 We'll go ahead and begin, George. I'm sure Vince will join us shortly. Yeah. Greg, would you mind just texting Vince to make sure he is on his way? Yes, I will. Thank you. Well, I will call to order the Monday, October 26, 2020 town of Essex Select Board meeting. And I will call to order the Essex Yellowstone Trustees meeting. Thank you, George. Are there any agenda additions or changes? Evan or Greg? No changes. There are some minor changes that Lieutenant Kissinger has for the traffic ordinance, but he can walk you through those when we get to that point. Are these additional documents, or do we have to not worry about changing the agenda? Yeah, no need to change the agenda. OK. Select Board members, do you wish to take anything out of, excuse me, we don't have a consent agenda, so I guess we don't have to take anything out of it. So the agenda is good to go. Anybody? Additions or changes? OK. Sorry, I apologize. I was an apologies. This is my Mac. I have a trackpad issue. I didn't know if, I know it's not Village Trustee time, but I was going to suggest we move the last item, local option tax up, and move the two select board only agenda items down. Thinking that select board could finish up the meeting on their last two items, if they're select board only, and the Village Trustees would potentially adjourn two meetings in a row. Can I jump in on that, Rush? Pardon? Can I, if I can just explain that a little bit? Does the select board only is for action, but it's still applicable to the trustees in terms of seeing what's going on with traffic, and eventually the trustees are going to be asked to approve the traffic ordinance as well, just because of the differences between the approval process between the two boards, the select board have to take action first, and the trustees afterwards. But it's still being asked to look at the same items. That makes complete and total sense, Greg. Thank you. Sorry about that. Andy? One suggestion maybe is to move the out and about update above the local option tax one, since I need to recuse myself for the local option one. And if I leave, then I won't have to come back if it's the last agenda item. That's only convenience for me. And so I don't please, it's trivial. Excuse me. I have no objection to that if the rest of the board members do not. Yeah, I don't have an objection to that, Andy. That's fine. So we'll move item 5E to come after item 5C. Any other agenda amendments? Andy, is your hand still up? Or is that new? Sorry, that's a residual. OK, thanks. OK, seeing no other agenda changes requested or no hands up, select board, would you like to move to approve the amended agenda? Thank you, Pat. Thank you, Dawn. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Same motion for the trustees. Do I hear a motion to amend the agenda? Second. Any further discussion? All in favor. Sorry, excuse me, who moved that? It was Raj. Oh, thank you so much. Any further discussion? All in favor. Aye. Aye. There you go. Thank you. Let's move on to public to be heard. This is the part of the meeting when if you are in the audience, you wish to speak to the board about items that are not on the agenda. If anyone in the audience would like to speak to the board, you can either raise your hand using your toolbar in the upper right or in the center of your screen, or you can indicate you wish to speak by using the chat. If you wish to speak to the board on something that is not on the agenda, please indicate that now. Thank you. I'm not seeing any hands. I'm not seeing any chat. There we go. Betsy Dunn. Thank you. This is just a comment, not a question. But last week, when George was talking about the town outside of the village and saying that we were going to have to accept a new culture when the merger goes through, I found that very interesting in that the merger of the two fire departments can happen because there's a culture difference. I don't understand that at all. Thank you. Thanks, Betsy. Anyone else with comments on items that are not on the agenda? All right, go ahead, George, and then we'll move on. Yeah, I want to just respond to Betsy. Betsy, I wasn't saying the select was going to have to accept a new culture. And if that's the impression I gave, then that's my fault for not being clear. I just said, I think we have some different ways of doing things, and merger is going to require us to sort of be collaborative and open to each other's way of doing things and understanding. And that really, I didn't mean to be threatening at all that we were going to try to come and change the board's culture, but we do have some differences in how we approach development and other things in the village. I was really just trying to make that point. Thanks. But I don't understand why that doesn't apply to the fire stations so that they could join and merge. Well, it could probably apply. It probably applies to everything. I don't want to intrude. I won't keep talking. But I think it probably applies to probably most village and town departments, if I'm understanding. Because we've been separated for so long, there's probably cultural differences between the two. And if we merge them, there's going to be a period of integration where we're going to have to learn and understand each other's way of doing things. That's all. That would be good. OK, thank you. OK, thank you. So let's move on to business item 5A, the Pueblo Town of Essex Village of Essex Junction Public Works Winter Operations Plan with COVID-19 impacts 2020 to 2021. Dennis, you're up. I'm guessing this is Dennis. Thank you. And good evening. You've got the information in front of you. And it has been posted on the web page as a draft. The recommendation or request is that you approve the document tonight. As you can tell from reading the cover memo, and if you look through the plan, there's a couple of things. It hasn't changed already at all from last year. That was on purpose. We had planned to make some changes this year in some areas. The problem that we've got basically is personnel and COVID. And if you haven't guessed from reading the memo and other things are going on, there's a great deal of angst on the part of public works departments. We've been talking to our neighbors in the county. We all share the same concerns. We understand the situation with doctors and nurses and police officers and can appreciate their particular situation. We've been lucky this summer. We've been able to carry on and do our jobs. And we're kind of in the background. From here on out until whenever winter ends, we're going to be in the foreground because none of the emergency responders can get to their jobs. None of the businesses can stay open. None of the schools can stay open unless we keep the roads open. And that's the concern that we have. We don't have a large workforce. We don't have a workforce in depth. I do not, you cannot find plow operators now that are experienced with a CDL. I just noticed the paper. There is another action on the papers on the webpage today from the state. There's a couple more communities in area just looking, small communities looking for someone who can drive a plow truck and has a CDL. They're just not out there. It's a skill set that's hard to get. It takes years of experience. It's part art, part science. If some of you have been in the trucks, you know what I mean in terms of operating the wing, the plow, the amount of salt or sand that's going down, watching for the car coming at you, watching for the mailboxes, watching for the kids that are playing and adjacent, waiting for school or whatever else. So it's a tough business and it's about to get tougher. In the past, we've had employees who've come in and plowed when they're sick. We can't really do that. We can't run the risk of a whole crew going out. And so that's our concern. And our concern is we've got to find a couple of things. One, we're working with our neighboring communities to develop lists where we could possibly share equipment and resources. That's really tough because there's the big snowstorm. Everybody wants the snow removed at once and there's no problem a couple of days later. The problem comes when it's that, eight to 10 inch snowfall that occurs and it's occurring everywhere and everybody needs people at the same time. We're trying to work our way through that but I'm telling you, it's not gonna be easy. I'm not looking forward to this winter. It's gonna be a very, hopefully we get decent weather. The best thing that we could probably have is heavy snow and no ice and that makes our job a whole lot easier. We do have some tents that we're gonna use but they don't have CDLs and can't plow the big trucks. So we didn't go and expand our sidewalk plowing services. I did think it was interesting. Evan had asked this question and I was a little late getting back to him but and I had Shannon do up some things from the GIS base. The town has about 53.6 miles of concrete or paved sidewalks. We actually plowed 48 miles of those which surprised me because I had never never gone back and took a look at them but a lot of them blocks to plow are the long, long walks not short streets with development. Those we don't get into very much but it's 48.2 out of 53.6 is the substantial amount that we do plow. So right now we've got the equipment. We do have the equipment. The one truck we ordered that was a replacement truck for this year. We ordered in March, we'll be seeing it in February. So we're using one of our older trucks this winter to get through the winter. If it breaks, we're gonna have to repair it and we're planning to turn it in in February. That gives you an indication what's going on in the industry. The trucks order them in March, get them the following February. That's the way it is. So I'm not painting a pretty picture and I don't intend to paint a pretty picture. We're gonna do our job, do it to the best of our ability. One of the things we came up with and you've got it in a document in front of you is to try to come up with some way to let the public and the schools and everybody know what's going on and that's to come up with some form of a system and we've chosen or I've chosen for the good, bad or indifferent. Green, yellow, red, green being, hey, we're doing everything we can. It'll be just like it's shown in the winter operations plan. We'll get to it right away. We'll get it cleared off. Yellow, we're probably talking some delays. Could be four hours, could be six hours in terms of clearing all our routes. Obviously we're gonna do the priority routes. If we have emergencies, we'll try to get those and get those done. But that could be four to eight hours where we're late. We can deal with that. We can put other people on trucks, throw some of the pickup trucks on the roads that other people can drive, we'll do everything we can. The red phase is a different animal. The red phase is when we have maybe a person or two down with COVID or maybe more and we can't get the crews out and keep them running. And if that's the case, we're gonna be late. We may be, you may see the main roads done and some of the secondary roads may not be done until the next day. And I don't even wanna think about that, but you've gotta identify ahead of time a worst case. That to me is the worst case. And I think everybody in the county is thinking about how do we handle this worst case if and when it occurs? So I'm gonna keep quiet with that. That's what we've said in there. We're gonna try to do as good a job we can as publicizing this through the media. If the board approves the plan. Obviously the first route for sharing of equipment is between the town and the village. And if the village has a truck down and needs our help, we're gonna help them. If we have a truck down, they're gonna help us. We do have some problems because some of our trucks are equipped only for the gravel roads and the village trucks they're equipped for salt and they're not gonna do much good putting gravel out the back of us at the end of a salt truck. They're just not equipped to do that. And by the time you shift it over, the storm's done. So there are some realities we're gonna have to deal with. But I thought I'd paint the picture as it is. And hopefully that you'll go ahead and approve the plan and we'll try to execute it and in some way shape or form get through the winter. I'm hoping that somewhere along the line someone at the state realized is that plow truck operators in the state at least for this winter are emergency personnel. And if we do get a vaccine and get other things some of those people should go to the top of the list because other people aren't gonna move if those trucks don't move. And I'll keep quiet after that and answer any questions you have. I think I saw Evan has his hand up and Pat Murray has his hand up and I'm not sure who was first. I'll wait. Oh, okay, now. You wanna hear what I have to say, Evan. Absolutely. Thanks. Appreciate the update. And I appreciate the focus on getting the plan out there. I think that that's really gonna be key. I think it's relevant to share that is your experience with CDL drivers and the complete lack of getting them is not just a local issue but is in fact a nationwide issue. The schools have dealt with this before with busing and trying to get bus drivers to the point where they were doing a training, they were offering a $2,000 sign-on bonus and they still weren't pulling in the drivers that were needed. I think something that very frequently happens or at least anecdotally that I can share is people come to me and they say, well, just hire some more. But it just doesn't work like that. We can put as much money in the budget as we want but just hire more is literally not an option. So having the ability to say we've looked at this, we have realistic expectations going into this. I think people understand we're in a pandemic, they understand that if we get down that that's where it's gonna be. We're all Vermonters. We're used to dealing with the snow and the hassle of that. But I think as long as it's, as long as it's out there, as long as it's shared, like you say you're going to do and people are aware of that fact, then I think that you guys are on a really good path going forward. Otherwise, I think that, that's really where we would get the problems if that reach doesn't spread enough and people are calling in the day of and they get 24 hours before my side street gets plowed. Just so I guess whatever we can do to help from the select board level, certainly. If there's any assistance or any sort of information that we can share and propagate, certainly willing to help as far as that goes. Thank you, Pat. Evan, did you want to go? Sure. Now that I see that other hands have not gone up. So Dennis, maybe you can explain a little bit of what goes in briefly, like about routes. Like I have people who tell me, well, anybody could jump in a truck and do a route. Anybody ever drive one of those trucks down Suzy Wilson with somebody passing you at 35 miles per hour when you're driving a 10 ton truck loaded with salt? You know, talk to them a little bit about that what happens when your regular driver isn't available for his or her route. Yeah, we've planned for some of those things already. You know, there's not a lot in our back pocket, but we do have a couple of people that we can pull in to help us. The superintendent right now is not part of the rotation, but he came from the rotation so he can go in and fill in. So obviously if one person's out, he can come in and fill in, we're good to go. We also can adjust routes. I mean, we've got a map that we produce. The map is on the webpage. It's gonna stay there. The routes generally take four to five hours and a normal snowstorm four to five hours to plow. But it's, as I said, it's a skill and an art. And we've had accidents before with these trucks and they're not pretty because they're heavy and they're hard to stop. And you cannot put someone who's inexperienced. And it generally takes somewhere between three to five years from the time we hire a young person to the point where we're comfortable saying, you can go out on your own and plow safely. And we've got a lot of those, most of our employees are in that category. And we're gonna do a lot. We're not gonna allow people to congregate in the garage, which is, you know, you talk about that this morning, somebody comes in at five or three o'clock in the morning, they've been plowing. Maybe they've been plowing through the night before and they come back in after a couple hours of sleep. And then we have a break in the storm and all of a sudden it shows up again in the afternoon. I can't have them hanging around the garage. So you may see the trucks on the road more just out driving and cleaning up, which is kind of a waste of resources. But I can't have six or eight guys hanging in the garage with masks on waiting for that storm to switch over. They can't eat together. I'm not gonna allow them to eat in the lunch room together. That's, it's too small a room with 10 or 12 people in there at one time. We may have to go to some shifts. We may have to put the road grader on the road. We may have to use the bucket loader. So we've got some contingency plans to make up where there's holes. My concern is if we get to the point where things just really start to fall apart and there isn't, and it's really a COVID situation. The other thing, a lot of people will come in the past have come in with colds with a temperature. Do they have the flu or do they have COVID or a head cold? So we'll test them. We'll have them go get a test. If they're going to get a test and you have to wait for that test you probably lost them for 48 hours minimum. So now you're waiting for another operator who's not on a truck for 48 hours just because they came in and had a temperature. And you've got to, because if you don't do that then we lose all nine operators and then we really are in trouble. So we're trying to work through all the different plans we can to make it work and I don't know if I've explained it well, but it's gonna be tough. Thank you, Dennis. I think Amber had her hand up, Amber. Hey, Dennis. I had a question regarding, it's more I guess towards this school district but I don't know if you've had a discussion with the school district about how their notification process is gonna work because I know you mentioned in the plan that they're gonna be responsible for letting folks know if we're in a red state. Have you had any discussion with the school district about that? Yes, we have. The problem is always gonna be timing. If it happens suddenly we're all in trouble and what do we do at that point? And then we'll have to try to get buses wherever they have to go. But if the timing is appropriate, the position has always been we don't call the shots on businesses being open or closed. That's up to the schools to decide. All we can do is give them the information as soon as we know it so they can then adjust. We've given them copies of the plan, gave to them actually about three or four weeks ago and part of what we're gonna be doing after tonight's meeting is meeting with everybody again, meeting with the police because if there's an emergency they need to know they can still call on us. You know if someone's having a health situation or a crisis we may have to just drop a route and go try to get them out. I mean that's the bottom line. School buses we've always tried if a school bus got stuck to try to get to them we'll still continue to do that. So we have to keep that line. I think the important thing and you mentioned is to keep the line of communication open with everybody so that it's real clear that as soon as we know we're getting into a problem they know and then they can adjust. I think the school from what I've talked to them a little bit so far is you know they're getting pretty good at distance learning. I don't think anybody likes that. They'd much rather have kids in the classroom but I think they can react pretty quickly if for some reason the school is closed and it's closed relatively quickly. They have an excellent notification system through it to parents and our job is to get that information to them as soon as we can so that they can make the right decision. Usually every winter and most people don't even realize this is Dan our highway foreman is on the phone with someone at the school probably almost on a daily basis as to what's going on what's happening what's likely to happen and I think Ricky does the same thing in the village. So we try to keep those lines open. Not perfect we blow some but most of the time we're pretty good with that. I don't know if I had a couple of comments or questions but I don't want to cut anyone else off and anyone else have a question at this point any uh selectmen or trustees Elaine. Dennis for what it's worth is it helpful if we try to communicate with residents now before the snow flies to say two things be aware that we may have shortages related to COVID but also if you can shovel your walk is that helpful. That would be that would be helpful we're going to run our routes anyway and so I'm not sure I can't I'm shoveling the streets which is probably what we need but yeah I mean if we had you know for example if we knew that a particular neighborhood ahead of time was going to come in and say hey for this winter we'll take care of our walks and I know that some of the some of the developments have already done that in the town that means we'll have to send up a piece of equipment there and that would be helpful if we knew early but we need if we're going to do that we need here's a you know I don't expect they'd be doing Susie Wilson Road or doing Route 15 but as we go into some of these other areas where we've you know get into some of the developments if they can queer them themselves and let us know that would be that would again cut down on the people we have to send out my biggest concern and I don't want to interrupt is the the sidewalk plows don't take a lot of time to train people on we're going to have a couple kids coming back college kids are coming back early that we're going to use during the winter we've got some people that have done it before some temporary help almost anybody can hop on a sidewalk plow almost anybody I mean not everybody so the sidewalks aren't their concern the concern is really having the qualified CDL drivers on the big trucks that's that's the real concern because we can't we just can't replace them you you can find people to do the sidewalk plows um rock rock yes rock but I think I think some of the questions got duplicated it's it's all good I'm on on what answered you're good good Dennis if I could make one one or two comments I would suggest that you we put a lot of emphasis for both uh village and town staff to get their flu shots if you can because if they get sick and you haven't had a flu shot if you get sick and you have had a flu shot chances are it's not it's not the flu you've got COVID so that would be something I would I would just personally would suggest and then I'm also wondering you know you talk about they're gathering together and I know I know in the village and I'm guessing it's probably true in the town they kind of have team or group meetings to talk about you know going for you know work and so forth and if if someone gets tested after you've had one of those group meetings you're going to have to quarantine everybody who's at the meeting potentially so you could you could have wind up taking the whole crew out and I'm wondering if in anticipation of reducing that that uh that temptation to meet as a group it might be worth it to make sure that they can somehow set them up so that they can they can communicate online is necessary so that they don't have to get together as a group just two thoughts if it means a little bit of an investment it's certainly worth it in terms of saving the stress of what would happen if you have to take out a whole crew yeah we've got I've got a meeting set up I know Ricky's got one planned also we're gonna meeting set up with the town group on Wednesday morning um on the plan trying to figure out ways to keep everybody safe because some of our employees have family members that have reduced systems so we have to be careful about that as well they have gone through and and a lot of the employees have taken the flu shots okay okay I can't force them to you know that's the person you can't do all I can do is talk to them and again we'll have that talk on Wednesday most have had it a few haven't so I'm gonna try to convince those others that it's a good idea to go get it I've gotten mine I always do like I guess it cuts down the risk yep okay thanks other hands other questions I see Ricky's hand Ricky Rick Jones good evening good evening yeah this is a big big worry I've talked with Dennis a few times on this you know you know our guys come in once in a while with a little sniffle or a little cough you know they work through it but this year's gonna be so much different we're not gonna know if we gotta send them home we gotta separate them and like Dennis says we gotta try to break the crew up and again this is uh I'm gonna put a little simple plug in uh Village Garage is a very small place that we have to get to get in there and we gotta try to keep the guys away and it's gonna be tough I've lost a few nights sleep over it possibly a couple gray hairs I don't know but yes we're gonna try you know obviously gonna do our best for the residents for the residents as they're junction these guys take great pride in keeping these streets and sidewalks clear for you folks but it's it is it's definitely a big worry for myself and and I'm sure Dennis the same way you know who knows what's gonna go through that shop and if you do you just can't get another person to drive one of those plow trucks that's the thing the the plow and the wing you just can't throw a person in that that you know has dump truck experience yeah you could try it but there's gonna be some damage to equipment and property and it's hard that you can't go out and hire a guy to do that or a person there is a little bit of backup we have in the village for sidewalks as far as some contractors we have a few that can hop in some of our not the primary vehicles but some of our secondary vehicles for these sidewalks so again we're gonna try our best obviously and hope for the best and try to keep everybody safe and again I think a few of our guys have gotten the flu shots I haven't checked with everybody I know my few others have so but yes no it's a you're nervous I'm already here I don't believe the board should go out in my opinion well and say hey look public we might be not plowing streets is here no don't say that you know we're gonna do our garden we won't quite we won't do that yet no don't yeah please please don't don't don't make them all nervous it just can be some nervous times for us as far as hopefully people will stay safe and not sick and we'll try to keep everybody separated we're gonna say we're gonna do our best for you guys thank you thank you Ricky we really appreciate it thanks Ricky Raj you have your hand up yeah I just thought just just a quick question for Dennis and Ricky I mean is there anything there have been discussions with the bordering towns about any kind of emergency mutual aid kind of situation I realized that you know just because one of our folks might be out doesn't mean they have fewer streets but you know is that at all a possibility in any of this looking to neighbors like Williston and Colchester for some help or some modified routes if things get a little interesting yes we have actually Williston took the lead a couple weeks ago and sent out a form that we all kind of filled in as to what our resources were we've been talking about I'm thinking we have both the village in the town have pretty good descriptive maps of what our routes are and where to go and I think a follow-up to what Williston is talking about is also they need to have maps available in their space so that if they were to call up and say hey we really really need a truck and we're at a point where maybe we can't do it at the beginning of the storm we might be able to help them I need to be able to send somebody over there who has some knowledge of where he's supposed to go and what he's supposed to do and not just say go to Williston and plow for the town of Williston and I wouldn't want the same thing to happen to us in rebirth no don't let that happen you know I can see a whole bunch of mailboxes and you know 200 200 mailboxes later yeah it happens so but yeah I think that's what they've been doing the other thing we've done before I know Ricky's done it and I've got a a sizable contractor who does want sizable but they do a fair amount of work for us you know Ricky has one in the village and we have one that does up on Carmichael Street who's already volunteered that if he had to expand he could do some of the areas that are close to his roots he has large enough equipment that he's he would be able to help us out it's not going to be a full road width or something like that but it would be enough to get people out if we get that then a few days later we can follow up when we have more people back to try to clear things out I'm going to try to keep people on the road as much as we can we have a larger garage area but even then I know this goes back to getting together as a group they really can't use a lunchroom other than to maybe get at the microwave or the refrigerator and we're going to set up tables out in the garage far enough apart two people per table it's heated it's not fancy but it's a place to as long as they maintain that and if they're inside this winter the hard part is going to be enforcing the mask rule but I'm going to be death on that because we have to if they're in there and they're not eating they need to have a mask on I mean that's the bottom line I mean it's all these kind of things that's why we want to have a meeting on Wednesday to just talk about if they want to protect their job and their families and the guy who's or lady who's working next to them they've got to be more than just a little careful on what they do and we're going to if we can keep them safe we'll get the job done the whole issue and I think that also means away from work you just don't congregate you want if you want your job you want the overtime you want to you know continue to feed your family and other kind of good stuff and keep a safe family don't congregate Ricky did you have more guess not for Rob we're going to um Dennis and I have talked about you know swapping maps you know give us the town maps I'm going to throw them on the break table for the guys so they get their different sections there I'm going to he's going to have the village maps so if we were to say get short again if we get like short a guy or two then the other ones are going to have to pick up all that slack and it's going to take that route though those guys so much longer to do those routes so at least the other employees will have a clue of say if I hey go to the countryside open that thing up for us just punch it open and they'll at least have a map that they've looked at you know over the this fall and stuff so they have some sort of clue of where they got to go what they got to do just to just to punch these things open we can go in and clean them up afterwards as long as we don't lose the whole crew obviously if we lose the whole crew then it's going to be a but yes we have been discussing that and like Dennis said there's a person there and Wilson has been trying to gather information from from all the other communities and we'll see where that goes but yeah I think a lot of us in this in in our in our field are are definitely thinking about oh my goodness you know what's going to happen because if it was a summer months it'd be like okay well that sidewalk doesn't get doesn't get poured or this street doesn't get paved or something doesn't happen this is like no snow's on the ground people have to ghost places you know the first responders got to get to places so this is like a whole another ball game so yeah it's going to be interesting but we got this we'll get it thank you you will you'll do great thank you guys thank you we need adoption right Dennis yes please right okay so um select for should we take public comment thank you andy yes yeah um I see Bruce post do you have any end up yeah yeah hi can you hear me yes we can thank you Dennis did I hear you say that if someone presents with certain symptoms if they've had a flu shot you're going to presume they have COVID no no no what what did you say I'm just wondering we've got all Travis has worked with us from HR we've got a whole protocol and what to do and we're dealing with our employees in terms of what do you do if you come in you know and and partially it's on supervision that's partially on the employee if they have a temperature now if they if they're running a temperature and they may have had a flu shot but if they're running a temperature over a 101 they're going to get a COVID check I mean that's a given if they're in their coughing and sneezing we may tell them to go home wait the next day and come back to see what your temperature is so we do have protocols set out for all the what ifs and the important thing is to meet with employees that's what we're going to be doing this week and then over the next couple weeks so everybody understands what the ground rules are and that we just don't need them in if they're sick and and I think that's part of Ricky's concern and my concern is we've had a lot of people who had head colds in the past who have worked and you know it's hard when you're working long hours you're going to get sick the question is what are they getting sick with and then how do we other employees from catching that I mean even if it's a simple thing like the flu do we want that employee around other employees who are going to affect the workplace and so we may end up having to say hey go home for a day get some rest and we have every morning when they come in we have a temperature gauge right there that we we check temperatures just to make sure nobody's got one so we've got the stuff in place it's just we've got a plan for that what if things start to go downhill and that's what I'm going to go thank you Dennis thanks Rosie are any other questions or comments from the public on this item I'm not seeing no I don't see any any hands okay so select board members unless you have any further questions or comments I'll accept a motion to approve the winter operations plan what is select board member like to make a motion to approve this winter operations plan I've got my my hand up I don't can see it just I just wanted I just wanted a good clarification of the procedure here so this we're just approving do we have to adopt to the later date or is this all all in one go because the just questioning I think this is approved and it's this is the one chance because the the way the recommendation is worded it says after hearing public input is the public input what we just did or is there a future public input intense plan that's when yes I can I can chip in just very quickly I think a few years ago one of the select board members was concerned that we hadn't provided it to the public ahead of time so we made sure this got on the web page about two weeks ago I think 10 days two weeks ago and then we rely on the public input from the meeting but it's not an ordinance it's it's an operations plan that the boards approve that we can essentially point to when people call up and say we're we're working within the context of the plan and and it's a plan for our operators so they know what they're supposed to do so yes it the simple approval is what we need dandy thanks okay right then I will willing to make the motion I move that the select board approve the winter operations plan for 2020 2021 I second it thank you andy thank you john any further discussion all those in favor please say I hi hi all right thank you I will hear us the same motion for the trustees but first I see that I think Betsy Dunn and I'm not sure what the protocol is here Betsy is that a new hand or is that a hand that you left over from before it's a current and based on what Dennis said I have one question okay sure so the question Dennis when you said the public is being informed are we putting this out like the plan out on front porch form or something more so that and putting on the community page of the Essex something because not everybody knows that there are these kind of documents out there and it might be worthwhile and putting it out there so that they can read it as well and that way or some kind of notice about it in those pages I just I just I worry that people aren't going to know there is a plan where to go to look for it thank you yes I'll answer that if I can't the answer is yes we've talked to Evan and the other his staff at 81 main and we've been kind of we waited for this meeting and once the board approves it we're going to figure out how to get it everywhere I really contact the media and say you've got a story for you but take at some point we've got to get out to the media and let them know be it television radio whatever else that this is a problem that it isn't just a problem for Essex it's the problem for everybody and if we do that we can also put in the pitch that you know for Essex residents one more information here's where you go but yes front porch forum Essex reporter although it's digital and we're going to do everything we can to get the information out there to people and early on in the storm if we get phone calls what we'll do is direct them right to the plan and say you know this is what we're trying to do and if you have any more questions read it first and that's usually what we do anyway you know here's the section you're interested in read it give me a call back and we can talk and that's what we've tried to do we've got to figure out a way to get it out to everybody because it doesn't do any good you know I think Chris my secretary is going to or administrative system is going to kill me because she's the one that gets all the phone calls and I'm trying to save her from walking out the door and so when the more we do up front it's going to be easier it's going to be on her because you know she does not like taking those winter calls where she's holding the phone a foot away from her ear trying to calm people down so yeah we need to get it out there I agree whatever we can do we're going to try thank you Dennis so trustees do I hear a motion to adopt the winter snow snow maintenance policy so moved do I hear a second second Dan made the motion Raj seconded any further discussion all in favor aye aye opposed thank you thank you very much thank you very much Dennis and Ricky let's have fingers crossed that it's not a rough winter yep okay Elaine do you want to take it away on the next um sure yep so item 5b accept traffic study with change in speed limit from 30 miles per hour to 25 miles per hour on Sand Hill road near Founders road I'm guessing this is something that Evan and Greg can start off with Greg do you uh is it going to be you or is it Lieutenant Kissinger this is actually Dennis sorry I had to find my uh mic and camera to bring myself back on no this is uh something that Dennis is presenting it ties into the traffic ordinance but some background to supplement and provide some substance and basis for what's coming up next yeah I'll I'll start but it's probably Rob is going to be the one that's going to pitch in too um Rob in the police department has done an excellent job I should say an outstanding job of trying to codify and change over all the the ordinances on traffic speed limits stop signs yield signs winter parking you name it he's really done an excellent job and he's really responsible for the changes to the ordinance one piece of that that public works put in as we've had uh numerous complaints one really especially last year about trying to slow the speed limit down on sand hill road from the approach to founders road in both directions and we performed or I performed a speed limit analysis of copy which is in your your document which looked at that and found sufficient rationale to make it to 25 miles an hour if the ordinance passes we're prepared to put up signals signals the speed limit signs that both approaches they're purchased if the board doesn't want to do this we'll put them elsewhere but that to me is an appropriate place to put them with kids walking to school and it's an area where I know Rob can probably talk to more specifically because the police enforce a lot of speeders in that area and what we're trying to do is make it safer for the school kids so that's why we did the study up and incorporated that in the new traffic ordinance and I don't know if Rob wants to add anything I'll keep quiet at this point I think I'm all set Dennis I think it's collaboration amongst a lot of departments not just myself I had a lot of help from Shannon and both Village Public Works and Town Public Works to help get this document started so board members or Greg go ahead I would just say the board members have any questions now's the time if not then staff would be looking to to have the board select board I suppose accept this study then we can move on to the ordinance Ron has a hand up yeah I see Chief Hogue's hand is up please go ahead yeah so I just wanted to add that I thought that this was an appropriate study I read it Dennis did a good job putting this together and I personally sat on Sandhill wrote a lot in the last couple of years and wrote many warnings and many tickets up there so I believe that lower in the speed limit to 25 is a good thing I would definitely support that select board any questions or comments George I see we have a member of the public's hands up but I want to let the trustees have their questions first trustee any any comments from the trustees on this I don't see any I would just just a quick question this is Raj sorry just a very very brief explanation on how you arrive at you know it talks about the 85% speed I don't want this to drag out but just how does it work when you are determining whether the 25 mile an hour is appropriate based on what you're seeing from driving on that road I think you're muted and it's here on mute yeah yeah actually if you build the MUTCD and you do the speed limit study 85th percentile speed is an important one but there's also situations such as what is the road how wide is it shoulder conditions grade sight distance and there are some sight distance problems to the south of Founders Road around that fairly sharp curve we've had people request a pedestrian crossing at that point and we're opposed to that because the lack of sight distance around that corner roadside development and culture safe speed and then pedestrian activities and I think so it's a combination of all those plus accidents speeding tickets that were issued all those things enter in essentially come down to a decision that has to be made by or at least a recommendation has to be made by professional engineer to do it correctly as to whether the speed limit should be reduced or not reduced and I know and I probably misspoke in the beginning I know people extremely requested the reduction but I kind of go in there with a blind eye and take a look at all the facts and then come back and say you know and all these things it isn't just 85th percentile although that's a part of it it's also all the other factors that weigh in if you you know should the speed is reduced and I think one of the biggest factors is is the fact that it's the school zone it's right you know it's the main access into the school area from both directions and with the this kids now changes the whole issue of pedestrian safety as well as speeding vehicles and there is a crossing they're just north of founders road there's a pedestrian crossing at that point within this speed limit zone thanks then any other trustees okay thank you this is probably getting a little ahead of ourselves but just out of curiosity I mean I think this is a good and appropriate change certainly heard from some residents who live up on that road but if this change doesn't bring the reduction in speed that we hope for are there other alternatives that we could look at clicking for example you know whether they be I don't know if it's you know speed bumps or something along those lines or we just at the moment I'm assuming that we're just looking to hopefully drop the speed limit and then hopefully traffic you know kind of follows along with that but I guess a more sort of a procedural question like if this doesn't bring the results that we hope it does what do we typically do in a circumstance like that what would be the next step I think we'd go back and look at the structure of the intersection I'm I'll be honest I'm not a great fan of speed bumps there's places where they do work and the only places I've seen where they work are you where you have multiple ones in a short space there's a few going out of South Brunton towards um Route 7 down there that seemed to work going through a housing complex down by Shaw's but that's because there's probably four or five in a row and it's pretty hard to not hit them at that point we did a study many years ago when we got a grant and we actually studied the speed limits before we put in some of these raised pedestrian crossings and afterwards and 50% of the the speed counts on that we did about 10 sites most of them are gone now and in 50% of this the data that we collected the speed went up two miles an hour and in 50% of the cases the speed went down for two miles an hour so I've never been convinced that they've actually been a solution what you can do though is you can do other things you can for example put in concrete you can put in sidewalks you can narrow the approach sounds you can't really take a car and park it in the road and in the parking lane but believe it or not that works in developments also because whenever you can do to limit that space so people visually see hey I've got a confined space coming up I've got to go slower so you can do some of those other structural things to better define the intersection right now that intersection is not curved in all four directions if you curb them you got to put in storm drawing drain system so it isn't you know it isn't necessarily just one solution but I mean that's the kind of thing I would look to next there's some form of structural solution to do it ultimately another option might be an actual signal that's tied to school hours that gets difficult in terms of enforcement there's not enough traffic there to warrant you know a red red signal but again you have to start to look at every one of these and you start at the low end easiest way I think is to do the speed limit and the signs see what happens and then we wait and see what kind of results we get and if we have to step it up we go to steps two three or four yeah absolutely all right great thanks Dennis appreciate it any other board members before we open it up to the public I had seen Betsy's hand is up and I had also seen Mary Post but I don't see her hand anymore so go ahead Betsy thank you Lane I'm excited about the 25 mile an hour zone I live off of Sand Hill and I was hopeful that you were going to do it from the point where the pool is because kids during the summer are trying to cross that road and it's it's also dangerous for them there it sounds like it's not going to come all the way up to even to foster but I would I would hope that we get it all the way to the turnoff of 15 on Sand Hill thank you thank you Betsy anybody else I think George your no I don't think the trust is just to select I think the next one if I'm not mistaken we have a say in that but not this one okay oh I'm sorry Dan you had your hand up oh yeah sorry I didn't see Dan sorry about that Dan just Elaine you attended the the regional planning meeting this past Wednesday and I don't know I think it came in after the segment but the the transportation secretary was present at that meeting for the state of Vermont and before that we had comments I think that night about projects that were coming forward in the next couple years and one of the projects I believe is on the list Dennis you might be able to confirm this would be the intersection of Sand Hill right off 15 that whole intersection is we redesigned there's a lot of issues there with traffic turning and trying to get on to 15 it's a dangerous intersection so there's a lot's going to be going on and and I agree with Dennis I'm not a big fan my career of speed bumps it also is there are trouble for plows and everything else when you're clearing the road but there's multiple ways to do traffic calming so I think once that intersection is improved and other things are done I think it might help quite a bit you're right Dan I believe that's part of the CIRC alternatives list that particular upgrade so okay so select board if you have no further questions we can go ahead and approve or accept the traffic study would any of you like to make a motion I make the motion we accept the traffic study as presented thank you Don is there a second Pat any further discussion just a question the the recommended language was more specific than that do we need more specific language or is what was said adequate Don I believe you said that your your motion was to accept the report as presented yes as presented it was to accept the traffic study as presented okay so Greg do you feel that's a sufficient motion or do you want Don to read the whole thing aloud I'm comfortable with it Dennis are you comfortable with it I'd say it's a it's a good enough motion that's as presented I think that captures it okay thank you thank you Greg we have a motion and a second on the floor any further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye aye aye opposed okay okay next item five C approved passage of revised motor vehicles traffic and parking ordinances and worn public hearing for final passage didn't I'm sorry we move five E to five C what wait a sec I'm sorry no we move five each after five C yeah okay thank you so this is a little more complicated and we're gonna need someone to I went through it and I have to admit I don't quite understand so I'm gonna need someone to perhaps walk us through this so so maybe maybe I can start this out for you it would be good so so as this kind of leads into or follows along with what we've been talking about here the last few minutes so just changing ordinances so what we had been originally thinking we were going to do was we were going to create a set of ordinances that both would look exactly the same but then the trustees and the select board would would pass them both and that would save some work with merger if that was to occur and also it would save a lot of confusion for our folks because they'd be working out of the same book and the same ordinance but I think after we got going with this we realized that there was gonna be probably an issue if we had an ordinance for the village trustees especially that included language that that had roads outside of the village so what we did was we went back and we created we just basically pulled out the village ordinances out of that original document and put those into a separate one for you folks to look at and then we had the original document for the select board that includes all of the language for the village in the in the town hopefully if if things go along where where merger occurs then this might save some some work on their policy and if there's a if there's a you know transitional board they can go back and they can work on work on the ordinance for both so that's where we're at so I guess we're looking to have you both take a look at at the ordinances that we presented make sure that those look okay and then move forward with passing those ordinances that are adopting those ordinances and I do have Lieutenant Kissinger here tonight because he crafted both of these so if there's any specific questions I'm going to defer to him to answer those okay if I chief if I could just clarify in terms of process what you're saying is that what's before us tonight is essentially for the select boards approval but the potential for trustee input because it does impact the village but we're not approving this tonight we're just here to participate and add any insight or concerns that we have is that correct well a little bit but I think and Greg can probably clarify that because he knows what he's adoption a little bit more but in my understanding you got the village trustees also have a a ordinance of their own to now adopt that has changes and updates to it okay but we're not seeing that tonight we're going to see that at a separate meeting that's my point is that is that what you're saying Greg yeah I can jump in on that so Lieutenant Kissinger provided the the draft ordinance for the town and the village okay in your packet we had originally scheduled this thinking as Chief Hoy just explained that we could do this as one package for the town and village ordinance figured we would present it to the board tonight even though they're now separated that way both discussion the police can hear the discussion about which direction the boards want to take on on the ordinance ultimately as far as approval process goes if the boards are comfortable both boards are comfortable tonight the select board will make a motion to let me just find the wording they pass the ordinance and they can authorize staff to to warn a public hearing for November 23rd which is the next joint meeting if there is no changes after that the select board can adopt the ordinance to take effect immediately or at any time at that point it'd be staff's recommendation would be that the trustees adopt the ordinance at the same time as the select board on November 23rd the trustees the village defers to state law which says that once the ordinance is passed it takes effect 60 days later if there's no petition to overturn it so the recommendation from staff would be that the trustees accept it on the 23rd the select board do their final passage and have it take effect 60 days later that way the police can start enforcing both ordinances at the same time they don't need to try to keep track of well which one's in effect now which one needs to wait about 30 more days and that this this way it's everyone's talking about traffic at the same time right but you what you would like from the trustees tonight is our approval to proceed with the process of adopting the ordinance which isn't going to happen until November but you want to get confirmation from us to staff to proceed with the with the process of doing this is that correct as far as a we don't need a formal motion to do that um okay like input from the trustees just him okay that's I just want to make sure that we we yeah okay thanks Greg thank you that way that way went to present on the 23rd all the input will be there and we can hopefully have a fairly brief meeting and discussion okay thank you thank you and I have the word version available uh at least if it's a little forward version in case anybody has specific questions or changes that they want to make okay thank you great I'd say if any Kissinger is available if anybody has questions hopefully we've all had a chance to read the ordinance at this point if you want to hit any high notes we can do that but I think just if there's questions or anything you want us to touch on there's a good good way to approach it I see Raj and then Andy and then Amber so sorry I did go through these but I just want to make sure so following let's say all of these are approved by both boards there will still be village ordinances and there will still be town ordinances but if there's a merger they're all ready to combine just want to make sure I'm understanding okay that's correct all right sorry I know it just it's confused it's okay Raj we're making making new way new ground here I think Andy Andy Amber's hand as I was up before my Amber it's all good Andy you can go ahead of me okay section 72040B mentions a village clerk just want to make sure that's the right words Andy because we're including the village portion of the ordinances and our ordinances that language in there that's the town clerk actually would probably run out so and then they're going to recognize this clerk how do we lose him we might have lost him the I'll try to speak up chief way correct me if I'm wrong the goal was to specify that this is still the village ordinance we do only have one clerk town in village-wise right now so we can we could change it to town clerk or if the if these prefer to keep it to indicate that it's the village clerk that's fine staff's recommendation would be to change it to just clerk yep it's the same yep if they yeah we no longer have a village clerk so yeah we could definitely change that okay that was my only question just want to make sure that we had the right words in there it shouldn't say town clerk I should just just say clerk are you changing both documents I get it are you all set any other question Amber did you have a question yeah I did I see that there was a whole new section on exemptions for the winter parking ban and I was just curious as to what potentially qualifies a person for an exemption under the under the parking ban it's a 7.20 0.050 yep so a lot of times Amber what we'll do is we'll have people to have a family up for the holidays and there's really no snow on the ground there's no forecast for snow so we would allow them to park on the street provide us with the information of the vehicles and the phone number so if weather does turn for the worst we would call them to move the vehicles off the road rather than ticket or tow them that was our our goal for that thanks other questions would you like to have go ahead Ricky just let the bill with trustees know I have gone over this Rob Kissinger and everything looks great and yes we'll get all of her work on that like I'm going to be gone when we're done and we'll be in line we should be doing FYI for you guys Ricky can you I I didn't I think some of us there was a little bit of interference was probably from someone else's Mike could you just I'm sorry can you repeat what you just said some of us didn't hear it okay can you hear me now yes yeah my band wasn't that great up here okay I've gone over this with Rob Kissinger in the last couple of years we've gone through this stuff and maybe he's made a lot of great recommendations we've made some changes in this and no I just it's FYI for the bill the trustees we've gone through this and everything that he's put in is it look great oh good okay that's very reassuring thank you appreciate that Ricky let's have a quick question if I could under the parking violations penalties I think it's 7.20 8.61 there's two numbers listed two different colors in this document I just didn't know if the penalties for some of these doubled or if it's second offense kind of thing first offense second offense it's page 34 on our pdf anyway I don't know if that helps 7.18 it's almost near the end Greg so the difference in colors are you seeing like a blue and a red correct abandoned vehicle says 25 and red 50 and that kind of thing yeah so those are first and second fences or excuse me one's a waiver amount and if they challenge it then that would be the higher fine so the waiver amount would be a $25 fine if they want to go to court and they lose they would pay the $50 fine oh now the way the pdf's formatted now I see that way over on the side and that makes more sense sorry it just wasn't lined up okay sure I just wanted basically I was wondering if we up the fines with this process that's all so this makes more sense some of these we didn't actually have fines for so that's why everything that's in red on the document is something that we're adding recommendations from everybody's input from the village public works town public works so those are should be first things that jump right to your eye are things that are we adding are all in red or changing so when you say something like unregistered vehicle trailer or equipment where would that have to be to receive a fine um property or public property public property because right now we have a lot of complaints in the village of people leaving their cars on the road unregistered yep and this this spells it out is it simplifies everything yep I like it and this ordinance wouldn't be the correct place for six or eight unregistered vehicles to be parked in a yard then that sort of thing no we can do that as um not a public nuisance but that'd be like probably under the quality of life ordinance yeah I if I can jump in Raj I think we have the village has ordinances for that kind of thing but it wouldn't be under traffic it's under some other and I can't give you the language but I know that back a number of years ago we we specifically passed something for that how effective it is is a different issue but um we have something like that but it's not in the traffic code so zoning thing or something yeah I think it's zoning yep thank you Rob you're welcome so George if any board members board members don't have any further questions and perhaps we should open this one up to the public as well yeah I Raj is your hand still up or is that residual is that leftover okay we're good I think right okay are there any members of the public that wish to comment on this item before emotions put on the floor Mary Post Mary Post go ahead hi just a question this is the first time I ever heard that if you have company you can call and get permission to have a car not be on the street and I'm wondering is that also for the town or was that just for the junction Mary that's for both it's not currently an ordinance but people have called in the past enough where we thought we had to include that into the ordinance to make allowances for such occasions so that does include the town oh great thank you so much you're welcome anybody else okay well um select board members if you are satisfied with this and wish to approve these changes and warn a public hearing then if we look at our cover memo for this the language for a uh motion Greg right we if you want if if we're you're saying if we approve this then we can you recommend that we pass the revised ordinances and authorize staff to publish a warning right that is correct that's the process and we will warn the public hearing for November 23rd and depending on the outcome of that hearing the board can either pass the ordinance at that time or if they want to make changes we would warn another public hearing for the future okay so then basically the motion you need from us is to warn the public hearing to pass the ordinance and to warn the public hearing okay would any board members like to make that motion sure I move that the select board pass the revised motor vehicles traffic and parking ordinance and authorize staff to publish a summary of the proposed revisions in a newspaper of general circulation and warn a public hearing for November 23rd 2020 to consider final passage of the motor vehicles traffic and parking ordinances thank you Andy is there anything Dawn thank you any further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye opposed all right thank you very much now for the trustees I don't if and Greg or Evan you know jump in here but I'm assuming that we're a little different we're saying just to we want to get give you approval to proceed with the process of adopting the ordinance is that correct that would be fine you don't even need to do that but um happy to take a motion for it okay why don't we do that so do I hear a motion from one of the trustees to proceed with the process of adopting the ordinances so moved do I hear a second second Raj moved and Dan second any further discussion all in favor aye aye opposed okay thank you thank you and thank you Rob and uh Ron thank you very much thank you both very much your work is appreciated and we we do really I know it's a lot of work and we really appreciate the effort it went into this thank you very welcome and Ricky and well yeah the fact that Ricky approved that was yeah that was gold in my mind Ricky and Dennis as well and I just wanted to say this is we have several other ordinances that we're looking at so this is this is a kind of a test for us to see how this went so once this is through we will have several others for you to look at so thank you very much for being proactive about that Ron especially seeing as going forward with merger one of the new concerns of the select board was making sure that an ordinance alignment process was in place so thank you for taking care of that for us we really appreciate it very welcome we understand the importance of that also right now we get to our amended agenda items so we moved item 5e the update on out and about to come next so Evan why don't you tell us more about how well that program went sure Greg can you I sent you that email earlier can you put that up on the on the screen so just so you all know both the village and the town work together on filing for a state grant with this great state agency with the initials a ccd we each received $10,000 grants to do an event which we rebranded as out and about maybe you saw the logo and the banners etc we quickly worked with local businesses to participate in the program and we determined that a $15 amount could be given per household and we had budgeted $15,000 of of the grant money to go out the rest was for advertising and banners etc would they hope that if this event was successful we would look to do this again the following year so as of today you will see $6,490 has been collected in receipts to reimburse to the businesses that you see below in general and this is early so I mean the event was really only you know in local government time days ago so we expect we had distributed 100% of the $15,000 in vouchers we are hopeful that 100% of the $15,000 will be claimed by these businesses which we had 50 of them in the village and the town which is nice to see you know there's a couple of names in here raised seafood participated in the in the town outside the village Wicked Wings town outside the village Turner Toys and right now the leader in in responses one of the things that we heard from from several of the businesses like Turner Toys was this rivals a holiday you know a Christmas holiday period for sales which it definitely warms our heart to hear that it was great in terms Annie Cooper was and Robin was it we're working on entertainment we had great bands and entertainment they were pros working in some difficult smalls venues but they were great they showed up on time they did two hours each people were were you know listening dancing Annie was taking pictures Saturday morning there was a couple in front of the bridal shop putting on a dance clinic don't know their names but they're going to be on posters soon and so in general we got a lot of positive comments not only from the businesses but our combined resonance that they really appreciated that we did this that we spaced out the entertainment both in the village and the town so if they wanted to go to a particular business or a restaurant they got a chance to also for taking some of the musical acts and so overall I'm open to listen to comments from board members and the public but we'd like to do you know do it probably in the spring and late summer again and we would put together a program in the budget process for those two events and continue to work together village and town outside the village I see Amber's hand up it was a great event and I think one of the things that was really beneficial was changing the requirement and allowing folks to be able to pick up the vouchers on Saturday and Sunday and Lincoln and up at Essex Experience we saw a lot of folks I was out there for a couple hours handing out vouchers I mean we ran out of vouchers on Saturday and I think it was it was really good to do that piece of it I do think there was a lot of folks that I talked to who weren't even aware that we were doing it so maybe some additional media pieces that we do for next time I know we have a short on time so if we're going to try to plan this ahead of time next time maybe some additional outlets to do that one quick question Evan is when do they have to turn in the vouchers in order to get reimbursement by great question I know that our friends at ACCD gave us a deadline I believe it's November 15th that our grant paperwork has to be into them now your event has to be held by the by the end of December November and your reporting is December 1st December 1st December 1st so they've got time yeah they've got a little time thanks you're welcome I also when this when after your questions I want to give a shout out to the out and about team that was assembled so go ahead and answer ask questions are there questions board members it was a fabulous event I'm so happy to see so many different businesses enjoying the benefit and Turner toy and hobby they they turned it into a marketing opportunity for themselves by informing their own mailing list which it shows the results were were great for them so it was a really good partnership and I'm very happy Evan to hear that you'd like to do it again more than once next year yeah maybe a quick shout out to Robin Pierce who who came up with the original idea which we did open and outside so we just took his foundation and made it out and about or if you'd like to say it in Canadian in a boot Tammy Linda Brad Aliso any Cooper all of them the trustees the select board members who manned some booths to answer questions hand out vouchers etc those vouchers were really well done they were very visual and so the restaurants and the businesses who put placards in their windows understood the program we will only get better at this and again we are set you know with approval we will set the spring and summer dates we want to make sure we're not in conflict with anything else the banner that we put over the dam it has a changeable date in it hoping that you would say yes and so that that investment won't go away thank you to the state who came up with this grant for us and if we find out that they have some grant money left maybe we'll figure out something else to do before the end of the year but in general it went pretty well and it's just one thing we want to be a little bit concerned with they end up being long days so we may kind of move it you know into you know a little you know squeeze it in a little bit but overall it was well received and so we're encouraged and I think it was it was something that the village in the town need in terms of building five corners as the place to go town center place to go that's where you go for entertainment you don't have to leave town you don't have to go to that town that starts with an essence up near a mountain you don't have to we've got it all here Evan I will I was there for a number of hours on both days handing out vouchers and sitting I sat with and you know I was absolutely shocked that very few people were interested in merger or had any local political questions but most people were very interested in what restaurants they could go to and getting their vouchers so I just wanted to report that maybe making it completely non-political next time would be a good strategy too well come on there had to be at least two people I don't think I think it was you maybe and someone else on the staff yeah let's be honest merger is not always at the top of the line it was too festive a mood mood to be worrying about that stuff yeah yeah so it's really nice to see this list and we're hoping to see so we only have 17 so there is 20 33 other vendors who have to submit yeah so yeah there's going to be a lot more than this yeah thanks yep thank you Evan thanks very much Evan and all that you and staff did oh it was all them I just said yes a lot no you did way more than that of them unless there are other board comments I'll open it up to the public does anyone from the public have any comment to make about this item nice Ken go ahead Ken Ken you might be muted how about now better there you go okay there we go yeah I went to both days it was really quite great there's a group of businesses that this kind of event really benefited that you know nobody's really mentioned much I just want to point it out you know restaurants of course are suffering terribly and this certainly helped those folks out but the bands that's a business that's also been hurt quite a bit by the COVID not being able to entertain much and you guys employed a lot of musicians that was wonderful I took some great videos posted those and yeah I just wanted to let you know that I recognize anyway that I appreciate that revenue going to the bands thank you for reminding me Ken we had over six I have a little echo going on that we had over 16 bands they really I mean and they were talented and yeah Ken great point and a lot of their outlets bars and other venues are just not doing in-person entertainment so they were really appreciative and one thing that we are going to clean up is most bands get paid onsite when they perform because we're a government we have to do W-9s and put people into our payroll system we had to we couldn't do it onsite so once we know in advance that what we're going to do we will get all their information and be able to give them a check onsite during our next events but Ken thank you for reminding me thank you other comments looks like we can move on yep so our last business item is discussion about local option tax for March 2021 ballot and you're going on yeah uh select board policy requires me to state in public in open meeting why I'm accusing myself so I've got to say this out loud before I leave so uh due to the in order to avoid the perception potential perception of conflict of interest due to my employment with a large employer in the village I need to recuse myself from this discussion and with everybody's permission I won't rejoin after the discussion thank you Andy it's I we understand it's too bad you can't participate but we understand right good night good night Andy thank you so um is there there's Sarah hey Sarah Sarah do you want me to open or do you want to do I'll open you go all right so we just want to bring this back up I know we've talked about it some sort of in the spring last fall we want to bring it back in front of you because it remains a priority for staff to diversify revenue sources where at all possible we are looking at or we're hopeful that the boards will be open to considering putting this on the March 2021 ballot this being the local option tax in Essex I do want to make a couple clarifying points about my memo before we get to the point which is just another opportunity to look at it think about it refresh our memories and get our questions together as staff reprioritizes this initiative make sure we are on the right track the local option tax is would be an additional one percent tax charged on meals and rooms which is MRT meals and rooms tax and sales and use tax sale SUT this is similar to all the surround it's the same as the surrounding communities Wilson Colchester St. Albans South Burlington all around us that additional one percent goes to the state the state keeps 30 percent of the one percent to administer it and they send us 70 percent of the one percent back there's a table in the middle of the memo which shows what we would have collected had we had the one percent local option tax on meals and rooms and sales and use over the last five fiscal years I do want to be very clear that FY 20 goes through June 30th 2020 so I do not feel like the impacts of the pandemic are accurately reflected here although the tax is charged at point of delivery so any online sales are are included in this if they're delivered in Essex however these are these are big numbers this is not just a little bit of money that I feel like we're leaving on the table and even if we had a portion of this going forward into the future that it could really help reduce the reliance on the property tax in a way that would be meaningful for everyone so it's our hope tonight that just to bring it back to toward the top of the very long high priority heavy list of things we have going on and I get you thinking about questions initiatives outreach things that we want you want us to be doing as we go forward Evan would you add anything to that sure I'm going to add so for the boards as part of our review one of the reasons we are bringing this forward and is as a town-wide initiative is because of the well one it has a town-wide benefit but two the way the Department of Taxation operates because S6 only has one zip code 05452 they have not separated the village businesses out from the town businesses and therefore if we were to do the tax they would prefer us to do it town-wide because that's how their their data is done and then so it also as we talked earlier with the police it would be very confusing if if both if it wasn't adopted town-wide so with that we can answer questions or direction of things that you would want to know for us to bring back one thing we have done in the last couple months with Greg reached out to a few businesses to get comments um uh in the I believe and George this was brought up is it now 12 is it 12 years ago yes this was brought up yes um and I think it was brought up in the infancy of this program by the state um it wasn't infancy I would say it was more like toddlerhood I mean they were there there there are a couple of uh Chittenden County communities that had had it for several years I think it was in place for several years so people had a lot of questions they didn't quite understand how they could you know how we would affect local businesses what I can tell you for my experience because I I came from Illinois that has a local sales tax and they have municipalities have the ability to raise an extra one percent very few people if anybody drives out of their way to avoid a tax you know if it unless it's a unless it's a huge ticket item but here's the fun thing about Vermont it's actually where the where the sale is delivered so if you buy something and you have it delivered to 05452 we get the tax right um but they also do not tax vehicles or anything that the state taxes themselves they they restrict us from getting any of that so um they're not double taxing you um and so one of the things you could see if you want to pull that chart back up um Sarah depending upon what COVID is actually doing our Greg thank you actually doing to the local economy you could see the FY average ranges from 1.287 in FY 16 to roughly 1.3 million dollars uh and then it's minus and then we would get 70 percent of that right Sarah no that's that's the 70 percent those are the dollars that we that's the 7 percent years again as Sarah mentioned it is not small and one of the things that I I think what we would like to do is um because I have some experience in this you do not budget all of that money because sales tax can be volatile as we can imagine in a pandemic if stores close if we move in they move out um you you don't want to budget the entire amount of money but if you budget um um 80 to 90 80 percent you're probably in a safe zone you leave the extra 20 percent um as a surplus for um and then you put it into your capital fund so that uh the money gets used but the property tax is not reliant 100 percent on that amount of money um yeah I mean you probably could I I'll take out the question but I since it's fresh in my memory you jogged a couple of things in my mind and um sure um if you don't mind me and Raj I see you have your hand up but let me I hope you don't mind just want to jump in because my my memories sometimes fades you were the presenter in 12 yeah I but a couple of the things that came up last time and we tried so hard to to disprove this and reach out but so many people were convinced that this would hurt local businesses and we had already looked at other other surrounding communities and we hadn't found a single any evidence that it hurt anyone's business so that might be something for you to look into to not reach out to other businesses necessarily but to talk to South Burlington, Winooski, Williston, towns that have had this and say has anyone gone on a business because since you've had this if they said I'm shutting down because you have that local option tax and it'd be that's that question is gonna come up and it'd be great if you have a good answer show number two the other thing that I thought at the time was the biggest source of revenue that we anticipated from this was going to be from IBM because of their cafeteria they have the largest cafe and they probably globe and since gets global foundries now but probably still is the largest eating establishment in the state of Vermont I don't know how many people they feed every day but they feed a lot um and that again came up well this is going to hurt IBM and this would be well they're gonna hurt global foundries but again we had a hard time convincing people no this doesn't come out of the bottom line of the company this comes out of the employees pockets and um but still and then I the last Pete the last two other things one was online sales there was a lot of confusion about what happens with online sales as you said it's the point of delivery that gets taxed it's not where it comes from but that's an important point to clear up because that that did trip us up the last time around and lastly you're absolutely correct you don't want to be dependent on this you it's it's icing on the cake really it's ice it's capital projects that you'd like to get done but you don't have to get done because as you just pointed out sales go up and down unlike property taxes which you can anticipate you know what your what your grand was value is every year you can't anticipate what your sales revenue is going to be every year so that's my only those my four points that jumped out of you from last time shall do shall do let me give you an example right of a food a food tax if you have a ten dollar um bill right food drink etc one percent is ten cents I know I know ten cents so everybody knows ten cents I know but nevertheless and and if anybody is seeing the line at the Starbucks drive-through all day every day I know they are not going anywhere else but I know I know and I and I know this and I hear you I've I've worked in sales tax towns for 20 24 years of my career I've seen lots of things but I've never seen anybody drive more than 10 miles out of their way to save 10 cents other than my sister but she's a little odd but I will we will we will address those I'm here to take more questions um I think I think Raj had his hand up first I'm not sure I know Amber does Raj I'm gonna let you go so on that in that vein um Sarah Evan anybody else that has an answer to this that you know what also came up at those uh that last effort utilities cable cell phones natural gas fuel oil food fuel toilets um what else we're forgetting I say electricity bill um any of those hit by this do we know um we do know I have to dig up my memo Raj actually I think you were in attendance at the capital committee meeting in the audience when I presented uh the memo right around the time you were elected because you were you had some input on how it impacts um photographers as well that I didn't have in my presentation oh I'm not connected to the VPN so I can't pull it off but we have accumulated much of that data um it does not affect in general your utilities like your heat your electric cost if you are renting a water heater for example that is taxable cable is taxable um so I'll have to I'll have to dig that back up um but it is a good reminder that that is some critical baseline information as well I think a lot of people I remember the one of the public forums um there was a lot of angry people saying you're going to hit my my basic needs uh every month um which is a fair argument but I just want to make sure that we know specifically what those would be in food you know it's not an extra one percent on groceries that weren't taxed in the beginning um and clothing I honestly don't remember how it treats clothing but clothing until 120 150 is tax-free and this doesn't add on to that until it gets to the taxable portion right I believe that's correct Raj yeah so I just you know we need to have a good one pager on we uh we have the state's uh guide on those that we will be able to publish on the website etc that are believe they are well done they they are in depth what is taxed what is not taxed and again I think some of it is what you would do with the with the revenue and while you have not had these discussions yet I will be happy to propose a plan to all of you with Sarah's help on some numbers on on property taxes um sharing and and capital that um you should you should have a discussion on uh should the tax pass thank you um thanks Evan uh so Aline I've got Amber Dan and then Patrick I think yeah Amber and Dan had their hands up first I put mine down I'm just all set I just wanted to see Raj covered what I wanted to say so I don't need to we'll take your name off the list Dan Amber yeah Evan's right so there were some fact sheets that were provided to the capital committee and they're really very good um that's not what I was going to say though okay I'm I'm a little concerned I'm on the fence about whether I I would support putting this on the ballot for March my concern is is that I'm absolutely in favor of the local option tax my concern is is that we're putting two fairly large issues uh in front of the voters in a very short period of time here to turn this around and um so I think the question that I have is if we don't put it on in March I'm not advocating that this is what I want to do I'm still on the fence but could we do a special election that is older or special a special vote you know for specifically just the local option tax and what would that entail and you guys might not have the answer to this tonight that's fine I just want to throw it out there we'll add it to the list can I jump in I don't want to jump in I know Pat's anxious I don't want to jump in but one option would be and you're exactly right Amber but there are two elections in the springtime there's a town annual meeting and then a month later there's the school annual meeting which is a Australian balloting so that might be an appropriate time to set to set the two apart I just threw that out there because that just occurred to me um so let's see I think Pat Murray had his hand up thanks George um yeah I'm very much for this um I absolutely think that it's I mean it's sellable I think the last time that this came around you know again uh as you spoke about toddler hood I mean since then every other town around us no it's a good right I mean it's just it's it's really basic I think at this point um with appreciation Amber as well for a number of items that we do have coming up to vote um I think that most people are familiar with this enough by now because everyone shops in Williston everyone has shopped in South Burlington at the mall everyone knows that there's just a one percent tax on that I don't really particularly think you know and again my personal opinion I don't really think it would be a hard sell or hard explanation because I think that you know 90 percent of Chittenden County is you know kind of under that already or at least you know are you know our our towns that are you know very you know close to us in size and scale um so I would have no problem putting it on in March um and this is one of the very few ways that we can look at you know getting some sort of property tax relief for our people putting you know money into capital projects that we know you know kind of get pushback or need to you know wait for some time I mean it's the longer we wait on it you know the more money is not coming in and I just at this point honestly I don't see any reason to continue putting this off I really don't Elaine George if I may yes so I recall back when this happened last time one of the issues around IBM had to do with taking delivery of supplies and equipment on the Essex side of their campus and having to pay use tax on that uh or pay the local options tax on that um so I would want to confirm uh whether that is still because then it wouldn't just be the cafeteria right true good point and so other manufacturers in the town would need would be exposed to the same tax as well that's right that's right good point Elaine um Raj came back Raj well I in that that is an excellent question I think if if those items though are used in manufacture and they're used to make something else then those items are not taxed so only if they're so if they're excess or they're used it's fairly limited I think in the used I mean if they're used for producing another product their ingredients or their their you know I yeah that's a tough one well you're right about that the nature of our nature of our manufacturing in our community and what that looks like um yeah you're you're right about that Raj manufacturing supplies are exempt however toilet paper pens uh thumb drives you know equipment things not not equipment that's non manufactured manufacturing related is not included and that was the point back then it wasn't the chemicals and the and the wafer ingredients and all that that we're talking about it was the non manufacturing equipment and supplies the stuff you run your office on yes admin okay um trustee select board other thoughts comments insights well yeah no I was just going to say we're not going to be the first community in the state obviously no or the others the issues that we're talking about I'm sure have been addressed by the communities so I I'm I was opposed to it back when it was first proposed I don't know how many years ago but like 12 years ago I guess but um as things have developed in the you know county most of communities around us already have this local option tax in fact south broenton um their town manager was looking seeking to double that yes so you know obviously um there's a desire for it yeah good point then um Ron go go for don don don don yeah sorry well I'm going to play devil's advocate for a minute and I don't want upset anybody but if you went with a local options tax would the village then give up their two separate tax districts so you wouldn't be adding three cents you'd only be adding a penny don are you referring to the the economic tax and what's the third one they have well they had their sidewalk in their economic development those two separate taxes they wanted if you go with the local options wouldn't some of that money go to the economic development part well I think two things going on here talking about this outside of the context of merger first of all and don I'm just gonna I'm gonna mute your mic just so the echo goes down but then just reopen it when you're ready to talk okay um so I think we're talking about this outside the context of merger and the sidewalk district is a part of merger not anything that exists now um if this passes in March then it can go into effect by July one and it possibly even sooner than that if I'm not correct um so I I hear what you're saying and it will it will impact the math of merger because it will offset the costs of capital for the entire community in ways that Evan and Sarah will explain to us in the future um as far as the economic development tax that the village has that's their that's their tax to deal with as they see fit yeah I jump in late those are keeping mind those are both property taxes and the economic development tax is about to go away this year um it was a three-year window I could be maybe four-year I can remember was a four-year Sarah three or four year you're muted but she's holding up four fingers I think it was five years oh it's five years okay but that's that's I think it's about to go away it is and that's also that's a that was a property tax so that would be different but what I see that this would do my understanding of this would work at this would be divided roughly between the village and the town and go mainly towards those things that we don't usually put property taxes for I mean we put property taxes towards capital improvements but um we always have way more capital improvements in need in need of funding than we have funding and in my mind and I'm get Evan Sarah you can pipe in here but in my mind that's where this money goes this goes to basically to fund though they help us with the backlog of capital improvements that's usually what the other communities have used it for is that correct that's what our recommendation would be go ahead Evan so uh the answer is our recommendation would be that all all proceeds go towards capital projects yeah and no and none if not very little would should be designated for operating yeah so the sidewalk district that's a that's an operational um process that's property taxes used to pay for routine maintenance on village sidewalks um as as the village in the town know there is a backlog of projects there's there's a wish list out there uh et cetera this is but there's also a desire to address property tax asian as it currently is and this could be a bridge for that effort right I just want to clarify our recommendation is that this goes to fund capital and one of the things that's currently happening as we're having operating transfers into the capital funds on both sides to fund capital as you all recently saw on page like 28 of my last memo to you um and that this would be able to reduce those operating transfers which reduces the pressure on the property tax to fund the capital so it's not property tax and now local options they're sort of a minor shifting that redistributes the funding mechanism to local option right I mean we are we are in in the merger or charter we're saying we're designating among other things the village is a debt payment district and what what is the village's debt the village's debt is money we took out because we we were so far behind in funding our capital projects we had to we had to jump start the thing I mean so it it would absolutely help with that but it's a very good question Don I know it and it's certainly going to get a little confusing explaining all this to to the voters that's for sure but I don't know I think we can keep it straight thanks guys I was just curious yeah um I throw this joke out if Sarah can explain the separation cost etc she'll be able to handle local option stacks easier right right Sarah you can beat me up tomorrow not a problem I will um Raj had his hand up yeah just so this is going to come up as a question so I'm just going to ask it here um so let's say this won't happen but let's say merger doesn't pass um local option tax passes no it could happen you know that scenario could happen so all right so then there we are unable to kind of really disentangle which community contributed what um so what is the current thinking on how that capital money gets allocated to the village and the town outside the village so or do we know yet I mean I've heard we've had little conversations about it here and there so this is a very good question Raj um there's off the top of my head there are three ways um there are probably others you can do it by grand list which we know every year what the grand list is you can do it it's currently 58 42 um town to village okay that's one way you can do it 50 50 that's pretty simple um you could do it with uh three or four variables inside it you can make it as complicated as you want to make it or as simple as you want to make it um the best way to do it is if you were merged you would have a capital plan for the entire community with priorities and start checking off your list but you can make it as difficult as you want to make it um or as simple as you want to make it and uh a lot of things of what we do in the village in the administration is we try to equalize it across the the platforms and so um we're not going to be able to answer that until the board gives us direction we will give you some suggestions when we come together with a plan but but Evan you're leaving out a bunch I mean we could have arm wrestling we could do dodgeball I mean we could we could ban banning contests all kinds of stuff you have a giant tug of war I mean there's all sorts of things so let's get creative come on finance trivia no no finance trivia depending on how this depending on how this winner goes we can see who takes out fewer mailboxes with the plot track on the board we give it out every week we give out $10,000 on Friday if you can answer the right trivia questions to the yeah let's get creative come on oh no I think we should have joint board trivia and the winner gets the money for that all right all right all right there's Vince Raj that yes I have been quiet just so Raj it was a very good question where it devolved from I'm sorry but it's just gonna come up you know and no obviously yeah sure and and I can I can tell you that you know again depending upon how we view capital which in my mind includes buildings and properties not just roads you know we're going to need to put together some ideas now it's an agreement between the two communities and it could change if you if you need it to change but in general it it it leaves again if you were a merged community under one board that board would decide where those dollars are going on an annual basis if you are the village in the town outside of the village not merged you'll probably put together an MOU and it'll run that way until you change it okay either way it benefits the communities greatly by letting you get after your capital needs without raising property taxes to do it so I don't the and and other board members are going to have more questions but I'm going to just ask you what's the process you to Sarah Evan going forward like the question Raj just asked and serious no and and all the other things that you're going to be working on this in the background and coming back to us for monthly reports and conference or what what do you envision to have happen here I envision us coming back to you at the next joint meeting with a presentation or something like that Sarah don't we're going to have to we have to have this buttoned up I believe by the beginning of January to be on the ballot for the March ballot and probably early February if it was going to be in the April ballot okay and this this opportunity vote right where where the village voters would vote on in the town town there'll be a town ballot and a village ballot and we need to pass them both or would there's be a town-wide ballot one I think it's a town-wide ballot will be raised by the town select board but but do bear in mind that the annual school meeting of the of the of the elections we have presently that probably gets the biggest turnout in April well you guys can jointly decide would you give you a give you an extra month to work on it so you might want to just keep that in mind now just to go in the weeds um the when act 60 came into being as six was on the list of towns uh that if it passed this um referendum it does not need state approval right so once it is a once it's approved by the voters it does not go to gov ops or any other or any other state committee it gets approved as a right great that's great uh we will have to deal with the department of taxation though and getting it up and running so uh I don't know if you want to open it up for questions no I'm thinking Vince has a question Vince looks like he has a question but maybe not I no no okay so I could see on the shirt no I know he's got he's just got that thumbs up guy there and I'm thinking he's he's all good okay all right I think that is all good I meant to the public if there's any other board questions board member questions we all good okay so I there's definitely someone who's who's hand is up and there's also someone on the phone so if we want to have Bruce post go first and then um Marcus Serta is on the phone sounds good I'm trying to get unmuted hang on you're good hello okay I I I feel like a prohibitionist going to a keg party um there's so much levity about increasing this tax so let me just throw in a little bit of reality uh first of all what makes you think you can put it on a uh ballot uh in nine 2009 it was done as a charter amendment uh because right now the revenue issues and budget issues are decided at town meeting and it was voted on uh voted down at town meeting uh a subsequent attempt to get it done in the village also went through the uh annual village meeting so uh I think you ought to get some legal advice as to whether you can put this on an Australian ballot if you can and then you have to go through town meeting um and that should look interesting in March a mass meeting depending on the pandemic one of the things people were very upset about uh in 2009 I remember being at uh the town offices a guy came in I want to vote on I'm going out of town I want to vote on that local option tax when he says well you can do it at town meeting well I can't I do it by Australian ballot no you have to be at town meeting that town meeting ended up having 500 people come to it on a snowy cold night it was 45 minutes late starting because there was such a line to get in we almost pushed the limit of the high school I'll show you this letter and I'll send it to uh this is the IBM letter that came in about two weeks before the ballot at that time both the board and the trustees were pushing what George initially said was that it only impacted meals in the cafeteria and uh I'll just read you the letter this came from the IBM site controller it was put on the consent agenda two weeks before the vote the select board never publicized it but because it was a public document I asked for got it and there was a lot of media attention uh it said dear select board and trustee members uh we have reviewed the current proposal for the sx junction and sx town 1% local option tax blah blah blah just to clarify this tack does not just impact meals sold in the IBM cafeteria this 1% will be added to all items procured by IBM that are not directly used in manufacturing or development which are exempt from sales tax these items include but are not limited to all construction materials for changes to office warehouse and lab areas all energy equipment and office supplies used in non-manufacturing areas we do not support this tax as it will increase our operating expenses significantly all increases in expenses directly impact our ability to be competitive and maintain employment level levels near a couple small paragraphs max levee was on the board at that time and he told me he says well it's not for attribution but I've been told that the tax would amount to the high six figures for IBM at that time I know global foundries is less than that but I'm sure it might have an impact and that I think Andy works at global foundries one of the issues that was a big issue then was residential energy taxes and those were I think eliminated in 2014 I'm not sure but there are a host of other things that are involved so it's it's not quite as easy and in terms of splitting the tax George you were on the trustees at that time there was I don't know if they called it a contract or a memorandum of understanding that the select board would split the proceeds with the village and there were legal questions raised as to whether you could even do that but the tax went down overwhelmingly at town meeting yes and a part of the collateral damage was a bob marcott who came in every year trying to reduce the proposed town budget actually won that night and there was a four hundred thousand dollar reduction in the requested town budget as people were having a feeding frenzy they were so upset with the conduct of the select board at that time and they felt misled in many areas the board seemed surprised itself by what was in the tax and they certainly were surprised by IBM's position so there you go that's my experience on it in 2009 by the way at that time south burlington burlington and another one of the big towns willson already had the local option tax on the books so there you go okay uh marcus surda is on the phone go ahead marcus he's on mute right i see i see he's on mute but all right hang on i also just messaged him because he messaged me marcus star number six can unmute you messaging him um does anyone else have any questions while we're waiting for marcus to come on i think you've got ken and iran saw a link okay go ahead ken and i asked marcus to try again after you speak hi um i'll just throw in two things for the baby splitting problem other than resorting to um finance trivia which sounds pretty torturous maybe another zip code would be the solution yeah okay we have two post offices hey if i can make you laugh that's a great thing um i'm sure the federal government will go right along with that i just happened to look it up it's not as hard as you might think the most both post offices have to be called delivery post offices i don't know it might be worth looking into i'm not sure exactly what the details are but um yeah it's an act of congress you're right about that it would solve the problem um second thing i'd like to mention is that um sorry patty we're gonna call on you don't worry you can stop waving oh thank you i can't see her i can guess that's a good thing not distracting um second item is um sales tax is regressive people that have lower income end up paying more of their percent income in a sales tax versus people who have more money generally wealthier people um and property tax is income sensitive income sensitivity adjusted so it's something to consider those are my two points thanks okay marcus you want to try again star six to unmute and if this doesn't work i would recommend typing your question in the comments in the chat oh you're on the phone you can't do that hang up and call back in well he can he can address it the next at our next meeting too i mean if he's um wanted to send us an email and we can read it at the next meeting where we bring this up elaine too that's a possibility i believe i saw iran renner had her hand up but i she took it back down so maybe not i'm not sure okay there it is go ahead thank you i too was um on the select board actually i was on the select board i wouldn't say i too i think bruce joined after the last local option tax vote i was on the select board in 2009 and i will add that not only was the budget hacked by the crowd who did not like what the chair of the select board did that year but he in fact lost his seat the next day in the election there is a lot of passion around this issue and i would warn you that there may be levity tonight but if history is not revisited and the reasons are not explored and none of them have been brought up yet as to why this failed it will fail again and heads will once again roll um i'm looking back at my very thick folder of local option tax information and one village resident at the time pointed out that she can't claim a local option tax the way she could for a property tax rebate so she called it a hidden tax she didn't like the idea and i don't blame her of being nickel and dime to death um a little on her cable bill a little on her electric bill and so forth and so on um i think we need to be very careful and very aware of how this impacts businesses like the global foundries around us um but i think we also have to read carefully through the minutes of that meeting in particular in march of 2009 and study vigorously why that didn't pass because it is not a no brainer thank you marcus do you want to try again one more time marcus yes yes go ahead it's what a conversation that we're having right one of one part of that discussion is about tax equity now we're talking about adding a tax or other taxes regardless of their equal or not now we're adding a tax as well that's a concern to the whole conversation anything it derails the conversation that we're trying to have the other thing i want to say on this is the fact that if you look at south burlington if you look at wilson if you look at when they took on the options taxes for their cities they did it with clear guidance and plans about what they were going to move forward for what i've heard so far is that this will go toward capital projects it's very general in the case of wilson they were looking at taking on all the big box stores and they were looking at mass development because of that new structure those new structures and businesses that were coming into their town south burlington was taking on a whole new downtown area that they were trying to build and construct to revitalize their city i'm not hearing specifics in this particular discussion around why we need this options tax and to be honest i'm a little disturbed that i heard so many times this evening that you know what it's okay because we can do it other towns have done it we can sell this we don't have to do a tax just because we can sell it i mean if we can get away with one percent believe me evan we can do 20 cents and go for two percent i mean the same arguments kind of apply but i don't think that it's either the right time or the right thing to do unless we have a real direct plan about how these taxes are going to be used so that the residents of Essex town village or otherwise have a clear understanding of how this is really going to impact them and to talk about the fact that this is going to impact in a positive way their property tax again that's a nebulous conversation because as we all know it's not just what happens in Essex that impacts our property tax as our property taxes can be changed because what happens around us so i think right now this is poorly timed this is not well thought out i would like to see more specifics before i as a resident were to put my vocalized support for it right now i can't vocalize that i just vocalize some concern because of the fact that this is being brought up at this time so and i'm having the conversation on a regular basis with people all over and the same conversation is about affordability in the state of vermont affordability cost of living and sometimes it's reality and sometimes it's perception and right now to have a conversation on options tax whether real or perceived definitely creates the perception that we are we're just adding on more taxes on to the everyday people who live here in the town and i don't think that's a good idea right now i think we should focus on the conversation for march around merger unless somebody gives us something else that really solidifies the reason that this needs to happen otherwise okay um bruce post and mary post call on patty she's been waiting and waving her hand okay see i don't patty i'm sorry i don't see you unless you just you raise your hand with your icon so please go ahead yes we can hear you okay i just wanted to tag along on what he just said it was great because i feel my two cents are because we don't have a vision a purpose we don't have a purpose statement for our town as a whole like like our individual town plans like you know what i'm talking about the planning commission we have a plan and just like as the extension has a plan what have you guys considered researching or even having your our attorney the village attorney research an interlocking government interlocking means you can have a couple of towns or portions of towns depending on population you know if one has a little bit more population than another um paid their portion in the tax rate however you know having to do with their population but it's interlocking interlocking means they have their own budgets they have their own separate capital things to do you know that they have you know all your you're talking about the capital plan and village keeps their capital plans fix all their sewer problems the town fixes all their highway problems or whatever but when it comes to having a a vision that both of us want then talk about the option tax i think we look into what the government it's going to be interlocking the interlocking government they have it in Maine and in New Hampshire where the couple of towns are separate but they work together as one team and what's our vision as a team here that's what i want to know okay um bruce post mary post you get a hundred percent of the post household tonight my goodness um just a quick correction uh on what ken said um the statewide property tax does have an income sensitivity provision municipal tax as i understand do not uh so uh income sensitivity doesn't apply to the municipal property tax that i'm aware thank you mary post hi there i just i don't have anything really definitive except that when i heard this whole discussion and saw i'll have everybody so happy and yeah yeah like it's a big festival i don't see anybody it seemed to me caring about the regular little person who's just struggling to make it in Essex in the juncture in Essex and like at one point we said oh the problem back then was IBM and global foundry they weren't going to have to take that much off of their bottom line because it's the people that pay and honestly i agree with marcus i am so thankful he said what he said and he said it better than i can say it but um i think we should be really really concerned about affordability in this town we we've talked about wanting to have housing affordability and yet one of the newest developments going up is uh i think the houses are all around five hundred thousand dollars that's affordable for whom i mean i really like to know my kids can't even afford to get an apartment in this place and i think that you know like marcus said to be adding on another tax who is actually thinking about and looking out for the people that do not have as much as a lot of us do and they're just hardly barely making it to pay their rent to buy food i think if we had if this passed all that money should go to our food shelves to help our friends and neighbors that live in our towns but it's always for new building projects or new this or new that let's start taking care of the people thank you is there anyone else in the public who wishes to speak pat can i ask you to hold off until we find that out okay all right i don't see any other hands up and i don't see any comments in the chat so go ahead pat you're muted thank you um one thing i did want to clarify for people is that uh i'm hearing where you're coming from um about uh going forward with this uh evan and um uh excuse me uh sara um have spoken to us and said that they are going to be coming back to us with the specifics of a plan um you know so i think that those of us who sit on this board are excited because to be frank it's very rare that we are able to find and utilize different revenue sources especially when they have the potential at lowering property taxes that we have to levy on the people in our community um but to say that there's not a plan yet when one hasn't been presented to us and one is forthcoming i think is a little bit difficult um you know right now what we're asking for in what is being presented to us is and this was something that came up last year as well we didn't feel that it was the right time so we put it off then and arguably missed out on close to a million dollars of possible tax revenue and tax relief that could have gone towards uh you know the functioning of this town um what we do need to bear in mind is that we're this is not a 100 plan um that the details of the plan are coming that this is the first time talking about this um you know as we move into what's possibly going to be on the ballot for march so i think it's just absolutely with respect i'm hearing what everyone is saying but you know we want to also be clear that we haven't gotten the specifics of a plan yet um you know but i think it's it's okay to be excited about hearing this because it's an opportunity that you know we should absolutely explore and we need to do due diligence and hear what that plan is going to be before dismissing it out of hand okay two more members of the public you've got Sharon Zukowski and Irene Renner again i believe Elaine yes Sharon you can go first since we haven't heard from you for yet and then Irene Sharon please go ahead okay um you can hear me now right yes we can uh i'll be short um when you present this plan um i'm hoping you'll make a very not uh just what you're going to do with the money but a very clear maybe or a easy to understand graph of what the individuals in the community would be taxed on since it's a destination tax like what will their phone be taxed will their internet purchases be taxed um i know that i renovated a building and i had to buy six appliances and i did have it delivered from the lows in south Burlington to Essex so i wouldn't have to pay that one percent because for contractors for small businesses out of the home uh one percent really adds up and the last thing when you're saying like oh it's starbucks it's like only going to be 40 cents some people 40 cents is a lot like the other day my neighbor borrowed two dollars from me so she could buy borrow buy baby tylenol i mean those little amounts add up for some people and that's it thank you okay uh Irene thank you a couple more things if i may um i just looked up and williston has had a local option tax since 2003 so that means that there were six years that most desks residents had had an opportunity to shop in willis and experience what it was like to pay that extra penny um so i we may have been in our toddler hood but we were not naive um when i was out on the select board in um 2009 when this came up last time i was all for it i have since revisited my position on it and i am not for it for a number of reasons um and finally when i see the incomplete and erroneous information that has been put out about the village merger vote i shudder to think how this will be pitched to the residents of sx please oh please have people from all sides of the issue help you write up whatever you're going to use to communicate so that it's not only accurate but fair to taxpayers so that they get a broad picture of the pluses and minuses and that there are not errors and omissions thanks that's a really good point because a lot of misinformation gets out there and you can never tell where it's coming from so what the official sources should really be accurate i'm really happy that our staff does such a great job at being accurate and we're going to keep doing that so board members i have a observation i just want to make um and this is an important aspect of capital in general um and a little history um i believe two town meetings ago the town voters added a hundred thousand dollars to the town budget for sidewalks a couple years prior to that the trustees did a straw poll with the residents at village meeting to say how do we feel that um we have all these projects that we have to do but we can't get at them would you feel about how do you feel about bonding and the audience was very happy to do that and that's how the village ended up with a three point two million dollar bond i think that's how much it came out to and it knocked a bunch of projects off the capital list so a local option tax is more broad based and and it is charged to the people who use the infrastructure and it is not targeted at specific people in the boundaries of the municipality and so the trucks that drive by on our roads and the people that park in our parking spots those folks who are patronizing our businesses would also pay that tax whereas a bond or adding to the budget for specific capital projects jacks the property tax for the residents of our community so while on one hand we are absolutely concerned with affordability and i hear i heard multiple comments about that and i understand it completely at the same time the other option is that we are taxing ourselves some more by bonding or increasing our capital budget to tackle these projects the third option is just don't do the projects so you know those are the things that our boards have to really worry about and decide what to do and in the end residents lose out when we have an opportunity to possibly bring in additional funding that could help offset that property tax so i just want to make everyone aware of those ups and downs or the balance there i'm not a hundred percent sold on this either i think local option taxes are a very easy to understand way to go if you're targeting the funds that are raised to very specific things and i heard the comments about we want to know exactly what this is going to get spent on and the last time this happened there was no information for anybody like we're just going to raise the money because we need it and that's not at all what we're saying here and we would propose very specific information but i still have reservations and i want our boards to talk about it and i know that the staff has not done any specific modeling for us yet that's coming so we are asking for patients on the part of the residents who are asking these questions because you're right you haven't gotten the details yet they're going to come and we will all see them together at the same time so thank you sorry george go ahead i want to just i i want to kind of second what you just said and i can tell you people who are asking for specific projects i was on the board when the local option tax was being proposed and i was on the board several years later when we went out for a bond and i can tell you exactly what we had the projects we had in mind we anticipated getting at that time about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year from the local option tax and in 2012 2013 we were well over seriously over a million million and a half dollars in our capital project in funding these were roads that had to be fixed and i know exactly what we were going to spend that local option tax money on we were going to spend it to fix the roads and the logic in my mind was that rather than rather than having the cost distributed just on village residents i'm only on village residents on their property taxes we would share the cost of fixing our roads with the people who commute across our roads and stop at Dunkin Donuts and McDonald's and all the places in in the village just as we do for south burlington and williston and so that was my logic and i i understand that's there are a lot of different perspectives there are a lot of different ways of seeing this and i appreciate the comments and certainly we'll take them to heart from all the folks who spoke out from the the audience today but i can assure you we had very specific projects in mind what we're going to spend the money on and unfortunately local residents it wound up raising their property taxes because we took out we had to take out a bond and that payment repayment of that bond got put into their property tax bill so that's maybe that's not how everyone wants to see it but sitting on the board of trustees trying to do the right thing from the village that's how i saw it okay looks like we have one more member of the public and then perhaps we should move on go ahead bruce things aren't as straightforward in terms of what the attacks would apply to i looked at an example today there's something called a bundled purchase if you buy a hundred dollar raincoat it wouldn't be taxed if you buy an umbrella for twenty dollars you would then bundle it with the raincoat and the whole one hundred twenty dollars will be taxed it's a strange strange thing back in 2009 there were certain types of pickles that were taxed and certain types pickles that were not so it's a it's a it's an interesting tax but one of the great things i don't hear though is how do we have budget discipline and see start dialing back what we're spending and i say that as a member of the board that voted against two of the budgets when i was there i'm not necessarily a fiscal conservative but i am fiscally responsible thanks okay everyone um board members did you have any additional comments or shall we move on to the reading file i'll take that as a move on to the reading file sorry lane this is done on they need mission to continue studying this sarah and evan or not this was an informational conversation there was no action item associated with it but i think consensus based on the questions is that we need answers so um board member comments i definitely have a question for evan but i want uh other board members do you have any questions or comments i just want to give a shout out to jim jutrus for his publication in the new england environmental journal i thought i was very impressed and very with he's he's so very busy yet in finding the time to write an article um he's he's a he's a scientist and a scholar at the same time and we really appreciate his effort so um i want to really um send thanks for him for doing that i will second that we are very lucky to have someone with so much expertise on our staff um any other board member comments or questions evan can you give us an update on how ballots are coming along yes i can as of about five o'clock uh we have 8397 general election ballots checked in just so you know they just get checked in uh they have not been put through uh yet total voter voter turnout in 2016 was 11 357 so we are at about 74 percent of 2016 total voter turnout and the village merger ballot total checked in so far is 2607 ballots that is fabulous evan please give susan mcdomara hill and her staff a huge thank you from us and also dawn from dawn thank you so much for please tell us what you've been up to for the last month i'm the person is alphabetizing every ballot that comes into the building oh my god you've been busy since the primary i have all 10 000 almost 11 000 envelopes um also interestingly enough the state of vermont sent us a envelope opener machine um through their cares act which if you think about it without that we would have to hand open 11 000 ballots then alphabetize them then check them in then secure them etc etc so uh susan and her crew have done a great job for those who are watching there is a ballot drop box right outside the front door at 81 main you can drop your ballot right in there it is it is uh removed uh the ballots several times during the workday specifically as well first thing in the morning last thing before the end of the workday um and often if uh more our our staff is in the building it is secured there is a security camera on it so if you go by please wave uh the camera will uh wreck you know uh not wave back but it will take your likeness and so that's a secure place to drop your ballot please vote um that's your franchise meant that's part of your voice uh for your community and your nation please vote seven don't you want to use this time to make any announcements of things that the bca might need this time we're we're on schedule we're going to begin feeding ballots on thursday thursday we're going to do district eight two as well as their merger balance friday we'll be doing eight one and on monday we'll be doing eight three and any ballots that come in over the weekend and on monday okay but thank you all thanks everybody that's volunteered to help it's been great done and if people vote in person correct yeah the polling places they do need to bring uh some form of idea i believe or something to could you explain that they need to bring if they've received a ballot in the mail and they haven't used it they need to bring it with them if they come in without it they'll have to fill out an affidavit right thank you but you don't need an id to vote not here right they just need that they need the the ballot that was sent to them or they have to fill out the affidavit that's correct good okay fingers crossed for good weather right it's going to be a very busy weekend so thank you in advance dawn and susan and all the volunteers who will be there at the polls all right um george anything else no i'm good uh trustees any uh any uh comments thoughts no select board any questions comments all right i'll take a motion to adjourn oh uh yeah elaine i did have one just wanted to uh mention or at least uh extend an offer uh here um even though i think uh we both did on social media um that if people had questions about the upcoming merger um that uh both you and i um and i think uh raj had mentioned that he was willing to do the same and andrew um you know we'd be happy to uh meet with people uh you know if it's via zoom you know just uh you know remote chat into people's living rooms you know so you know if anyone has any qualms about needing to stand up and ask questions in a public meeting you know it's just a an easy way to uh make people feel comfortable about getting their questions answered i'll also be inspired by uh aoc and say that if anyone we have younger members if they have a video game that they want to play i will download it i will play it with them i will describe the merger while doing that since uh she got like 700 000 people watching her play a video game over this last week um as she was trying to get out the vote um so it works for her then i'll do it here too did she win that's pretty cool uh it was a series of like quick games so yeah like i think she lost some and she won some what was that vince i said you're a brave man pat those kids are so good at fortnight they trounce me every time yeah i know i'm setting myself up for losing but gotta do what you gotta do yeah pat thank you for remembering to say that so yeah pat and i and raj and andrew brown are happy to zoom into your living room and answer your questions about merger um and friends families and neighbors you can invite them over over in quotes um to listen in and ask your questions since going door to door is really not an option in order to remain safe um we would be happy to come to you in a safe way and answer your questions anytime between now and whenever so thank you all right select board if you're interested we'll take a uh motion for adjournment okay second and donna's seconding thank you all those in favor hi hi opposed thank you select board is adjourned trustees any uh anyone want to make a motion i move we adjourn second uh amber second she beat you dan any further discussion dan you're slowing down yeah he's sleeping any further discussion all in favor hi hi all right folks we'll see you next week have a good evening bye bye be safe please good night everybody all right you did me all good night everybody all right you did me all