 get started. I'll go ahead and call the Village of Essex Junction Board of Trustees for a Tuesday, February 15th order. And I will call the Essex Town Select Board to order for Tuesday, February 15th, 2022. Thank you, Andy. I believe we have a couple of agenda additions for tonight. Raj, do you want to mention those? I've got one. I wanted to add the latest version of the MOU we've been working on so that we can have that as reference. Should we finish any of the Tier 2 shared agreements tonight, we can reference back to that and see where we are. So adding that to Item D, myself or Brad can email that around to the boards. I'm a little concerned adding something that nobody has seen except you guys. No, this is the final, this is the version that we all last worked on. It's nothing new and it's there so that we can refer back to it. Should we we need to look at the last list of that first section where it delineates what we're working on? Is that overarching MOU? Okay, so it's not a new version. I'm sorry, Raj, when you used the word version, I thought you meant you were, there was yet a new update. I think this one is dated 12, 14, 21. And it's the last version that we've all worked on together. And Raj, were you all set? Yes. And we also, I would like to add to the agenda a resolution and appreciation of Evan Teach. And I would like to add that to Item, I like to make that Item 5c so then all subsequent items would be shifted down. Any other additions or changes? Tracy, did you have something you wanted to change? Yeah, I just, you know, I get a little uncomfortable when we have something on the agenda added. There is a documentation to go to it, but the public hasn't had a chance to see it or weigh in on it. However, since this is just a resolution, it's not setting policy. I'm more okay with with adding it, I guess I'll say. I thought Tracy, you also want to do, did you want to have a more discussion about the tree farm? Item, as well. Sorry, I thought you were asking me about that specific agenda changes. Yes, I would like to pull a tree farm from consent. Do you have a recommendation for where in the agenda you'd like to put it? I think we squeezed in the resolution 5c. So I would recommend making that 5d and then shifting the other two items down. Could we move that to the end just in the sense of personally, I'd like to get these agreements discussed. So if we're going to pull that, I'd prefer that that be the final item. The reason behind it is just to let the public know that there is, I mean we're actually getting into the item now, but just to let the public know that there is a committee that is going to be working on it. It's not my intent to make any substantive changes to what's in the agenda. I suppose it's just to bring it up then. Sure, we can put that as what would then be 5d, I think you said. Anything else from select board members? Roger, see your hands up. You're muted. That is operator error. Anything else, trustees or staff? Okay, from staff. So that was a couple of things to make sure that I'm not missing anything. So items A and B as listed are not being changed. New item C is a resolution. New item D is the consent item of the tree farm. Then E being the update on separation, F being agreements, and G being boards and commissions. Capture all that, right? Yep, that's that's why I've got it. Great, trustees, I would entertain a motion to amend the agenda. So moved. Second. Thank you, George. Thank you, Amber. Any further discussion, trustees? Hearing none, all in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, opposed. Passing unanimously, thank you. All right, select the board. I've wanted to do this for so long, I will make the same motion on behalf of the select board. I'll second it. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you, Sue. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes 5-0. Thank you all, and that brings us into public to be heard. So this is a portion of tonight's meeting where if anybody has anything you would like to bring up to both boards. Now is the time to do so. Please make sure to raise your hand and make sure you have time on the floor. I would request that you please be civil, address your comments to either myself as a president for the board of trustees or to select board chair Andy Watts. Please refrain from disparaging comments. Please maintain appropriate language. And again, the time is now if you raise your hand. I have a question. Sure. If you can just please identify yourself just for the record. Okay. My name is Betsy Dunn, and I am a BCA member, and I am concerned about the vote, the ballots that we've sent out. There have been multiple people who have called in, my husband and ourselves, got a ballot for someone else that was inside of the envelope addressed to him. And the person that we had on that inner ballot that he had to sign was I gave them a call. They had another person's ballot. That person had Tom's ballot. And then today I got a call from one of my neighbors who also had this happen. Very concerned about this because if people sign that slip and the names don't match, their vote is not going to count. That's what I have to say. Thank you. Thank you, Betsy. I am assuming our staff have heard that and will take the appropriate steps to see that forward. I will also say thank you for reminding me that people may be calling in. So as I'm looking through to see if there are any other callers. I can't get into the Zoom. It won't let me get in at all. I've tried on three different machines. Thank you. I think if you go to the website, I believe it has been updated. My understanding is that there was an incorrect link that was posted earlier that that was updated within, I believe, the town's website. I just tried to sign in, but I'll do it again. I see. I guess I'm going to piggyback a little bit on Betsy's call. So I have reports of four individuals who have received ballots and that envelope is as somebody else's name preprinted on it. So I'm just interested to know what is the process for checking the signature versus the name on the ballot, which apparently is preprinted this round. And what happens if the signature is not legible? I mean, a whole series of questions come to mind about those ballots where you can't verify that the signature matches the name. What happens if the person doesn't even notice? Which I guess is to be the case because I did check with the town clerk today and she had only gotten one report as of about four o'clock. And I know about these four instances. So I know that people aren't going to be calling in and they may not even notice. So the question is, what is the procedure for making sure that the signature on the ballot envelope matches the name on the ballot envelope? Thank you for the question. Our staff have heard the concern. I don't have that answer. I don't know if Evan does or any of our other stuff. Evan's hand is up. Evan is just addressing that or was it something else? I'll be happy to address that. I talked to Susan this morning. We asked people that if of the 15,000 ballots that we mailed out, if there are a handful that got put in the wrong envelopes, people call the clerk's office, let them know that there was a mistake and what to do. When ballots do come in, they do get looked at. And there's also information on the website as to what to do. But we generally prefer people call the clerk who is the election official of the town and the village. Thanks. That was not an answer to my question. My question was, I understood what your question was, Mr. Signorello. That's the answer and they can call the clerk. I don't know what the exact procedure is. I'm not the clerk. And she's not in this meeting. Thank you. That's what I was looking for. Thank you. So is there also, I thought there was also the opportunity to cure incorrect ballots at this point as well? Or is that not true for local elections? I don't know. I guess we'll have to ask the clerk what the process is. We don't know. If the names don't match, it would get thrown out. Thank you for that. I'd appreciate getting the answers from our, this isn't to discredit anything being said. I would appreciate our answers coming from our clerk who is the head of these elections. So I appreciate that. And let's move on from that question and going to Mary Post. Hi. I just want to say that you had said at the beginning of this that we should not make disparaging comments. And I really get frustrated by the way sometimes the callers are treated. And I wish that you would talk to Evan and tell him that it's hurtful sometimes the way he answers people, the way he just did, to Ken, and he may not be aware of it. And if someone could clue him in that, you know, this was an actual question and it would be nice if he would be a little nicer back. Thank you. No offense taken. Any other hands up? I would also ask that if you are not pleased to make sure to mute yourself. It does get very distracting when there are multiple conversations going on at the same time. I see no other new hands up. And so you will come back to the board and go to Business Item 5A, an equity update from Essex Westford School District. And I believe we have Erin McGuire here. Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me. I wanted to start just by appreciating both boards and their support of the equity work in the Essex Westford School District. My purpose here tonight is to give you a brief update and answer any questions that you might have. I continue to be deeply engaged with the Committee on Equity for Essex. And as the school district representative to that group, that is the group within the context of the municipalities doing really great work and thinking forward about how to do more work around equity inside of the municipalities. Grateful to have some new members there. Brad and Wendy have been great conversationalists as it relates to this work. And so just excited about the collaboration between the district and both municipalities. So thanks so much for all of that. And hopefully this update will be helpful to you. And I do have a PowerPoint presentation that I would like to use. So I'm going to ask if someone could allow me to share the screen. That would be great. And then I would be able to pull that up. I'm not sure who is sort of the owner of the Zoom, if you will. I'm going to try to make you a co-host. If you just hover over the share screen and see the little arrow next to it, if you click on that and allow multiple screen shares and then let me share and then you can take that away afterward. And I would just ask that no one else share while I'm sharing. And then you don't have to make me a co-host. Okay, let's see. There we go. Yes, we've got it. Okay. All right. Awesome. So I'm going to go ahead and move this into slideshow mode so that you can see the slides. And Andrew Brown, I can see you still on screen. Can I get a thumbs up that you can see that? Awesome. Good. I can't see everyone on screen. And I will go ahead and move through and look to take questions at the end. I think that probably makes the most sense. I know you have a lot on your agenda. There are a couple of things I'd like to do tonight. The first is just give a brief update about the equity policy and the procedures and where we are procedurally. And then also do a review of our goals and then talk a little bit about some of the activities and actions that we're taking in the school district that hopefully folks can learn from. So first, related to the policy update and the procedure, just a reminder that the policy development took place across FY21. And we are now in a place where we have passed the policy that happened on June 15th. Many of you are aware of that. Both boards passed a resolution of support of that policy. Again, deep appreciation for your support. And then over this year, we are working to develop procedure. Just for those people who may not be familiar with the difference between policy and procedure in the school district, policy is the directive of the school board. Procedure is the implementation plan of the superintendent related to that policy. So the board has passed their policy and the equity advisory committee who's noted here is in the process of developing a procedure for consideration for the superintendent. And ultimately, it's the responsibility of the superintendent to publish a procedure publicly as well as provide that to the board for consideration of alignment with the policy itself. So that's work that's still ongoing. Wanted to let you know that an incredible group of community members, students as well as some teachers have come together in the equity advisory committee that is established by the equity policy in AWSD. That group of people, they were selected out of about 40 applicants. There are about 15 people who are there. There were six students selected. So that's really exciting to have a large student contingency on that group. And their purpose really is to do a couple of things. First is initially to propose the procedure and then also to help support in considering how the district monitors its progress as well as consider curriculum and other topics around equity to provide a very externalized view and lots of voice as it relates to our equity work. One of the things that's so important about equity work is that you don't sort of become insular in your equity work. It really needs to be varied voices and diverse voices who are providing inputs to an institution or organization related to this work, particularly those people who are most impacted by the work. So that group is meeting monthly and the design took place. And now we are I think on our fourth meeting and we're in the process of developing ideas for procedure for each of the goals. So the next piece that I wanted to talk about were the goals themselves so that you just had a reminder of what our areas of focus are. I'm going to go through these fairly quickly just to remind you of the goals of the EWSD equity policy. The first one is really related to curriculum decisions and ensuring that anti-racist and LGBTQIA plus affirming education are central in our work. This is about ensuring that we do not erase any group of people and we center people in our work as it relates to their presence in our classrooms and in our schools and in our communities. That also includes disability, cultural, ethnic, religious, multi-linguistic and socioeconomic diversity awareness and really making sure that that is a centerpiece of our decision making in curriculum Pre-K through 12. We're also working to redefine the accountability procedures for students and really trying to center transformation and redressing harm. So resolving harm. We know that straight punitive approaches to harm are ineffective and often create divides and so really trying to transform our accountability practices to resolve harms that have been levied against one person or another and trying to figure out how to bring people together through understanding and engagement across differences. We're also working to make sure that we support and protect people in underserved and marginalized positions while in school care and really centering family engagement that is inclusive and make sure that we really think about the needs of families and how their culture and experience and intersection with the historic dynamics of a school district that engage families really regularly and how the district shows up in that. How do we make that a more inclusive experience and consider everyone in the context of the design of that? We also want to make sure to diversify our workforce, our educators, our administration, our staff from marginalized groups and retain people so that we are more diverse than we presently are. We want to make sure that school environments are reflective of all people, that they're welcoming and protect diverse personal cultural expressions, thinking about food and language, art, music and clothing, thinking about how we celebrate and recognize cultural practices and also make sure that we are thinking carefully about developing anti-racist culturally agile proficient and responsive educators to center visibility and respect for all students in ways that are developmentally sensitive so that's another area that we're focused on and ultimately making sure that we're applying a transparent equity process to policies and procedures and practices throughout the district in all decision-making and are monitoring practices. So those are the goals of the equity policy and what I wanted to do tonight was spend just a little bit of time in each one sharing some of the activities that the school district is doing to move these goals forward. As I do this I really want to make sure to say that there is much work to do. This is not work that is finished. This is not a checklist to be done with. This is a journey and it is ongoing work for the district and the district has worked to take steps towards activities as well as training, learning and engagement in conversations that are courageous to try to move these goals forward. So my objective today is to share a little bit with you of that. I did share this with the school board as well at the last meeting. So as we move into equity goal updates I wanted to let you know that there is a curriculum auditing training that's happening for all teachers across the school district. We are looking to teach teachers how to audit their own curriculum through an equity lens. Often when you think about the word auditing you think about someone coming in and auditing what you're doing and we're really looking at deeply training everyone to think about their own curriculum in that way and provide auditing tools so that they can use tools to do that body of work. We're looking at ninth grade instructional designs for new book groups and thinking about the books and texts and materials we use and instruction. Our library procedure now is in alignment with the equity policy and we're having conversations about health curriculum to address the gender binary bias that sometimes shows up there. We were gifted a set of about 50 books from Gadakina which is the work that Judy Dow does around Indigenous Vermonters in this area and recognizing the abnaki and leading in that space and we took those books and we actually replicated the collection across all of our schools. It's just a small example but something that really makes sure to re-engage the the Indigenous people of Vermont as well as this land and re-engage so that the erasure is lessened. We are working on diversifying our library collections and we're doing that through training for librarians when our second year implicit bias training. There's been a workshop available to all educators although this was an optional one and not everyone is taking part in the essential understandings of Indigenous Vermonters and doing that in collaboration with Sheldon Farms so that's exciting. Many examples exist around units on identity and justice celebrations of Black History Month which we're in now and leaning into different religions and other topics that help us think about the area of diversifying the stories that we tell the perspectives that we look through the lenses that we use to teach and book selection has certainly been a major focus. We are also working on those accountability decisions. I talked about restorative practices and installing people in our schools to make sure that there are folks who are really available to support restorative practices at our high school and our middle school. We've developed a wellness space at Essex High School. We're engaged with an organization called Up for Learning and doing training for Essex High School teachers around restorative practice. Really cool project around youth participatory action research and so that's about engaging youth in research in the school identifying areas of interest and doing action research in the school through a student lens. We certainly have been focused on looking at suspension as a response and really trying to reframe that and think about other ways of moving forward with learning and addressing needs. Those are some things that have happened. There's certainly much to do in that area. In order to support and protect people in marginalized spaces we definitely have seen a substantial increase in the focus on Title IX and making sure sexual harassment is an area of focus and topic and clear reporting practices. We have an entire bias response system that's new at Essex High School and that's been really exciting. All faculty and staff are receiving training on the equity policy itself so everyone has an awareness of understanding that this is a critical focus. Making sure that people are visible and heard is an important part of the curriculum audit training. We're leaning into into parent and community areas where there is a notice of inequities so making sure when somebody brings up inequities that they see that we lean into that as opposed to lean back from it and really do a lot of deep listening and we've certainly done a great deal of leadership training. We're also working to make sure that these are areas of focus for family engagement too so I've talked about the bias response and leadership training and policy review. We've been part of a project around multilingual COVID supports and making sure that cultural liaisons are part of our conversations more frequently and we've also been focused on diversifying the workforce. This is a long-term goal and we have made some progress. We have a ways to go but we have used some affinity-oriented mentoring programs looking at administrative meeting structures to enhance this leadership training and hiring team training. We have an overarching plan that we're working on to diversify that has a whole bunch of ideas in it that will help us think about how we benefit people from being an employee in EWSD in ways that enhance interest and as well as retention and also thinking about how we post. What's the language we use? How are we encouraging people to apply? Where are we posting and thinking more about recruiting measures? We're also working on making sure that our environment is reflective and welcoming and thinking about how we address celebrations in our school district. One of the things that we want to make sure to recognize is that special days and special celebrations are a really critical part of education and one of the myths about equity work is that it sort of strips that from schools and actually it couldn't be further from the truth. We're really looking to infuse our schools with lots of opportunities for learning many different types of celebrations, many different types of religions, many different types of cultures and foods and music and so having visuals and certainly murals and flags are a part of that. What food are we serving and how are we celebrating through food discussions related to the performance selections that we make when we create theater or music and how can that be part of this piece? We do have an inclusion calendar that we've made available for everyone and we've tried to create a calendar on Google that all teachers can access and it puts all of the different celebrations or months or that month on the first day and provides resources for people to be able to bring those concepts into their classrooms with an opportunity for learning about different celebrations. That's something else that we've been doing. There's so much professional development going on that I couldn't possibly make the whole list but certainly the curriculum training. We've done racial equity training with Paul Gorski. The implicit bias training is ongoing. Those equity policy faculty review sessions. There's plenty of work going on around new learning for students within the context of the social justice union and many other student groups. There are equity clubs, GSAs, gender and sexuality clubs. There's a lot going on to build experiences both for faculty, staff, students. We're looking at doing implicit bias training across so this isn't just teachers. It's about everyone and have been engaged with our operations side of the house as well. It's been a really incredible journey to be collective in our work together. With that, that was a very brief overview. I didn't want to take too much time and make sure to leave plenty of time for questions. Those are where we are with our equity policy and procedure. A reminder of the goals and some of those activities and new learnings that we're doing across the districts to really deeply engage in equity work. I do want to say it was in a conversation the other day. You can do a lot of activities. You can create celebrations. You can read different books. Those are all things we need to be doing. The deep and courageous conversations among faculty and staff are some of the most valuable learning opportunities. Really thinking about how we engage student voice in the leadership work around equity has been incredibly powerful. Being listeners, you know, institutions have a long history of not being accessible and not creating a sense of belonging for everyone and we're looking to turn that curve. We have again a long way to go and this is not about perfection. I often say that perfection is the enemy of great and we are working hard to recognize where we have an impact that isn't so great and how to make that better and it doesn't mean that we always get it right the first time. It's a lot of work and sometimes those conversations are hard but we're trying to be brave and have them every day as often as we can. I'm really proud of the leadership team for recognizing how to seed power, how to think about how to listen deeply to students, the role students are playing in the equity advisory committee. It's pretty exciting. So with that I think I'll stop there and just offer an opportunity to take any questions and I hope that was helpful and what you were looking for for an update from EWSD. Thank you Erin. Really appreciate that and you talk about how perfection can get in the way while certainly perfection is hard to reach. You've made a lot of progress. Well done. Thank you. Thank you for raising all of this. Four members, questions. Go ahead, Raj. Thanks Erin. That was very complete. I know you called that brief. That was a lot. Thank you. So what have you and your team found as your biggest challenges as you've worked on this for the past few years? A couple of years. I think probably, thanks for that question Raj. It's a great one. You know probably the hardest part is getting to a place where we have a collective system of recognizing our impact instead of our intent. It's really hard to understand when you're really trying to do something well and it is harmful in some way to figure out how to accept that and really lean in to change and recognizing impact instead of feeling like yeah but you know we tried so hard and we didn't mean for that to happen and so I cite that because I think institutions are designed to you know everyone is working so hard to be a contributing member to an institution. That's true in your municipality right and when for me as a director I really want to do well. I want to do things in ways that are helpful to people. I want to do things in ways that are beneficial to the organization and when I do something that's harmful your immediate human reaction is to sort of be defensive and it's not an easy task and it is sort of what we've been socialized to do is to protect our own selves as it relates to anything we might have done wrong and so getting the system to really sit collectively in a place where we're able to stop any defensiveness when someone is feeling like we're doing something wrong and lean in and listen and try to understand the impact from a multitude of different perspectives is probably the really the hardest the hardest part because you are often as an individual really attached to your intent versus your impact so I think I would cite that and that cuts across kind of everyone and even with all the conversation we have about it when it comes to that moment it's hard to do and so I think that's where I would land on that question. And I appreciate that answer and I'm glad you mentioned the Committee on Equity for Essex the collaboration among staff in the municipality. I think that's a great connection and I think there's a number of different ways the community is coming together from all different angles and I think that's that's great work so thanks for being here tonight. Thanks Raj. Go ahead Pat. Thank you Andrew and Erin thank you so much for being here both a compliment and a question compliment first you guys are doing such amazing work with inclusion and I can see it day to day you know just even as simple as talking with other parents around the state who have fears about sending a non-binary child to school but with you know in in our household like we feel like our kid is supported every single day and it's I know that you're in it but it's really just a huge relief as a parent that you know you can send your kids somewhere where they're going to be accepted. So I think you guys have done an amazing job with that. I did have a question that it was a drum I beat for quite some time on the school board as well but I was wondering it may not really fall within your purview but the school lunches where kids have been being fed for the last two years now and I know that part of that program was wrapped up in COVID funding but I also think that it's a huge positive step towards equity in our community. Do you know if or have you heard if that's a program that plans to extend beyond the end of this year or not just curious if there's any news about that and if there is if there's anything that we could do to support the effort to continue it. What I would say is that I know that there's conversations happening at the national level the state level and the local level. I don't know if anything has landed at this point and I would recommend maybe a contact with Brian Donahue as the primary leader in that area. I do engage with Scott Faye who is our director of nutritional services through an equity lens related to this and I certainly agree that if we could feed all children without differentiation based on socioeconomic status I think that that is an incredible benefit and I think it does come down to funding and design work that I know that Brian and Scott are deeply engaged in so I wouldn't want to speak for them about where they're finding themselves at this very moment in time but I do feel confident in saying that the conversation is happening and I know that it would be amazing if we can keep going. Great awesome thank you Erin. Yeah thanks Pat. All right Don. I'm curious with the reading program and the library changes why you chose ninth grade and not earlier. So that there's definitely a lot of work going on through all of the grades related to book selection. The you know the high school teachers have been really invested at the ninth grade level to try on some pretty substantial shifts which is why that showed up on that list. The list that I provided you was not complete at all so it would take me a really long time to describe every stitch of work that's happening. One of the pieces of work that I know is happening all the way through all of the schools is teacher consideration related to the texts and the books that they're choosing and thinking across those related to representation from an identity perspective and some real shifts in some of that. So like the librarians at the early elementary levels are doing incredible work at really revising their stacks as well as in their selection of books and media and so our teachers in their classrooms. It's just that there was a real consolidated and clear sort of effort and project that I know about that's happening at ninth grade so I just wanted to highlight that. So it definitely wasn't exclusionary but was more of an example. So Don thanks for bringing that up so that I could share that I appreciate it. Thank you Erin. Gracie Gordon. Yeah Erin thanks for being here. Along the lines of restorative practices I was curious whether EWSB has a peer mediation program and if not have you considered one? So one of the parts of the restorative practices training that we're doing does have a student component we're using up for learning that does a great deal of co-training between students and teachers so that is a part of the conversation. I would also just add that you know as I listen to people talk about this body of work and the more engaged we get around the importance of student leadership the more I'm seeing come forward not just in the context of restorative practice but related to all kinds of training and training teachers and students together those ideas are definitely coming up and you know we have a long way to go to do that. I do just want to note that you know teachers don't have a great deal of time during the year for training period so you know we could that is a that's one of those kind of institutional restrictions that we have is time and I know that's true for everyone and we need to kind of bend the time and figure out how to make this centered and one of the things that I think will be really beneficial into the future is doing more of that co-training on a number of different in a number of different points. We don't have a formal peer mentor restorative practice design but what we do have is a bias response panel at Essex High School that is made up of students and faculty together to take a look at bias incidents that take place and create recommendations forward together on an equal playing field so students in that space have the same level of voice that the adults do and it's a really powerful space to hear and listen and watch an issue be addressed in a way that isn't peer-to-peer completely because there are adults in the space working together it's more that adult student partnership piece but I appreciate that comment and you know continue to look forward into into the future. You know one of the things that I didn't say during the presentation that feels relevant to is just and I know I don't really need to tell anyone this but you know the pandemic has had a substantial impact both in highlighting inequities and also consuming time and energy of people to manage school in the context of a pandemic so that's been a part of all of this I think we've learned a lot through that but you know it I uh there are there are days where I wonder what it would be like today without the pandemic um you know I can kind of see it both ways but uh we definitely are trying to leverage every minute um that we're able to really enhance some of this work it does touch everything so you know the school board is meeting tonight I'm going to go and and talk with them as well um and you know at the same time like equity is part of everything right I mean that's that last goal it's every decision it's every voice every moment so really trying to leverage learning opportunities into the active teaching to to try to address that but thanks for bringing that up you know I think peer mentor programs are important there is a peer helper program at Essex High School that's really great and it has a long history and is not necessarily tied specifically to this equity work but is a part of it right where students are trained to engage other students they do mental health first aid training they train around cultural um agility and ELL needs and work to be peers in the environment supporting other peers with those kinds of of needs so we do have a peer to peer program as well great Erin thank you I don't see any other hands up so again thank you for your your time the update the presentation as you mentioned there is a school board meeting going on right now so in terms of duties and doing here doing the job you're paid for instead of volunteering to help us I'm always glad to be here I'm so grateful that for the collaboration I just I just want to say how important that is I know that you all are dealing with a lot and um you know holding on to relationship I can't tell you how important it is to me that we're all in relationship together with the district and with the municipalities it's it's everything so thanks for having me thanks for staying in relationship with the district on this work and I'm happy to come back if you need me absolutely thank you Erin take care bye everyone right and that will transition us to our next agenda item the uh the update consider accepting report recommendations from sx best Marguerite are you taking this one there we go um no actually we have a we have a co-chair here that I am so glad she's actually going to take this one um Jody and so I'm gonna ask Greg um if she can have sharing privileges unless Jody would prefer that we move the slides along for you no that's okay and he he already um did his magic so of course Greg is so on it so yes please Jody go for it I won't I won't make the stage any longer hi everyone my name is Jody Cayman I'm a resident of Essex town lived here about 18 years and I'll try to do the same pace Erin did um that was a whirlwind full of information and I'm not sure I'll do our justice but I will try to go through this as quickly as possible but also recognizing I'm trying to summarize a little over a year's worth of work in about 15 minutes so so Essex best let me just back up it stands for building equity solidarity and trust and just to give you a little bit of background in 2020 there were um municipal leaders invested in a multi-year engagement with creative discourse um Tabitha Moore and Sue McCormick and the purpose was to build a more inclusive welcoming and equitable community residents were surveyed on issues related to public safety policing and social equity and about 58 people attended the listening sessions and over 200 people completed online surveys and you know findings based on the the data that were collected I think what's important about this first set of stats is that nearly half to more than half identify the presence of racism in Essex um and that you know when individuals were indicating where and when they experienced racism and feeling a lack of safety that it was not solely in the arena of policing but it extended to include education municipal government and other public spaces so essentially um you know a collective definition of what safe environment consists of emerge from the survey responses and it really included these six elements and I'll read them out a strong sense of community and belonging and that public safety is seen as a collective responsibility that there's equitable access to resources protection and quality of life and that people's basic needs are met that people are not discriminated against or singled out regardless of identity position background or views that everyone feels comfortable and safe from physical and emotional harm and can travel freely and without worry to all parts of the community that there's a low crime rate and adequate and responsive police fire and rescue services and that sidewalks and roads are safe and well maintained and that there's adequate lighting so in response to the surveys and in an effort to continue moving towards those six elements of safety the Essex best racial justice task force was formed it's comprised of 20 plus legislative municipal and community members um six of whom I saw their names on the um at the meeting tonight so um they can also speak up as we have questions if they feel comfortable but um you know it was really focused around these two priorities so municipal investments in equity and representative leadership and public safety and so for the first priority municipal investments in equity and municipal leadership there were two overarching goals with specific recommendations so the first goal was around drafting a three-year specific a three-year strategic plan to build administrative racial and economic equity and so these were some of the specific recommendations so to institutionalize equity inclusion and diversity considerations into budgeting and resource allocation decisions to reserve shared funding dollars um for equity or a human development position to establish the equity position noted above as a cross functional position able to influence broad based policy and decision making to structure personnel processes to attract higher support and retain board and staff representatives of the community with a greater focus on hiring people from marginalized groups to ensure community development efforts increase investment in people equity and inclusion by creating and participating in events particularly equity and social justice activities and to reconfigure the process for the committee that distributes the one percent of human services funding so the second goal under the equity and municipal leadership was around building relationships with people from underrepresented groups to advise sxbest to participate in community racial equity efforts and potentially step forward to serve in leadership roles and so to do that the recommendations were to develop network to develop a network of socially culturally and ethnically diverse individuals and groups to engage in these efforts of sxbest mission to host um and or collaborate on community events as an entry point for by pock community members such as block parties picnic street art dune team etc um which some of those efforts have been going on this year um to work with the sx westford school district to invite students to give regular reports and updates to the select board village trustees school officials collaborating organizations and the community to leverage connections from our early work in the task force to share news of leadership openings and opportunities to send job postings committee committee openings to networks including relationships being built via the task force and to create a communications campaign to increase a sense of belonging and for sharing sxbest activities and events using both print and social media and including a distinctive logo so those were the first two under the municipal leadership this the second priority was around enhancing public safety and so the overarching goal here was to continue to enhance public safety and i think what's critical before moving forward is to just highlight how the sx community defined public safety so the assets community defined public safety as a broad based community promise that people's basic needs including housing food transportation child care etc are being met so this became the committee's first guiding factor that the most vulnerable citizens are cared for first and everyone has equal protection access to resources and an equitable quality of life for the second guiding factor we needed to continue to consider the impact of race in the experiences and perceptions of safety and so as we review the recommendations that follow i just want to highlight that in essence there's really two sets of recommendations as they pertain to public safety so the first is municipal driven and are specific to public safety needs that fall under the purview of the sx police department and the second set of recommendations are more broad and relate to the foundation of public safety as defined above so recommendations that fall under the purview of sx police department to provide greater funding for providers equipped for non-policing situations to remove an unnecessary burden on our police force and reach better outcomes by addressing root problems so for example utilizing the community outreach team and seeing how we can expand the use of this team to be able to respond to to mental health or other related issues creating pathways for communication and input from the community about sx police department to hear from those who are most impacted to establish a clear and encouraging process for individual officers and the entirety of the sx police department to have shared learnings when they feel weaponized within the community to establish an annual commitment to budgeting for low-lift high return opportunities for creating a community dedicated to social justice and so as the community research models for comprehensive and collaborative support it was drawn to the Eugene Oregon evidence-based cahoots model which talks about for example basic needs hotline and just kind of drilling down a little bit more further recommendations around the sx police department were to continue community engagement activities and initiatives to build trust to increase funding for mental health supports within the sx police department and that is specifically focusing on the fact that the community outreach funding runs through the sx police department so when before we were talking about expanding some of their supports that would be through this this mechanism to convert one police officer position into a community liaison position which i think that's already in play but we really support that develop a citizen's police academy and for those of you that aren't familiar with it it's a community program that's created to build a bond of mutual trust and respect between the police department and the community there's different models of these used all over the country for 911 or dispatch to and to investigate consistent sx police department dispatch response protocols and to provide sufficient training for consistent responses and de-escalating responses the next one is to analyze and review calls and outcomes to maximize the effectiveness of responses by assuring appropriate resources are cited and i should just pause and just say here that these recommendations you can read it in the full report but they really came from meeting with the different groups and from looking at data and from having series of conversations with members of the community outreach team members of the sx police department members of dispatch etc and looking at where we're strengths and where we're challenges and so that's that methodology and who we talk to is in the full report but i'm focusing primarily on the recommendations in the interest of time so last couple ones to pursue grant funding or provide a grant writer to assist with grant writing to fulfill financial needs for programs and staffing so for example looking at the community justice center services and how those could be expanded provide additional financial support to increase the number of hours the community outreach employees are on call continue to increase the role of community outreach in the response to mental health crises so again building and drilling down on some of the broader recommendations you saw at the beginning so you know we're asking sx leadership to commit to supporting the goals of these organizations and the support this is with the broader overall needs that are essential to the foundation of public safety so again we talked about kind of these two levels of recommendations around public safety and these are really getting at the foundation of public safety where everybody's needs are met and so the support to to move forward on the recommendations around this particular level would be could range from creating ongoing relationships with key members of these organizations to better utilizing resources for sx citizens such as writing letters of support for grant applications helping to identify and facilitate connections to pay the way for change offering available space to meet as needed and other support as to be determined and the organizations that we're referring to or are ones such as Howard's first call crisis service aunt dots food shelf the Champlain Valley office of economic opportunity who we talked at length with about housing challenges and so organizations such as that many of whom serve the broad not only sx but the broader Chittenden County community and so just to kind of summarize you know when we think about accepting this report from our lens on the committee it's really that you support the goals of the report and you're you're willing to support the ongoing work of sx best and making a commitment to work towards these recommendations particularly those that involve the municipalities and leadership so I'm still gonna that's that is the you know down and dirty summary of a little over years work of intensive work by 20 members of our committee and there is the full report that I believe was provided to folks maybe last week or the week before I can't remember Tony thank you this is this is quite a lot of work and clearly one year worth of effort from 20 plus individuals there's a lot that has been accomplished in here so so thank you and great path forward one quick question with how often the police department is mentioned and well I know this isn't a memo just wondering if you can touch on it briefly how has the police department and or the police chief been involved in these conversations so I served on the public safety and I feel like Ron and Rob have been at every or nearly every meeting and I feel like Ron has really fully engaged in the conversations I also know you know you may have noticed we didn't necessarily put in a specific recommendation about training for the police and I part of the reason that didn't go in necessarily in the high level recommendations is that Ron was also really keeping us in the loop about the ongoing work he was doing internally with his his staff and his team and so you know my experience is that he was thoroughly engaged and really invested and I feel confident that the recommendations that were putting forth are ones that you know his voice was represented although Ron I know you're on the call so you can also disagree with me but that's been my experience I will agree with that wholeheartedly everything you said is exactly what I would have said so thank you so much for for doing such a great job with your presentation and all of your hard work and also Catherine bring for for contributing to this I just wanted to say publicly thank you for for everything that you guys have done over the last year and a half you're welcome trustee select board members questions comments go ahead Raj yeah I just I was the trustee representative on this along with Pat Murray from the select board and I can just I'm just floored at how much time and effort was put into all of this work for members of the community I don't remember seeing such a large effort in my time being active with with the community it's really impressive I appreciate all their findings my side of it was was more from the representation and the government end and not the public safety end and I'm sort of excited to see what comes next from that I just wanted to say thanks to everyone that was for that was in it from the beginning and have come and gone and come back again so tremendous amount of work very much appreciated go ahead George thanks Andrew Jody just a technical question in your presentation and I don't want to go back I can't really find it but you used the word the officer feels weaponized within the community did I get that right and I think I know what that means but I I just want to make sure I know what that means maybe you could just explain that to me thanks no I'm glad and I actually let's say there you go I actually had that because I was anticipating that question okay so when someone or something is weaponized it means that the person or thing is being used as a weapon obviously that you know but when referring to the police it's often used in the context of citizens calling um calling the police to report fellow citizens engaging in ordinary activities but the caller's biases inflate the situation as dangerous okay okay thanks yep it's a good question go ahead Andy yeah thanks jody I one thing I just wanted to comment that I'm I'm very happy to see that some of the goals that you've talked about have already been have already come forward you know you mentioned the the late liaison officer in the police department which is which is in the budget that's going to the to the voters in two weeks I think that's an amazing step forward and looking forward to to see more to come so thank you for your work so I'm not sticking any other hands up shall we move to the recommendation so I believe we have a recommended motion in the packet somebody would like to read that to help get this further along trying to find it I have it but are we doing it independently I mean individually or each board okay there yeah go for you Sue all right I'll do for supper then so uh I um the select make a motion that the select board accept the report including its recommendations and support both staff and Essex best in the continuation of their execution of the report's recommendations okay thank you Sue do I have a second second I think I heard Don first there thank you Don any any further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye opposed okay motion passes five zero thank you and would trust you like to make that motion sure I'll move that the trustees accept the report including its recommendations and support both staff and Essex best in the continuation of their execution of the report's recommendations I'll second that thank you Raj thank you George any further discussion on that motion hearing none all in favor please signify by saying aye hi hi hi hi anybody oppose pass unanimously thank you trustees Jody thank you again for for being here for sharing this with us as well as you can pass the appreciation on to all of the other members of the Essex best would be greatly appreciated I will do that and I raise my hand just to be able to say thank you I feel like it's really nice to have the work that this group has been doing um supported and validated and I will definitely bring that back to our group which meets um literally a month from now so thank you very much good luck with the rest of your meeting Jody take care thank you so next on our agenda we have a resolution and appreciation of Evan teach so this is a last minute agenda edition uh because this is our last joint meeting with unified municipal manager Evan teach um and so really wanted to take the opportunity to put all the spotlight on Evan allow us to talk about Evan as much as we can for this period of time which he loves to have done uh and as we we do so if uh rad I think you have the copy of the resolution as it's currently drafted so if you would be able to put that up on the screen would be appreciated I think Greg's got it let me see if I do I do you need me to email it to you Greg I can do that real quick I do have it I'm just trying to pull it up okay really nice Evan definitely worth waiting for I'm sure it would be wonderful and so there we go thank you you now that we have this up here uh would someone like to read the resolution as is currently written and then after we read this um if there are other edits we could go ahead and provide those I'd be happy to read it can everyone hear me Andrew and good yes go ahead George whereas Evan teach was hired in 2017 by the select board of Essex town and the board of trustees of Essex junction and incorporated village within Essex town to fulfill the jointly and recently created role of unified manager to exercise administrative and executive leadership over all town and village municipal operations and whereas during his tenure as unified manager Evan hired and retained many high-performing employees and helped implement many administrative changes that improve the quality and efficiency of municipal services and whereas Evan's mentorship of town administrative staff helped foster a new generation of executive leadership within the Essex town government and whereas Evan identified the need for the town in the village municipalities to be part to be a part of the solution for diversity equity and inclusion and dedicated staffing and financial resources to ensure the success of this effort and whereas Evan's thoughtful leadership in implementing state and federal health guidelines through two years of the COVID-19 pandemic provided a high level of safety for town and village staff with no loss of efficiency or diminishment of municipal services and whoops okay whereas Evan authorized and health organized to out and about in Essex events during the summers of the pandemic which helped foster a sense of community and boost the local economy and whereas part of Evan's responsibility in addition to his extensive management duties was to assist the two boards and their respective electorates through the process of exploring options for changing the statutory relationship between the Essex town municipal government and the Essex junction municipal government including the possible dissolution of one or both municipal charters and the creation of a new chartered community and whereas the select board and board of trustees mutually agreed to propose to their electorates a merger of their two respective municipal governments and whereas the electorate of Essex town shows not to merge the two communities and the electorate of Essex junctions subsequently chose to petition the Vermont legislature to fully separate from Essex town and become an independent city and whereas the decisions of the electorates compelled the Essex select board and the Essex junction trustees to dissolve the position of unified manager as per term specified in the municipal managers contract thereby ending Evan's employment with Essex junction and Essex town and whereas Evan's continued dedication to the total community despite the decision to not pursue merger and terminate the unified manager position and his balanced positive and energetic approach to providing service to both boards helped foster a climate of cooperation and cordiality which helped lay the foundation for lasting positive relations between the two governments now therefore be it resolved that the town of Essex select board and village of Essex junction board of trustees hereby express our deepest and sincerest appreciation for Evan teaches excellent service to our municipalities and our fondest wishes for his future endeavors thank you George of course it goes without saying but I'll say it anyway thank you Evan I'd say do us we can do a standing ovation for Evan just kind of awkward to do what we're all want to assume maybe just a sitting a sitting ovation not all of us are not all of us are sitting but we can't wait we could we could do this we can just you know flash our hands off and on right that's true that's true okay so I'll just do that so uh board members do we have any other suggestions for the resolution if not I will certainly entertain the motion to approve the resolution I will make the motion to approve the on behalf of the Essex junction trustee so I'll make the motion to approve the resolution on behalf of uh Evan teach thank you George thank you Dan is there any further discussion on that motion hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye anybody oppose passing unanimously thank you hey Don I see your hand up on behalf of the Essex select board I make the motion that we approve this proclamation with appreciation to Evan teach thank you Don do I have a second second I'm not sure who that was Tracy it was Tracy okay all right thank you Don thank you Tracy I do want to comment that there is precedent for the precedent for the select board to introduce resolutions and approve in the same same meeting I just I guess wanted to uh is there I guess uh the alternative would be to uh vote on it in our our next meeting which is a week from tomorrow but uh if there's anybody I just wanted to have the discussion anybody not wanting to move forward with uh voting on this tonight or not everybody okay with it or not I can't see everybody I see a thumb up from Sue I see a thumb up from Don Patrick Tracy okay is he nodding all right okay just wanted to make sure before we vote it all right uh any further discussion okay uh all those in favor please say aye aye opposed okay motion passes five zero uh thank you Evan for for um absolutely everything um it's been a uh been a good couple years thank you and again Evan thank you thank you so I'm moving on to our next agenda item uh Tracy you had wanted to pull the tree farm agreement from the consent yeah I just I was initially going to suggest that we have essentially like a negotiating committee and I reached out to Marguerite and basically that's already in the work since I don't think many select board know know that and I don't I'm not sure that the public is aware of that I just wanted to make that comment Marguerite if you have anything else please chime in but I just wanted to state that publicly for everyone's awareness that you know that that that train is moving behind the scenes yeah I'll just add here um it's just it's a group of people from both municipalities including both rec directors um it may shift and change a little bit if we find that we need other people involved but right now um you know it is a small handful of us and we will be bringing it back to both joint boards um in March so um to both boards one joint board both boards um in March so um so it will be you'll be seeing stuff before it's finished or finalized this lease extension is just so that we have enough time to do all that and actually get everyone involved you know and be collaborative in that sense um and um also involve the tree farm management group along the way as well so just to clear that up in case there's any questions go ahead George yeah thanks Andrew I do well I'm glad you brought this up Tracy because I I did want to I had a sort of a question for for this negotiation um my understanding is that we as two boards did not come to uh an absolute conclusion that we were going to completely take over and there would be no role for the tree farm management group after four years I think my understanding and maybe I'm wrong is that after all the public testimony we heard there was going to be some negotiation around the continuation of the tree of the tree farm management group um in an advisory or some other kind of role is is that correct um that they would get that it maybe that isn't what would happen maybe they would prefer not to do that but there's not a a a specific set outcome uh with this or am I getting that wrong uh this agreement is to memorialize what we agreed to at our our last joint meeting about extending it about extending the uh agreement as it is okay and that and that's just that's all this happening here but after but I thought the idea was that over over the four year period after we've sorted all the whether the the technical parts of the agreement there's not a set uh a specific um understanding is that right or wrong I'm I'm seeing margaret smiling I'm seeing bad kind of nodding I and I don't so I just give me your thoughts guys I just wanted to get an understanding with what this is about um yeah brad I don't know if you have something you want to add I will just say it is true if you read the motions it's not you know there is no that the clearest part is that there will be a business like a development of a business plan and what that you know what that would look like for the next four years but it is true that you know it's not laid out in the motion what the details are and that's partly I think what we want to work you know out and get to um and maybe it means that they there is no continuation after four years maybe it means something else um but in the motions it just there are specifics about having a manager plan and having a business development plan and then you know from there you're right there's there's nothing clear after that so right thank you margaret because I think the the intent of the motion was to kind of leave it a little bit open-ended about exactly where it was going to where it was going to land the other questions go ahead suit it not a question just uh I have the most the motions that we made in a transition plan as part of that uh as well just to just to jump in on that thank you sir rosh I was going to make a motion that we move forward with us um because I didn't anticipate much conversation about it since it was in the consent agenda and we weren't going to talk about it very much so I'm ready to make a motion to move us along to the next item I'm just trying to find that um since it was in the consent agenda I'm having a hard time but well the recommendation is that uh so these would oh you got it yep right are we ready for that at this point uh Andrew yes I think so all right I move the uh trustees approve the extension agreement between the tree farm manager group the village and the village of s extension um as proposed I'll second I should I include the town in that I don't feel yeah okay yeah I'll rewrite that if that's all right uh George yep fine I'll second I'll yeah I'll just revise that to include in the town of Essex all right thanks dorth and I'll revise my second to include too for that revised amendment uh motion thank you yes I do believe that that would be an important component considering that there is an agreement between the multiple parties and it's not just us in the tree farm but us the town and tree farm so there's a motion on the table it's been seconded any further discussion hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye hi hi anybody opposed all right pass unanimously thank you hey select board so I can make it I have it in front of me so uh make the recommendation that the select board approve the extension agreement between the tree farm management group the village of s extension and the town of Essex thank you sue do I have a second I will second the motion thank you Tracy um just one clarification you said recommend I think you made make a motion oh I've done that before sorry about that okay any further discussion motion listen in favor please say aye aye opposed okay motion passes five zero going on to we're at five e now village city update on charter timeline the state process uh I did not I did not do a memo for this sorry um essentially where things are as of now uh the uh the separation bill h 491 has passed out of house government operations committee it's currently at house ways and means it's going to be taken up tomorrow there's a potential vote on that bill if it's passed out of house ways and means it would then go to the full house for consideration and potential approval once it's approved by the house it goes into the same two committees in the senate so senate government operations and senate ways and means from there would then need to go to the full senate for approval there if there are no additional changes then it would go to the governor for signature or for veto or just letting it pass until that point in time separation has not been finalized so still a few more steps but it is moving along as the update roger's your hand up um as a question and I would be remiss to if I didn't also just again express my appreciation to Andy for your your testimony um being willing and especially at very last minutes uh to rearrange lives and schedules to be able to testify uh and Patrick I know you testified as well thank you as well any questions all right so we would move on to 5f and the separation agreements as this is coming up one just piece of note from a logistical standpoint um the trustees are going to want an opportunity to to talk in executive session about some of the changes um so the request and Andy thank you for as we communicated before what would be nice is if select board if you'd be able to talk us through the changes that you're recommending or that you're proposing any additional context that you can provide and then the trustees we would go into executive session for 30 minutes have a have that brief conversation then come back to the meeting at that point all right so let's see uh um greg can you bring up the latest agreements okay so let's see I think the highlighted ones are ones that were talked about last time right or wasn't that the last meeting where these were discussed pretty much anything uh that's new I believe is what the select board has proposed since the last meeting or after the last meeting I think some of this was discussed at the last meeting with the trustees and some of it is new right so the the dates that are in here being um 2023 I don't know if that was new this time or was it in there last time any could I uh the yellow highlights represent changes that were made after the last joint meeting and all of the other underlined and different color changes came from the town since since that meeting and were not discussed at the joint meeting okay so just I sorry I didn't I guess I didn't completely follow it so the yellow highlighted has already been discussed that's not been discussed it's it was discussed last time and then it was changed in the document to reflect that discussion okay okay all right so the date the for end of the fiscal year following status in the city or June 30th 2023 okay so this this is right this is saying that the the agreement ends uh at the end of the transition year or um if the if the city is formed and also on the same date if it's not formed I think that's what the uh intent here is in that um so that it would be have to be further discussed if if the city of vestige junction is not formed um we'd have to have a discussion to extend this agreement after the first year or during the first year before the end of the first year any anybody have any concerns with that sue get your hand up yeah just the discussion at the last joint meeting was I think the date in here was 2025 I don't know it was it was it was further out there and so the discussion was to pull it in to 2023 so I think that's what that why that date is highlighted any concerns from the trustees on that okay the next change uh is the original version specified a specific number of employees that the town can employ um we didn't want to be bound by this document with regard to how many and who we can hire so we made it more ambiguous to change it to the other employees any concerns with that okay Greg can you scroll down Greg are you there I may be um the whereas but the town and village city manager sharing oversight with the clerk uh I believe the select board reasoning there was um managers can figure that piece of it out and it's kind of a weird situation where the current clerk is a village employee that did two assistant clerks with town employees um and just thinking up to the managers there to figure out how to do that work you scroll down to the next change I don't see it moving um is it me that was no it's not moving on the screen it looks good yeah I love that I thought I was strong I was okay okay so then yeah right that we added a new whereas um specifying shared uh oversight of the clerk since each of the municipalities have the ability to appoint a clerk and both entities have chosen the same clerk um needs to be shared oversight there is what we're asking for any concerns with that Andy just um some of this if we have a concern we may talk about in the executive session and then come back okay okay you're all right you you you don't want discussion now you just want us to explain our rationale okay gotcha all right all right so this next one's the same thing with the date it's interesting that it says one two and then three um in it but it's the it's consistent with the date above um and then this makes the specific comment of if the relationship needs to continue beyond the end of the end of uh fy uh 23 then uh a new agreement need to be put together um in number two there we we changed it again to be less specific as the number of employees that the town can employ um moving down further the conclusion of this agreement both offices shall function independently at the respective city and town offices unless otherwise mutually agreed by the parties um what leaves the window open if uh a new agreement wants to be put together to continue sharing functional space moving down um so this changes the termination to say that it is a date specific regardless of whether the city is formed or not unless a new agreement is put together since we had to coincide on the same date and the one on the dispute there just has added some clarity on the US district court for the state of Vermont can i just ask a clarifying question on that andy sure if i may so i'm just curious if there's any any more context you could provide as to why in this and some of uh and in the uh recreation senior center agreements there's now a reference to the US district court those weren't in the previous ones i don't i don't know i believe it was a recommendation from the lawyer wasn't it probably yeah they did come through with with um bills changes i don't know anything beyond that i was just looking at the at the the what the version with bills edits and he does have that so that was a a lawyer input yeah it wasn't anything we explicitly discussed or asked for and then i think that's it for that one the one thing um that's actually missing from that that we did talk about um is the um there was some discussion about being more explicit about where fees go um you know it i don't want to i don't want there to be any misunderstandings or or um incorrect assumptions about um when when you know i assume when a a dog license is issued to a city resident that this the dog license fee would go to the city um and i'm not i know we're though for those that's just an example i know for those those types of things uh dog licenses marriage licenses they're they're small dollar amounts but um we i think we do want to make it clear about um land record fees um and then there's the question of you know and i understand that as of june july 1st if the city has formed any new city land land record for property in the city would be a city land record but all previously existing land records are town land records and and um any fees associated with those records uh go to the town just asking that we put something in here explicit about where fees are going just to be um sure there's no misunderstanding or or incorrect assumptions on either side um and i don't know we we we don't maybe it's not our business where your city land records are going to go um if you've got a solution for that then maybe it doesn't need to be in here but if you need some transitional situation i don't know if it should be documented or discussed or or or or or it could be specified i'm just i'm just throwing things out you could you could also leave it up to uh uh staff to figure out right but uh i just don't want to don't want to leave things on the floor that that could cause um disputes later so i think that's it for the clerk and trader um this one here we we actually have some additional discussion about uh or there was some additional separate Greg asked me about this one uh after i guess there was some discussion on on the trustee's side where it says with the exception of all separation related costs that's a pretty ambiguous definite or term or phrase there um and maybe maybe this needs to say something and the select board hasn't discussed this either that maybe if if a modification should be made to this that you know separation costs that aren't already accounted for in relevant municipal budgets um for example the town is is paying for Sarah Macy's consulting services which will be a large piece of the disentanglement of the the two organizations that's already in our budget we're not asking you to to pay for the things that are already in our budget but um so i don't know maybe this this may be maybe me to bear some additional discussion on the select board side as well Greg go ahead thank you um so yeah brad and i spoke about this this morning or earlier today a little bit um and i think you explained the separation costs here they're well um and also noted that the town budget includes some money for personnel costs related to the disentanglement of finance both municipal budgets include five thousand dollars towards non-personal costs um so hopefully that'll clarify or can be clarified or specified in here what's already in the budget or not in the budget um i do think it's worth the two the town and village discussing what happens if uh those costs go above budget or what happens after fiscal year 23 and how to share any costs that are not currently budgeted for or future fiscal years um but beyond that uh let me set in here some money the town budget for these costs and they're tied to the disentanglement i suppose is the word um with its finance agreement versus separation and the reason in there being that finance departments are going to be getting separated and pulled apart regardless of what happens with separation it's kind of more of a decision that's tied to management organizational structure um now that merger that hasn't happened but it's it's not necessarily a separation due so much as a management um forward direction organization and brad feel anything i missed from our conversation okay and then this one okay right oh yeah okay i can't see everybody's faces here um this uh section here versus term this the the um comment here is to have this agreement start at the beginning of the the next fiscal year um i i again i wasn't involved in the discussion on this i don't think there are other select board members i wasn't involved in the last meeting where potentially this was discussed um i think the the intent here is to because we're there's also discussions going on about the current fiscal year um and i don't know that that's a separate discussion than this discussion um as to how you know finance is going to be funded for both municipalities in the current fiscal year um and so we wanted to segregate this from that and put in a july one start date also added a clause that um um the agreement doesn't it has the there's opportunity to modify the agreement as part of the extension that it doesn't necessarily all of the terms that are in here remain the same so i'm just gonna share finance 100 that is including so greg was this this including without limitation consulting fees is this in reference to sarah do we need to potentially uh that's kind of i think you talked about with it um money being the town budget and um thanks to party uh finance director for clarifying and confirming what money was already in the town budget i think this is one of those instances where you might want to take a look and say what happens if um cost go above budget so the yeah so there's this this this actually gets a little weird thinking about it now though because it's only fyi 23 that we have money put in there but this agreement goes until fyi 25 and so i think we need more thought here um that in that stipulation of beyond fyi 23 we could just call that out yeah and again there's the uh you scroll past it quickly again there greg there's another second place where it talks about uh separation costs born and again this needs to be separation costs that aren't um already accounted for in fyi 23 proposed fyi 23 budgets or something on that order okay and i think that's it for the finance agreement and then for uh indian brook uh in that uh whichever whereas that is with the underlying in it um i wanted to or just add it in the comment that there are some exceptions um in regard to access that are defined later um the select board wanted to put something explicit in here about the the space at two lincoln street and that the city will continue agrees to continue to provide that space scrolling down um there's a section added in here similar to the police agreement where there was a three and a half percent of direct costs to support the indirect expenses um and then there's a a you know a term that's not in the whereas is the uh section that that specifies the comments that were made in the added whereas above i think you skipped over the change under indian brook number two there you go i don't see anything i see a change bar all right okay yeah i was wondering where that was okay it's not underlines that's why i missed it okay so there's a request here that the city share in the maintenance and operational capital expenses indian brook um as part of the ability to have resident access to that park it's funny that it doesn't show up as high under the length but i'm just wondering there's another change bar there did we it's like there's just a space between there must have kind of the track changes or some changes must have come to there from them yep yep okay and then i don't think there's anything else down below i don't think so but out termination as we want a two-year two-year termination clause so that there's some sense of continuity um so that each of us have time to prepare say if the senior center needs to move we can find this space and have time to deal with it so that and so that seniors feel there's a sense of long a long term situation here we can't you know um terminate the senior center for example on short notice and i think that's it said there's nothing's anything more relevant except for maybe the agreement about the comment about the courts which was added in there and you can make one other point about the termination notice the termination notice the termination also gives the city a chance if the town senior bus is not going to be available to all right true true true yeah yeah i just mentioned senior center but it's also yes also true for for senior bus as well so so that the city would have time to make other arrangements if necessary if if for some reason we need to we the town decides to terminate that service right and and that's it is there another what's another copy of this well that is it's an all just an older copy yes we forgot for some reason uh so did you get a question you're muted garage if that was it i was just gonna try to get us to move to executive session oh okay before you before you do that i just wanted to ask if there were any other clarifying questions from any other board members before we go into executive session not seeing any i wouldn't retain that motion rash all right i think i have the right one here i move that the trustees make the specific finding the general public knowledge of contracts would place the village at a substantial disadvantage okay a second i'll second george any further discussion hearing none all in favor signify by saying aye aye post great those in the end of this need the second one too right yeah i move the trustees enter an executive session to discuss contracts pursuant to one bsa section 313 a1a to include the interim municipal manager second george any further discussion hearing none all in favor signify by saying aye aye hi anybody opposed obviously name us so thank you uh we'll be so it's almost 820 we should be back by 850 apologize for this inconvenience and awkwardness um we'll be back uh so we have adjourned the executive session and uh trustees are called back into regular session i don't know and if you needed to formalize that in any way for the select board or if you all just hung around and we just we just we just looked about gotcha all right um so thank you uh for the edits so we can go through this in the sequential order starting off with the clerk so with regards to the the timeline we think it would be cleaner if all of the timelines were just changed to say uh that the agreements would conclude on 7123 regardless of whether separation is approved because if it's approved and it would happen at the timeline if it's not approved then it would still default to that same date that would just make it cleaner in the long run you're saying all of the agreements agreements including finance only clerk so only talking about the clerk agreement you're talking about clerk okay yeah okay i think that's consistent with what we were asking for is there anything specific to the 7-1 versus 6-30 i'm just curious fully agreement i think that might have been what you intended i think that is June 30 yep yep i did mean June 30 thank you sue no job my apologies so yes the intent of uh just having it say June 30 instead of the whole fiscal year following establishment blah blah blah as far as uh the desire about uh land records from the town and and revenue coming from the town um we're not at all in disagreement with that uh would rather there it would rather instead of us uh dictating which records go where which fees go where doing something similar to what we have with the finance agreement of saying the the clerk can figure out where it goes okay our desire frankly is to we don't want to give the impression we're telling staff how to do their job right yep in terms of the the federal court references in the court agreement as well as the other two we have a very strong recommendation from our attorney to not do that um and so that's for us that's just a no we're not okay without being in there uh the other changes we had no concerns over the um oversight uh the other changes yeah we had no concerns so you're saying no to the u.s district court clause right so are those things the select board is would be in agreement too or in agreement with uh i don't know i think we need to go back and ask uh our legal counsel about that clause you want us to strike i see a couple of hands i don't know if you want me to call on the select board members oh sorry go ahead remember to unmute myself um yeah honestly and i apologize i do not recall why bill wanted those if he made any mention of it specifically like i'm clearly not wedded to it but i want to hear what the reasoning is but to i i'd off the top of my head and maybe don or see where tracy can remember if bill mentioned the specific reason why that was put in there but i don't seem to recall it off top of my head don i'm not sure if i answer patrick's question but if an issue comes up it can't be decided in civil court it would automatically go to district court but that wasn't my question my question was why is the village lawyers object to having that in there of raising it to a level that it um to start off at that level when it's it shouldn't start off at the u.s. district court and amber may be able to better articulate the lawyer speak um than what i can oh so this implies that you have a choice between two roots okay i wasn't going to actually piggyback off that i was just going to say that um we've we've been negotiating these agreements for 70 months i don't know it seems like four years at this point and this has never come up in all of the agreements that we've negotiated and so i think i i would push it back and say not that the question isn't why does our our attorney disagree but why does your attorney feel that after eight months in negotiations and other agreements that don't have this language why are we putting this language in at the 11th hour right we'll go back and ask nobody i don't think anybody recalls the reason why it was even if we discussed it so so did you have other comments no i was just going to basically say it came it came in the edits that we received from bill and i don't we did not discuss it with him so i think we do need to go go back and understand yeah so what was behind it so excluding that one change or excluding that one reference to the district court piece is that something that i hear it's like we're wanting to get feedback from the attorney on are the other pieces ones that you all would agree to and the reason i'm asking is i'd love for us to get as close as we possibly can to approving these or possibly even having a motion to approve pending your conversation with your attorney well we have we we have the select board has two meetings in march and we have a joint meeting in march there's three more meetings to get through these so i think we're gonna have we'll go back and talk about that with our legal counsel and get back to you so i guess some question i have for board members is the the question of how to do with fees like i brought up well we actually we discussed it a bit last time there was no language specific language proposed i think that's the other piece that i'd like to see just make sure we have clean language on um as well so um i don't know how others to go ahead yeah i was gonna ask because so that we did discuss it we didn't have language to review and i wasn't clear or were the trustees saying that they wouldn't agree to having language in there or just some slightly different flavor of that language to provide the the uh the staff with some uh responsibility or decision-making capacity it's really so if we if we call out say town land records then we should likely call out everything and determine where everything goes um and in all honesty that's the the opinion from the trustees is we prefer to have our our staff do that work that's that's what we have hired them to do that's what they have done and in particular with the clerk treasurer and being that treasurer position we hold that in state law holds the treasurer position pretty highly as a independent and fiduciary responsibility um and a highly ethical position well that's where i come from so just so i understand you're saying you would not agree to any language in adding language around that i think i'm just trying to understand what your position is i i understand the the background i just want to understand what it would be in the document i that the so similar to what we have in the finance one if you can bear with me while i scroll through our packet to get to it yeah that that one talks about two finance directors deciding how where funds should go in this case it's a different situation we've got a single person who has two hats making that decision i think that's what you're posing language similar right to what's in the it has a has a chain of uh if the finance directors can't can't agree then the managers have to agree and then if the managers don't agree then the boards agree or whatever however it works right roger a better way of articulating it i don't know if it's better but i think there's two questions that maybe andy was asking before and i think one of them was where where do revenues related to land records that reside with the town prior to the establishment of the city end up and right is that correct no no no i didn't ask that question at all all all town records are town records forever because i've written down that you wanted to know amongst the fees and everything you wanted to know should a land you know land records reside in town office where would fees to access those go before and after and i would say with the town and if you that's the language you want in the agreement i don't think we would have any problem with that i think one of the concerns that i had with not having staff determine after where fees went for dog licensing and marriage licensing is we are going to get into a situation where we're going to have to come up with an exhaustive list and i don't know you know and and that that kind of minutiae i think is pretty clear if if a person comes in for a dog license and live in the town i think the clerk treasurer's office can determine that for us that kind of thing i think that's where we're coming from so it's not so much that we don't want language in there it's just i we worry or i'll speak for myself i worry that we run the risk of trying to come up with an exhaustive list and that could get paralytic and if if it if you if the town wants language to say that yes the the land records prior to the establishment of the city reside with the town and obviously the revenues with it then i think that's a different thing and that's also okay from and trustees chime in if i'm not making any sense or if i'm wrong but mine i just sounded like there were two questions so i'm just trying to help so well we can come back with proposed language great so yeah that was it with with the clerk if we're good to go on to the shared financial go ahead rosh can i ask when we'll get that proposed language will we get it in advance well in advance of our next joint meeting you have two and in the joint meeting so i'm worried not that since you guys talked about this prior but yet there was still no language proposed that we might not even get it for the next joint meeting so can we clarify and connect with trying to get that language out prior to our joint meeting so that attorneys have time to respond to it so we we have a town meeting coming up we have things that we're doing as well so i i cannot commit staff to do things um and i won't end you know unless unless greg's willing to uh or evan are willing to commit to a specific date i'm not going to commit down i think we can probably get it for the next shared meeting in this past instance we had less than a week to turn things around and we had some people on vacation so i'm working on it and this one slipped through the cracks so i apologize for that but i'm pretty confident we can get into language for the next shared meeting our next shared meeting too i mean i i think we've heard what the desires are what we're happy to take a first crack at it if that would be helpful and send it over to bill for review and and get it in the next select board packet if that's helpful greg do you have a preference there i'll work with bill next select board meeting is week from tomorrow so yeah i'll see if i can work with bill and get some language in for the packet when it goes out for Friday so sorry greg just to clarify you're going to take the first stab at it yes okay great thanks so moving on to the finance agreement so it sounded like the conversation uh that andy you and greg had there would be some changes in addition to what was put in here and it sounds like the now everybody's faces are walking towards it sounds like the references of things like with the exception of all separation related costs there was another reference down and i believe that section three it sounded like those were going away so i i thought we talked about modifying them such that they were specific that there were that they uh referenced the explicit things that well maybe not the explicit things but a a statement that if something's already included in f y 23 budget so it's a different situation than beyond f y 23 so i think that's where we need to we need to figure out the right language to say um since again again since our f y 23 budget already includes some expenses associated with separation and disentanglement and i and it's it's awkward we can't really commit to what we're going to do in f y 24 so we have to figure out how to put the language in here that that allows freedom of action for future boards um so i don't know i don't know it's it's a it's a it's a strange thing to figure out who's going to pay for what you know two and three years from now when i think that so it it sounds like yes then uh the cost beyond fiscal year 23 so yes we would be we're fine with that concept that uh and certainly that language would need to get worked out um but yes we're fine with that concept um so just to be clear you're saying that you're okay with with the city paying separation costs beyond f y 23 is that what you said or no not wait no i'm talking about uh so there was a conversation so there's separation but then there's also undoing the consolidation work that had happened in finance was going to happen regardless so in that philosophy we are okay with that philosophy that it was going to happen regardless and so we are happy to share in the costs of undoing the consolidation we're not going to pay for uh disentangling the consolidation that aboard should previously do too then there was so so just to be again to be clear you you you want to complete you want to you want to take out these all of these comments about separation costs that are i mean there's another there's a different section that says that the two directors will decide where whose budget will pay for whatever comes into question or or whether it's done proportionately or however but with regard to setting a budget we each need to set our budget assuming through the length of this agreement that we will support that we will share all the costs they're fine with like what's currently highlighted if you're seeing that we are we are fine with the directors figuring out um the costs we are we're good with that all right so we need then the select board needs to have more discussion about backing away from what we've put in here or come back with a different proposal with number one in the term given that this is the way that our two municipalities already have our own finance directors would prefer that it says this agreement shall commence on the date of the execution of this agreement instead of commencing on July 1 of this year then we we need to consider whether this has implications to our current year's budget that would just be memorializing what's currently happening but that's the intent behind that state to see well uh yeah but I just want to take a clear clean look at whether or not there's anything unintended in here that applies to the current year that that because we're we're talking about this in in the context of separation agreements so just which which potentially doesn't start on judge July 1st just going back to the earlier statement of just the disentangling of the consolidation and that during the the management conversations and then agreeing to undo that this was a part of not having shared management not having shared finance yeah the the select board is pretty explicit in our discussion that we had about this saying that July 1st was the correct date for this so we just need to we need to revisit that discussion and either put something behind our reasoning or figure out what we want to do then the with any modifications deemed necessary in other agreements that's worded as with any modifications mutually agreed upon application which instead of deemed necessary and mutually agreed upon that the current language is rather ambiguous yeah yeah and then the last one is that same reference of the U.S. district court right that is it with this one again in terms of turnarounds maybe Brad and Greg can work with each other to to get the language right into our respective attorneys to help get that process going those on some of these points the select board needs to have a discussion so yeah we'll see where we can get but just to make sure that you have legal language and contractual language and not just Andrew fumbling through statements yep yep so then with going to recreation indian brook senior center senior bus the the spirit of this or the interpretation of this is vastly different than what was proposed from the trustees to the select board in various ways and frankly with the edits that are provided the trustees would just prefer of a no just going on these in our in our separate ways we'd be happy to go back to our original proposal and would hope that the select board would like to see the select board work with us on that proposal or agree to that proposal but if not we're we're happy to go our own way on these items so when you said original agreement you mean the the unedited version of this one or the one that was provided provided had been provided for proposed previously the unedited version so can you clarify as to which specific issues you object to pretty much all of them have if you'd like we didn't we didn't change the senior center one that much so with the bus if we're not so with the like with the bus one if what's if we're not sharing things like the senior center then we just we would figure out the bus on our own that was a small enough one where we would just do that so changes like so we're being asked to share in a lot of costs but yet then we're told to not charge in other costs in other ways we're being told or we're being proposed so we're not told that sounds more forceful being asked to pay for indirect costs for the senior center but yet not the parts on the screen here that's in yellow to provide the space rent-free and if the village slash city would pay for all the repairs maintenance improvements earlier we had so similar similar to you're having folks reside in our finance department right although that's not explicitly put into that agreement and right so it's a similar thing we can talk we're not we're not gonna we're not gonna charge you rent for that space we're not gonna make you you know pay for um and you know we can we always take this language out yeah we're also we're also we you know if we if we um you know i'm just i'm just putting out possibilities here if we back off on the three and a half percent indirect cost so the possibilities are to undo the the changes in the documents and that's what the trustees would agree to can i provide some context to the the prepares maintenance and improvements for the senior center that's what's happening now and this is looking to the institute or this memorialized what's happening right now so yeah the trustees would agree to undoing the changes that were made in the document oh we can discuss that rush yeah sorry andrew i'm just pointing out the changes to the indian brick portion as well for maintenance capital and the like weren't in the original proposal that was put forth as a way to capture all of these mutually beneficial areas and allow time for dust to settle from all of the changes our communities are going through and revisit these things once both boards had a good idea of where the chips fell all right i guess we'll have to have that discussion so andy since you probably can't see my hand i hope you don't mind i'm just gonna pick up go ahead go ahead um just throwing this out there as a you know the proposal if you will um given the changes to rec indian brook um there are non-resident fees that can be charged for ejrp um anyone can patronize indian brook by using the day passes would this be more amenable to the trustees if we strip out ejrp and indian brooks and those are still accessible to non-residents and just focus on senior center and senior bus um what would that make it more agreeable at this point um from the conversation i'm going to go out on a limb since we did not discuss that and say no that it would not and my follow-up to that is if we strip out the 3.5 um indirect cost for the senior center uh would that make it more palatable given that as andy pointed out you know 81 main is covering the cost of maintenance improvements repairs uh finance will be located there um if this agreement is silent i assume that the same will be true for uh to lincoln uh that any repairs maintenance improvements to that space would be covered by the village since it's a village-owned building so we would be amenable to having this agreement to go back to what was proposed to the select board so just to be clear you're you're not amenable to pulling out rec in indian brook and just having a senior center you want it back to the original agreement or nothing yes so can can you just help us i i think i think i'm sensing that there's um um that you're not agreeing to what's highlighted in yellow and i'm trying to understand what the what the uh what the issue is that's causing you to be not agreeable to that it is vastly different than the spirit of what we had originally talked about which is providing these community benefits without getting into indirect capital all those kinds of things just equal access to the great programs that our communities provide that was the intent of what we had originally talked about with the difference and also time of trying to get these finalized we would rather go our own way and that does not preclude us from say in six months or a year saying hey you know what maybe that wasn't the right decision let's revisit this go ahead george yes uh could i i'm not sure who's in charge of the document could you just scroll down because i'd also like to ask ask a question about the indian brook piece or maybe it's up i'm sorry where you talk about uh yeah it's it's in section two there it doesn't it's it's a weird added reason well my question is the city shall share and the main is why wasn't why wasn't this highlighted as as being new this is new this is this is new to this this wasn't in the original agreement so it is there's there's some reason the way this was edited it doesn't show up correctly so i i i don't know why it doesn't show up there it wasn't there was no there's no intent to hide it or anything yeah we called it out during the review we did talk about it during the review but okay for some reason yeah the edit didn't present itself correctly having trouble unmuting all night long um yeah so i think it was sue that asked is it the issue with the three and a half percent um alone for the it's it is also as i mentioned earlier it is also that addition of indian brook um you know no my question was that highlighted area in yellow because we talked about removing the three and a half percent clause and there was still disagreement so so i guess the disagreement would still be with just the overall with that inclusion of indian brook for maintenance and capital and all of that um you know a lot of these pieces that were added are sort of dwarfed by looking at the similar approach to ejrp for instance you know if if we took a similar approach to what it would take to provide those services in the spirit with which we're reading this current this current draft that figure is huge um and certainly not something the select board would want to do which is why we left it out in the original saying that this should just wash because again way back a couple months when we had the the tree level and the high level conversation and this last tier two agreements you know the the conversation revolved around you know these are these are the last bits in some ways and they are going to for the most part wash out and we'll take a few years we'll see other communities end up after whatever happens in the next few months and revisit either before that 2025 or at in by the time 2025 comes around and then we'll have a much better picture of where we all are on especially these items so yeah that's that's kind of the uninsured of it so is your hand up again there is it it is just because i'm just um i guess reacting to the comment about e g r p and we also are um have the same scenario for sx parks and recs so that i mean i feel like that was the they we didn't alter that at all we kept it all all the same so i guess i'm i don't i i think it was tracy that proposed if if we just made this document about the senior center and if we move the three and a half percent and i think we're still hearing that that's not agreeable so i think we do as a as a select board need to go back and and discuss because we're not really it it doesn't feel like there's negotiation taking place here we're so i think we have to really figure out you know the what's being proposed to us and how we how we can react to that or how we can hand you know what's right for our community right that's really what we need to do thanks you pat uh sorry had to unmute um so i pulled up the last document version of this that i had and you know just looking through it i guess i'm i'm a little disappointed that there's not going to be any further talk about this to be frank i think that pulling and saying will revisit in a few years the senior center and the senior bus which are crucial services to the seniors of our community is a horrible way to talk about this um to be honest i think looking at the subs substantive changes i mean if it's a matter of making sure that all the seniors in our community have these services and pulling out the 3.5 percent i have no problem with that i'm honestly a little i do didn't notice the per capita basis for indian brook i don't see that in the previous version of this so i understand the objection to the change however i will also point out that indian brook in and of itself is something that i think certainly speaking for myself as an s6 junction resident i want access to it and i would prefer to keep it at the same access same fees that we used to pay and to be frank i think that is completely fair that maintenance operation capital expenses of a service that we are asking to have equal access to it makes sense that an s6 junction resident you know want to you know on a per capita basis if there's extra maintenance costs because we are using it that we should be part of that is want to make sure i guess before we continue on and say okay let's leave it for two years and see where we are that we're completely aware of exactly what that means for all the seniors or the people who would utilize these services in our community i really don't see any reason why we if we talk about this right now can't just say let's pull out the 3.5 percent and then honestly i would love to hear the thought process behind you know why as a junction resident getting equal access to indian brook why we shouldn't also be part of the maintenance costs for that it makes sense in my mind so if there's a rejection then i want to hear it sure and i want to clarify a couple pieces so one is very the very first conversation our boards had around the senior center and the conversations that trustees have had we have always been committed to the senior center and provided the question is whether we're going to share in doing that with the select board or not um so the trustees are 100 percent committed to having a senior center for our community whether we do it with the select board that's the question being being posed upon us the other thing is the budgets were about that our communities are going to be voting on are going to take us through june 30 2023 so what we're talking about is july 1 2023 forward we're not talking about pulling seniors or the senior center out tomorrow we're not talking about shutting a senior center down or preventing senior access in this current year because not at all a conversation you're having nor is that something we're applying because again we are very committed from the the village perspective the trustee perspective to having a senior center with regards to uh the the agreement in general and the changes and being opposed to it uh raja mentioned uh the indirect costs for ejrp um ejrp's general fund budget is over 800 thousand dollars with an enterprise fund of two and a half million dollars so that's why we're not we talked about not going down the nickland diamond with three and a half percent indirect because frankly it is a cost that would not at all be um something that i i feel i can predict the select board would be open to so that's why we didn't go down that path and that's why early on we talked about not going down uh and so the other portion that i mentioned is time we want separation to be finalized this legislative session we want these agreements to be finalized as soon as possible and so frankly it's easier to just say for now let's not let's not agree to the it's easier to say uh we would agree to the changes that we had for the uh proposal that we made to the select board we would agree to that or we would agree to not sharing these services possibly picking the conversation back up uh in the new fiscal year but we are not talking about necessarily waiting two three four years or anything like that so i just want to make sure the attendee was very clear uh george i think your hand is up first okay thanks um just i and i and i agree generally with what you just said andrew um and in response to pat i would love to see the senior center continue as it is status quo in the sense that we're both sharing in it um that that's been my hope all along but let's just just by a sort of analogy um if that if we agree to that and let's say god forbid lincoln hall burns down so would the town be on board with sharing 50 of the cost of rebuilding lincoln hall because that's where the senior center is located and we have this agreement that that with the town and that but that that's sort of how i would look at the issue with indian brook um there's a lot of issues with indian brook a lot of capital expenses that could be coming down the road um and we would you're saying we would be the village would be on the hook um you know 50 50 or on a per capita basis to meet those capital costs uh we we've got nothing we're not binding you to the town to any such agreement for the for the sx junction side so i i just have a real problem with us being bound to that kind of an agreement for the town side roger handles up did you take that down i did you both covered it thanks so we're we're losing all three of these because they're in the same agreement if they're in separate agreements would be would we be having a different discussion this uh that sounds like what tracy was asking before yeah right right no all right so i guess we'll have to have a discussion and we'll let you know when we uh so right where's that gonna go okay um nothing else nothing else from us there's more agenda andrew just pulling that part up now thank you so we are now on to the discussing of shared boards and commissions so i know brad had sent around or there was a document that was sent around um that talked about uh where we had last left this conversation um within our mo u it's looking to see if we included this within our working and we had left this conversation as i last recall we had talked about which boards we wanted to to share or not to share i think at our last meeting we talked about the conversation um that andy patrick roger and i had the housing commission uh there was the email from the energy commission sorry trying to find the details for this agenda item um if there's a way that i could share my screen uh looks like i can i can just bring this up andrew helpful thank you uh huh are you seeing this select board memo or are you seeing yes sure yes it's just a little small great sorry my computer is not cooperating very well with me at the moment uh basically andrew there there are um you know four kind of groups um the sx best um the committee on equity for sx which is a staff initiated group economic development commission and the housing commission and the both boards have had some discussions about economic development um i think we're waiting to hear back from the housing commission on on a firm recommendation um so it's really about um it's down to kind of these groups and whether or not the two boards see value in continuing a relationship with any of these sorry the energy committee is also in there and the chair from that committee expressed interest in continuing i'll see if i can get a better version on my screen so i'll just go ahead and start off with the with sx best with what was presented to us this seems like something that yes we should continue um i i don't know for how long we want to set a time frame um this uh this multi-year plan that they provided seems to be a very beneficial documents that we've just accepted i would love to help see it forward and continue i i would agree with that considering how integral um the police department leadership has been in that in that whole process um i think i think having it continue until it's ended with the idea that it continue while we have a police agreement in place um is valuable um there's more aspects to it but um certainly that is one of them and and so i would be all for seeing that continue and until the boards decide otherwise um i don't know that we need a we need an end date on that so i'm i'm scratching my head as to whether this is the maybe we had discussions in the police contract discussions about a a board is this that board or is this a different board um i also have questions about many some of the things that are in their recommendations are our town only things like the the one percent uh i i have not heard or seen any indication that the new city is going to do a one percent for human services like the town does um i i have some some potential trepidation about having that be a joint thing if you're not contributing there's you know so there's there's i guess i have to go through and think through a lot of the specifics um in there um i know yes i the folks are doing absolutely wonderful work and yeah we should make it continue but we need to make sure we're doing doing it equitably um i don't know what else to say yeah andy i think you bring up some good points and points that kind of go along with a lot of these other commissions so um for instance i know that uh in the town budget proposed town budget there's 30 thousand dollars for some of this work maybe 20 to 30 something in there that's covering the next fiscal year um when we're still sort of consolidated but i would fully expect that if the village were going to participate and continue in this that they would also find a budget allocation to to put forward to continue that work um and that you know with a lot of these things since we're not one joint community anymore um that we would have to look through all of these committees or ask staff to to recommend ways that the committees would be appointed um financial decisions made um budget set and funded um i i just wonder i guess for me i guess the overarching question to all of this is well two questions which ones are we interested in pursuing and and and right now do we need because we we still have some time or i guess three questions sorry bear with me which ones are we interested in talking about um how do we want to approach them do we want to simply state our intent and and formalize our intent as two boards and ask staff over the next year to look at how that could work um from an appointment budgetary decision making standpoint um for instance for the housing commission i see no reason why they couldn't work together for both our communities but there will be times when a certain topic or certain grant or a certain um effort might relate only to one municipality and they can still work on that together but when it comes to returning to that particular board for approval funding budgetary participation that it would be there would be a process for that so that non-residents wouldn't be making those financial decisions and whatnot um so i think that's totally possible um i don't know i guess the only other question i have for all of us is do we really need to get into that minutiae or should we just be declaring intent and asking for that work to continue over the next fiscal year as things be coupled i mean we can participate in that process but do we need to do we need to hammer out every single one of those questions um now and i don't necessarily have an answer but um trying to simplify the conversation a little bit and not again get into the minutiae of making these decisions which could take should take frankly with some of them some thought so right george yeah thanks i'll i'll just uh i'll sort of concur with uh what roger has said i guess my question is uh this is a whole different context uh we're not gonna we're not proposing to sign contracts to continue appointed commissions commissions come and go they're they're creatures of elected boards and um so we're not this is a different thing in the police agreement than the the other the it agreement and all the other agreements we've had um so i'm not really sure what the just what the intention is here are we trying to wrap bring this all to a conclusion um it seems to me that this is something that could we could kind of see how things play out over the next year without having to make a decision or any kind of a firm commitment tonight generally i feel that most of us um think these commissions are doing good work and we would want to see that work continue i have raised the concern just with the trustees that um we are not taking full advantage of some of the the state funds that are available to us by not having our own downtown committee and i would see a downtown committee as as having a lot of overlap with what the economic development commission does but it would just simply be a completely village or sx junction focused committee so that would be something that i think would i would want to see i would propose taking a really serious hard look at that but um but right now i don't know if i'm not out to or i don't think any of us are out to shut down any of these committees or dissolve them i think they're all doing good work thank you george um for a little bit of context or to help with this agenda item in general in the overarching mou that we've previously agreed to uh we've talked about we have that shared boards commissions and committees would be a part of these tier two agreements and so with the select board saying that separation agreements are an all or nothing package um the intention i would say then is for us to figure out which boards committees commissions we want to explore working with together uh or not for those that we do i would ask can we agree to have an agreement that would simply be we agree to iron out the details of sharing these boards sharing these boards committees commissions and so then for tonight can we just identify what those are and andy if i can answer one of your questions as express the presentation we have tonight is not um what we went back and forth a bit on in the police contract that was specifically if that committee if as express recommended specifically a police oversight commission which i don't believe they have so that's a different thing so it's not so sorry i forgot to answer that question so andrew my brain is still reeling from the fact that you want to walk away from the senior center or back away from the senior center so i'm struggling with thinking of anything here um so yeah i guess i guess my you know i i think the the work that was mentioned i think raj mentioned it of figuring out how to make joint committees work maybe the thing that we need and you're right there's not there's no way to to uh resolve that in the next couple of meetings um um and so i don't know i i guess i'm i'm at a loss is the word that where we go here maybe the maybe the select board needs to have a discussion about whether to just you know um remove this uh defer it whatever you know what we want to do i see pat's hand up pat go ahead here uh thank you andy um i agree that this clearly not enough time to iron out the details or the specifics for them but i do also think that if we probably straw pulled ourselves that we would have loose agreement that we would do want to meet together with all of the various committees that were you know brought up those big four or five energy housing etc um might this be an appropriate thing for a subcommittee so we don't have all 10 of us you know kind of working through each committee um you know it would just be something we agree you know hey these four or five committees and then or these are the ones we want to go in on and we'll have two reps from each board and they'll come back to us with recommendation in six months we did ask the boards themselves to come back with recommendations or discussions about it we did get something from energy but the not too much from others yeah i think ultimately since we'd be the ones who would you know or the two some mechanism of how we're appointing new individuals to the both these boards to make sure that it's fair um you know make sure that everyone has a space on the boards if they want it um i mean i'm just thinking again spitballing off top my head that trying to work this out over time with 10 people is going to be really tough um and i think we've not used them in a while but a sub this seems like perfect subcommittee work for me two reps from each board so we've also been trying to uh limit adding new meetings but yeah yeah sorry somebody else was talking and that's okay um two quick things one uh and i just want to correct something you mentioned um we're not walking away from the senior center we are committed to having a senior center just whether we're going to work collaboratively with the select board or do a joint thing with the select board um just want to make sure that that that narrative doesn't get put out there um so with these boards commissions committees clearly this is a lot of detailed work so i ask them to go back to the select board select board would you be okay just getting rid of shared boards commissions and committees from that mo you and we then take the next period of time however long it shall be so we can actually have these conversations because otherwise that's going to hold up signing off on all these other agreements hey how about that that would also then give time for these committees commissions and boards to come back to their recommendations instead of us telling them how to do it so uh i think we would uh i think we need to have that discussion in context with all the other things we need to discuss so then i guess that the two the two past requests if you will from the trustees or from my perspective trustees disagree if you disagree either our two boards agree to only at this point in time for the mo you say identify the boards that we lost to figure these details out and that would satisfy the mo you or we remove that section from the mo so when you select board talk about that next those could be the two options i'd be greatly appreciative so sorry can you clarify what the two options are in your view in the mo you number two uh exhibit i is uh and shared boards commissions and committees either striking that from the mo or our or agreeing that to satisfy the mo all we would do is identify the committee committee boards and commissions that we would want to um have an agreement with okay because yes even just this last 10 minutes clearly it's going to take some time to hammer out these details for anyone but these boards let alone multiple all right we'll have a discussion anything else i just had a question on it if it's okay i ask a question go ahead sir in the memo under there was a discussion about possible action well with the town of s6 that took place at a trustee meeting on the uh in reference to mr tyler brought up miss haney's letter from the reading file to illustrate the need for the village to focus on their own economic development vision so i was trying to understand and know george you already referenced about the downtown committee but right in reading through this it kind of i wasn't sure if there was also thought of a separate economic development committee because that's how it kind of reads uh right if i can answer uh sue you're right that as i said the when i look at a downtown committee you know economic economic development for s extension is the our downtown is our economic development so and and if you have a housing commission that's looking at redeveloping and infill development and handling all the capital projects we have coming down the road um that that's economic development and that wouldn't that wouldn't be the responsibility of a joint economic developed joint village town economic development committee that would have to be just a an s6 junction only focused uh downtown commission and so i guess saying there's a lot of overlap between what that housing or what i'm sorry what that downtown commission would be doing and what the the more general uh shared economic development development commission does um but would see that almost in certain instances be working at cross purposes um or or doing the same thing i guess so that's why i'm saying i'm not really sure down the road but um we're i'm talking probably to get a downtown commission going um and get it approved by the state um is probably going to take the better part of the year so it's not something that's going to happen right away and so my point is is that the the current economic development commission would be fine um i don't see any use any reason to abolish it or dissolve it right away but i'd be i think we have to be honest and say assigning some contract or something making some statutory commitment that we're gonna keep this thing going for years to come uh that's where i would have a problem and but then i say well wait a second commissions we could we could decide five months from now the two boards could decide to dissolve the economic development they're just creatures of of elected boards so that's why i don't know a little bit of a confused answer that but that i don't know if that answers your question yeah i was just trying to understand because it references forming your own economic development commission i didn't know whether the thought process was in addition or in place of so no in place the the the downtown commission would be the economic development commission they would they would serve the same purpose okay it it says forming a downtown committee or their own economic development commission so maybe that's it might have been something lost in translation yep absolutely yep thanks i mean in the interest of brevity i'm ready to make i'm i know what i've given this some thought and i'm we've got four here we heard from a six best tonight i've already said i think it makes sense to continue that work especially since a lot of it involves our public safety resources which we have already agreed to share um i think we've heard from an energy committee that they've actually had the conversation and they want to stay together and that also makes sense to me a lot of that energy doesn't stop at borders and frankly we should bring in more communities economic development i don't think that should continue i think we have cross purposes if they want to collaborate great but generally speaking i think we should probably separate it and i think the joint housing commission is just getting off its feet and should be given time to continue and i think unlike economic development i think housing and the issues around it are a little bit different and that commission can do good work as long as we take some time over the next year to give them some parameters about how the logistics will work out about them with decision-making and budgeting so from an mou point of view and from a decision-making point of view i i suspect we can make that kind of decision that said what george brought up a minute ago saying that you know these things are not you know just because we agree to do the economic development commission for instance um in an mou doesn't mean we can't turn around in six months and decide as a board that we don't want one anymore um or or you um they're not um sort of statutory beings that that are contractually you know created so sort of of two minds i mean does it need to be do does this really need to be part of the overall conversation and the overall decision um that said i don't know that that's that i i totally hear you pat i'm just not sure um i guess we haven't heard from joint housing i think what they ask is best report uh the implication from their final report is they see that work continuing so i guess it's fair to say yes we haven't heard from joint housing but you know my overall question is you know how with with another year in front of us of of untangling consolidation how critical is this decision to the overall scheme of things quickly into that question roge from from my perspective this is very low in terms of how important it is to untangling consolidation and separation so i know the there was a request from from me to the select board about um the ways to move this forward roge i don't disagree with anything you said um i think we need to hear from the select board and whether that's now we're from us from their own subsequent meeting i would just request that we resolve this for our next meeting we'll have a discussion there's nothing else on this and i believe that would take us to the consent i move that the select board approve the consent agenda just jump right to it second thank you tracy any further discussion all those in favor please say aye hi i oppose okay select board approves consent agenda five zero and i'll make a motion that the trustees approve the consent agenda good thank you george thank you dan any further discussion hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye anybody oppose aye zero as well and board member comments if we want to say anything we haven't already said i just want to reiterate my appreciation to evan sorry george uh so i just want to reiterate the appreciation for evan teach again this is the last joint meeting appreciate all you have done to get us to where we are where we have been um your leadership has truly been a wonderful addition to our community sorry to see that you're you won't be around i won't be able to see you walking your dog in a in a few months um you will be greatly missed thank you here here thank you evan yeah thank you evan thank you those were my that's what i was going to say and thank you for talking to my mouth thank you for the kind words anybody else nothing i would entertain a motion to adjourn from the trustees second hey dan had the motion brought to the second any further discussion hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye anybody oppose five zero thank you make a motion at the end of select board adjourn for the evening and thank you evan for your hard work thank you don to have a second a grateful second just a question for the discussion go ahead yeah i just wanted to ask a question whether we wanted to go into executive to talk about our response to the the trustees responses tonight i don't think it was Warren Tracy um well we do have a an executive session for the tentative agreement that's on the agenda that's how the trustees right the trustees went executive earlier i don't really want to but if others do i guess we could i'm not saying i particularly want to i'm just wondering if it would be a we our next our next meeting is uh wednesday next week stirring the school vacations anybody gone i have another question i'm hoping to ask we we didn't ask for public input on any of our discussion single public input question tonight right yeah not to be too particular but i think we do already have a motion and a second on the table and motions to adjourn are non-debatable non-debatable all those in favor please say hi hi hi hi motion passes five zero night folks have a good