 Okay, it's 7 o'clock, guys. Evan? Yeah, yeah. Scott? Okay, then I will call the December 17th, 2018 select board meeting to order. I invite you to rise and join us in 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. I'd like to welcome everyone to tonight's select board meeting and just, as always, remind you to put your phone to silent if you could. Appreciate it, so it doesn't go off during the meeting. Had that happened once, it's quite embarrassing. Okay, so, Evan, we have a few items at our place. So for agenda additions and changes, what do we have? Um, things. I'm going to let Kurt take it for one thing, but just to catch up, we have a memo from Dennis Lutz on truck 107 replacement or repair. Okay, and that's for which item? 5-H. We have a revised, um, fund balance memo that is 5-D. Okay. There was a mathematical error. Okay. Let's add two corrections. Yes. Okay. There you are. Uh, there's some minutes corrections from Irene, uh, with 5-K. And then lastly, under executive session, we do not need an executive session for evaluation of public employees, so A-B can be scratched. B can be scratched, okay? We'll keep A there for now. Okay, so do I have a motion to add items to, uh, 5-D, 5-H, and 5-K, and scratch, uh, executive session 8-B? Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. Any further discussion about amending the agenda? Accordingly. Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes 4-0. As, uh, you'll notice there's normally 5 selectmen at the table. There's only 4 tonight. Elaine Sopcich is unable to be with us tonight. She will join us at the joint meeting tomorrow. Okay. So, uh, next is, next up is public to be heard. That's a time for the public to speak to the select board on items that are not on the agenda. Is there anyone here tonight wishing to speak during public to be heard? Barbara, if you could state your name for the record, please. The select board not to support the staff proposal to amend the current public works MOU to include funding for the village highway and fire department rolling stock. I do so because this proposal is ill-advised. It is not simply symbolic nor innocuous. It proposes using the MOU mechanism to purchase equipment whose ownership remains with another municipality. Let me repeat that. The ownership of that equipment. That capital expenditure remains with another municipality. We went down this road several years ago with money for a fire truck. At that time, I made a statement and I stand by it today. If it's something this community as a whole needs, then it belongs in the town budget, paid for by all, and owned by all. The MOU is a bad mechanism for what we've been doing and this makes it worse. It's time for the select board to put an end to the current consolidation model. It has been going on far too long and it has not resulted in my opinion in any significant merger of departments. For all intents and purposes, we have status quo. All we have done is move the budget items of the village into the town without merging the departments with minor exception. I believe that the consolidation as it has existed is not a way to govern nor to be governed. I can no longer support any further consolidation efforts that are executed via MOU. I can not support any further consolidation efforts until the select board and trustees take separation off the table. Putting separation on the table is counterproductive and inconsistent with the goals of consolidation. I cannot support any further consolidation efforts unless the two boards commit to bringing a governance proposal to the two municipalities by November 2020. My lack of support for the proposal that you will consider tomorrow night does not reflect my desire and support for a full merger of our two communities into a single municipality with a single charter. I have always supported that and I will continue to support that. But what we have been doing is not good for this community. Thank you. Thank you, Barbara. Okay, is there anyone else wishing to speak to the public? Margaret? Hi. At the last meeting for making an effort to speak into the microphones I know it's not always pleasant, but it was much appreciated, so thank you. Thank you for the reminder. I hope that it happens again. Can you hear it back there? I'm good. I'm good. As always, we're leaning in a little bit. Thank you, Margaret. Okay, anybody else wishing to speak to the public to be heard? Okay, thank you for your comments. Okay, we're going to move on to our business item section, and first up we have a couple of interviews. The first one is an interview, an appointment for Zoning Board of Adjustment. I'd like to invite Tracy Delphia up to the microphone there, if you would. First, we'd like to say welcome, and thank you for being willing to step forward to volunteer in our community. Tracy, if you could give us a little bit about your background, who you are, and what your interest is on being appointed to the ZVA. We'd love to hear that. Sure. I grew up in the Adirondack Park, lower Adirondack Park. I went to Castleton for school and moved up to South Burlington for my first job. In 2012, I joined the South Burlington Planning Commission. I spent four years on the Planning Commission, three as the vice chair. During that time, South Burlington went through interim zoning, a major rewrite of their city plan, multiple amendments to their land development regulations, including the form-based code that's currently in place for their city center, including some transportation overlay districts, parking overlay, things of that sort. In 2016, I met my now husband, moved to Essex Junction in 2017, and we just purchased a home together, well, I guess over a year ago, time flies, on Old Stage Road, and I've been wanting to dip my toes in to the Essex community, and I've worked with Cullen Bullard for nine years now at the state. He highly encouraged me to put my name in the hat, so here I am. Fantastic. Thank you very much for your background. And do you have any questions for me? So I was just going to ask. Oh, sorry. That's fine. I'll open it to the board. Questions for Tracy. Irene? South Burlington has been very busy. Would you be okay with a little slower pace, maybe at least to start with here on our CBA? Yes, please. I was telling Max that it was a very welcome step back for a little while, but I'm very much ready to get back into community involvement. Mike? My question is almost going to mirror that, but on a little bit different angle. I've done both. I've served on the Planning Commission and the CBA, and the Planning Commission I would hazard to say is a little bit more exciting in that the applications are more varied and the CBA is not. We'll just let it go with that. So I hear that you are going to enjoy the slower pace. The applications are going to be quite a stirring either, and just wanted to make sure that that was going to be okay with you as well. My take on, there's a unique relationship between the zoning board and the Planning Commission in that there should be regular communication between the two bodies. If the Planning Commission doesn't know where those pain points are, they can't improve your code. So I'm not sure if there are regular meetings between the two bodies, but I'm very willing and ready to give that feedback as far as what I see could be improved and where working together is one overall body. A fresh set of eyes. Great. Okay, anybody else? Okay, I think the CBA meets anywhere between one to seven times a year. Is that right, Greg? Yeah, on average it's probably about six times. Give or take one or two, depending. The zoning board is a lot of times just dependent on which applications they get, slower pace as you've heard. And in the future, if you want to kick it up a notch, you know the Planning Commission sometimes gets vacancies. I'm open to anything. So what's the Board's pleasure? Do you want to go into Executive Session? I don't think that's necessary. No. What's the Board's pleasure? I'll make a motion. I would move that the select Board appoint Tracy Delphia to the vacancy on the Essex zoning Board of Adjustment. Thank you. Second. Thank you, Andy. Any further discussion about appointing Tracy Delphia to the ZVA? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Okay, next interview we have is Marcus Wilson. I'd like to invite Marcus up to the table as well. He's looking to be appointed to the Cemetery Commission. And I know by charter the manager could appoint them with the approval of the select board, but we're going to have you come and talk directly to us. So as I said to Tracy, if you could give us a little bit about your background about who you are, Marcus, and what your interest is on being on the cemetery commission. Sure, sure. I've been in Essex Junction for about 10 years now. I'm from Austin, Texas originally, but I've been in Vermont for 18 years. By trade, I'm a financial analyst for a subsidiary of United Health, and I work at home. My interest in cemeteries goes back to a young age and early age. I actually was next door neighbor with a commissioner of Texas State Cemetery, and so I spent a lot of time at a very large plot of land in Central Austin, Texas, reviewing the grounds and learning the history. That's an extremely important aspect for me, is the history. And I've been working with some acquaintances in Bennington to document some symbolism on early headstones, so that's another aspect of interest to me, and I value cemeteries as public spaces. Sometimes certain communities have drifted away from that, so that's a motivating factor for me as well. Okay. Thank you, Marcus. I'll open it up to the board for questions for Marcus. Anybody? Evan? Oh, Andy. Yeah, sure. I was going to ask what your superpower is. What is it that you bring to the table that you think could contribute to a cemetery commission? Sure. The personal passion, first and foremost, an interest. But secondly, in reviewing some past meeting notes, my financial background, I feel maybe a value to the committee. Not sure how at this point in time, but that's another strong suit that I've been to the table. Evan? With your interest, are you familiar with any type of grants or foundations that help out cemeteries? Well, not intimately at this point. I have begun the process of connecting with the Vermont Old Cemetery Association to see if I might find some information there. I know that just following their social media presence, there's been some interest and requests from other communities in the state of Vermont for funding and assistance to help improve grounds and et cetera, so. Okay. Anybody else? You're done? Okay. What's the board's pleasure? Want to go to executive or open? I think this would be another one that we would not need executive session for. Okay. You ready? I move that the board name Marcus Wilson to the Cemetery Commission. Thank you. I'll second. Any further discussion about appointing Marcus Wilson to the Cemetery Commission? Andy? I'm going to be a pain in the butt here, but the Charter says that the Cemetery Commissioners are appointed by the town manager, so I think the wording of the motion may be that it should be, possibly should be that the board approves the appointment, the town manager's appointment, if the town manager so chooses to do appointment. So I'm wondering if we should do it that way because our Charter says it's the town manager's job. Irene, if you want to withdraw your second, withdraw the motion and restate it, if you wish. I'll be happy to make the motion. To the select board, I recommend appointment of Mr. Wilson. I think we still need to have a motion from the select board. Right. Are we accepting his recommendation? Yeah. Yeah. I move that the select board recommend to the town manager with the appointment of Marcus Wilson to the Cemetery Commission. Yes? Of course. Okay. All right. So you're seconded, Irene? Okay. Any further discussion about having Marcus Wilson join the Cemetery Commission? You're none. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? The motion passes unanimously. So thank you. Thank you. Marcus. Thank you very much. So will somebody be in touch with him? We will be in touch. So you'll be hearing from someone from the manager's office about how to get started. So thank you so much, both of you, for volunteering. Okay. We're going to move on to our next item of business, which is 5C, and that's an annual update from Greater Burlington Industrial Corps, better known as GBIC. Welcome, Kurt. How are you tonight? Good. Thank you. Good. Thanks for coming in and sharing what's going on at GBIC. Well, I appreciate the opportunity, Max, to get back in front of the select board again and give you kind of an update. We appreciate our partnership with the town and also with the village of Essex. I recently met with Evan and Greg just to, because Evan's still a little bit of a new guy on the block just to make sure he was up to date with the history of GBIC. And as a quick reminder, we focus our activities on dollar-added businesses that are selling goods and services out of state, bringing dollar one into Vermont. And those monies, once they're in the state, is new money into our economy, are circulated and expanded. So we work with mainly manufacturers or companies that are selling services out of state. The past year has been pretty busy in Essex, although we cover the entire county, lots going on in Essex. Obviously, global foundries, the character and with a new owner has gone through a little bit of adjustment. And we've worked with them. One of the first things was on the increase at Green Mountain Power and the power rates. We had some early on meetings that contributed to their efforts to try to stabilize. And I guess that was still before the Public Utility Department Commission. So we helped a little bit on that power issue. Obviously, power issue at global foundries is still something that is of concern to the company and concern to economic development corporations like GVIC looking out for those jobs there. Obviously, with global foundries they've taken a little bit different look at their campus. They don't have the interest in the buffer or the campus. They're just looking at the production facility. And so, as you probably read that the Williston campus, they're willing to divest that to a new owner is also property in Essex as well. The so-called 40 acres or the big parking lot is. And I know that we've worked with IBM before and now with Globe a little bit on what the future of that might be. Vermont has just a couple of really incentive programs for economic development. And one of them is called the Vermont Employment Growth Incentive. And real quickly it's hard to explain, but I'll try to, basically the way it works is if a company proposes a project either bringing a business into Vermont or expanding a business in a substantial way that what the state can do is evaluate the economic impact of that new project on the state economy. Primary generators are employment, employee payroll tax, and also capital improvements and other tax benefits as well. So the state calculates that overall economic benefit to the state. They take a piece of it, of this new money and then return a portion of that back to the company for a short period as an incentive to do the project. If the company sets targets and if they meet those targets, the new money generated by the new project gets paid back to the business as an incentive, and those incentive payments have paid out over five years. We've worked with a number of companies in Essex, Blodgett, with their relocation from Burlington to Essex, Gordini, I don't know how many of you are familiar with Gordini, a glove manufacturer, who'd have thought they were in. And based in Essex, we were successful in helping them with a veggie, and also new harbor security as well. Gordini just got their final approval last Friday, and as well as new harbor got a deferral, they're having a little trouble finding people and finding a new location so they ask that their start date be deferred until next calendar year to start that project. The other program stated Economic Development Program we work with is something called the Vermont Employment, I mean sorry, the Vermont, I'm talking too fast, the Vermont Training Program. The Vermont Training Program is basically, it's not a training program, it's really a grant program to help subsidize up to half of the cost of training of new employees. And it's really a skills development program for companies to add, either if they're bringing on new equipment or machinery, or getting into a new line of work, or if they want to do leadership training or do some upgrade training of their staff, hire new workers, and Vermont Systems and Essex got a major contract, hiring a lot of people, they were just awarded $150,000 training grant which is a substantial, it means they're doing like $300,000 worth of training over there with all the new employees that we hired. So a couple examples of what we work with in Essex for existing companies trying to keep track of existing businesses back and forth with Flex-A-Seal a little bit, they like a new building, they like to expand, they're having difficulty doing that, and it looks like they're where they're going to be for a while. As far as industrial land goes, there's not much vacant land available left in Chittenden County. In Catamount we have two lots back left in the park that we've developed up there. There's a little bit of land out in metal lands in that industrial park. As you know Essex has probably got the biggest chunk of industrial land that's zoned and for expansion of manufacturers. Sandhill, Allen Martin, Thompson Drive up in that area, Bob Miller's building more space up there. So we really look at that area as well as some global foundry's property as being really some of our future for industrial growth in the area. So we'll be working on that. The other thing you just mentioned is you spend a lot of time on the state level on workforce development. Big problem for a lot of businesses. Everybody you talk to, I mean, you talk with global, they have like a basically 200 available jobs at any one time over there. So workforce is a real struggle. And excuse me Frank, especially Frank Coffey with GBIC has spent a lot of time on that. So I just want to give you a quick update. Thank you for your help over the years and look forward to keeping in touch with Greg and Evan and the slick board as well. I'll be glad to answer any questions before I lose my voice here. Okay, thanks for the update. Yeah, it sounds like you've been busy in Essex. So I want to open it up to the board for questions occurred about GBIC. Anybody? Okay, Evan. During our discussion, we talked a little bit about the stuff that companies need nowadays. Blodgett, the discussion is they'd like to expand their lines but they need workers. And they need to be able to get their workers to Essex, Essex Junction. How does GBIC work in that arena? I guess the way to look at that is we were closely with the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. They're the planners. We're the vines to see economic development people. We worked with them on there when they rewrote the regional plan. We did the comprehensive economic development strategy, which is really the economic development strategy for the regional plan. We really look to their expertise on the transportation issues. They have a whole system over there. So we would work closely with them. Charlie Baker, Executive Director, is on our board so to make sure we have good communications between the two organizations. And then from your perspective, what are two or three of the best things that Essex can do to help itself attract and retain its businesses? My economic development 101 is to really create a favorable environment for businesses. You don't really try to provide too direct of a control or active connection with businesses as much as you're trying to provide a good environment for that business to grow. So that's an equitable tax structure. It's a predictable and timely permitting process. It's assistance with adequate infrastructure. So I think those are the things behind the scenes if you create that environment. I think, you know, I can't think of any issues. The only issue I think I can think of with Essex is probably you're not right next to the interstate, but there's nothing you can do about that. I know a lot of work's been done on 117 and that'll help for traffic going south. So that's my economic development 101. Thank you. So diversifying the tax base is really, I mean, critical to do, and that's, I know what you're helping to do. So you have an annual meeting and other meetings that your board meets and who's the rep from Essex on your board? The event would be the rep to attend our annual meeting. It's in the middle of June every year. We've already set the date. Actually, yeah. We'll make sure that he's on the invite. On the invite? Okay. We haven't set any invites out yet, but I went to an event at the Echo Center. Was that your annual meeting? Yes. And on your board, do you have members from the community on it? And if so, who's the rep from Essex? I mean, you said annual meeting, but you must have quarterly meetings. We have a board of, I think, 30 authorized. I think we have 29 board members right now throughout the community. We try to get young people on our board. We've done pretty successful a pretty good mix of men and women on the board. Who appoints the members? Who appoints? How do they become members of the board? We have the nominating committee of the board and working with Frank, the president, will come up with suggested new board members and they'll vote it in. There's a, I can't remember all the details, but there's a term so that we have a good turnover. The board meets, we don't meet during the middle of the summer because that's a hard time to get people together. I think we have like 10 meetings a year for the entire board. Then we also obviously have an executive board that meets on every two weeks actively. It's comprised of members from the larger board. But you don't try to get members from all communities on your board or a rep? We have a pretty good representation. And if you're going to quiz me on who's from, we have from Essex, I'm going to start to blank out here so I can get back to you. If you could get back to us, I'd like to know. I can do that. It's been appointed. Okay. And then lastly, it's about communication. And we talked about this a little bit last year, that if a business is in need of something that they're not getting, if they need to grow and they're having issues with where they are here in Essex, I know there's a confidentiality piece, but I'd like to make sure that you're working with Evan when you hear that there's an issue, so that he can be aware of it. And if needed, we can maybe help understand and provide assistance in some way. I think we've already had meetings that involved Evan that he hasn't talked about those meetings. So we have a good confidence that... Okay. And I know the confidentiality piece, if it comes to... I know one of his first days on the job, I think we had a meeting or two. Okay. Awesome. Very good. And I think we certainly appreciate it the other way. I know if you have something come up, I know in the past, Greg has helped me learn about things going on in Essex. I try to attend the Essex Economic Development Committee meetings, and that's a good way. And Greg, do you still attend those? Most of them. Yeah, most of them. So that's a good way to keep that communication going. It's Mondays at noon or something? Okay. Okay, super. That's good. I'm glad the lines of communication are open for both ways, actually. Okay, Irene? So, Mike, I just want to clarify if I could, Kurt, in this reverse side of the memo where you received from Frank and Paul, it says the chief elected official of each community is a member of GBIC's corporation per your articles of association. So I just want to make sure that we have enough of our elected officials also helping out, along with Evan and Greg, and make sure that, again, that's communicated properly so that we're showing up when we're supposed to show up. Originally, GBIC was formed by municipalities back in the mid-50s. And so the members, yeah, municipalities are members of GBIC in the way that we invite them and they participate in the annual meeting. Beyond that, that's about the involvement of municipalities as municipalities. But certainly, I'll get back to you on where our memberships are from to give you a feel of who they are and where they're from. But I appreciate that. And recommendations or somebody that you think would be good to have on the board will be glad to take a look at that. Because the work you do, the economic development piece is very important. Okay, if there are no other questions, we'd like to say thank you for all the work you do on Essex-Bahat. Okay, thank you. Thanks for coming in. Okay, we're going to move on to business item 5D and that's assignment of FYE 18 fund balance. And Lauren, you want to kick that one off for us? Yes. So our audit is almost completed. We do have some audited numbers for the fund balance, although we don't have a draft yet. But it's always good to get these numbers into the audit so we can record it for the next year. And so as we did last year, we've come up with... There are items that are restricted and there are items that are non-spendable that are part of our fund balance. And then we have items that were already assigned last year. Things have happened to them. Some of them we've spent some of it. Some of them we've added to it. And then we have new things that we want to assign for this year. And so I've come up with a list for you of things that we think should be assigned, some of which you have weighed in on, like the $1,000 for the steps to end violence, the money for the police early retirement. We've already decided on the $13,332 for fire salaries. That was last February. And then I think you mentioned that the governance attorney should come out of fund balance. So we've come up with this list and are asking you to approve it for the end of... This is as of June 30th, 2018. So ask us to approve the new assignments or for the whole list? All of them. Because some of them have changed since last year. Some of them have been added to a little bit, like the records preservation, the planning. They use some of that. So we'd like to have that everything reconfirmed as assigned. We don't know how much these others were increased from prior approval. Well, actually you can tell by the chart. So the changes are listed in the middle. Mary? But I couldn't figure out why there was a line across the big box in the spreadsheet. Is that significant of something above the line is a different flavor than things below this line? Is there a line between planning and retirement? And I just couldn't figure out why the line was there or why there was a line period. I think that was last year's line and it just kind of got left in there. Because last year we were doing a couple of things with the retirement money. Please just ignore that. Any other questions? Andy? The Board of Select and Professional Services line, that's $6,400. There was also $6,400 last year. Is there any intent for that? That's an old number. It's been on the books for a long time. And I haven't heard any suggestions to change it. I'd like to propose that we move that into future tax reduction. Since it's just been sitting there and we have no purpose for it, rather than sitting on the money, give it back to the, or put it into the bucket that can be given back to taxpayers. But what if we do need to tap into it for sorry? That's what the 15% is for. That's $6,400 out of $2 million we have in unassigned fund balance, right? What the 15% is for is for unexpected things. Lauren, do you see any problem with that? No. We also have other funds that are negative. Do we not that are currently negative? Funds. I mean, some of these accounts, some of these lines. These are not negative. We do have some numbers in our capital that are negative, including our buildings maintenance. So that was, I think you added about that, that the residual was going to build buildings maintenance because we have a need there. I mean, that would be another place that this could go. One of the, Andy, I think, I'm sorry. It's like Board Member Watts. I think that's an admirable thing. And I think if we didn't have many other needs, maybe not as defined, such as our buildings fund, I think one of the items in the budget tonight is actually two of them. We have a truck that unfortunately just had engine problems that we are now going to have to act upon before we anticipated it. It was going to be in the budget for next year. That truck is, Dennis is going to talk about that. We also have some building maintenance in the public works garage that is going to be quite expensive but not anticipated yet this year for future work. So while it is only $6,400, it is monies that we're going to end up moving around anyway. So maybe a suggestion would be to put it in either the buildings fund or the vehicle replacement fund. And we're always going to be replacing vehicles. And always going to be fixing buildings. So is it about the 64? Okay. What's up? I would agree with Evan. I think this money should go to areas that have a negative balance. And the reason I feel that that's really a no-brainer in my view is because we have $118,721 for future tax reduction, I believe already. If we didn't have anything there and we were over the 15%, then I would say I might feel a little differently. I don't, I think the 6400 should definitely go to buildings. The buildings as opposed to... Well, buildings, the new truck, I mean, wherever we decide is going to be the more important piece to help out with. Okay. You suggested buildings. I know that the Public Works Building is in need as we read. So would that be something we'd want to do to reassign this from board of select and professional services to the buildings, what do you call that fund? Buildings? Actually put it into the capital fund for buildings. That would be a good thing to do with it. Transfer it into the capital fund for buildings. Are you okay with that? I'm okay with that. Would that be the second line from the bottom here or are you adding to that second line from the bottom? Okay, so now it's no lower 65,000. It's something else. Andy, I want to hear from you. I asked about this number and this is really just a what's left number. There's nothing specific behind it other than fear of future building maintenance. Right? I think that was the response I got. I don't know if Dennis you want to, can you, Dennis? Unfortunately the list is getting bigger. Sorry. Maybe I can talk out here. But unfortunately the list is getting bigger and I'm not trying to scare you. You haven't seen the capital plan yet for next year but there's some expenditures in there that we have our plan is to meet this week because we've done things a little bit differently this year. We've had the department's head put in requests for needs. Those needs well exceed the two cents that are available on the tax rate. Some of those involve buildings. We're going to have to cut some of those requests back to the two cents or postpone some of those needs. I think we're well over $50,000 short of the request. Right. One of the requests is the Essex Free Library Building Facade is in need of repair. I believe the front of the building is in dire need of some repair. It's on the list. Right. So there's always, we have parking lots that have need. I know that your building still needs some things. The fire department wants to talk about some doors. We've worked pretty closely with the new librarian staff when Anne left, unfortunately, but we've worked with them to try to identify some of those needs which really haven't been identified. And they're real needs. And Evan mentioned the facade. We've got, Caitlin's probably got half a dozen things. You'll see in the capital request form that make a lot of sense. I'll give you just another specific example. One of the biggest problems they have, for example, is in their toilets, the patrons, a lot of times kids will stuff the toilets down, paper down the toilets. And the solution is the hand dryers, the automatic hand dryers that you push with heat and get rid of the paper towels, the bus being called out to fix a problem with the toilet that overflows in that area. So those, I mean, there's a long list that goes on. So we're not going to have enough money, even in the proposed capital plan. Some of those are going to be postponed and some can, but if there's a place to put it for the future, in my view, I would agree. I think that's a good, there's other needs, but that's a good place to put it. You'll see when we get into the building, we've got 27 buildings, a minimum, 30, maybe more, spread all over, and I may have missed a couple of buildings we've got there, but we've got them all over and even the new ones have needs. Thanks, Dennis. So, Andy. Just to clarify, this line item says building maintenance. Dennis has been talking about capital. So are we talking about the same thing or different things? That's where I'm, are we redirecting this to building maintenance or are we putting it into the capital to address some of the negative numbers that are in the capital? Dennis, can you answer that? Because we talked about the capital funds for building and yet this line at the bottom of a new assignment says building maintenance needs. Yeah. Are they one of the same? Yeah, they really are and it's a misnomer. I think that you can, we haven't defined, we need a complete overhaul of the capital planning process to a certain degree and we did a large part of that, you'll see this year, but we've changed. But we've used the term in a lot of different ways. We've always had a, what we've used in the capital planning, if you look at the actual definition on use of library, library deferred maintenance is a capital planning item. So is it maintenance or is it capital improvements? And we probably need to get the language improved. And one of the things we also need to do, I don't want to go off in a tangent, one of the things we've needed to do for a long time is that we have a number, a large number of capital accounts and we're finally trying to associate those capital accounts with account numbers so we can track expenses better because we've had accounts, developers have set aside funds for projects, they've gone into an account. But some of those account numbers have not been given account numbers that we can then, and I hate to use the word account, account for properly. And so what we're trying to do is get that together. So the nomenclature needs to be standardized so that we're not using, in one case, library deferred maintenance would really mean capital improvements for the library. And that's, we'll see that a lot. We've used a lot of terms that shouldn't be used. They should be one term, one line item that includes those things, but it's really one thing. It is both. It's not just maintenance, meaning the paint, that would be pure maintenance. We're thinking more in terms of improvements to the facilities that would add to the value of that building, for example. So if we say we'd like to move the 6400 from the Board of Selectment Professional Services to the capital funds for buildings, and that would then, could we change that under new assignments, call that capital funds for buildings as opposed to capital maintenance needs? Would that be right? Yeah, that's fine. Okay. And if we did that, it would change it from 65067. It would increase it to 71467. Did you do the math? No, I didn't do it. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So is that reasonable? People want to do that? Yes. Okay. All right. So why don't we do that? Then we'll scratch the Selectment Professional Services and move that into the capital funds for building, for buildings. And again, change that from 65067 to 71467. Okay. Good. Anything else? Andy? I think Dennis can talk to this one too. The last year, we did a similar swizzle for the stormwater. It was $30,000 this year. We're doing $50,000. We ended up on different line items here in this spreadsheet. I'm just wondering why it's $50,000 this year, when it was $30,000 last year. What are the different differences there? It was transferred. It's already gone into the capital fund. It's gone. Yeah. It's empty now. Right. It's empty. And now we want to do it again. A new allocation. Yeah. The request to include this came from me. And the rationale was that within the stormwater operating budget this year, we did not spend all the funds that were available. And some of them in the operating budget were professional services. Some were construction of facilities. We had funds in there for that in line items. Some of those funds, a lot of those funds, didn't get spent because the state is still behind in terms of defining what the requirements are. We have, right now, we have, and these are really rough numbers. I'm just doing it off the top of my head. But again, from the capital plan, if you added up all the projects that we have grants for, the local share is about 600,000 in change. We've, if all of them would be, if we got a bill for all of them today, meaning all done complete, we were $100,000 short just on grants that we've got. The thing that's saving us is in the capital plan, we're putting away funds each year. And these projects take three or four years to build. When we, at start, we've got one of the projects that's, I believe I'll talk to you later. It was a grant that we went for with the village together. The village is managing it to do a phosphorus control plan for the town. That's the most important piece of work we're working on. That was just recently awarded. We're going to be working over the next year trying to determine what projects do we need over the next 20 years to build and what are the costs of those projects. Because when I project out what we're putting away now for stormwater, and the fact we're going to continue to go for grants, my best guess is there's not going to be enough money there. But I don't know because I don't have the project list to go to say, in order to meet our required level of phosphorus removal, this is what needs to be done and this is what it's going to cost. And so any funds that we can put into the stormwater account now, we can use to leverage for grants because they're still giving out money. And we can use that to leverage whatever grants we can get that will work us towards that end. While we're trying to figure out what's the longer-term plan, does it come out of the two cents? Do we have to add more money to that two cents to afford stormwater? Do we have to bond for those projects? I don't have the answer, but I know that we're still trying to get more grants and we're already, you know, if we were today, we're $100,000 short. So everything we put in is going to help us get to the end game. That's why we're underspent by that amount roughly this year and my recommendation was put it back where it belongs, which is helping us to move forward on stormwater. Anything else? Andy? Not a row. All right, I'll keep going. There's $50,000 in here for tax equity in merger. I'm questioning whether we should just put that again into the future tax reduction category, fully recognizing we certainly don't have to use it in the upcoming tax year, but as we did last year, we deferred some of it and left it in that future category. The reason I think that it ought to be just thrown in there is this presupposes merger and I, you know, putting money into something that tied to that specific event, I'm just concerned that, I mean, is it okay to do that if there's not a positive or not a guarantee that we're going to get to merger? I just wanted to raise that question. Evan, you want to comment? Not to be negative, but if merger doesn't happen, these are still your funds. They can be assigned or unassigned as you choose. So again, not to be negative. As soon as either you or the electorate decide that you are or you aren't, you can reassign these as you will. I think, though, that while lowering the tax bill for anybody in any one year is laudable and a good goal, there are going to be expenses if you do merge in terms of taxation that you may want to use to feather something in. And while one might be to do something in one year, one may be to do something over a period of time. And like Dennis says, when you're trying to do something over a longer period of time and with grants or other things, sometimes you need that pot to be bigger than any one year would support. But those are your funds and you can decide whether they are to be designated or re-designated like we just moved 6400 bucks. I personally like to see it kept as defined here because if we add to that over time, I think Evan's right. We do get to that point where we merge, those funds are going to be very helpful and to have them designated for that specifically. I would second that. I would just say based on what we know right now and what we're working on right now, it would seem to me that that makes sense, the changes that we're making here tonight. As Evan said earlier, it's still our money. If priorities change, it does not preclude us from moving it, if need be. My concern is that we only have one meeting a year where we touch these funds. That's typically this first one in December. And I guess we could, maybe I'm just thinking out loud here. I suppose we could revisit whenever we wanted and move funds around whenever we wanted. As I hear, I apologize for it. I agree. We tend to, you tend to do this once a year, probably because there's really no need to move funds as often. But there are times when we do look to use those funds during the year and that is a time to open it up. It just is very, it can be complicated. I'd like the 1332 for the fire salaries we dealt with in February. Right, so we have done that. I guess the positive would be that you have funds from which to move versus other communities that don't have any funds to move. So I don't think there's anything hard and fast that says you only have to have this conversation once a year, but we just don't always have the need. The history behind that is we were, we suggested in prior years that we should wait until we have the audited numbers before we do this. So from an audit standpoint, we've been told that this is the perfect time to do it. It is a good time. So that's why we're here. The other piece of this that gives me a little bit of heartburn is we have this policy, this pesky policy is getting away all the time. That says, and I understand that, it says you can have 15% fund balance and then anything above that needs to be allocated to something or given back to the taxpayers. And I guess this particular line item is intended to be given back to the taxpayers at some point. I guess my only, yeah. So whether it's in this line item or the general future tax reduction line item probably doesn't matter. I'm talking out loud. It's thinking through this out loud again. Sometimes it helps to say out loud. But my, I guess mainly, yeah, the, the, the, I guess I'm okay with it. I'm gonna leave it, leave it where it is. Any other comments or questions about, about this? If not, we would like to make a motion so that we can lock this in. All right. Just like forward recommend the fund balance be assigned in the amounts as indicated on the spreadsheet and as amended this evening. And that amendment is moving the 64 out of the Yes. Selectment and into the capital fund. Second. Mike. Okay, any further discussion about assigning these amounts to the fund balance? Okay, hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Okay. Motion passes unanimously. Yes, Senator. And if I could, we all know that Lauren is retiring any moment now. But her work on these funds and our fund balance and her knowledge, it's incredible. And I know that she's going to take a little hiatus and come back and do some project work. But I hope she teaches where all these are because I could, I only catch a fraction. So is this your last select board meeting? Wow. Thank you. Thank you for the joint meeting tomorrow. We're going to have the joint meeting tomorrow. Okay. I'm going to be here. Thank you. Thank you for everything. Yeah, for everything. Fantastic. So thank you. Okay. We're going to move on to the next business item, which is five E and that's approval of fund funding request for undesignated capital funds for additional highway garage repairs. And Dennis, I'm glad you're still sitting there. Yeah, I guess I've got a few things to cover tonight. This was originally planned. I mean, we knew about this or I knew about this last July and kind of postponed putting it forward. I was hoping that we'd be able to do it with a normal capital plan and, and Lauren suggested and Evan suggested that, you know, if this is a real need that we should just get it done. And I agree with him. It's one of those things we probably should not have postponed. You know, there's a question that I think Tim brought out that there was some structural supports that removed probably 15 or 20 years ago when the doors were put in. Additional doors are put in. Maybe three doors that were added. One door on the very far western side of the building never had any cross bracing or structural support there because that's the main entryway into the lift. Those doors were a necessity as we increased our fleet. If you've been up there when everything is inside, you could not maneuver those vehicles in that building if you didn't have those additional doors to get in and out of from a structural point of view. Those buildings, those metal frame buildings are designed pretty closely. Their package was built in the 70s and there's not a lot of freeboard in there with regard to current safety margins for snow loads and things like that. They're designed for the standards that were in effect at that time and designed very closely to those standards that it's not forgiving. Tim is an excellent structural engineer. I've dealt with him a long time. At one point he was a roommate of my sons and actually worked for Count of Essex way back when, but he's one of the best structural engineers in the state. We got done fixing the posts that were holding up the main beams this last year. We weren't able to get to all of it. He said the concern would be if you had a combination of a late spring storm, heavy snow load on the roof and a combination of some heavy winds, the torque on that building would essentially take down that whole corner. Some of the building is better protected on the backside because it not only has the bracing up, but it also has the siding there. It's safer actually when the doors are down because that does provide some lateral support. But his feeling is, and although it's an old building and we don't know where we're going with all our buildings, that from a safety concern, he had a very real concern that we ought to put up some additional supports in that part of the building to guarantee that from a structural point of view, the building didn't come down under a certain set of circumstances. So when we talked about this and talked about the funds and where we were going, there seemed to be a logical time to get him back, complete the design, get a contractor in, and get it finished. We're going to have to put some footings down inside the garage and put some columns up and then tie those columns across to the beams. His further suggestion of his is that the columns that support that we had, the one or the two that actually rusted at the bottom that were really not supporting anything, we got very lucky because the only thing that was holding it up was the roof girders holding the beams up with rivets because nothing was really supporting it on the ground. So that, and that's occurred just because they're metal, they're metal frame building. The trucks are full of salt. We wash them down and nature, mother nature is there. That problem is not going to go away. These supports would be internal inside that section so they're more protected. Whatever happens to that building in the future, it will give a level protection. So the request is that we take those funds as recommended by staff to go out and get it finished design and build it, get it fixed. Okay. Thanks for that background. Questions for Dennis? Comments? Anybody? Andy? Yeah. I'm just looking for a better understanding or definition of undesignated capital funds. So that's money that's already in your capital account that's not designated for a specific. I just want to make sure that's the definition. I see some nodding. All right. So it's money we already have. Right. It's already been approved as a capital. Okay. Am I correct in understanding that if we have the perfect storm, it's not only going to hurt the building, but everything inside of it, right? It's going to start falling down like a run of fright. Yeah. It's one of those things that once that corner starts, I mean, it's, you know, who knows, but once that corner starts, and it is the, I guess it's the Southwest corner. Once that Southwest corner goes, where does that, when we start to take those, go to those beams and start to twist and torque them, where does it stop? We have been very lucky. What is the age of the building? It was built in, there were some economic funds that were provided back in, before I came to the town, back in the late 70s. I think it was about 1977, and I think that's the age of that building. So it's 50 years old, roughly. So Dennis, when the doors were installed, that's when the building's vertical bracing, and is that the responsibility of the installer that they weakened the building? No, I guess if there's a hit, it would be my hit, because we needed those doors put in, and you can't have those overhead doors are inconsistent with that bracing. You'd have to go to a different type of bracing, and we didn't do that. So that if there's a hit for that, it really falls on my shoulders for authorizing the doors. It's really not the overhead door, people. It's, we made the decision to change the makeup of that building. And how, if this gets approved, how quickly could this work get started? Well, this is the time of year to get it done, if we can, because the people that would fabricate and build that are really not out in the summer, you know, building, still buildings and things, and that's who to have to come in as a contractor. So we'd advertise it, we'd go through the normal process to find a contractor, have Tim do a simple set of specs, put it out to bid, and then get the work done. So it could be done with this year? Yeah, I'd like to see it done in the next couple of months, before we get into a March timeframe, I'd like to have it finished. Max meaning, Max a member? Max will, yes. Just checking. Okay, any other questions? Sounds like something that we really don't want to wait on. Dennis, just a curiosity question. Beginning of the second paragraph of Tim's memo, attached sketch depicts a concept to install a new structural steel moment frame to replace vertical bracing. What is a moment frame, please? A moment frame is a rigid frame. If you want to think of it as a door frame. Okay, a jam. Jam tied to the upper beams, tied to the floor, that would either be welded or riveted to those upper girders, and with a cross beam and a column, doesn't have to be a huge column, connected down to the floor to a support. So it locks those upper beams in place, and prevents that roof from torquing. Okay. Getting that moment, there's two types of failures, there's the shear failure where it breaks like that, and there's the bending failure, which is a moment failure, and it would be the moment bending failure of that roof that would cause the thing to come down. Thank you. I'd never heard that term used before. I'm not a structural engineer, but some things, I guess if you sit in class long enough, they eventually come back. Thank you. In the interim, is there a way to roof rake the snow off that so that you don't get a load that's too big on there? Is it not practical? I've hesitated. Safe. Yeah, the safety is an issue. I've hesitated having people up on that roof, and it's like other things, there's a certain degree of risk and a certain degree of luck, if you will. I think that if we had a real combination of some heavy snows, we'd probably find a way to get some device to get up there that we could get some of that load off. If we don't have that heavy snow, and it continues like it is now, we just get the work done. What's the board's pleasure? I would move that this life board authorize funds from undesignated capital funds for repairs to the town highway garage in the estimated amount of $43,000. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. Any further discussion about authorizing the undesignated capital funds to fix the highway garage? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you, Dennis. Okay, we're going to move on to Business Item 5F. Keep things moving. Update on status of current capital projects. A lot of them in there. I realize this is not a novel, but I wanted to provide, we've done this every year to provide a word version update of what we've been working on since the start of this physical year, where we are with those accounts. The capital plan that you'll see coming at you in a few weeks won't have the narrative. It'll have the spreadsheet and all the backup sheets explaining what went into that spreadsheet. So this is kind of the one time to go through and talk in words about what's going on with each one of the projects. It wasn't my intent to bore you by going through each one of these projects, but by providing it early. If you had any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer them. I do want to make you aware of one project under highways just because it's occurring today. We had a Class 2 Paving Grant for Sandhill Road, and we did the portion close to Route 15. We probably should have taken it a few more feet, but we left that portion because that's where the State's project is going to come in to improve the intersection. So we finished Sandhill Road down quite a ways. We had additional money in the grant. We had originally going to take it all down, redo everything we found that there was a more cost-effective way to do it. So we actually saved quite a bit of money under the grant. We really wanted to jump Sandhill Road, because there's another section we did out to Ellen Martin that's finished. So we wanted to go farther down Sandhill Road. The state under the grant would not allow us to use the money. It had to be a contiguous portion of Sandhill Road. But underneath the portion we completed, there's some 50-year-old corrugated metal pipe that's in pretty bad shape. And so Erin talked to the state and convinced them to put the money into lining that. So if you happen to be on Sandhill Road today, traffic was a little backed up because we didn't realize that the steam was going to be that bad. But what they're doing is they're going into that storm drain. They televised it first a couple weeks ago. They're putting it into a company, a bike contract, going into the storm drain, putting... I'm not sure if the material is fiberglass, but it's like a fiberglass curtain. It's that cloth material. Putting it down into one of the catch basins, dragging it through the catch basin, sealing it, and then they put steam in the inside under pressure. And what that does is force that bag, like a balloon, against the side. And then the moisture in there essentially allows it to cure. And when you get done, you have a fully lined, strengthened pipe that's probably half to three-quarters of an inch thick. And the state agreed that they would allow us to use the grant to do that because it's expensive. We have some pipes fried that we wanted to do it, and it just happened today because it was so cool that the steam was everywhere. We actually had to put traffic control up because you couldn't see with all the steam in the air what was going on. But our plan is we have some problems down in the lower part of Sandhill Road because those pipes that go down the last portion are also corrugated metal. They're also 50 years old. We did televise them. They're in pretty bad shape. We intend to do that out of FY20 funds. But that's our plan. So it was a, and they may still be there tomorrow to finish. So it's kind of a neat thing to watch. But it is a way to expand the dollars that we have, use up the grant money that was there for a good purpose. So now we'll have a renovated storm drain under Sandhill Road near the fire station heading back towards Cemetery Road. Just kind of interesting. Seems like a novel idea. It was a novel idea. Thanks, Andy. Thank you. So I don't, does anyone have any questions about any of the projects that you want to go through or just accept this as it is? I can answer any that you have. I think Mike has a question for you. Dennis, on page four, down at the bottom under water lines, could you, could you speak to, I'm looking in particular for number one and number two, no budget expenditure was made in FY13 to FY18 or will be made in FY19. Two questions. Number one, is there money in there now under these? No. Okay. So these were created as an anticipated capital expenditure but has not been funded to date. These are what I would call legacy projects that we may want to remove at some point in time. Okay. From the village boundary heading back towards Pinecrest. Yep. There is a pressure difference between the village lines and our lines. You'd have to put a bunch of things in there, but there was a quest request to put in water and we don't extend water unless the users pay for it. So we, this goes a long time back. I'd have a hard time finding the reports now. We did up a cost estimate, what it might cost the users, and the answer came back, we're not interested. So, and there's a few of these in here that we've left as legacy projects. They're still in a capital plan. They may be a future need, but there's no money allocated. There's no work being done. And maybe when we discuss the capital plan, it's time to take them off. Be quite honest. The Douglas to Willoughby was, this goes back to, there was a project to develop when the land was in the sewer core, parallel to Route 15. If anyone's familiar with the Van Gaal farm, in that area off of Old Stage Road. At one point in time, there was a project to be developed in that area and a waterline to loop from those two locations, from Willoughby, and will be all the way over to Douglas to, yeah, Douglas and by towers right there. And again, that project was approved by the town, got killed in Act 250. We looked at it, it was denied. It's been farmland ever since. We looked at that as a potential way to provide additional interconnections. Since then, we've redone the water lines on Route 15. They were old 8-inch AC. They're now 12-inch ductile iron. So a lot of water has gone over the dam, where we don't need it anymore, but it's still a legacy project. I've left it in every year. Again, maybe it's time to take it out. That was the second prong of my two-part question, was if they are inactive and would be foreseen as being inactive for a period of time moving forward. One of the things that Sarah and I have worked a lot on the capital plan, and one of the things that we have all these stormwater grants, and they're identified projects, and we've decided they should be in the capital plan as identified projects. So in the capital plan, you have one account that funds these. That's where our money goes in. But then you have the other accounts where you're spending them. For the public, they need to know, what are we spending that money on? So we're listing all those as the sheet in the back for it. So you're going to find that where we may have had, well, you know how many projects are on this list, we're probably going to double that. So the question is, how do we present that to the voters? How do we present that to the board? So you have full disclosure on all those accounts, because these have no funds in them. But there's also a lot of accounts that have dollar accounts were put in there for, maybe by a developer, for a very specific purpose, that we can't touch because we haven't done anything with it yet. It's still there. So it should be identified as a capital project for a future need. So you're going to find some of these may have to come off. Yep. You're going to have a lot more being added. That was the information I was looking for. Thank you. So if they've been inactive for 10 years or something, I mean, is there a cutoff? That would make sense, Dennis? Yeah, I mean, there's, I won't belabor you, but there's one, for example, under highway. One of the old highway projects is Alan Martin Parkway. Yes. To take Alan Martin Parkway from where it ends now and connect it down to the Cirque. And that's, there was a real important need for that if the Cirque was going to be built to Williston. Because if you could get off the interstate in Williston, get on the Cirque, do you want all that traffic coming through the town center, or do you want that traffic to come up Alan Martin Parkway, go on to Sand Hill Road, go on to Alan Martin Drive, and head up Route 15 towards Jericho, under Hill in the Northeast Kingdom. It was a logical extension. There is no Cirque highway going to be built in Williston, from the Williston to Essex Lake. So do you need this other leg, given the fact that we have Sand Hill Road, and signals now at the bottom of Sand Hill Road? So we've made improvements to our infrastructure that at some point negate the need for some of these projects. So I think it's a very good question. And when we get to the budget discussions with Capital Plan, maybe that's the point where the board says, red ink that one. Maybe you can make recommendations of which ones you think should be taken off, and we can add that as part of the review. So that you get a project list that's real. Yeah, yeah, perfect. Thanks again, Dennis. I'm wondering how this sewer projects on hold fit into that, because the needs are still there. Would they stay on this list, even though there's no money and no prayer for some of these sewers to ever go in, as far as some of us are concerned? That's why I've left them on. But it's a very good question, and maybe some of them should be left on, because maybe there's still a need for those in the future, and others, it may be, it's time to take them off, because in reality we're just not going to build them. We'll let Dennis red line those that he thinks are appropriate. I can do that as part of the review. That'd be a great idea. Anything else to Dennis on the Capitol? Andy? Library, Parks and Rec and the Tree Farm all have negative balances, and I understand it's because of unexpected things that happened for all three of those. Is there any indication from that that planning should be different for those areas? I know a building having to be torn down is not something you're going to plan for. Right, but some of those, I think we can anticipate some of those better. I think that one of the things that, I thought about that, and I think there's three choices that you really have. One is, one you can do an immediate fix and say, well, let's take some money out of the undesignated account and bring that balance to zero. In some cases, you can do that if the accounts are small. The other one is that we should be looking at the long-term costs for that particular line item and what amount of money is needed per year to substantiate that line item. What that really means is we need better planning. Some of that falls within our individual departments. It's not just public work. Some of it falls within the individual department. You really have a better feel for where you're going. That's partially the argument for a buildings manager, but that's a separate discussion. I think you get to a point where you ought to be budgeting. For example, we might go in the hole in a given year on equipment replacement, but if we're putting enough money over a 20-year period, you may have one year that dips below, but the plan is you're going to have enough money to substantiate that fund for 20 years. You're going to have enough in the 15% funds and the other funds to cover the fact that that account may be just below the line. You need to do better planning. What bothered me is if we had an account that was zero, it was negative. Next year we spent more money. It's still negative. That tells me, number one, you're not doing enough planning. Number two, you're not putting enough money to cover that expense. So I'm not so concerned, I've not been concerned even some of my accounts, which ones go below zero, as long as over the long term they're solving. If it's a one-time event that occurs, they figure out a way to do it, but it can be fixed immediately by saying, let's just plug the hole, make it zero, start all over. But if there's a good enough plan, you might not have to do that. You might be able to just say, it's going to come out of the hole next year, that's what it is. Okay, this is currently just information. It's information, and I would, when we give you, we're going to still use books for the capital plan. We haven't quite gotten to the point where we're going to put it all on spreadsheets. The plan will be on a spreadsheet, but ultimately our individual sheets in the back, we're going to try to put into Excel and link them so it's easy to change stuff and add things. But the book that you'll get, this will be one of the inserts in the book. We always do that. So you've got what's proposed, what we're doing now, and where the money's being spent this year, so we can kind of compare apples to apples. Now, we'll have new binders, and if you want to get rid of the old ones, we'll take those and recycle them and use them the next year. Any else? Dennis, you always do a bang-up job on this. I know it's a lot to keep track of, and we have full confidence in what you do. Thank you. Okay, we're going to move on to business item 5G, which is approval of a grant application for the scoping of a stormwater improvement project on Tanglewood Drive. Dennis. Annie came to me with this. I told her she didn't have to show up tonight since I was going to be here. I'd cover for her. I've been a good boss. But anyway, she put this together. We've been looking at the line that's at the far end of Tanglewood. It's a similar thing. It's old metal pipes, but over time has caused significant erosion down in Fernhalo and that whole area. Very erodible soils, and we've done all kinds of things down there with the conservation corp at Richmond that we've used. They've come in. They put up check dams, and it just doesn't work. There's too much stormwater getting down there. We had the UVM students look at it one year and run some numbers for us. So we've got a little bit of background. In the meetings that we go to with the CCRPC, Annie overheard a conversation that in the current year they may have some UPW funds that they hadn't allocated. Unified planning work work program. And every year and you'll see us in January we'll come in with a request I think your first meeting in January or second to go after funds for next year for certain things. We've got some projects lined up we want to do. They're planning projects that it's a 20-80% match. I know Annie put this together and actually the cost estimate is probably more than we get from the match but we still would get $20,000 for the work. What we really want to do is have this is one where we probably will not get grants to construct it but we will have enough done under the conceptual plans that we could build it ourselves. The thought process there it's a pretty simple thought process but a bunch of and I'll do this I think I'll try to explain it without putting anything on the wall but you've got a bunch of catch basins down for an hollow. It's an old line, it's a metal line it's all rusted out. The road will need to be redone anyway. The road is 40 feet wide, curb to curb our standard is 30, it was built a long time ago. It's at the far end of Tanglewood where the road does narrow down after this intersection anyway. And this will go through a public process so the residents will have and I'll say it and everything else 30 feet which gives us 10 feet to play with and within that 10 feet put a path because there is no path on Tanglewood and that's, you know, we'll work from our back to the front in this case but use some of the stormwater funds I mean we may be able to get a grant for the stormwater portion I'm not sure but take that stormwater pipe take it out put a much larger pipe in a much much larger pipe with flow coming out of the catch basin into that pipe so you store that water and then coming out you put a much smaller pipe with an overflow so you're essentially using that large pipe to store water during those intense rainstorms you're letting it go out at a much slower pace which means you're cutting the erosion down below and you have an overflow that if that storm continues for two hours it's going to run over the top and it's like it's always been but if you can catch that one or two year storm you reduce the amount of erosion that's occurring down below we may also be able to put some stuff in that system which would help us get some credit for fossil removal so if we can get a conceptual plan this is the case again where can we go get money to get work done that we need to get done that we can get grants for or cut down our costs we had planned to go out to do this ourselves with our own costs this summer to hire an engineer and look at it this way we can get 20,000 at least out of the dollars the last two years we've not spent it in the professional services so we could make up the difference we won't know what the final cost of this is until we get an estimate from whatever engineer they pick engineers and then assign them to the project the regional planning commission does we have a say in that but they'll actually hire an engineer as opposed to bid it so we'll negotiate a contract if it's 25,000 under then it's 5,000 cost to us if it ends up being this type of estimate we have to eat that difference between the five and well it'll be 20 with the five and the 17 additional which we have funds in the operating account to cover leverage those funds it's another way to leverage funds other questions the path goes in and I've talked to you before about this the distance between the curb and where that path is to make sure it's wide enough so that when the snowplow comes by with the wing out to clear the road and push it on to that land that it doesn't there's enough there that it doesn't cover the walkway it's actually a wider right of way but if we took the existing curb out we'd have the feet to begin with so if we put in, it could be a path it could be a patuminous path it could be five to eight feet wide we could go further into a right of way towards the property the issue probably for neighbors is going to be wanting which side of the street who wants it, who doesn't want it but I think that particular street as we work our way from the back end to the front that's in the area where the kids are walking to school and there is no sidewalk there is no path so it could be a path it could be a sidewalk but I agree with you we need the snow storage but to me it's a logical progression if we can get stormwater to fix part of it and oh by the way get a path in at the same time it gets us part way closer to getting something built out to San Hill Road where we then have a path where there ought to be a path or a sidewalk along that there's too many houses there without that amenity a public process so the neighbors there they have concerns or issues or preferences they can air them can you solve the longstanding mystery for me walking down the street on a sunny day going past a storm banner here I'm trying to figure out where that water is coming from but it's from the big pipe that's just slowly draining out from the rainstorm a couple days ago so I had you solve the mystery for me so I'm happy or it could be an underdrain it could be an underdrain from someone's house who's tied in when there's a high groundwater table and it's leaking into the storm drain we have a lot of stormwater that runs through our community have we ever done that calculation just to see volume I mean it's just I mean I'm amazed two days after a storm I mean anybody who goes and looks at the dam on the bridge on Williston you can figure out because we're downstream from everybody else when that dam is wide open you know we have creeks Indian Brook Creek and stuff you could sit out here and listen to the water rush by we have a lot of water run through here we have a lot of hills and so it's a quick a lot of times it's a quick relief from the high to the low what's the pleasure I would move that the select board approve and direct the chair to sign a letter of support for grant funding under the RPC's unified planning work program for the Tanglewood Drive stormwater improvement project any further discussion about approving this grant application I mean about hearing none all those in favor signify me saying aye aye motion passes unanimously Max I do have along with that one of the things that's required is for the chair to submit a letter of support and I've got the original okay yeah we can leave that here thank you say put you got like 5 more items yeah so we're going to move on to I think it's 1 this is item 5H the memo from Greg and Dennis regarding the plow truck replacement and we did get some new information that we brought on in the beginning okay yes so last Friday was not a good day and I just got this so I'm going to have to go through it a little bit slower than maybe the other stuff but truck 107 truck 107 is a truck that we're going to turn in this year which is always the way it works it was taken off the road and I was told it required a substantial amount of repair what happened was the truck this truck plows the central area of town Essex Way up old stage those areas we've got 5 major large trucks the Plow and Trown so this one is the one that's right in the center the operator realized that the engine was overheating he turned it off got a hold of the mechanic on the radio mechanic told him to go outside and check to make sure there's no coolant leaking on the ground to make sure there wasn't the coolant had gone out onto the ground waited until it cooled he says get it back to the garage he stops to get back to the garage every time he started it and moved it a few feet it would overheat he'd have to shut it down and let it cool and move it again so we got it back to the garage what Jerry found out at that point was that there was no coolant visibly leaking but there's 2 and I'm not a mechanic they're called EGR exhaust gas recirculation coolers and they were added to diesel trucks to try and improve the emissions from those trucks and when they checked those they were down 3.5 gallons of coolant and at that point I happened to be in the garage when they started it up and there's this white smoke, black smoke the whole garage was filled and we shut it off got a hold of Clark's because they do that kind of maintenance for us it's an international they came down, picked it up, brought it up and they've given you a copy of their bill they did a diagnostic on it and they said just to get at what has to be gotten at in terms of the visible stuff those 2 coolant devices had leaked into the engine so you essentially had antifreeze in the engine you weren't burning diesel fuel you were basically burning antifreeze so what happened at that point is if the they know that it's going to take at least and I've given you a copy of their estimate to basically fix the seal the coolant systems the cylinder head gasket the other pieces but they won't know if there's any damage to the engine meaning either the cylinder is getting scoured or in fact if the head was cracked until they get into it so it's a little bit of a crapshoot they're estimated it might cost another 5 it might cost 10 or it might cost another 5 to 10 more so you've got a 10 to $20,000 range for repairs so given the fact that we asked them to park it we know that they can't get to it right away if they were going to fix it so there's at least a 3 or 4 week delay they've got their own schedule of stuff that's sitting there they've got to get to a point where they can work on it so we know we're going to be out for a period of time with that we started doing a whole lot of other stuff if you order a new truck you're not going to see our new truck until August so that doesn't work for the winner the issue is how do we get through the rest of the winner because actually even though we've had a winner we're just starting so we can't purchase a new truck we checked in New England to see if any other trucks were available that maybe the dealers had prepped so we were ready to sell nothing was available so that was out so when we got to that point the question is we got the actual trade in value from Clark's of that truck if it was in good shape and we traded in tomorrow it's about a $38,000 trade which surprised me it was that high but that's what it is but are we going to put $20,000 into an old truck that we're going to trade so we're just purchasing a new truck and there should have been delivered in November they didn't get it until now so it didn't get delivered to Clark's until last week so it's sitting on their lock it's an eight year old truck our mechanic used to work for the town of Colchester so he knows mechanics in Colchester so it's call up Colchester what's this truck like what's the condition the answer came back is they were using the truck for plowing it's in good shape it might require some breaks and maybe some clutch work but it's been on the road it's operational it's fully equipped it can run Jerry estimated that if the clutch and the other pieces the brakes had to be done it might be another $3,000 so Clark's quoted Colchester $48,000 as their trade in and they said they would sell us that truck for $48,000 now so the next step was what's our truck worth so they looked at it and they said they would give us $38,000 for our truck less than $15,000 to fix the engine so the difference when you get all done is that we could pick up Colchester's truck for $25,000 the other thing they indicated is that and we bought almost all of our trucks for them I'll be where it's going to go in the future that they would in the spring if we ordered a truck after approvals and town meeting and all that they would allow us $45,000 on the trade on the $48,000 truck so the net difference is $3,000 on the trade which you can look at a lot of different ways and if you had to put another $3,000 somewhere between $3,000 and $6,000 that's three to four months rental on a truck and the thought process was once we get through winter we take it up to Clark's and do the trade right then we go back to four trucks for the spring and summer while we're waiting for a new truck to come in let's not stretch our luck any let's not put any more money into it than we have to let's get the maximum trade work with the trucks we have because in summer if we have to use trucks we can rent trucks from anybody and that gives us a vehicle to use from now until hopefully spring there's in my view there's no difference given you a copy of our equipment replacement plan that you'll also see in the budget for the $3,000 if we had to put repairs into it it comes in repairs and maintenance there's money there right now in that account as of now given what money is going into and what we've spent we have $111,000 in the account so we can decrease that by $25,000 for the truck you'll see different numbers next year because the trade will actually occur differently in 2020 so the numbers will change some but the net effect on our overall capital equipment replacement plan is nil and there's always a degree of risk what if that truck blows up, don't know doesn't know, you don't know so you play the odds and I think the odds say this is probably the best place we could be the other option would be and we talked about this is park it and work off the trucks we have and that might work it's difficult because we're using a lot smaller trucks with half the capacity to do what this one's doing it means longer time for plowing could we make it if we had to we probably could the problem becomes one if anything else goes down for any period of time then you're really in a world of hurt because then you don't have enough to put on the road to do it it's a key service it's a key service and a key area and so that's why we're lucky I think we got to a solution in a very short period of time and we're lucky the weather is playing nice to us for the next few days because we could if the board approves we can get this done this week the truck will be in our shed this week and we can be back to where we were we'll see a truck with Colchester emblems two in there we'll tell them we worked a great deal with Colchester they're now following the road for us and it was great thanks for that background Dennis questions about that seems pretty ingenious I think you've done your due diligence Dennis as usual I have a question a little surprise to see that the coolers were down by three and a half gallons I'm just wondering is there a checklist that your folks go through before they hop in the the question that I my tack was a little bit different to start with is this operator error that's the question I asked Jerry and he said no he said they've had problems with this he said what happens is you it can happen very suddenly because of the way that the newer engines that we buy are Cummings engines I can't tell you what the name of the engine in this truck is it's another brand but they've had problems off and on with this and it can happen very quickly very suddenly where you get a leak between that particular device and the engine and quite honestly that truck had been out plowing doing everything and there's been no issues with it so you and I asked Jerry that I said which should the operator have known this ahead of time he said not with this particular situation is this is not a question of operator error he says it's a question of if anything else fault you design with the original truck and I've got to believe that I mean Jerry's pretty if he felt it was operator error we would have had a long talk with the operator about the problem but I but I mean is there a checklist that there you know check the air pressure we have our own checklist and they also have a requirement on the CDL to keep their license that they're required to do a check on the vehicles I know things can happen while you're out on the road to look fine in the morning and be broken afterwards if we end up putting brakes and or a clutch into this new used truck from Colchester would there be a reason that you might want to hang on to it for a year or so we've talked about that I think I've not seen the truck I'd like to take a look and see what the truck is I think we started we need to and Evan and I have talked about this a little bit too we need to start looking at we've been trying as Mike brought up trying to get the life of these trucks down and we're getting there but if Colchester is trading in at 8 years maybe we need to look at our numbers in terms of trading value if we can we can get right balance you have a balance you're going to depreciate it's going to devalue anywhere from 700 to a thousand dollars a month that's what your dealer is going to get you we're going to have a truck parked over the summer because we don't use them as much in the summer and devalue it by five, six, seven thousand dollars and then you play that game and it's just and it's back to how long are you keeping on what's your useful thing technology you have the EPA who has its standards and depending upon whether this one is or isn't in the new standards it's just and what condition is it and are you willing to put good money it's just like your car are you willing to put good money now into an eight or ten year vehicle or would you rather put that money into a newer more dependable vehicle and they play the I don't want to say it's a game it's not a game but it's how many do we have what kind of vehicle is it is it the one vehicle you can't do without this time of year this is the one vehicle you can't do without this time of year so that's the equation we can buy and we have been buying extended warranties which go out to seven years and they're they're a little pricey but they're not they fit into the budget we've already got them budgeted in to do that but there's a reason why they extended warranties only go out to seven years and we're doing ours our trucks are ten to eleven so we need to get them down and the question is how do we get them down and the only reason that I would look at what you're suggesting I mean is that if there was a year where we could do that that might build up enough capital reserve in the capital account that then we could start on a seven or eight year retirement but you've got to make sure you've got the right vehicle to extend that year with and again I don't know the vehicle from anything but we haven't seen this you know the others we've grown up with we Jerry's work on this is one we don't know and so I it's maybe a little riskier but I think the idea is a good one it may be that we take a look at one of our better trucks and say let's get one more year which might allow us to bring everything back as you go forward for the next 15 or 20 keeps up the trade in value keeps up the trade in value there's there's some things that when I say we need some we've got a lot of fires in the pan but this is one we need to look at to see if there's a way to bring these bring that equipment replacement plan with less years so is this for information purposes recommendation it's a recommendation because we are going to be spending money from the capital plan that was that's over the that's unbudgeted and not in the original plan Mike emotion I'd be great okay I moved the select board approve that the the town trade in truck number 107 in its current condition to Clark's center for $23,000 and purchase the used Colchester truck from Clark's at a cost of $48,000 which results in a net $25,000 cost transaction further pending budget approval at town meeting the town would trade in the used Colchester truck for a new truck replacement as outlined in the vehicle equipment replacement plan Mike I have a second on that okay any further discussion about the trade in for truck number 107 would we really not bother to put our name on it is that part of the plan to just not even put us we'll find some way to cover up I just I don't want to put any more money into it than we have to other than to make it rotable though if we have to do something we may have to find something that we can cover or some way to do what we have to do but we also don't want to devalue the truck no that's true Colchester cops stopping people within Essex proper so we've cooperated with them before Mike I think Linda Myers might have some of her old magnetic signs still in her garage we could put that over the local series of course I did okay any other discussion get hearing on all those in favor signify by saying hi okay motion passes unanimously thank you very much thank you Dennis thank you well done okay we're going to move on to business item five I which is approval of contract for building needs analysis and Greg this one's going to kick this one off to bring this back to you this is the building needs analysis RFP had gone out a few months ago had brought it to you and the trustees originally the plan was to do a building needs analysis this was budgeted in the capital plan last year building needs for the town and village public works department town recreation and town fire after speaking I'm just speaking to the select board and the trustees getting some input we revised the RFP and added the village fire department and village recreation and parks to the study as well put the RFP out we had budgeted $40,000 two bids came back in one from Scott and partners the other one was from wayman lamp here staff met at a staff team that reviewed the two applications and recommend that the town and the village go with Scott and partners the trustees reviewed this last week they also approved the Scott and partners because the bid came in at $45,650 it's above that $40,000 threshold for the purchasing policy which is why it's coming back to you and just some reminders on the project it's just a space needs analysis it's not going to be making recommendations of whether there should be one building or two buildings or where they're going to be for each of these departments it's just kind of looking at what are the needs going to be for staffing for storage for equipment for programs for going out for 30 years it's get that far out it becomes a rough estimate 30 years from now but it's a planning tool for going forward and a lot of that will probably weigh in on where the board stand with consolidation and merger and everything else but at the very least it's going to give us a sense of what we need to start budgeting for and planning for whether it's one facility or two so that's where we stand staff recommendations that the select board authorized the unified manager to finalize and execute the contract with Scott and partners happy to answer any questions questions for Greg on this anybody we kind of had a lot of discussion about this before it's just about adding a couple other things and since it's over the 40k it's got to come back okay so what's the board's pleasure you're up Andy alright I'll move that the select board authorized unified manager to execute a contract with Scott and partners for a building needs analysis thank you Andy do I have a second second for the discussion on the building needs analysis hearing none all those in favor signify me saying aye that one passes unanimously as well a lot of hard work by Greg and Dennis and others to put this RFP together and the committee for their recommendation thank you all for what you guys do to make this happen we're moving on to business item 5J and that's the acceptance of the land donation at Indian Brook Road Greg another one that you've seen this one has been on the back burner for a little bit longer but starting probably about two years ago the unsworth family which owns land between old stage road and Indian Brook road and your park they owned about 250 acres somewhere in that range they went through a subdivision project about a year ago got held up at act 250 went through the local approval process got held up at act 250 for a few reasons one of which was that the state was concerned about future development potential so the unsworth decided to approach the town to see if the town is interested in accepting a donation of 160 acres of that property to keep it undeveloped in perpetuity from a wildlife from wildlife conservation standpoint it's part of big wildlife habitat there's wetlands on there streams it meets a lot of the town plan goals and objectives in terms of conservation it does but Indian Brook is not a huge piece but there's maybe 200 feet of a strip that would potentially allow for future trail connections and other recreation components down the road nothing's on there right now nothing's planned at this point we have a sleepy hollow road that the town accepted earlier this year so it's back the unsworth really just kind of had one request it's been in their family for a few generations and they ask it to be called the Ray Underworth parcel that's the going back three generations it's the grandfather of James Unsworth who's been my primary contact on the project so that's what the request there the town would forgo a little bit of revenue in school taxes the estimate from a couple of years ago was $330 probably closer to $350 at this point a current tax rate for municipal taxes school taxes are a little bit more than that but bringing it to you there was a draft warranty deed we'd go through that just figure out any tweaks make sure there's nothing there with the attorneys but just ready to move forward with it and get back to the underworths if the board is still amenable to this that you should be any questions about this it's finally coming to fruition anybody, Andy? I asked about the hunting question there's no restrictions or stipulations which just fall under whatever ordinance if there's any that might apply correct, Allie Beil and I Parks and Rec Director spoke to James Unsworth they're open either way they said if the town passes local ordinances those would apply but there's no trails or anything like there is in India, Brock? No, Allie and I have talked about this we recommend just leaving it as is at this point we've already gone through a lot of the study for the firearms ordinance this was not included in any of those discussions it's like I said it's similar to that Horton property which will not be affected if recreation becomes more of a heavily used recreation area that's probably the time to revisit it okay, questions, comments pretty straightforward I think what's the board's pleasure on this one? I move that the select board authorize the unified manager to execute a land donation from Indianbrook properties LLP to the town of Essex thank you, Andy do I have a second? second it any further discussion about accepting the generous land donation at Indianbrook Road might we include the name of the parcel in that motion? yeah, to be known as the Ray-Unsworth parcel thanks good catch okay, any further discussion about that accepting that land hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye aye, opposed the motion passes unanimously and if you could send them our deepest thanks for that very generous donation then we would be happy to call out the Ray-Unsworth parcel okay, great that brings us to the last business item in 5, which is 5K and that's approval of minutes we have a motion to approve the minutes of December 3rd I would move approval of the minutes of December 3rd with select board member corrections and page 2 page 3 and page 4 and last, page 5 okay, hearing none all those in favor of the December 3rd 2018 select board minutes, signify by saying aye aye, opposed okay, passes unanimously, wonderful how about another one for the joint meeting I would move approval of the minutes of December 5th with select board member corrections second start off on page 1 line 28 please it says changes to the agenda in the following I would just say include the following instead of that okay with that good so I handed out the corrections so everybody could see what I'm doing here and feel free to stop me but I'm trying to break up some of these really long sentences into smaller ones particularly line 69 I don't want to put words in Mr. Watts' mouth but I think it's okay to say Andy Watts had a question regarding non-residents fees if you had questions regarding other fees I didn't recall them you okay with that sorry page 69 page 2 okay also for Mr. Watts on line 82 at the very end I thought the Hornets mess was the past experience but maybe I didn't hear that correctly I agree with that change also okay thank you at the end of line 86 I want to put that in context and add the words as happened several years ago I was saying at that meeting on line 87 at the end Mrs. Renner asked who would be the checks and balances anybody have issues with 86 or 87 okay we're going to move on to page 3 line 104 this is just making it more readable as I said George Tyler on line 104 provided a brief synopsis of the subcommittees charge and activity period okay line 119 further questions included whether it is possible to merge governance and not merge finances the way it's written just didn't make any sense to me but maybe other people saw something that I didn't yep okay and then line 130 Mr. Tyler asked Mr. Richards to explain situations with regard to a strong mayor in the city or a weak mayor okay we'll go with that too thank you page 4 line 163 audience member Bruce post discussed paradox of choice how too many choices confuse the public period right and then Mr. Post added that the current situation is not as complicated as Brexit he asked what the joint boards want they felt reaching out to much smaller communities and I should have circled 166 as well that's not pretty and finally I should have circled 168 because I want to add also that the boards learned from past failures and he and George Tyler had a little dialogue about that okay okay so 171 you have some changes too right okay everybody okay with what changes were suggested on page 4 by Irene okay now we're going to move on to page 5 6 actually change page 5 um so I should have circled lines 250, 251 252 254 after much discussion the boards decided to have the press release edited and presented for review to the joint board members I'm not sure why certain names were put in there it came to me I did get it and review it right because we're all joint board members we're all joint board members the joint board members now I thought that joint board member is the subcommittee thing isn't it that would say subcommittee members I think joint board is the two the select board interest because I think we all saw it right yeah okay so everybody okay with what Irene's suggesting on page 6 I guess I as I said I read that to me I would read that to me I guess clarify that we don't really refer to ourselves as a joint board you want to say instead of joint board say select board and trustees members both board members members of both boards members of both boards you got that okay thank you anything else on 6 alright all those in favor of the December 5th 2018 select board minutes with corrections signify by saying aye aye passes unanimously thank you that's it for the minutes to consent items we have a motion we approve all the consent agenda consent items with select board member comments second comments about check warrants of December 7th or the 14th everybody okay I entertain a motion to approve the consent items then we have a motion we have a motion oh we do thank you all those in favor of the consent items signify by saying aye aye comments or questions about what's in there you'll see that I put a just a draft of our outreach and you'll notice there's a lot more lines on there and that's not saying that we need to populate all those but I would hope we can do like we've done in previous years try to populate at least 10 to 12 and if you could take that and see your calendar and what you'd like to possibly do we can discuss that it'll be on an agenda item probably in January and if you have other suggestions you want to add that's fine Eddie we may have had this discussion in past years I just don't remember where we ended up having select board members who are campaigning who may be campaigning participate in the outreach I don't remember if we asked them to sit it out or whether we said it was okay I don't remember where we sat no but I'm looking at Mike I'm like hey we can sit it out I think it was the expectation was that it would only be there to hand out the information and not to be used as a campaigning to stop I don't remember where we ended up in that discussion that would put a lot of burden on those that are running and I think everybody agrees to that okay alright any other questions or comments any communication okay and then we have at the end it's our meetings and we have another one tomorrow 6.30 right here right things haven't changed so you won't be here Elaine is supposed to be back so we should be in good shape because we agreed if we're going to do a joint meeting it needs to have four at least okay so Evan tomorrow night will be your last official meeting with Lauren I believe so unfortunately but we will try to either do a cake or something as well with that but since she won't be watching this live she might be you never know Scott okay but after 29 it's close to 29 years yeah it's a long time we will be using Lauren's services on a project basis upon her return so from a little hiatus do you have a resolution that we're signing for her? no okay when you pen it again most people may know this but I don't know if everybody knows this she was interim manager at the village along with Susan there for a while which was a huge responsibility on top of her finance duties so you would want to probably include that too thanks there's an emerald ash borer memo in here I swear a couple weeks ago there was a town of Essex chipper in my neighborhood and a couple of trees got taken down have you started taking ash trees down or was there something else going on? I believe we have taken some and that we have other trees of other species that are slated to come down one of the things that's occurring is that the village and the town public works got together both have emerald ash borer tree plants and they basically not even basically they use the same equipment so our crews are going to start working together on trying to maximize the effort because both of which have about well over $150,000 worth of trees each that have to come down over a period of time before the little bug actually does get here so but we do take down trees some are not diseased with that but in anticipation so I don't know exactly which trees got taken down okay so we crossed out the executive session 8B at the beginning and we appointed the two Tracy and Marcus in open sessions so we don't need 8A, correct? would you like I move to adjourn? I would second any further discussion about adjourning? hearing none, all those in favor of adjourning signify by saying aye okay the sub passes unanimously good work tonight all lots of lots of work done