we hope you've got a lot out of these I think these are pretty informative this is all good stuff so as you all know we had our school resource officer Kirk McGlennis retire after many many years of service and what I can tell you one of the projects that Ron and I have been working on almost a year now is re-evaluating our services, staffing we can do a better job part of that is is our primary focus on our schools and our children in safety so Ron and I have attended several school resource meetings school safety meetings conventions looking at best practices we're looking at making a little bit of adjustment and I'm here today to talk to you about it so that you know that we have a plan and that we're focused and I think the plan makes sense but you may hear from your constituents some questions I want to make sure so we're going to meet with the trustees follow up with the select board but just so that you haven't understood historically our school resource officer basically is integrated schools and basically did drug resistance education and that's kind of worked into almost its own program where in the last few years Curt teaches in the health classes he teaches in some schools but a lot of it's based on good decisions, stranger danger drug resistance, that type of stuff and looking at statistically where we are having incidents across our country the graded schools are probably not I would say our highest area where we would have a concern it's actually a high school and it's basically the makeup of where we're having those incidents who are the people that are there, the size of the population and so in looking at it we decided that at least short term, well let me back up a little bit we believe that we actually need three school resource officers probably in the next five years to be able to significantly cover Essex and Essex Junction I believe we're going to need one at the high school and we need one for the town schools and one for the village schools to really cover what the standard is that we're seeing out there if you do research on these what's happening there it's basically having them put on the ground at the location, they're very quick and they're over very fast and it's basically having the security personnel to deal with in a very quick manner with that thought in mind and speaking with the unified manager we talked to the school district about how those plans, about needing more officers the village and the town for the last 28 years through the budget, through the police budget and the taxpayers has paid 100% of that resource officer that's in the school during the school year teaching those classes and then we pull them back and use them on the road for traffic control and things like that during the year we've approached the school district and talked about some help with helping them fund some school resource officers to try to hit that number 3 goal I'm pleased to say that the school district was open to our conversation and has actually budgeted for a small percentage of the resource officer in the budget this year for the long term goal hopefully of maybe fund 1 and then maybe we split the last one is what we're looking at maybe trying to get towards so with Kurt being gone we are about to replace our school resource officer we've just hired a new officer that will backfill the position that we need and probably very shortly within 3 or 4 weeks we'll look at moving the officer school district wants them at the high school we agree we think that's the place where it needs to be it's going to be a little bit more of a security than a teaching function but they will still be involved with the students our goal is is if the school budget passes and there's funding there is to attempt to make up the other third of the funding that we would need to do that from the police budget and actually add once that budget was approved for next year a second school resource officer would kind of do what we had been doing bump them between the town and village and then eventually get to third position and move them into those schools they're going to specialize a little bit more probably do a little less teaching more building relationships with the students because that's what it's all about as we do the run hide fight and see something, say something it's about being connected with the students it's about spending time at basketball games it's about you know it's not just being a guard at the door so as we make that move we're probably going to move forward with putting that person the new resource officer to the high school I know we're going to hear some questions our intent is to probably do a new school resource officer do something in the local newspaper and talk a little about the vision and why we're making those decisions but I wanted to come to the board's first to let you know what our vision is, why we're doing it certainly if you have any thoughts or ideas you know our main goal is safety and we've got to put our resource where they think they're going to make a difference but we do have a plan to backfill as soon as we can I'm aware that at the high school they do have security there security guard, I've seen they also have former brook and police officer Bill LeWere who works there I believe he's still there, I don't know if that's so he's going to continue on in his role whatever he's security or to my knowledge for the time being he's there, I think Bill's a little long in the tooth that he's a friend so I can say that but you may not know that actually one of our retired police officers Diana Moranowitz actually works over there now so kind of the neat part is we actually have multiple we would have one full time and two retired folks that are there so it kind of increases that they're in classroom and there like I said historically there was a dare program that had curriculum that was mainly focused about drug resistance they then went to Project Northland and the last one is basically Curtin and Linda Kerry developed kind of a hybrid model and everything in reference to stranger danger drug resistance, being safe on the internet and basically what happens is they get plugged into classes with the health teacher or maybe in civics classes talking about laws again what we're looking at doing is a little less teaching a little bit of that work out but they will still be available and do some of that teaching our issue is they are also going to be our subject matter experts when we're dealing with juvenile issues our problem is is if we have a juvenile issue and we have someone in the classroom that we've made a commitment and we have a juvenile school that school resources are out of a class where they're scheduled to be to then go deal with the juvenile incident if they're more of a security type profile locked into classes where they could leave it gives us the flexibility to move those officers around where needed and if we've got an issue over at this school like if I have the staffing I can move two school resource officers out there before I have to pull an officer off the road that's responding to calls or dealing with accidents so again it's trying to be smarter about how we're using those resources makes sense I'm curious how you see the role of a full police officer in uniform during the gun versus the community outreach worker type partnership that we're doing with the Howard Center and in terms of some of those details of as a young person who has some type of an issue is it a police officer coming in to mitigate the security so I'll start with our school resource officers are almost all about there are unified personnel that are it's what they've all grown up with so they're going to be the same folks they're going to be in uniform there part of what that is is building good relationships with police officers they're in trouble outreach person so that person is available to those resource officers in the school so it really depends on what the incident is if it's something that's a violation of law the school resource officer may be involved with that if it's something that is a mental health issue that school resource officer may call a community outreach worker that will deal with that and then step away from the situation one thing I will tell you is as we ask the school to be involved and help pay they want more say which I can understand so what we are currently looking at is and this is common in most communities is an MOU between us and the schools to talk about what those jobs are what the expectations are as you can understand there are specific rules educational laws FERPA that are root definitive lines particularly for law enforcement about privacy and stuff like that so part of that is going to be us understanding where that is doing the training and making sure that we all understand what officers at the location can and can't do what their jobs are but the school actually sees that more as a staff being their full time than actually just having come in to teach a class and then leave our vision is there's a cruiser out in front of every one of those schools flying the flag so the people know you're going to come here there's someone here to protect the children so again we're going to have to those folks if we ended up with three what we pretty much do is they rotate through we probably would have someone stay at the high school and then we'd have someone deal with the town schools and someone deal with village schools and as we needed it we could move resources into certain areas where we need them maybe this is just because it's been let's say I graduated from S6 in 2001 so it's been a little while I'll date myself there so is it really that much of a security concern at the high school where we need to have a full time police officer there statistically that's where the events are happening those grades that population so it's more of a prevention and in case then it's because it's currently that much of a correct we are not we don't have I mean we deal with safety issues all the time it is looking at the numbers and saying if something is going to happen and where they happen for the last 10 years statistically it is in higher populations than graded schools and is where there is larger populations and the students and the people that work there are all within the age groups where so what we're trying to do is we understand that's the probability of where if we're going to have an issue we're probably going to have it trying to make sure at least our resources are put in those locations to begin with first absolutely so we're not we're talking about making changes but we've thought about it we think it's the right decision we've got a plan for the future we've been been working with the unified manager in the school district I think we have a plan I think we may even have that second officer possibly next year starting next year it depends on the funding that comes through them and some creative budgeting I guess on my hand it's good budgeting thank you for your time it's also beneficial that we've started getting our ranks filled making these which are allowing us to keep the streets and the schools staffed and we do thank the school district for considering this and working with us this just sort of came about in the last couple of weeks with Brian and others in the school district and their budgeting it's a very good idea this is a great idea before we lose the chief I've heard a lot of appreciation of the draft enforcement that we've seen stepping up as well as the fact that you now have a Facebook page and the increased communication to the public I've heard a lot of great feedback so thank you we are trying to do better about that stuff could you tell them about the PERS story short as you know I was particularly if you're doing it for a police department so the horror stories we did the research for years and I was the person that was saying no no no no no no the horror stories of well this got posted on a page at two o'clock at night and by six o'clock in the morning channel three or yes news is standing at your door wanting to know about the issue you need to maintain and so it takes a lot of resources to do that and being under staff we didn't have the resources to be able to do that I think in an efficient manner there's a couple of things that now that we've done it and we think we've got a pretty good handle on it a perfect example is about a week ago we had a PERS staff from one of our local stores where PERS was stolen we officer went down, immediately took the information went to the security camera in the store, got a picture from the store came back and we posted it on Facebook within an hour the person that was responsible for that was standing in my lobby and that case was solved so huge powerful we will be talking very soon about another endeavor that we're combining with a company called Ring the Doorbell that has a neighborhood program that deals with video in neighborhoods and safety and tips and stuff like that that is going to be free to the community that they've tested in a couple different areas and had a significant reduction crime or at least being able to solve crime so we're excited to be, again what we're trying to do is work smarter, not harder and use some of that technology to figure out where our issues are and where we can be more efficient thank you thank you okay to annual meeting preparation and I think we had a little bit of a discussion we don't have we didn't put slides and everything, all the specific stuff I just thought what really this discussion should be about first of all I don't know Sarah if you want to go over this first but basically it's just okay with us but generally what we want to see happen at the annual meeting and then my idea was in terms of the specific slides budget slides and stuff I can, or one of you, but I'm happy to do I can just work with Sarah to get the abbreviated version of the financial pie charts and stuff, I don't think we want the entire presentation that we normally have that we had back in December for the budget area but an abbreviated so do you want to take it away Sarah do you want me to do this or what, how do we want this I'm judgment a lot of this stuff here about timing and menus same menu as Sarah we do the pledge, we do the anthem that type of thing, you have the typical voting, really what we were thinking was that George would or someone, George would do sort of like what Max did on the select board side maybe even abbreviated from that go over some highlights do some type of presentation we have a little bit of time before that goes on you had mentioned in some of this material about doing your announcement and just doing that overview the budget, there are no articles right, there's no amendments there's no any other voting right, the thing is it's pretty tight, it's pretty succinct and then I don't I don't know how deep we want to get into, I'd like to just hear your thoughts, deep we want to get into things like alignment and various things we've done with the town, I can touch on it we want to dig way down into it just superficially go over it, what are some of your thoughts I think that's something that I would more or less look toward after the budget vote and then we open it up for public discussion on matters whatever then I feel that we could save it til then it's just that so much of our budget is intertwined with the balance what do we say, you do an overview I'm going to drill down into the what's going to happen in the future what are you doing from here what about this, what about that we're specifically leaving it to what has been done and as far as the future getting further into those matters we'll leave that for the what has been done with this budget for future discussions whatever it is I can lead what we can do is we can lead that off do you want me to do that or do you want to do that any volunteers volunteer want to talk about okay alright anything else we want to put into this I'm sorry if I missed what you said but Max always does it's consolidation to date and how much we've saved to date will you be including that? that's again, I thought I could maybe since that is budget related I would probably could touch on that some of that in the budget as long as it's pretty specific to the budget and then maybe a broader thing when we talk about it just give an overview of where consolidation and governance discussion is can you really see that it's an average of $200,000 a year or something that we're saving there even if it's just that one slide and say while this is town-wide we know that we pay approximately 40% well because it's 42% grant list wow approximately exactly she's numerous do we have anything else other than this that we want to share? are you looking for comments or changes to the documents that we're going to hand out to Q&A and such? well let me I was going to but let me just say just in terms of the flow of the annual meeting no that's okay but any thoughts, everything, is that good? anything else we need to add? so yeah let's look at any of the documents now I'm not ready to give specific why not review it and then get back to changes, is there a particular deadline? which document are you talking about? all of them I want to reread them and just make sure that it's going to be pretty quick I think the annual meeting well yeah the end of the week? oh absolutely some of this stuff has to go into the annual report it has to get printed oh yeah I'll give you a letter or anything I just want the chance to read again Thursday at 5 430 I mean 430 I'll try to have it out of the country so you probably won't know well it goes to Tammy but I just think there's a dead little patient Friday of Thursday 430 I can absolutely do that okay how about the other so this is questions are you talking about these things as well? right this is the whole packet that we're going to hand out with the annual report or printed in the annual report which things are going to be printed in the annual report do we know? usually it's just a letter I think it's just a statement from the trustees I think the rest of these are handouts I would agree with that so the rest of these you could probably take your time I'm sure they'd like to get them done but I think the high priority would be the trustee statement because I think Darby gave me until she hit me with a deadline last week absolutely we'll do my best and I want to thank Sarah and Darby and Evan for some edits in here the glossary that we usually have this is something I brought up to Sarah in the village report we usually have a glossary of terms in the back that explains what emotion is that explains what certain line items are so folks can understand the report better I will bring that up at my staff meeting tomorrow morning it's probably what Patty left behind I think I would ask and say is it basically the same template that we've been using for the last few years I wouldn't imagine so but double check the covers and a six printer so the rumor can die that we went somewhere else it's been it's been cat amount color for years I will double check we have a meeting tomorrow morning make sure that glossary can be very not changing anything that Patty had been doing also she didn't really so we will double check we're both in the same meeting tomorrow but it's been in there for the last two or three years we're in the same meeting tomorrow morning so we'll take care of that it's useful and it would be nice to have it both annually and so the towns was blue and had a thing we're looking at green for the village so they're going to be very similar but the village will be green and Elaine I know we talked about a couple of things at the end of town meeting but it was all sort of this frantic blur so if there are other things you've said to me you can revive that require action if you can revive me but two things one was the glossary which I would really like to see repeated this and the other was the potential of using dyslexic friendly fonts oh that's right that's like a whole other conversation don't worry about that now don't worry about accessibility that might be useful in the future that's right that's not change the process now it will accommodate a new font dyslexic friendly fonts are no serif is that what it is but they're also are weighted heavily on the bottom and they sometimes lean in different directions depending upon whether it's a B or a D or a P or a Q or a G to help you differentiate and there's spaces, bigger spaces between letters and words yeah it's really interesting I learned about it I had one other thing just other communities what they do with their village and our town meaning is they have some community group or a big sale for as far as I can tell we've never done that is there a reason why we've never had a local BTO the four women's program somebody come in and say well we're probably in the beginning so I was counter recording there was a big sale at town meeting who had a table with food oh no I'm sorry the library wrong I can understand that in some communities we may look at it but we have a lot of entities narrow it down to one per year or something plus spaces at a premium at least at the town meeting if you've been on the hallway it is packed actually two or more of the comments one of the people who did surveys was start on time well we would love to start on time but everybody is registering to get in and we wait so because they eat first and then they register I guess we'll just offer a future year where maybe buy a cupcake from some nice place unintended food for thought but we can take that as a suggestion one other thing I'd like to consider I brought this up before regardless of where governance discussions and everything goes I think that there is an opportunity to consolidate these annual reports I think that's something I mean it is something that could be done I know it's tricky in terms of preparing the budgets and warning the budgets I understand that but I think that maybe if we anticipated doing it we could plan on it I've even said I think it would be interesting to see if we couldn't get the school district's annual report the village's annual report and the town's annual report you're ambitious yes but the city of Montpelio was able to do it I think it's all under the governance structure but on the other hand I was so impressed by looking at it because it gives all the information for the citizens in one place instead of saying here's three important separate documents it puts it all in one place and I'm sure it would be horrifying for staff to figure out how to do it but on the other hand maybe we get higher some extra help but I think in the long run it would really be something that would be great it's a solvable problem I think it's a solvable problem they're laughing I'm sorry my recent Google searches include can my hair turn white overnight look it's an easy solution but the problem is is that the school district has its annual meeting in April the village has its annual meeting in April we bought the town well we pushed the town's annual meeting back into April we all get it together that would be better than trying to pull it all up give you guys more time let's just make it online version and then you print out the town it does their whatever their annual meeting we can look into it it's just a thought I don't want to digress into this it's a long meeting like I said at the audit discussion I look forward to the day when we can do one one okay sorry just a thought let's move on so consent agenda can I say something regarding the preparation is it possible for the village to put out a vote today sign I noticed that at the lab town meeting there was no vote today sign five members but recording for the meeting not that we're never parked down but it would be awfully nice with the Australian ballot being with the school district to let our residents know that we are indeed voting if not on Tuesday then also on Monday and the Wednesday before that there is some political action happening for their governance and we are not reminding our public some of them do things electronically some of them with the old fashioned way by paper and that sandwich board that used to go out you mean out here out here no there also wasn't more of the town office there wasn't one there either so I think our populist needs a reminder because in the electronic age we'll have their noses on the phones okay we're not supposed to be doing that in cars regardless okay they miss things and I think sometimes that sign has helped people remember that sometime during that day they need to hit the polls or participate later in the evening so it might just be new staff old staff it was such a matter of having for Patty probably to do that and it might have been a number of things that she didn't get communicated I'm sure I think as I draw past here quarter after six in the morning there was nothing out here on my way to the polls to set them up so I'm sure that if it was going to happen it would have happened by then and I'm going to ask you to please make sure that it is happening by then okay so that we're all reminded I'm sorry but if you didn't see it and I'm sorry that we didn't put it out you called us or text it or whatever we do have a staffing changeover but if somebody would have called us one we would have located where the sign is and we would have found it's probably in the basement and we would have put it out I'm jumping over my supervisor okay well I'm saying this too anonymously but I'm saying this as a member of the poet that wasn't there it will be fixed I asked I asked about signs okay that's fixable we'll do that alright thank you for pointing it out though thank you appreciate it there are only a few of us out there so we are on to the consent agenda Elaine seconds I'll second I have a website question there it's the best to get it filled out by March 25th can I just offer a reference tool that I know that this is like the start of the communications team process and I want to make you aware I know you know about the Essex governance group that formed four years ago they did their report the egg report and one of the recommendations was have a communications director and have a concise communications plan I'm going to make a copy of this document it's a public information public involvement toolkit so I know that this is like getting municipal information out to the community and once you have this process underway and you're all comfortable in your roles I would like to talk about those recommendations for communication from the egg this is a public engagement communications protocol that is from the city of Portland Oregon I think it's a really I'm not going to go into great detail but it's one of the four recommendations that both boards accepted from the Essex governance group and so I'm really excited to see that there's now going to be a protocol in place for external communications from the staff and then as soon as you're ready I can't wait to sit down and start talking about a public participation protocol involving this team so rah rah thank you and thank you for establishing this having staff dedicated to communications it's really really important and I'm really glad to see that it's being implemented thank you wait a second any further discussion about the consent agenda thank you all in favor oh that was the reading file wasn't it yeah I didn't want to that's okay because I'm so sorry we were all holding our breath but that was okay you guys are great thanks but not with the reading file with the website questionnaire are we going to get these questions or is that the intent like are we I could ask I could get you electronically can you download the page I'm just saying these I don't have a way to take it from a PDF to put it into a word to then put something in got it so 830 meeting tomorrow morning we'll take care of that thank you at that 830 we have a just the manager's office so it's Sarah, Greg myself, Tammy and Travis we try to meet every once a week for about an hour these types of things for an hour and a half they didn't go talking about hair going white thank you any other questions about the reading file everyone go on this everyone see the the change in our joint meeting schedule we had one for late April and we moved it up and we moved our regular trustee meeting back because it was going to put the regular meeting on the same day as the Australian we're still having a joint meeting on the same day as Australian anything else reading file everyone good schedules all set okay so do I think we are not going to we're not going into executive session I think we're all set so do I hear a motion to adjourn I move Dan seconds any further discussion all in favor we're adjourned thank you