 Thank you everybody for joining us. Do we have any agenda additions or changes tonight? None from staff, Andrew. I would like to propose just a reorder of putting 6E to where 6F is. I anticipate an executive session with 6E, so then that way we could just end the meeting from that point or from after that point. George, your hands up. Yeah, Andrew, thanks. Andrew, I don't really have an addition or change, but I have a couple of documents that are relevant to our discussion about the Lincoln Hall renovation, and I might actually wanna have one of them put on the screen. I'm not sure I can probably read them, but I don't wanna have to control the screen. I'm not sure who is in control of the screen tonight, and I can email them to you. I think if you want to email them to Evan or... I'm running the screen. What's up? Brad, you're running the screen, aren't you? Correct. Okay, Brad's here, because I had a note that Brad wasn't gonna be here. All right, okay, I'll email him to you, Brad. And then if you just want to reference what they are so we can add them to the agenda. Yeah, there are just some notes on the building renovation that I wanted to get kind of specific answers to, and then one of them has to deal with the carpet at Lincoln Hall. I don't wanna nitpick, but I just wanted to make sure that these are somehow entered into the conversation. Great, so adding building renovation notes and building carpet notes? Yes, right. Two, six, C. Right, thanks. I'll email them to Brad. So he can have them. And Raj? Yeah, so I just wanna make sure I understood what you were doing for your organizing ENF. I think Amber and I intended to have a discussion about the committee assignments and executive session as well. I would anticipate we would come out of that executive session for the decision. Okay. Right? Yeah, I was just trying to make sure I understood so that we didn't have an issue later. Okay. Yeah, so we'll go into executive session, have that discussion come out, make the decision, finish the rest of the agenda, then go into that six E so we can just end from the executive session. All right, thanks. I just, thanks. Okay. Anything else? Now that we have, okay. So with nothing else, I would entertain a motion to amend the agenda as discussed. I move we amend the agenda as discussed. Second. Thank you, Raj. Thank you, Amber. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, please say nay. I pass unanimously. Thank you all. Just to make a note, I did hear from trustee Dan Caron that you would not be in attendance tonight. Just so that we were not waiting on him. So that will bring us to item four, public to be heard. So this is a portion of tonight's meeting where if there are any members from the public who wish to address the board about something that's not on the agenda, now is the time to do so. If you would like to address the board, please make sure to raise your hand, and I'll make sure you have time to bring up a concern that you have. So go ahead using Zoom, click on that reactions button, and raise your hand. So I see no hands going up. There's nothing in the chat. So we will go off from public to be heard and jump into the business or the agenda item 5A, the public hearing on the fiscal year 2023 proposed budget and capital program. It looks like we have Sarah Macy joining us tonight. You do. Hello again. May I be made a host or given the ability to share my screen, please? You are a host now, and I will remember to pass that back so I don't inadvertently end the meeting when I'm finished sharing. Okay, screen two. At this point, you should all be seeing the summary page of the 2023 budget. Awesome. Thank you for those nods. All right. So we're at the point in budget season where we have our public hearing. Just to recap, we have been working on this budget since the fall with budget day in November and a few work sessions earlier this year. We've landed at a 11, I'm gonna start with the general fund. We've landed at an 11.9% overall increase in the village general fund. That's about just shy of $670,000 over the FY22 budget. The theme of this budget is personnel. Of that $670,000, over 84% of the increase is a direct result of hiring new personnel and finance and management. And there are some positions. There was a move from part-time to full-time position in Brownell and moving a portion of a position fully into the general fund and EGRP in addition to a new customer service specialist in that department. Let me switch over here. In addition to the new positions which are driving the increase in the budget, we have planned increases in capital transfers which we see in all of the funds, the general fund, the water funds who are fund and sanitation fund which are the other consistent driver over time. I'm sure that you all remember in the previous few years these have also been planned incremental increases over time to fund our long-term capital plans in these different funds and those continue as planned. As I noted just now we're headed, we're looking at an 11.9% bottom line increase. The primary driver is the salaries and benefits for the new positions plus changes to regular salaries and benefits of existing positions. Capital transfer increases make about $53,000 in the general fund. We've tucked in some additional money in legal in anticipation for any separation related expenses we may see in the coming year. We've included an increase this year in the highway budget $37,000 to help round out our paving program and elections is increasing $13,000 to support the mailing of ballots during the year. And lastly, the other notable increase of this overall increase is there $12,000 in the stormwater costing center of the general fund. Now the stormwater costing center personnel are funded through the town budget through an existing agreement and these matching grant funds were excluded from that. And so those were added to that costing center and are offset by village tax dollars. And this will give a village stormwater a little bit more flexibility in going after grants in the coming year. Even though the bottom line is an 11.9% increase, we're only looking at a 3.9% increase in the tax levy because of ARPA funds. And so at our last meeting, we decided, there was a last time we talked about the budget we decided to use $375,000 of ARPA funding to offset the increased tax payers in this year while we wait on the legislature decision on the independence initiative. This has allowed us to keep the tax rate fairly stable from FY22 to FY23. We're looking at just over one penny or 3.44% change on the tax rate. An average village property assessed at $280,000 should anticipate about a $32 increase in taxes year over year, make it a little bit bigger. This graph that you're seeing on the screen is looking at FY22 actual tax rates. And this is just a reminder to those viewing that in the Village of Essex Struction, currently the breakdown of the property taxes on the tax bill is only 13% village taxes. 22% are taxes that go to the town and 65% taxes going to the school. Before I move on to capital funds and enterprise funds, are there any comments or questions on the general fund portion? General knows and no hands. All right. Next up in this budget packet are the six different capital funds that the village has. We have the Capital Reserve Fund and in FY23, we're looking to finish up the work on Densmore Drive, replace the Brickyard culverts, which are sort of in line with the culvert replacements that have happened on Densmore Drive, which are all part of the Indian Brook. I don't know what this proper word is, but like watershed where that all comes through. And we're gonna continue work on the Crescent Connector Project out of the Capital Reserve Fund. In FY23, the Rolling Stock Fund has no planned spending, although the transfer into rolling stock from the general fund continues to accumulate funds for future planned spending. EGRP capital continues to be funded at approximately one penny on the grand list. And that will help fund some playground equipment, maintenance, roofing, landscaping, new truck, and lawnmower. In the Water Sewer Insanitation Funds, sewer fund has no specific capital projects other than ongoing debt payments in the coming year. The water fund is looking to replace a pressure or install a pressure relief valve. We're gonna be working on the Iroquois Waterline and Road Reconstruction, which will flow over actually into the Capital Reserve Fund. And there's replacement of the backhoe pickup truck and ongoing debt payments. Lastly, in the Sanitation Fund, in addition to ongoing debt payments, we have some ongoing manhole rehab and a pump project at the South Street Pump Station. Lastly, our four enterprise funds are shown on the screen here. The EGRP program fund is looking at a 6.4% increase, about $173,000 there. The driver to that increase is staffing and programming costs. Just a reminder, these enterprise funds are all self-supported. They are not funded at all through tax dollars. In the Water Fund, you may notice this year, what I've done is I've pulled out the pass through to global foundries from the operating portion of the budget to give us a more realistic view of the operating budget of the Water Fund for which the village water rate payers are paying. So that is looking at about a 5.8% or $80,000 increase over last year. The primary driver there is a planned $50,000 increase to the transfer to capital, a slight increase in the administrative fees that the Water Sewer and Sanitation Fund pay to the general fund and regular personnel costs. In the sewer fund, the increase over last year is more substantial, it's just over 10%, almost $240,000. Primary driver and wastewater are staffing changes within the wastewater treatment facility. In addition to that, there's planned increase transfer to capital and those administrative fees, but really what's driving those costs are personnel. Lastly, the Sanitation Fund has a just under 2% increase and then the change there, oh my goodness, I can't remember what was off my head, but the theme really is, even though there's a lot going on in the village, if you pick up the newspaper, there really are not a lot of changes in this budget. Personnel, capital, and the shifts happening behind the scenes are funding those initiatives to support all of the things that are happening on the ground. Do you wanna touch on estimated utility rates? Utility rates in the village will be set later in the year, closer to May, June, when we have a full year of usage to use and calculating the usage and the fixed charges. Overall, because of the adjustment we made last time to the way the administrative fees are being charged from the general fund to the water, sewer, and sanitation funds, the overall utility rates are looking at about a 6.36% increase on the year for the average user. The average residential property uses 120 gallons a day. The bulk of this comes on the water side, which as we saw was the highest percentage or the higher, the middle percentage increase of the three funds. The sewer rate we will likely be proposing to remain stable year over year and we'll get more specific about that when we set rates and then sanitation is also adjusted appropriately. So we're looking at about an overall, less than $70 increase year over year between taxes and utility rates for the average residential home in the village. That concludes my presentation on the budgets. I would be happy to answer any questions or go into some more detail or pull up the spreadsheets if anyone is interested. Thank you, Sarah. As always, really appreciate your thoroughness going through this. As this is a public hearing, trustees, I would just ask if you can hold your comments questions until we get to the business items 6A as that's when we get back to the budget. So really with it being a public hearing, community, residents, if you have questions, please go ahead and raise your hand. Happy to make sure that you have the opportunity to ask questions. Please make sure to address your questions to me and I will do my best to answer them. If I do not know the answer, I will absolutely turn over to Sarah to have her fill in the gaps that I have. So go ahead, raise your hand if you have any questions. Going once, going twice. And with no questions, we will go ahead and close the public hearing and that would then conclude the agenda item 4A and we will very quickly, or 5A, and you will quickly transition now into 6A, consider adoption of the fiscal year 23 budget capital program budget. And hello, Sarah. Nice to see you again. Thank you for joining us. Hello. I am. You're welcome. Long time. So if you could just run through the budget again, that'd be great. Happy to. No, I'm kidding. This one, you know, we spend such a long period of time talking about this budget that sometimes it comes back to me and fits and spurts. But I also, I know Jess is here too. She and I had chatted about both being at the meeting and she's available to hop on as well. Jess, do you wanna take this piece or would you like me to keep on, keep it on? Totally. Why don't you keep on keeping on? Okay. You just budget out. All right. We'll close it out. Okay. Thank you. So the memo that's displayed on your screen that's in the packet is just the formal adoption of the FY23 proposed budget. For the general fund, this will then be the dollar amount that gets borne for annual meeting. For the other funds, this will be the final approval of those budgets. As you can see in the memo, each of the operating budgets are listed out. Each of the capital budgets are listed out. These numbers represent bottom line expenditures in each of these funds for the year. As I noted just a few moments ago, the estimated tax rate to support the general fund is 0.3460, which is a 3.44% over last year. And overall we're estimating the enterprise fund budgets to are the enterprise fund budgets to cause an increase in utility rates of 6.3% over last year. And we'll finalize those as we get closer to May and June. If there are no, this would be a great time. This, as Andrew said, is a time for questions from the trustees or additional comments. If not, I would look for a motion to adopt these budgets. Thank you, Sarah. I don't have any questions on the budget. I just, again, wanted to express my appreciation to you and others who very quickly read through the ARPA regulations which had just came out about a day or so before you presented this to us for the first time and how to discuss ways to help mitigate some of that tax increase that was allowed to us. So again, very greatly appreciate the efforts of you and others who helped make that happen. So trustees, again, questions. Otherwise, I would also entertain that motion that you see on the screen. George. I don't have your questions. I'm ready to make the motion. So I'll recommend that the, I'll move that the trustees adopt the various FY23 budgets in the amounts listed above. Thank you, George. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Raj. Any further discussion? The only thing I wanna just add in here is that for those watching for the first time, if this seems like that just happened really fast, I want you to know that this is the third time the trustees have talked about this budget. Yes. And this budget has not changed from the last time that we've seen this at our previous meeting. So please know that we have talked about this quite, quite thoroughly. It does not happen, it does not pass that quickly. So with that said, there's a motion on the table. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say nay. Hearing none, pass unanimously. Thank you all. Sarah, Jess, thank you both. You all very much. Do I need to pass my host authority back to somebody? Yes, back to me, please. Uh-huh. And Sarah, is this our last meeting with you? Oh no, show me the bag. I hope not. I wasn't sure. Okay. Oh, oh boy. I'm very hard to get rid of, actually. Awesome. We'll see her, you'll see her soon, but not like next week. You still got it, Sarah. Even in retirement, you are still doing a great job. Retirement? All right, hold on, Brad. How do I make you the host? Make a six-point admin host, please. Oh, not you? No, please. Oh, but I just made you the host, so now you'll have to pass it over. Oh my God. All right. What happens in retirement? This is what happens. You all have a wonderful evening. Thank you so much. I look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you. All right, so that will then take us into six B to discuss the annual meeting ballot initiatives. Yes, Andrew. So I will get that up on the screen in one sec. There are three things that you all have been discussing in terms of getting on the ballot for this April. The local option tax cannabis and increasing the fund balance threshold. And tonight it's just a confirmation that those are the three items that you would like to see on the ballot and whether or not you would like to remove any of those or add anything else. There is nothing that I would like to remove or add. Trustees, is there anything else that any of you would like to remove or add? No. I appreciate that. And I appreciate the updated memo from Robin as well with regards to cannabis. Yes. It's disappointing the state. So at this point is not agreeing to the 1000 foot buffer and is going back to the 500 foot buffer. Correct. But this is part of building that plane as it flies. And the only thing I would add, Andrew, is that we are working on the language, the ballot language for the local option tax. I've been working a little bit with Claudine and looped in just today. There are, in the way that the statute is written, there are certain provisions that you need in order to add a local option tax. Most communities that have gone about it have done it through charter change. So we're trying to do it without charter change given that we are about to have a new charter and there's a lot of confusion there. So we will have updated information for you at the March 8th meeting if we can, in fact, put this on the ballot. But I want to let you know there is a possibility that it might be worthy of a conversation with the trustees to consider moving this to November. So we will do our best. I want to get it on the ballot in April, but we will consult with finance and legal counsel and determine if April is the most appropriate time or if it's worthy of talking about considering November. If you'd like, I'd be also happy to put anyone in touch with a former representative who that individual used to talk about how with the passage of, I think it was Act 46, there was some statute, some allowance for communities like us that have something to do with the education side of things, where we did not have to do it through a charter change. We would only have to do it through a vote through the Australian ballot. Again, I don't understand the legal ramifications or what that actual language is that allowed for it, but we're happy to put you in touch with that person. Great, Evan, do you have a commentary on that? Yeah, it was Act 60 and the village was designated because of Act 60, I can't remember the term, but we were part of Act 60 by the state. So that's something golden, I don't remember that. No. Go ahead, George. Yeah, we were considered a gold town because we were spending way above the state average and communities that were spending above the statewide average for per pupil education were considered gold towns. Well, we'll just work to confirm all of that and hopefully we can get it on the ballot, but we just wanna make sure everything is, all the eyes are dotted and teeth crossed. We would hate to collect it and then have to give it back because it wasn't done appropriately and then have to redo it all again. Yeah. Great, so it seems as if the consensus since we've all shaken our heads, yes, is to have those items that are within the memo put on the ballot and hopefully then that will all be able to happen. Great, go ahead, Raj. Quicker than finding my button to raise my hand. So with the local option tax, is that going to, should that be allowed as a vote? Does that question get listed out for each individual type of tax or would we write one question that would include the various types of tax, the 1% would impact, does that make sense? Yes, I'm super glad you brought that up, Raj. And I apologize that I did not. So there are three different options with the local option tax. You can add that to the sales tax, you can add that to meals and rooms, you can add that to lodging. And you could do any of those versions, all three of those, or you can select the ones you want to do. So it would be good to take the temperature right now of the board of how you would like, if you would like to include all of those, if it's possible to include them as individually listed items, but that would be really helpful as we craft that language. So thank you so much, Raj, for bringing that up. Since I was just talking, I'll go first. I'd prefer all three as one question. I would agree with that. Yeah, I would agree with that. You know. That was remarkably easy. Yes. Moving right along. That's how we work. Are there any other questions or anything else? That's necessary on this. So that will bring us into our next item, which is to Lincoln Street. Yes, thank you, Andrew. And I am trying to share my screen, but it's, I'm not being successful at the moment. So the question before you all tonight with to Lincoln Street is, we just wanted to get a sense of where the trustees want to go with the renovation. And, you know, in the memo, in the packet, it's kind of listed as some discussion items. Do you want to just go bare bones and get this place up and running? Do you want to add an elevator and make the entire building ADA accessible? What do you want to do in terms of the impacts or try and focus on in terms of the impacts with the teen center chips and the senior center? And do you want to address any issues that are in those spaces? So this is just an open discussion for the trustees to give us some feedback so we can proceed accordingly. So I'll go ahead and start off. I think what I'm going to say is a bit like a unicorn request where I would like to see us preserve as much of chips and the senior center as possible, though at the same time, if we're going to disrupt the building and the flow of the building, I would like us to disrupt it once so that that way we don't have to go in, disrupt the operations, bring staff in, then disrupt them again at some other point in time and they're relatively near future. So yes, I would also then like to see an elevator and address the whole building. So while I'd like to preserve as much space, realizing addressing the whole building may likely go against what I just mentioned. Great. And is that the consensus of the other trustees? I see George with his hands up. Andrew, I have a fairly extensive commentary about this and it is directly to give you a sense for out of what I want, but I don't want to interrupt. I don't want to take up too much time and Raj, I mean, do you want to go first or we've kind of had our hands up at the same time. I'm happy to see to you if you want or. Go right ahead. Okay. All right. I'll dig in because I looked at this and I want to say first of all, let me go through, before I say what I think we should do, let me go through some of my comments and observations with the plans to have so far. I wanted to, and I went over to Lincoln Holiday and walked around and I noted a couple of things. One thing I note that all of the options that were there, Brad, they all have the show the vault as being a big, you know, being used and you have, and they have a great big area outside the vault for public record searches and for title searches. And it occurred to me that there's nothing in the vault right now. There's a few, there's some old, small portion has taken up with vital records and just about everything else in there is stuff like Christmas decorations, office supplies, all that's going to have to be moved out. And I know I'm going into the weeds here guys. So just bear with me because there is a point at the end of my discussion. Bottom line is that we're going to be putting new land records in there, but we're not actually going to be putting new land records in there. They're going to be accumulating once we start the new village, I mean the new city. So you're basically going to be having a giant empty space for quite a number of years to come. And so I don't think you're going to need to have three seats outside the vault. So members of the public can do title searches. And I noticed on all the options that you, that they, Scott and partners designated this great big area. And it would be great if it was going to be that busy, but it's not going to be that busy for many years. Furthermore, all of the new records I'm assuming coming in are going to be digitized. They're going to be scanned and put probably on a closed server. So you could have those desks to where people do public record searches anywhere in the building. They don't have to be outside the vault in that great big room. You could actually put some inside the vault. That would be fine. Cause the vault is really just a room. Sounds very intimidating, but it's not. So I would like that considered. You don't, we don't really need to use that space. You could use it for something else. The other thing I noted is public access. There's two different plans. One where members of the public come in and most of the time they're going to come in to see the assistant clerk or the zoning administrator and three of the plans you have them coming into sort of the main part of the office where the manager and the human resources people are. And one of the plans you have them, you have big desks sort of out in the hallway. So I would really urge that you get guidance from Terry Haas and Susan McNamara Hill on that question because they're the ones who can tell you where the best location for that is to go to the chips. I, we're not going to move chips and we're not going to move the senior center before July period. It's not going to happen. It's not feasible, but I went up there and it's amazing how much empty space there is up there. There's probably more empty space up there than there is off total office space in the main office downstairs. And I think this is a legacy building. We're not going to get rid of Lincoln Hall. It's going to be the city office for years to come. I was opposed to doing this before, but now in reflecting on it, I think we should bite the bullet, put in an elevator and that would open up the entire upstairs for us to use and would give us more office space than we would need right now. What chips is using can easily be compacted into a much smaller area. And they would still have their main areas where the kids congregate, but all of the offices are just have furniture and stuff stored in them right now. So I would recommend putting an elevator in and renovating the second floor, which brings me to the next point, which is I don't think anyone should be working down in the basement. It's got no natural lighting. It's got terrible ventilation. It's probably got mold from the foundation like most of these 18th, 19th century buildings do. So I would recommend that we move the community development desk up to the second floor or somewhere else but out of the basement. And that only be used. We could probably have a break room for staff down there with a little kitchen or something. That'd be okay to spend some time, but I would basically recommend that you only use it for storage and maybe as I said, a break room, which leads me to my last point, which is about the carpet. And this is the, these were the papers. I've tried so many different ways to get them over to flash them onto the screen. It doesn't matter, I'll get them to you, but the carpet in the entire building needs to come up. And this is why I'm bringing it up. I'm really getting nitpicky, but this is gonna add significantly to the cost. But all of that carpet needs to come up. Carpet in public buildings is, and I went and did, and I don't wanna get all science on everybody. I know I get, people get angry when I do that, but I did do, I did, I found a peer reviewed study of peer reviewed studies that is sort of state of the art. And it says carpets in public spaces don't do it. They have significant adverse health effects. And of course, and this paper was written in response to carpet manufacturers who said, well, we don't like that. And we're gonna invent, we have new carpet technology that gets around the adverse health effects. And these folks looked at a whole bunch of studies and said, no, that's not true. Carpets are still a no-no. And I will be happy to argue the science with anybody. There is just huge amount of technical public health data saying, don't put carpets in big public spaces like this. And I know that the floors in Lincoln Hall are uneven. They've probably got years of linoleum, hardwood, all kinds of junk. It's gonna add significantly to the expense. But since we are talking about it now, I think we need to, besides putting in the elevator, we need to get all the carpets out of there and figure out a way to put hard surface floors in there. So I wrote all these things down and I put them in nice notes. So they don't all have to go into the minutes, but I'll send them off to you. But I also have a little summary of that research paper. And I really urge us to make that a major piece of this renovation to get the carpets out of there. So thanks for the indulgence. I'll stop talking now. I don't think I have any other notes. Thanks, guys. Hi, Raj. Well, George, I did not do a literature review. Okay. George covered a couple of things that I was gonna say. I'd rather do this once, as you said, Andrew. It's interesting, a couple of little details on some of these drawings. Some had staff bathrooms that were separate from the public bathrooms. I think when you go to work, in a situation like this, you sort of want things like that. So anywhere we can, and I know it sounds frivolous, but there was a difference in some of these drawings. So that's important to me. Everybody talked about the elevator, making that as big as ADA requires. And I agree with the space upstairs and the knot using the basement if we can not all avoid it. Other than that, I think we should do, as much as we can do now to cause this little disruption in the future and prepare us for the next 10, 20 years. And yeah, that's it. Thank you, Raj. Along the lines of preparing for the next 10 to 20 years, one of the things that also, to get a little bit into the weeds, I just wanna make sure that with our meeting room, even though we have garnered significantly more attendance being in a hybrid meeting format, there's going to be a point in time when most, if not all the trustees are going to be back in person. And I would assume that we're gonna have some level of public participation in person at those meetings as well. And we may try to figure out a hybrid meeting style moving forward. But I mentioned that because I thought that one or more of the options had a smaller meeting room and I'm only concerned about the ability for us to stay safe, knowing what we know now about living through a pandemic and trying to have some kinds of social distancing while still trying to accommodate increased attendance. And even more so, I'm gonna make an assumption that after we become an independent city, there may be some increased attention on the things that we do. And so we may then have some increased attendance physically at our meetings. So I don't think that making our meeting room smaller would be really in the best interest for the long-term. Andrew, if I can jump in, I'm sorry, Amber doesn't have her hand up, so I'm gonna re-pick up. I agree with what you just said. I think we do need to anticipate it. You need to have a room that can accommodate pretty much, you're gonna need, I think we should have a meeting room that's pretty much the same size as the current meeting room. And I also note that upstairs on the second floor at the very end, there's a really big room that looks like it's kind of being used as a meeting room. Oh, it didn't really look like it was all that busy. So that could be an alternative meeting room. And then, as I said, you could actually, if you renovate part of the basement, you could just put a room down there, even if as long as no one's working down there all the time, you could have another meeting room down there, but I agree with you. I think our main meeting room should continue to be about that same size. I wouldn't gobble up that space. Raj, I think your hand went up first, but if you don't mind, since Amber hasn't gone yet. Amber, why don't you go ahead? I was just gonna piggyback off and say, yeah, I noticed that too. I think option three and option four made that conference room smaller, but then also showed on the third floor because three and four was the option of doing the work on the third floor. It showed a pretty large conference room on the third floor. My concern looking at that was, we've spent a lot of time getting town meeting TV and all the setup in that smaller conference room. I'm just not sure how much it's gonna take to put them upstairs if we decide we're gonna go down that road. That actually looks like it might be a bigger space after renovations upstairs. And if there's an elevator, then maybe that's a better room, but I agree. My comments are, I think I agree with everything that everybody said. I'm kind of curious. It looked like, I didn't really think about the basement until you said that, George, but I agree keeping folks in the basement without any windows and stuff is probably not a good plan. And my question looking at these was, what were we gonna do with all this office space? But if we brought everybody up, because there is estimated to, well, it's not only Robin, I think there was three offices, including the new assessor that was going downstairs in the basement. What does that do? My question is, what does that do for the costs? It looked like it was about $100,000 plus spent in the basement itself. So my only other comment about agreeing on doing it and causing less disruption is, I would really like to still have some money that we could throw towards doing some work at Public Works. And I know that that's probably not gonna be a lot of money, but I would love to have something to start, finish this and work on Public Works as well. Thank you, Amber. The only thing I wanna just jump on real quick with regards to Public Works, I don't see that being a part of this. And I really foresee that being a much larger project that we're gonna need to go out to the community and ask them for some money. And I only say that because I don't think that the current facility is where we want to throw money at, but rather I think we need that. I'm trying to think of what the building's needs assessment had mentioned for the Village's Public Works Department. I mean, I was looking at that building needs assessment and I was a little confused as to what exactly they, what they were suggesting. The numbers were kind of all over the place. I mean, clearly we're not talking a $500,000 fix here, but it, you know, maybe, and maybe that's a whole separate conversation as to we need to kind of drill down a little bit more of John and then drill down a little bit more as to what they were, the Minnesota, the needs assessment was really, it seemed like it was more focused on the town, to be honest with you. It was, and it was about the joint merged operation, which we're not going down, but I just wanted to mention that to really say that it is a separate topic, I think, for a separate conversation for another point in time. Yep, agreed. All right, go ahead, Raj. I guess I just, I forgot to echo what George was saying. You know, I was in the South Burlington, the new South Burlington municipal offices recently, and when I picked my jaw up off the floor, it does occur to me as we have, sorry, Brett, it does occur to me as we're having this conversation that I think thinking of a workplace, thinking of safety, thinking of our employees, it's really important to me that they have a separate entrance and that there's a firm delineation, a secure delineation between public access and staff work area, be it passcode to go upstairs or key card, but also basically as you enter, I think I'm looking at the fourth one right now, I'm not sure, but just making sure there's some kind of delineation there for them. And I think that's what I'm looking at here. I just sometimes it's hard to tell on these, but I just wanted to echo George's comment about potentially a separate entrance and all that stuff, but I know that things like that can really up the cost. So I guess we'll have to be careful with that, but I think it's important. Thank you, Ross. Go ahead, George. Yeah, I just, I do want to go back. I read the, I went back and read the building needs assessment and what it, the main takeaway, the point I was raising about it, the last time I mentioned it, is that it said that the village staff are working in substandard conditions. And that was the main point I was using for that assessment. Otherwise the assessment really wasn't, I don't want to say it wasn't a great value, but it was a completely different purpose. What that basically what they did was, they looked at the total current square footage, and then based on current industry standards, they calculated what it would cost to rebuild it to its current square footage. And then they said, for the next 50 years, what would be the ideal square footage? And then again, based on current industry standards, they calculated what that renovation would be. So they gave us two broad numbers. There was no plan, there was no specific thing going on. There was nothing there. And that's why I'm saying it didn't really, it doesn't really give us much of a sense. And so in order to address, when I was getting at before of just the immediate issue of staff working in substandard conditions, I was just wondering if we couldn't have Ricky and Rick and Robin go over there and look specifically. First of all, go through that. What do they mean by what are the substandard conditions? And then look at it and see if there's not an immediate fix that could be done, not necessarily as part of this, but I'm looking at the ARPA funds. And as far as I can tell, we're getting $3 million and the estimates for a soup to nuts renovation of Lincoln Hall right now are right around 1.6. So it looked like there should be a significant amount of money left over. And I'm not saying you're gonna rebuild the entire public works department, but you may have enough there to address the immediate need and then break that rebuild into phases so that we can do phase one right away and get the staff out of their substandard conditions and get them some more decent working conditions and then phase in the next two things with the usual funding, either capital project or applying for grant or even a bond or something like that. That's what I was trying to get at, but I'm not saying we should short change the renovation of Lincoln Hall, but unless I'm way off, it looks like even if we really, even if we did 1.8 million or $1.9 million rebuild of Lincoln Hall, there still should be a pretty significant amount of ARPA funds left over. And since that money sort of is, the genesis of that money is because of a pandemic, it's about health, then we should be looking to make all of our buildings healthy. You're here, George. Well said. Thanks. Trustees, anything else about to Lincoln? That's really helpful. Thank you all, plenty of notes here to go from. And our next steps are, to reconnect with John Alden and to hone in on one of these options. And then also to engage with staff stakeholders, as you suggested, George, those who have been around and utilized the buildings to see what kind of input they have, hopefully getting back to you all sometime in April with some final designs for approval so that we can get some blueprints drawn and get this out to RFP for this summer with construction starting in the fall. But John did feel confident assuming that somebody gives us an appropriate bid for the RFP and accepts the offer that we could be done with construction by the spring and have people in this and to Lincoln for the start of the new city year on 7-1, 2023. If I could just add one thing, Brad, I think I just wanted to reemphasize. I would also try to talk to Susan McNamara Hill. She was in that building, she spent most of her career in that building and she can give you a really good idea of what the assistant clerk, what the needs are and where that desk might best be located. So I really recommend talking to her about it as well as Terry. Yep, yep, yeah, all stakeholders will be included and Susan as our clerk treasurer, obviously will be included. And I would just also, you know, plant a very early seed that, you know, with all the things you all are considering with local option tax and some other things, you know, considering a bond at some point in the future of, you know, fixing the public works facility, fixing some issues that are at the fire department, considering some recreation needs in the community, gym space, you know, parlaying all of those things into a bond and utilizing local option tax maybe an appropriate consideration in the future. So I certainly would want to just put that out on the table early that that might be something you tackle, you know, in the next couple of years. Absolutely, Brad, thank you. So there is no motion necessary on this, I believe. So that would then bring us into 16 and an update on the masking effort. Yeah, so yeah, Raj and I have continued to be in touch with Ann Smith from Project N95 and unsuccessful so far in identifying source for high quality masks for mass distribution in the community. We did, the village in town just received some procedural masks, which are kind of those, those blue ones, the surgical masks that you see a lot of people wearing, the state has provided those. So up for consideration or discussion tonight, there's two things. One is you have about 4,000 of those blue masks and how would you like those distributed in the community? They are in hand, they are on site. So it's just a matter of getting them out. And then the second, you know, part of that conversation is just if anybody has any great ideas of finding high quality masks, then feel free to share. Otherwise we are kind of at the mercy of our continued discussions with Project N95 and any other leads we have. I think part of this is I keep hearing from people, oh, I know where you can get them, but you can get a couple hundred if you're lucky. You're not gonna find bulk right now even still. So with things improving, I think we stay on it. And I think it's pretty clear that we'll be back in a situation at some point, hopefully longer than sooner. So, you know, if we had this effort, maybe a month earlier, we probably would have had great success before everything sort of flew off the shelves. But so I'd suggest we'll stay on this. And if, you know, the great thing happens that we don't need them, then we don't spend the money and we haven't spent it already. So, yeah, a little frustrating, but on the upside. You just muted yourself, Raj. I said on the upside, sorry, I don't know how I did that. Things are improving, so at least we have that going for us. I guess all I would add to this is in terms of how to distribute, I would think of it similar to like out and about where the community did a really good job of getting thousands of dollars of vouchers out to two individuals. So I would say that seems to work for vouchers. I think that could work for masks. I have no idea how many each person should be able to get. I think you guys can figure that out. But I think that that method worked once and very well worked again. The bummer about these is that they're single use as opposed to the other. So we'll have to talk about that. And interesting breakdown for the state as to what each community got in terms of what the village got and how they compared it with the town. So I mean, I'd encourage you Brad to have a conversation with whoever's in possession of them to re-explore the allocation calculation for the town, I think at 40% of the entire town population, the village got 40% of the village population. So that's just the classic. It's not a huge amount difference, but it might be worth the conversation if we're trying to distribute them. Or maybe I'm just nitpicking. In terms of any potential populations though, I do wonder about having some available at the senior center for those participants to take with them, use a lot of their. And in particular, I also wonder about Whitcomb Woods and the senior affordable housing development that's in our community and whether they have a need for masks or for them, their staff. I think those could be some opportunities and we did discuss in this effort, making sure that our own staff received some of them as well. So we can trust ease any other comments on this or I can turn it over to public comment. Andy Cooper, why don't you go ahead and mute yourself and floor is yours. My favorite thing to unmute myself. I would very much like to, I'm sorry that I missed a little bit of what's been going on. I missed a meeting or two and I don't know how many, I would like to take an attempt, a quick one. I have three places I would like to check for N95s or KF94s or KN95s. And I think those are the three styles that you would want to distribute if I understand correctly. What volume were you seeking please? 10,000, 2,000, 4,000, 22,000. I think we were around 10 or so thousand to start with Raj or Brad. Yeah, you two have been leading this. Correct, 10,000. Does anybody, would you just, Brad, you think I'm just gonna bump into the same stuff you do? I think I could maybe, but I want to try. Great, if you want to forward any leads you have that might cut down on some of the back and forth. That's all right. Oh, I was going to try and then connect. I wasn't going to, I don't want to do anything. I don't need to send you 100 emails. I was going to try, try, try. And if I get a bite, I was going to give it up to you. Or I can give, or I can give. Yes, that would be great. If you could forward that. Yeah, great. I might, there was one more. If you could forward that to me and Raj, that would be great. Great, I will do that. And then I agree with the, I think that having the blue surgical mask that senior centers and places where people don't remember to have them but need them, like at a library, everywhere that someone might be like, ah, and then have them. Sorry, I got a little overly excited and I forgot that I don't actually use it at that table. Thank you for letting me talk. And I will email Raj and Brad once about it. Thank you. Thank you, Annie. Any other comments from the public? Seeing nothing. I think we are, again, all set with this agenda item. So that would take us into the new six E, which is the city manager committee appointments. Yeah, I think we're going to talk about these in executive session. Raj and Amber interviewed all 11 applicants and have some updates for you all and some decision-making opportunities once you get out of the executive session. Thank you. So just for some housekeeping then. So what we're going to do is we're going to go into executive session and we'll talk. I don't know how long this is going to take. So I would just ask for the public's patience as we will then come back into the public session, likely make a decision, and then continue on with the rest of the agenda. So, so everybody's aware. Yes, Kathy. Hold on. I can't seem to get my video to work, but how long do you think the first executive session will last? And do you need me to continue on when you're in there until the end of the meeting? Raj, Brad, Amber, I don't know if either of you have thoughts in terms of how long this first part may take. I hope it'll take very long. Okay. 20, 30, 10. 15, 20 minutes at most. Would you like me to stick around? If you don't mind. I don't mind. Who's, yeah, I'm good with staying. As I say, the only other things we have left from that, well, yeah, why don't you hang around? We'll do. Thank you, Kathy. Does anybody have the motion up for executive session? Sure. I move that we go into executive session, discuss the appointment of public officers under the provision of Title I, Section 313A3 of the Vermont Statutes and include the Recreation Director. I'll second. Thank you, Raj. Thank you, George. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed, please say nay. That's unanimously. Thank you. So, public, we will be back in a few minutes. Back into our regular session of the February 22nd, 2022, trustees meeting just to summarize the conversation we had. There were 11 fantastic applicants for the Hiring and Recruitment Committee for the new city manager for the city of S-Extension. Trustees Traula and Tebow have interviewed all of the candidates. They had great feedback on all of the members and so much so that what we're going to do is we are going to have instead of one committee of 11 people and two trustees, meaning we would need to cut some of the stellar volunteers who applied, we're going to have one hiring committee and one recruitment committee, so two separate committees. And a conversation we're going to continue to have is whether or not there will be trustee involvement in these committees. So let's just go back to that one portion here, trustees, as to whether or not we want to have a trustee on each of the committees, either as full-fledged members and or what was mentioned as the ex-officio, so that that way we can be there if questions are necessary, but not necessarily participate as the decision maker. George, why don't you take it off? I, you know, I'm not opposed to the ex-officio idea, but I would kind of lean towards having an active trustee involved because I think that you might want to make sure that that connection between the current board exists. We're kind of in a real state of flux right now. So in that regard, I mean, I'm not trying to push, but and I know Amber and Raj, you've done this, so I'd be happy to volunteer myself for one of these if that helps. But on the other hand, if the rest of you feel strongly that we don't need an active trustee, I'll go with the flow. I don't have really strong feeling, but I think it might be wise in this case just to have an active trustee involved in both of these groups. Probably just one is necessary. We don't need two on each committee. We just need one on each of the committees. That's fine, I don't know. Just my opinion. That sounds very reasonable, George. So there would be one on each, right? Yeah, I mean, if I can just continue. I think of the people who have been trustees and who it'd be, Lori and Elaine are fairly recent, but other than that, I'm trying to, I'm gonna make a huge faux pas here since we're speaking foreign languages. I'm gonna forget somebody, but I mean, we're just in a real state of flux right now. So I think we really need someone who is kind of up to the moment. Sounds good. So then for the sake of the motion for tonight, we would have a motion to empower trustees, Chala and Tebo to select which of the 11 community volunteers would be appointed to the recruitment committee and to the separate hiring planning committee. I will say so moved. Thank you, Raj. Is there a second? I'll second. Thank you, George. Is there any further discussion? I would just say Amber Raj, thank you for interviewing the 11 applicants for this meeting. Thank you very much, guys. I really appreciate it. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, please signify by saying nay. So that passed unanimously. Thank you. And to close that loop in terms of the trustee representatives, George, you volunteered before? Yeah, either one. I mean, someone else is gonna have to volunteer. We're gonna need someone else who's gonna volunteer for this, right? I'm not getting both committees. It's that we, right? You're not gonna get both, no. Okay, good. So I'll, you know, I don't have a strong, I'll take either one. I don't have a strong preference. So one of you wants to volunteer for the other one and you have a strong preference, I'll go with, I'll accommodate you. What I would say is Amber and Raj, you've gone this far. If either one of you wants to continue on, please feel free. I won't stop you. If you don't want to, and you want to take the time not to, I can do that. We'll think about it. Okay. Why don't we, once we split the committees and stuff, we'll figure out whether we're gonna stay on or whatnot. Yeah. I do think there is always some, it's nice to have the consistency of that phase too. So. And if both of you want to stay on and you don't need me, I won't be completely crushed by that. I'd be okay with that. So, just want to make my phone. Find another committee for you, George. All right. Here, here. All right, so then. The committee for George will be the committee. So then I look forward to, in the reading file of our next meeting, seeing who you all selected and who's going where. And again, just want to thank the 11 applicants. Really excited for the, for having some youth voice in these committees. That's something that we have not done in terms of a trustee appointed committee. So really looking forward to this opportunity and really looking forward to many of the volunteers who have not volunteered before. Thank you again to all of you. And so with that item, we are now onto agenda item 6F, which is the town contracts memo, our town contract item. This, any, let me rephrase that. We are going to have some of this conversation in executive session, but before we get to that, this is all such a time for a general debrief if there are any other conversations that we want to have in terms of a reflection from our past joint meeting. Yeah, Andrew, thanks. I would just say that since the last joint meeting, there have been some emailing forth with the town manager and everybody's on the same page in terms of continuing these conversations between now and the March 28th joint meeting. Both boards have three meetings, including tonight where they can talk, consider what they want these contracts to look like. So I don't think we need to wait until March 28th for everybody to see a new draft. I think we can have conversations in between. We can exchange new drafts so that on March 28th, what we're looking at is something that both boards have seen, have reviewed, have had attorneys review, and hopefully it's something to be able to sign off on. It would be great to get to that point. I do believe at this point, everything is in the select board stands in terms of their responses to that last meeting. I appreciate how far and how much of a collaborative process it has been to date in continuing that process. Are there any other comments on that or questions? Okay. In hearing none, there is a portion of this conversation that we would have an executive session, but I would ask that we get through the rest of the agenda so that that way those in attendance don't have to sit through the rest of the meeting. I don't, Andrew, I'm just gonna interrupt. I don't see a lot of guests tonight, but do we wanna take any public comment on any of this before we leave for the evening? Sure, happy to. And I would just throw that out in general that if there is an agenda item that somebody doesn't want to speak to as was done before, please do raise your hand. If I don't see your hand that I'm not going to call on you. So sure, I can call that out. And if there is a member from the public who wished to raise something to our attention or speak to this item, please do raise your hand. Happy to give you the floor time. Seeing no hands going up, that we can bring it back to the board. And since we're gonna come back to this, let's go into the consent agenda. Move when you accept the consent agenda. Thank you, Ross. Second. Thank you, George. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say nay. All right, pass unanimously, thank you all. And into the reading file and board member comments. I do have a couple of things I just wanted to raise. First up, in case anybody missed it, H-491, the official city of Essex Junction Charter has passed the house. So take a moment and applaud that. And in particular, wanna thank each of you on the trustees who helped us to craft that and get it to where it is. I wanna thank the community who was able to very quickly get a significant number of signatures to have that advisory question on the ballot in such a short time period, as well as your input throughout this process to date. Wouldn't have been able to get where we are without that. As well as we also would not be where we are if it were not for Lori Houghton and Karen Dolan, do need to absolutely appreciate the work that they have done in the legislature to get that to where it is. So wanna really make sure that the community understands that Karen and Lori have done fantastic work to get this to where it is. So thank you to both of you. Also, I want the trustees just to heads up. It's likely in the next couple of weeks we're going to be getting a request and or some interest from the community on a grant through the state's agency on commerce and community development and their Better Places grant. So just giving you all the heads up that there may be something coming from the community on that one. Another portion at our last, at this past joint meeting we approve of a resolution for Evan Teach and we just love for that to get signed. So not sure if we need to physically sign something if our existing digital signatures can be used. But I think that since Evan's last day is Friday we'd love to get that officially signed as well as put on our website for anybody who wants to be able to reference that. That would be appreciated. And along those lines, Evan, today is a 20 seconds and your last day is Friday. So this is our last meeting together. Again, just want to extend my sincerest appreciation to you, your efforts getting us to where we are really helping to get us into conversations in places we have not been as a community. Your management as it's all in that resolution has been fantastic. So thank you, Evan. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Evan. And Evan, I just want to second that as a new board member, not having done this before, your patience as a manager and guidance has been greatly appreciated. And I value very much and I wish you the best. Thanks for everything. I don't think people realize how much you've done for the community, so I appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks for the kind words. I agree. I think what they've seen from you, Evan, what the public has seen is the tip of the iceberg. I know how many, many, many hours. And I don't know of any other municipal manager that's had to deal with two different boards for this many years. And you did it splendidly. And it was a remarkable feat. And so we do appreciate everything that you did. You put in a lot of hours, many, many hours. And those of us who were there know it and appreciate it. You know, along that line, something that I don't think we've named before, Evan was absolutely the manager for two municipalities and had two boards that he worked for. Sometimes did not always see eye to eye and had to very skillfully navigate that dilemma and that dichotomy that existed. At the same time, that also meant, if members of the public think that attending these meetings is boring, or if attending these meetings gets lengthy and interrupts our nightly sleep, just imagine what that was like for Evan, doing it for both the trustees and for the select board meetings. Not to mention the number of weekend and night meetings that he had attended for things like out and about. And I know Evan, you also attended some planning commission meetings and other committees for both municipalities. So that 40 hour a week salary was certainly a lot more than just 40 hours and well deserved. And again, I appreciate all that you've done for our community. Exactly. Thank you. Thank you. Pleasure serving both communities. Thank you, Evan. Is there anything else, trustees? No, I'm good for now. Okay. So with nothing else, you all need to be patient while I find the executive session member again. Go ahead and make the motions. That would be amazing. I move to find the premature general public knowledge regarding the villages contracts for the town of Essex who clearly placed the village at a substantial disadvantage because the trustees risk is closing its negotiation strategy if it discusses the proposed contract terms in public. Thank you. I entertain in seconds. I'll second. Thank you, Raj. Thank you, George. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say nay. Pass unanimously. Thank you. And who do we want? Okay, I see. Move that we go into executive session to discuss potential contracts with the town of Essex under the provisions of total one, section 313A1 of the run statutes and include the recreation director. I'll second. In terms of any other discussion, is there anybody else we would like to invite? Evan, do you want the night off? I love the night off. I don't know what I was saying. And just for the record, okay. Good. Have a great night. Have a great chat. Thank you. All right. All those in favor of the motion to signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say nay. Pass unanimously. Everybody thank you for your attendance. Evan, thank you again. Can't thank you enough. Take care Evan.