 I didn't see any accidents, but I'm surprised I didn't. I guess we won't have it in here. Yeah, we may want to have it. Who else is missing? Greg Douglas was coming. He was pulling in. What's that? Greg was pulling in as I was walking in. Let's give it another minute. We need a warning. Okay, Mike, ready? Welcome to the Essex Junction Trustees Meeting. And we'll open up the Select Board Meeting of February 6, 2018. But first, join us for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Alright, welcome everybody. And if we're not talking hot enough, just raise your hand and we'll talk even louder. In the first order of business, agenda additions or changes? Evan? We have an addition for item 5G. They are the minutes of December 18th. Okay. And then we have item 6B, the update on governance questions and answers, Q&A. 6B, gotcha. Just for clarity, the minutes of December 18th are also just for the trustees, right? Okay, so we'll deal with that when we get to that item. Trustees, do I hear a motion to amend the minutes? I move. The agenda. I move to amend the agenda as presented. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. We need the same motion from the Select Board. So moved. Second. Any further discussion about amend the agenda to include these items? Very none of those in favor? Second. Aye. Aye. Okay. Passes analysis. Thanks. Okay, so first order of business. First of all, I'd like to invite members for, whether you're here for the Select Board or the trustees or both members of the public who have something to say, question to ask. Now is the time to speak. Anything on the agenda tonight that anyone wants to comment or ask questions about? I don't know. Everyone good? Okay. By the way, is everyone signed in? All right. Thank you. So we will move. It also turned to cell phones that silence would be appreciated as well. Well, Lori can't do that because she's not. Except Lori. Okay. So first order of business is a discussion of a shared website for town of Essex and village of Essex Junction by Rob Haluba. Rob, come on up and talk to us about this. Do you have a space? No. Lori, I'm sure we can make some space. What is your question? Yeah, sure. Okay. Do you like this? Thank you, everyone, for beginning the event or having me here to speak. I know that some of you have been aware through various meetings that we're looking, we were actively going forward with a new website to sign, or new website vendor for shared, for our shared websites. So just as a little brief history where we're at right now, we currently have 14 different websites that are hosted by various areas of the town in the village. So it's more than just the Essex Junction.org website or the Essex.org website. There's a variety of other ones that people have set up throughout the years. So our goal here is to have a combined website, a central point for residents to come and get information easily. And currently where we stand with these 14 different websites, that's not an option. It's not easy for people to find information across the various websites. Within some of the websites, in particular the town website, it's very difficult to find any information. Searching doesn't work well. You can certainly hunt through it and find stuff. I would have to believe that the residents and anyone looking for information on that would become incredibly frustrated. I certainly know myself would be frustrated if I was going to these websites and trying to find anything, you know, basic information that should be readily available. So about eight months ago, there was a group of us, Shannon Lunderville, myself and Darby Mayville, started looking at different providers. And we had some criteria as to what we were looking for that brought us to four different providers. So one was Civic Plus, the other was Gov Office. That's the town's current website provider. We looked at Echo Pixel, that's the village's current provider. And we looked at Revise. That's a similar website to Civic Plus and Gov Office. I think the town of South Burlington used them to convert their website recently within last year or two. So we looked at those four because they, aside from the two that are currently providing the service, the other two had a lot of the functionality that we were hoping to regain out of the new design. So that was some of the criteria that we looked at. The criteria that we were looking for was a vendor that was experienced in municipal website design and support, a website vendor that also gave us a lot of modules to choose from. So there's a variety of things that we currently use on our various websites that are provided by other parties. So we were plugging those modules into our current website. What we were hoping to get was a system that had a lot of the features already built into it or they can easily add into the overall website with ease. We were also looking at the size of the provider, the security that they could offer, the ease of use for our employees for managing their own content. That was a big part of what we were hoping to get out of from the IT department. We're currently handling all the updates for both the town and the village. The other websites that's kind of handled all of the places by the various departments that put those sites up. So we wanted a system that we can really turn over to our staff with some training but relative ease for them to get to know it. And the last thing was cost. So those were our criteria. So we went through that and found that Acidic Plus met all of the criteria and in some areas exceeded it with the exception of cost. They are the most expensive of them and not a whole lot more but it's definitely more expensive for the upfront costs. The overall annual costs are roughly about what we're paying now for all 14 sites. So that's going to be a bit of a wash as far as how much we're spending annually once we go to this for increasing services. So we're adding a bunch of stuff that we currently don't have. And I'll get into that in a second. So even though the cost is about the same, it's really not a good comparison because we are adding so much more to what we have now. So I can get into kind of what it is that they offer that we really like. So and I'll give you a look. Aside from that, I'll also give you a little bit of history about Acidic Plus. So Acidic Plus is a provider of municipal websites. They have 3,500 plus websites or clients that they support in Canada and the United States. They've got 300 plus employees. They have live support, 365, 247. They've got 20 years of experience in municipal government website design. They had their website service over 70 million residents in the U.S. and Canada. So they are out there touching a lot of the population through their websites. They have 40 different modules that we were able to choose from. For this project, we've selected four of those modules. And there's definitely a lot of room for growth going forward with a lot of the other modules. For example, they have an HR module for onboarding. There was one for streaming video and putting that up on your website. So there's a lot to choose from. But as far as this project, we've got four that we've chosen that I think are a good starting point for us. It certainly gets us to the next level as far as, A, communicating to the public with ease. Easy for our employees to handle uploading and maintaining their content. So continuing on some of the other benefits. They are ADA Section 508 compliant and that is the latest compliance with ADA for website. They have multiple geographically diverse data centers that are being maintained 247, 365 for attacks, system outages, hardware failures, whatever might happen. They're fully redundant. They have a uptime of 99.9% guaranteed to us. Part of their agreement and part of having it maintained by them is that our software is going to be automatically updated. We're not going to have to worry about, okay, are we at the latest patch level with our servers, with our databases, with the other software components that are being installed for us. Out of our hands, they handle it and they have a team of people that are devoted to handling this type of thing. They've never been hacked or had a denial of service attack on any of their websites. That being said, if that ever was to happen, they have a very strict mitigation process for dealing with it. There's a project team that's going to work with us throughout the whole process. And this is a real good selling point, especially for where we're at. And that's trying to unify the two communities. In four years, free of charge, we're able to do a complete redesign of our website. So as this process continues on, things might be more merged at that in four years time. So it's not something we need to worry about spending another $30,000 or whatever it is to have our website redesigned because we're more aligned than we were today. So that gives us a real nice feature that they offer with their service. They have social media connectors, so it helps for that communication process that we're looking to do is get the community more involved. And so that's kind of their benefits that I really liked about their company. So on to kind of the general idea. Again, this is all still high level. We just recently had a kickoff project with them, so it's still everything's in the preliminary stages. But what we're looking at is we purchased what are called department headers. And those department headers are four unique pages that have sub pages and all the information within it. But the framework is going to be similar between the pages. So a person isn't getting lost once they go from one to the other. So you're not wondering, okay, I clicked on that link over on this bar. And now when I go to that page, that link's down in the bottom. And so everything's going to be consistent across the four department headers. But what we've talked about as far as what those pages, those department headers are going to look at, look like, the first one is a landing or home page. And we thought that that's a good page for the, we refer to it as the Essex community page. It's kind of a page that I want to, for lack of a better word, sells the community. But it gives a lot of information for people about the community. It's more high level. It's not, you know, where do I pay my tax and stuff like that. It's more of what's great about the town and village of Essex. From that page, you're able to go to the various other pages. So there's going to be a page for the town. That's all town-specific information. There'll be a page for the village. Also, all village-specific information. And then the fourth page, we're still on deciding. I suggested possibly a unified red page. But another option is a joint page where information that has been merged, that's the page it goes to. So that one's kind of, I've decided, we're not. And all four of them are relatively un-decided. The two are definite. And then the two, we're still open to working with what makes the most sense. So that's the four pages. What our goal is, is to combine 13 of the 14 websites. The exception to that, the 14th website is the Brown-Ava Library. And we'll have a pointer from the village website to Brown-Ava website. We did that because they had just recently gone through a website redesign. So we didn't want to kind of throw away all the work that they put into that and go to this at this point. So we wanted them to continue to operate just like that. And it's easy enough for us to just put a pointer to their current page. There's certainly flexibility in the future to pull them in, if and when that time comes. But as the initial project rolls out, we're just going to have a pointer to that. We're going to point to have a mass notification system for emergency broadcasts. Also for any sort of internal broadcasts. So people can sign up for rent notifications, for library notifications, for public works, for general community information. So that's something that we really don't have now across a lot of platforms. We don't have the ability to just quickly go and send it to everyone that's signed up for this program. The benefit of that program is it's an SRE map driven program. So you can do geocircles to specifically target certain areas for broadcast notifications. So like last year with the water main grant, you can draw a circle around it and say notify the people that are in this circle that the water main is broken or where you've got a boil of your water. So it's just sending out a notification to the whole town. And then people are like, well, that doesn't really apply to me yet. I don't know why I'm getting that. Also one of the other modules that we purchased is a request tracking module. And that is for, think about it, it's an alternative to C-click fix where the public is able to send a notification to the public works that there is a pothole, there's a water coming out of the street, whatever. They'll get it just the same way they do in C-click fix. It's a reporting function to it. We can pull those reports. But with this module, we're also able to include internal requests. So we're able to eliminate the health desk software that we currently have and bundle that into this. So we have a single point here, employees can just go to the intranet and say, here's, I want to open up a health desk ticket. I want to open up a request for there's a building problem and when we have our building's person, that's where the request will go. So that's kind of the idea of what the overall view of what we're looking at for the website design again is still very preliminary. And so I know some of the questions probably come up on why we need a new website. And I think if you just look at the panel's website alone, you can see that it's dated aside from not being refined information, it just looks dated. It needs a refresh. But this is a good opportunity to bring everything into a single website that is easy to administer. It allows for, there's no need for cross training of employees. So if we train the rec department to update their content, if they need someone to fill in for them, there's no learning curve on the system. They just need access to that particular area of the website to do modifications. So everyone will be trained on, everyone that we deal with content editors will be trained on how to do this. And we can easily switch into different departments and help out where the security is a big concern. Everyone I think is aware that, you know, that's a real common thing right now that people are really concerned with security. And with the provider of this size, they have, again, a team of individuals devoted to cybersecurity. They're monitoring this stuff 24-7. That's important. Some people might ask, well, it's just a town or village website. What's the big deal if it was compromised? Well, it doesn't look good. It puts egg on her face. We don't want to have our website have a picture on it that says you've been hacked and whatever and trying to fix that. Just we look poor. So we want to have a system that's highly secure and works for both our residents for ease of use and for our internal employees as well. Efficiency of administration. So like right now we are administering at least the two websites between for the IT department. So Darby, Shannon, Martin, myself are all doing that. But it's a bit much. It's a little cumbersome because we're uploading things multiple times whereas just uploading it once and then having failures to it from a central repository is certainly much more efficient than it go. And we're dealing with a variety of different requests throughout the week. So while five minutes here, five minutes there might not seem like a lot it's all week that we're dealing with multiple posts. So over the course of a year it really does add up. And so we're looking at something that we only have one spot to post things and it's so much easier. So that's kind of the overview of it. There was a good example that I've been using and I don't know if you want to bring it up if you're good. So don't look at the actual look past the design of the page because I'm not totally keen on that. That's on that municipalities but their web design team they work with Citib Plus. This is what they seem to like. But what I'm showing you here is how they incorporated a village into a town and how that's worked. This is the town of Victor New York. Victor New York? Victor New York dot org. Sorry, NY. And so this is the town in western New York that's about 20,000 residents they've got a village incorporated in their town so they're similar. So this is the main page for them. It's the town page. We're going to have an actual main page so it's different to this. But if you look on that button right there there's a village of Victor New York. So click on that. And then you'll see it's slightly different. The greens might be different but that logo at the top is different. Again, I don't really like the overall layout. I don't find the colors that have them. That's all on us to decide. When we're working with this it's a blank canvas. It's whatever we want. But this is a good example that they have experience in communities like ours. Can I interrupt you? Could you go to the Village of Essex Junction website? Thank you. I just want to point something out that was very specific that when we updated your scroll down we immediately see news. That was why we designed the website to be the way it is. As soon as you land on the page you get hit in the face with all kinds of stuff that's going on in the village. That's what we wanted. We didn't want a pretty picture and then you have to go dig into it to find the stuff you're looking for. As soon as you came to the Village of Essex Junction it was here's everything that's happening. That's kind of a priority. That's fair. If you scroll down there's Bernie Sanders and there's all kinds of stuff water bills are due all that stuff. That was really important and when we talk about it the town needed a new website about a year after it was published I think. No offense. You got none taken. We've updated our several times so that concern is I don't want to see us go backwards in time to something that because this really works and suddenly I'm looking at something that is more of a clunky thing. That's fine. Those are valid points and certainly as we get to that design phase these are the types of things that we're going to want to know what works now, what doesn't work what would you like to see stuff that isn't in here that would make things a whole lot better. All of that is absolutely something we want to look into and certainly address. That's a priority. That can be done. That's kind of the nice nice piece of having these four department headers. While the framework is relatively the same within that page the village page can have the news right on the front and maybe the town page doesn't want that or maybe we do but either way we don't have to go with one versus the other they can be independent about their own stuff like that. We were always thinking more thinking a bit more in terms of the conversation think more in terms of New York Times as opposed to a website like Stuff, Pictures, News Calendar, Events Right at you. It's a tool to communicate to the public. That's really what it boils down to it's not we're not in the business of selling stuff so it's not a marketing website it's not that it's for providing information to the public and internal employees as well. So you mentioned that there would be a time to talk about design so is now not the time to say there's some things that can you certainly bring them up but no this is kind of just a high level thing and as we get further down the path of the projects those are definitely these are the discussions we're going to start having with everyone. I think if it's all right there's several things on here that I think we absolutely need to have if you don't mind by saying them now. Okay thank you. So on the Village website and this is an underutilized feature but we have a public input section where we post a question and people can just post their responses what do you think about this what are your thoughts on that we haven't used it to the extent that we would like to but it's nice to know it's in there so I would like to have something like that so you're talking about a two-way communication yes. You can see it on the Village website at the top news and public input on the top menu bar there you go so topics for public input you know it's not like a facebook page where people just randomly post things but we specifically had a question about what do you think of the design five corners and that was a specific question and people responded. Does that get better? Does that get better? Darby, I believe yeah and I see on the Victory website that they have a pretty robust notify me section that lets you choose what kinds of notifications you want so I'm assuming we'll have a variety of choices like meeting minutes yeah I mean they can get as granular as we want and you can be high level and you just want everything because Village residents already have an RSS feed that they've signed up for this is to complement an RSS feed but it's more than that so the emergency broadcast piece of it is huge and we don't have that now it's essential I'm a little concerned about the idea of replacing C-click fix we made a big effort to make that a thing and it's become very popular and useful so can you incorporate other widgets that you can incorporate? oh yeah no it's going to be built in in fact I had a meeting with Ricky Jones and Chris Stoddard to look at a demo of what they offered and they liked this product Fargo C-click fix is it easier to use just in general it's much easier for them to get around does it have an older app? yeah the price of C-click fix is high so this the annual cost is going to be washed but we're out of these services and removing C-click fix is kind of a big chunk of what we're spending now on these services it's a lot of money the service they're offering is considerably less than C-click fix I just have like over two years you can have as many questions as you want will residents be able to pay taxes, water bills and license fees and those kinds of things online? probably not right initially but these are this is definitely a component that is we can put into it and we can look into it now in planning cases as well I know in the town we do pay so we can we don't necessarily need to use their service we could continue to use our service but we could also look at replacing our current service and just plug it in into the C-click fix service as well okay and my next question is you talked about the possibility of the fourth header page being a combination site for REC so I'm curious with our co-location conversation going on and both REC departments use the same registration software but I noticed that Civic Plus has a module for REC registration what is the thought about that? well they're trying to sell me on it and I said no we're using a remark like an essence junction we've got a really good price from our provider right around the corner from us so no and they totally understood that and if that ever was to change we certainly could look at their module I know that both Holchester and Burlington just left from our systems to go to Civic Plus their REC program so there are communities around here that are starting to use it it probably is a good program but I don't think this is necessarily the time for that I don't think it's a great idea to remove that business from our systems they've given us a great rate up to this point so and last question I promise for now our Channel 17 widgets will they be able to be incorporated in clickable agendas that you too yeah everything all that stuff that we have now they've built right back into it yeah Bill have access to all the analytics too yeah there and if I didn't mention it we have a devoted account that works for them that's monitoring our analytics and finding if people are having to click three, four, five times this is something and it's constant that seems like the information people are looking for they work with us to move that to say hey I think this would be better on this page less clicks people seem to want this information it's taking them a lot of time to get to it so not only do we have an account rep that is monitoring our analytics but we also have access to those analytics as well okay and can you easily go back to any page back to the home page about having to go backwards just one click and you're back in case you went down a rabbit hole and say oh this is wrong I don't want to have to back out I just want to jump sure and generally that's done with like that the whole time and that would be consistent across all the sub pages from there okay super so all the mobile devices these sites are going to work just fine we sometimes get public record requests and it would be nice to maybe go through what all those requests were and see which ones make sense that we can actually make it available to the public if that's really what they're looking for and also with the opt-in push notifications they need to have a disclaimer or something that says look when you give us your email it's public record so make sure that they click yep understand that before they go so that nobody gets surprised when you know that's public information absolutely and with that whenever any of these things happen by default they're being put into the emergency broadcast feature so if you sign up for WREC you're also getting signed up for emergency stuff you know I can't imagine anyone who had any issue with that and is that an email certificate or can we do it for a text as well you can do email text or phone call often people are going to sign up for that but definitely email and text are probably going to be the primary sources of communicating and it's also that communication can turn down for two ways as well so if the police they were actively responding to something and they were going back and forth they have the ability to go back and forth through the text but you also have the ability to turn that off if you're sending it out to the public hey you know the soccer fields are closed because of rain you don't necessarily need that two way communication for some certain things you know I mean it's something we certainly can look at and address but both two way or non-way communication Rob this is not a criticism and I'm very impressed and happy about all the bells and whistles and security and everything but I want to I think it's important for me to and my fellow trustees can disagree with me but I do want to just note something here again it's how this came to us okay the reason Elaine and I have so many questions about the Village website is because Elaine and Lori and EcoPixel and staff was a collaborative effort first of all to make the decision to design a new to have a new website and then we were all collaboratively very much involved in designing a new website this has the flavor of a decision that was made by staff and it's almost like a courtesy it's coming to us informing us that this decision has been made and we're being invited to jump on board and I think it's just one of the we talk about cultural differences in the Village and the town and I think this is one of those cultural differences where a decision to do something like this would be sort of initiated and be much more organic with the elected board involved at the beginning and not come to us sort of with an attitude of well this is something that's primarily up for staff to figure out and we'll let you participate to the extent that we think you know how to participate and don't take that the wrong way but I think it is there is an interesting cultural difference here it's sort of like the same thing with the building services person some of the other things we've seen where some of these decisions really in our sx junction world the trustees would be more involved right in the grassroots aspect okay and I hope we can keep that in mind as we move forward collaboratively okay no I'm sorry that's not no apologies necessary but I think this is something to note and I don't know did I miss speak or I would agree 100% okay it's it's different here because we're smaller and we're not really smaller in some ways in some ways but I would say that the the trustee board is accustomed to being included in the the genesis of the conversation we're thinking we should maybe do the website what do you think absolutely go do it and come back to us or yeah we want to be involved I think I appreciate that okay any other questions I just want to reiterate not to put more on it but I agree wholeheartedly with George any way we not that the trustee starts really really hard in our communications with our community and I think our website and our involvement and it was a big step forward in that as we move forward Irene are we too late recommendations are you bringing this to us for our feedback or are you just bringing it because it sounded like you were open to hearing our feedback and it's we still are in that very ordinary phase so but now I'm happy to hear anything really nice that's good at least as we move further along these are things we can be brought back to so yeah so I have a question about the four unique pages and I guess those are more like areas that you would send someone to I'm not sure on the victory website for example whether those pages would be the ones at the top or whether they would be the actual buttons I'm just trying to envision not that they would look like this but where do you envision them being yeah I mean these are things yeah I'm not entirely sure okay that's yeah there's a variety of different ways to do it certainly nothing on the side is done with the sidewalls that's good that's gone so it's definitely you're going to see those top venues and or that middle menu I have a bunch of questions guys here Jack what is the deployment date yeah so we're looking at probably the end of September is the rollout probably by the middle it's the end of June there will be something some sort of demo that we can start to show people and give you a good feel of what we're looking at and they're probably about even before that but we mock-ups and stuff like that and we can certainly share with people and get some feedback on as well as you're putting this together do you foresee how many pointers to the existing 13 or 14 websites so that people get a sense of you know if you want to find fire it's under this outside the village head or this town head or this consolidated head or I mean people could people get a sense of that by you using pointers just temporarily before we design all these those addresses and pointing to the specific spots within the page cause I could see that actually redoing 14 websites and putting them in that format could take forever but to have pointers to them in the meantime might be just a nice way for people to get used to the new format that has a bookmark and stuff that'll just bring them to the new page nothing will change as far as the address they enter that's good cause I mean at some point sxfire.com or whatever it's called it's gonna go away right I mean no we can keep that we're gonna keep that domain we don't want to lose it we own it now so there's no reason we would not want to we would want to lose it in fact it was one or two that I just bought recently just so we have totally won sxfire.com sxvt.org and we've got a variety of domain some other people can't grab them and kind of make it look like our community so we talked a lot about using the word town because town is gonna be one of your areas and yet town means a lot of different things to a lot of people so like if we landed on the town of sx page here and village was like the first button in the middle and you had outside the village stuff in the second or consolidating stuff on the third you know what I'm saying town doesn't help anybody if that's an area because that area could have so many different definitions so I think when you're looking at your four unique pages the three left after you have a landing page I'd ask that you keep that in mind but there's some different groups more descriptive just more accurate you know outside the village planning isn't town-wide planning even though we call it town planning but town assessor is town-wide so if we're not gonna make the whole website sx the town consolidating or not and then one of the buttons is village for village only things I just think we'd be really careful when we allocate those four pages to make sure they not only make sense but then going forward as we consolidate more things it's a natural progression to not having to open up new modules or shut down modules but areas because I think whatever areas you set up now should be perfectly sensible like I think this victory page is probably the whole town of victory Victor so the village of victor as long as there's a town of victor that has even one department and one budget thing is gonna have that button in the middle sure if it fully consolidates into the town of victor maybe that button goes away and we're talking about maybe doing that here but we haven't come up with that yet so I would expect the village to have its own button but not necessarily outside the village to have its own button not necessarily for consolidating to have its own button so I think just thinking through what are we as a town and what does that mean that word town so one of the things we've been talking about internally a little bit is a lot of alternative areas make it more customer friendly for our residents just physically every single day we have people who walk in and they're looking for they want to pull a building permit and to walk into two Lincoln street you can tell it's not yet to go but to get to a mainstream device first so part of what we need to figure out with this website is when somebody comes in and they're not quite sure if they're a town resident outside the village or a village resident but they just want to get a building permit we have to figure out a way for them to click on a building permit and then figure out if you live inside the village and then direct them to that proper space and that's somebody the back one stuff we're going to have to do here but kind of looking at it as a town government functions and village government functions and if somebody knows that they need to get a village building permit they can click on Village of Essex Junction if they're just building permit and not sure where trying to figure out how to direct them so those are kind of the conversations we're having on how to best serve the residents and one of the other things with that that we talked about is that if there are forms or any sort of documents that are the same you can regardless of where you click on it if it's in the village side or it's in the town side it's the same form, it's the same repository where it's stored you don't have to store it in two different places you just click on it once there it is I have a follow up on that what's the document storage plan for Civic Plus today does it come with server space and are you what is going to be the process for determining how much history goes up there in terms of meeting packets minutes, flats, all that kind of stuff so we start out with 25 giga available storage it's a fairly large, fairly good amount especially for the type of stuff that we're storing the files are relatively small excuse me where that becomes a problem is if we start to look at storing video and that's a whole nother example so initially this, I believe if we compare what we have now the amount of storage that we're using this is way more than enough and it gives us room for growth so it definitely has the capability of storing up on space but we can also add to that it's not like, okay once you have 25 giga start cleaning stuff all out because you're not giving it more then we don't have any physical space to give you that's not the case any other last questions here real quick on the fourth bullet down the record joint page at the end it says in the program it's pending confirmation are we waiting to hear back from Civic Plus that we can do this or are we waiting for confirmation of what's happening between internal, just internal talks that's the point where we're looking at kind of having the landing s6 community page then from there having the kind of about us tell people what s6 is one of the departments one of the bullets there and the fourth one is sort of up in the air should it be a combined wreck thing should it be a combined joint thing that's what that pending confirmation is okay everyone good okay can I ask a question yes Laurie and I'm sorry so what would be the process going forward to ask to receive updates and provide input to this new website ask at the board that's a good question I don't think we've really talked about that but I think what we have a workgroup that we've defined for this project so Greg, myself, Shannon, Darby and Tammy are on that workgroup so as we start moving forward with this I think those will come with figure out a good point and we'll start giving updates regular updates we can do additions to the reading files to the boards they've got a monthly basis or so and if we have something that we feel is ready to present a mock-up or a demo or a question we want Darby and Dorothy back on if we can bring that up as an agenda item great and then if they're how easy so let's say we get to that point and there are some things we would like to make is it easy with our vendor to request changes initially, yeah once when we're in the design phase absolutely we'll open this and work with them and tell them now that we're getting feedback that that doesn't work we'd like to change it to whatever and then move on once it's fully designed then we kind of agree that it looks good and the design changes we handle them we have to pay to have some involved design changes so then I'm assuming that this would already be happening but I'd like to put in a big clap before it goes final both boards final thank you Robin I'm not familiar with it but as they're building things with our direction is there an interim page that the public doesn't see but we kind of can see the Browndale library gets something like that so it's a hidden it's not a distributed a sandbox it's a website you can look at it like a sandbox it's open to the public but it's not a searchable address we would just give that address to the people we would distribute it to you guys and then say hey give us your feedback on what you think so far and I think that's around the July time end of June and Robin from what I'm hearing I think that culturally the village board would like to be more involved so I think maybe we can work with the committee and people that are working on it and start getting more feedback earlier on first thank you for being patient with us and letting us explore the many questions we have because this is it's a big project and it's the base of our community online so it's very important so thank you for the attention and I think the other thing is this is just one of the components of a communication strategy that's being formed for how we're going to communicate two ways with our community and multiple ways whether it's whatever the app du jour is whether it's Facebook or Twitter or whatever the next super app is going to be plus the ability to get out to the public for things like a night like tonight you know what we're doing how we're dealing with it if we have water main breaks if we have street closures if we have canceled meetings we all know your children are in soccer and every other sport if for whatever reason that is canceled change of time, change of venue we have the ability the other thing we also talked about is that one thing that you guys have in the village like here's a plan please comment on it or here's an idea please here's a survey it's a way for us to get some feedback and one of the things we talked about is like we did in the town with the gun discharge ordinance to geolock who can send us information having somebody from California or Australia give you a comment on five corners is nice but may not be relevant but somebody from inside the geographical location is the town of Essex that includes the village of Essex Junction is more important for what we would want the comment from so we're looking at that type of feature as well I have one unrelated IT question not for now but at a future time there was an article in seven days this week about the NEMRIC system I was wondering if anyone could ask about that and I would just like to have an input from you about whether our residence data was compromised in any way and what the situation was whether it needed to be addressed and what we're doing going forward not today we have a big agenda maybe a reading file memo would be helpful just to address the article thank you I can't stress enough how important it is this as part of a bigger communications plan to show that village residents are part of the town and nothing says that they're separate to me more than having two different areas one for town, one for village as you can map out here with four different pages so I would just caution you that doesn't reflect reality it doesn't send to me the right message that we're all one town I think that's where our guidance will come in we'll get to that in some future point I see that we've bought four pages so if we've already paid for a page that we don't need I'm worried about that there's other ways we could use it there's certainly we've definitely discussed if it wasn't if we went down a different path there were uses for these pages so it wasn't like you're just going to be blank pages well that seems to be the big hang up residents don't even know where they live and if we're not reinforcing that we're all one town first of all then what's the point of having one on the website anyways we'll have 14 we'll have two we'll have more than one I think this is a step in the right direction this gives us the framework to the future where we're all together it's simply time for the town to be up there on the website any other questions, comments thank you very much I'm going to ask for the board's indulgence due to the weather some members of the public couldn't be here right at the members of the public audience comment to be heard we've had someone come in after that if it's with the board's indulgence I would like to give this person an opportunity is that okay? absolutely ma'am would you like to talk to us can you state your name for the record it's non-discrimination so now I am working on a grant for a March women's fund and I was trying to see if I can get my municipality to help me with it it's only $10,000 it's one year time for $10,000 then it can progress into two year or extra $10,000 and it was really this council would lend credibility it would receive and acknowledge charitable contributions it would request records it would communicate regularity and projects and it's basically something I want to do for a viable careers as far as non- pregnancy for investment and economic services for low income women also that's just basically it I would really like the signature to be a sub grantee and communicate with production of the community of extension there is land in Group 15 that I was really dedicated with it's about five acres and $90,000 donor portal with it everyone can go up to Vermont's community foundation the deadline is tomorrow but I don't see anybody in the community that has worked on it so I got up and seen the board today to see if I can get any support on that okay so you're looking for a grant for the Vermont women's foundation is that what you're saying? to get a physical sponsor a physical sponsor for could you a physical sponsor well it says a physical sponsor it lands credibility for a 501 status project so I was just trying to see and it also says that you guys have my disability is on the list in government agency is on the list so you're asking either the village or the town to become a sponsor for a grant to the Vermont community foundation yeah to upload a grant that's a deadline tomorrow for the Vermont community foundation to submit your grant application and what does that have to do with the property on Route 15 well the property doesn't have anything to do with the two options that they have up there the guidelines of their options is pathways from 12 to 25 ages just for women okay but that was something I researched the property up there five acres to make up Barbra States community in Vermont community foundation they work with community economic vitality so I was just trying to get a couple of people to help me out it's been taking me about a month and a half everyone disagrees with a lot of stuff and I'm just wondering how come they don't want fresh air in community outhouses and different things that would happen in a little bit of land like that and be involved in anything out of nature so the deadline is tomorrow yes is this a rolling deadline like is there another opportunity because I think what yeah they said that it could be prioritized because we need to read like what if you have a description of what you need and a copy of the application like we can't just I have a copy of it right here we need to read it what we could do is we could have the staff take it and if you have your contact information get back to you we can't make a decision oh I know exactly what you can do the executive director can sign this and upload the application and either an organization like maybe a public agency like for now they can help me with some of the work okay those are copies those are the originals of those copies that you if you get this is something I researched online this is a letter of support but I rather just say it to you instead of just doing it and this is a FICO sponsor agreement for competitive grant rounds okay this is just your agenda is that the copies of the others not our agenda but can you leave those papers here because our staff would have to look at them and read through them and then they could talk to us about it unfortunately that's how we work I didn't point out the whole grant guidelines because I'm not a grantee I'm just trying to get a physical sponsor I can't upload an application maybe if she does maybe if you can we'll give you the information to get in touch with our staff and then you can reach out tomorrow during the business hours I did approach this one right here I did give him this so you have contact information to go over to the offices over at 81 Main Street maybe you could speak with somebody there and maybe give them the information that they're looking for about you could probably get him into well that's where he works he's the manager for our community so if you want to meet with him tomorrow maybe and then in that form be able to get the details that we're asking for okay what are our details we need to read what you're proposing and we need to understand what commitment you're asking for from us and we can't do that just all of a sudden well it's just a $10,000 grant and it looked like when I did the dedication of it I would have like $3,000 left into the deliveries of the care packages for the community we need all that in writing we need to see what it is you're proposing before we can act on it an actual sponsorship proposal then what it obligates the community we need documents that have stuff in writing I will get that ready the deadline is tomorrow so first thing I want to be here after 10 o'clock tomorrow morning meeting this morning not a problem at all thank you good luck be careful thank you next up I'm going to try to move us quickly here last time around at our last joint meeting we generally said November 2020 we should shoot for that as a deadline if we're going to have a governance some kind of a governance change proposal to put in front of the voters if we planned on doing it in November of 2020 that's a presidential election it would maximize the voter turnout we think and it would give us a pretty good amount of time to be working on this and to get something ready but I noticed that I went back over the minutes and I watched the tape and we did not actually all agree we kind of made noise that it made sense and so I thought that before some of us think that that's a good idea and others may not have agreed to that I thought it would first of all be good to bring this out again and actually have a vote that we think that November 2020 is a deadline for should be the deadline for having a governance change proposal we should work towards having a governance change proposal for 2020 in November 2020 and I'm going to throw that up and Max do you want to add something I just want to ask you to ask Susan if we were to choose if everybody agreed that November 2020 was the time we want to have everything on a ballot ready for vote when does everything have to be decided and ready to go so that they can get printed and be ready for the vote we have a question formalized by the middle of August so we can send it to the state to be on the state ballot ok August 2020 and that's I mean that would be before you actually warned it but it would be the same language for the question ok so that's a year and a half basically from now and Susan in terms of public hearings or any kind of public meetings leading up to that what are what there is that you mentioned that we had little discussion of this before there's a difference between a charter change and a vote to merge there's some nuances there that we might want to be aware of can you sort of briefly touch on those they're very similar there's a specific statute called merger of municipalities and so it outlines the procedure for what the communities need to go through to merge and it's similar to the statute for charter changes but this would the merger would require both the municipalities their legislative bodies to approve by a majority the plan of merger ok and once you went through the process there would be two public hearings there would be the vote and the vote would be on the plan of merger once if that was approved the plan of merger would become the new charter for the new merged community ok but there's no difference in the true it knows to be for the timeline it's similar there may be a little slight differences in the number of days you need to warn public hearings ok that's something I wanted so yeah that's something I would want to finalize with the attorney that you've hired to deal with these matters but August 2020 is what we need to be generally shooting for anything that we're planning to put on the ballot in November of 2020 would have to have it wrapped up and ready to go by August and one other issue so now if it's something would have to be voted on by all town voters and by village voters and so we'd go on the statewide ballot for town voters but then the village voters would be a separate ballot is that correct? ok I'm questioning that because I know I've read all of the merger plans that I could find in statute and some of them explicitly state in the merger plan who has to approve the merger plan in order to make it valid and not all of them say that both the town and the village need to vote so I'm not saying I don't mean I could be it could be that that was done at a time when statutes were different that's another question for the attorney I'm not saying that were they incorporated villages if they weren't incorporated villages the rules could be very different they were all incorporated villages they also had language in there about dissolving the village charter simultaneously so it was a single vote of the town and I'm just saying that there are cases where they haven't had the two vote scenario that's a little different procedure than what I was looking at well we'd have to get advice from the attorney today's statutes if there are any changes for them so we'd have to be careful about that do you want to clarify it? but nonetheless the fact that we need to get this done by August is still there so regardless of legalese and on the vote and such that we can deal with later but we want to find out the deadline we want to get this moving toward that direction I mean that's still to be discussed but it's nice to have knowledge ahead of time where our deadline is where the lamb goes off and says this is it you're done Susan you said the question must be finalized by August are we permitted to only ask one question or is there can you do multiple questions well I was just thinking back to the last time this was put out there was the question was do the voters approve of the plan of merger for the town of whatever and that was the way it was some questions like the name of the municipality or that there's a district different districts or whatever we choose all written into the charter that they're approving and they have to approve the whole package but again yeah I would run that by the I think that's something we're going to want to make sure so the question is is everyone comfortable putting that stake in the ground it says November 2020 because this is such an important decision we want as many people to actually go to the polls to weigh in and I think there's going to be a pretty good turnout likely for presidential elections particularly in 2020 I just when George was speaking he used language two different ways he said November 2020 is a deadline and you also said work toward 2020 I just want to be clear that you don't mean that if we can't make it by 2020 we're not going to do it I understand the goal is a very good goal to have a goal it's entirely possible that we try really really hard but like the little engine that we just don't make it there so we've got to put it off for another year I'm sorry that's what I wanted to address so I think November 2020 is ideal in terms of reach of voters because the most people are going to come out I'm worried in the past we set a deadline or a date, an optimum date and then people start feeling rushed and then people start feeling that the work we're doing isn't good enough because we're trying really hard to make it date and so I would like to propose that we aim for November 2020 and we aim for August of 2020 but that perhaps at some point in May or April 2020 we say okay where are we are we happy with as far as we've gotten have we answered all the questions do we feel like we are prepared enough to take this to a vote because we are working so very hard it would be upsetting and a waste of everyone's time and money if we continue on this path and then at the last minute there are political problems with meeting a deadline well if we agree that that's the right time then we're going to need to work backwards to where we are today and say things have to be done here so as we're on that timeline we'll know if we're ahead or behind and we may have to do a check and adjust on that date but I think having it out there is a good goal because just the turnout should be best rather than having a special meeting where you get a very limited voter turnout so I think we'll have that checkpoint as we go because we're going to need to have that timeline very crisp and we'll know if we're on that light path and not and is the end product for November 2020 definitely a complete merger or could it just be codifying are we specifying what that is or are we just specifying a date of voting on something my feeling is Irene is that I think we should call it a governance change proposal I don't think we should get too specific at this point because I think as soon as we, the more specific we get the more kind of boxed in I know that by doing it department by department and step by step people have bought in really well and I would love to see maybe a 2020 vote on certain things we've already done that people will live with for five years but then maybe a vote four years later or two years later whenever we see the next big bump and voters coming to do other stuff and I wouldn't want to just try to eat the elephant all at once just because 2020 is moving large and I don't know we want to know what we're confident people are happy with and can understand because you know how these election years are all the oxygen is taken out of the room by all the candidates running it every government level and trying to get a word in it twice or a word in the papers or even an ad in the paper about what we're trying to do could be really difficult Exactly, I agree I mean I would say I'm not going to make the motion but this is what the motion the kind of motion I would make I would say something to the effect of that the trustees work with the select board to develop a governance change proposal for voter approval in November 2020 doesn't say we've got to do it doesn't say exactly what it is but it kind of says November 2020 is really what we're sharing for it's it's adequately vague and then not tonight I guess but in the subsequent joint meeting or sooner we would start mapping the work that has to be done what to be realistically accomplished I think that's the next step Elaine I think that's something we can talk about Got it right on the agenda after that but I think that we want to nail this down first and get everyone's feelings about November 2020 and your thoughts on November 2020 Dan? Certainly I'm not really worried whether it's a merge or what but some kind of governance decision that's a good call I will make a motion that the trustees work with the select board to develop a governance change what? Laura do you have comments? No I think it's a good plan I will say my focus is on the governance but I hope we continue to focus on I'd like to just check into Mike and I read about the 2020 days Oh, it makes sense to you as well Oh yeah I like the way the motion is going to be presented and I think 2020 is definitely a good goal given the way we're going to be voting the motion Okay so I will make a motion. Should we ask it through the public comment? I have an idea Really? I'm sorry You do that There's a motion on the table we're taking public comment before motion Is there anyone out there that would like to make a comment on it? Margaret I think that the thought that the 2020 election is going to suck a lot of air out of the room and people are going to be really focused on that and not so much focused on this is something that you should consider in selecting that as your target date You will get a lot of voters Dan Can I just comment that I agree with Irene's comment that during a presidential election year when you come towards November there is obviously the national level and the state level politicians that are taking up a lot of their time and a lot of space on the pages and paper but I don't foresee this as being an issue that people are going to be looking in the last minute saying oh this is what I look at it as we've discussed already our public outreach we're not going to wait until the last minute people are going to know ahead of time as far as sucking the oxygen out of the air and losing it right then sure there's going to be a lot more distraction toward that end but we're going to be doing our own thing you know you can look at it any way you want but I think people are going to pretty much have a good idea before November comes around whether they're for or against this whole whatever we come up with I would agree with that but I would also say that we have an annual meeting and if we really are concerned that the presidential election is just distracting everybody we can go to annual meeting it could be another hard deadline that we could look at I will say that in the past when setting special meeting dates for important votes our boards have been accused of setting dates that were inappropriate for certain aspects of the community and if you choose a presidential election there's no avoiding it so it's a safety net for us to choose to not be accused of choosing a date that is inappropriate for certain parts of the community plus it's going to be so spectacular and fabulous that it's going to totally upshine anything else anything else is there anyone getting about free balloons and hamburgers and hoax and it'll be great is there anyone else Andy? when we get to 2020 a lot of people are going to be voting early will this be addressed in any way that you can vote early? that's a great question it'll be on it'll be on the ballot that people are going to be requesting the statewide ballot so yes, they can vote early and it's going to be right there that's the reason I'm saying they need to get the wording in early so that that ballot and the separate village ballot is really good in time to send those out to the early voters good point anybody else? what is your name again? Andy okay, so I'm going to make a motion that the trustees work with the select board to develop a governance change proposal for voter approval in November 2020 I will second that any further discussion, Laurie? thank you I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I