 Good evening and welcome to the May 20th, 2019 Select Board Meeting. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Evan, do we have any additions or changes to the agenda? Well, just a couple of things to go to your packet. Nothing new to the agenda. There's a tax map that can go with Consent Item 6. Where was it? It's with the junkyard item. I looked, I printed out something from the wrong agenda. Yeah. It's funny because we talk about these things and I'm like, I don't even remember. And the other item is the tax sale policy, no changes from when you last saw it, but just a refresher from the changes that were, that were accepted at the last meeting. Okay, so no changes to the agenda. So no need to approve. And public to be heard. This is the time for audience members that would like to speak to the Select Board on items that are not on the agenda. Is there anyone here this evening that would like to address the Select Board on items that are not on the agenda? All right. Seeing none, we'll move right along. Our first item of business will be an interview and reappointment for the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. We have a representative and an alternate. And I think what we'd like to do with the concurrence of the board is ask Jeff Carr, our current representative and Irene Renner, our current alternate to come to the table together. That's okay. Perhaps we can have the conversation jointly. So hi. So our job this evening is to talk about CCRPC and New York guys roles as our representative. How's it been going? You want to go first as the alternate or do you want to? Sure. Jeff goes to most of the meetings. I get to go about once a year and get to see the people that I used to work with on the RBC. Do you still go to all the meetings anyway? I mean, are you always only going? He's in China or somewhere? Oh, okay. I've been doing it for a while. I started off in August of 2001 as the town outside the village's Metropolitan Planning Organization Rep. August of 2001? August of 2001. And then when I was chair of the MPO, I worked with the RPC chair and we merged the organizations. And then after that, the select board for some reason saw fit to appoint me in the CCRPC commissioners for the town outside the village. And I do it because I firmly believe that democracy is not a spectator sport. And even though I'm a representative on the RPC outside of the village, I'm actually a village alternate. Right. And I've actually served in capacity as the village representative in the same meeting when the village representative in the first alternate couldn't make the meeting. And that happens maybe once, twice a year. Because the town and the villages, the town outside the village and the town's interest in planning and in transportation issues is more or less always aligned. So there's never been any conflict. And also I serve as the alternate to the Transportation Advisory Committee, which is the TAC, which Dennis Lutz is the town's outside the village's representative on. And when I sit on the RPC board, I can keep my eye on things like the MS4 issues and all that kind of stuff. So when things happen in planning or at the planning level, and maybe you're coming down from the state from the agency of commerce and community development, if there's something that I see in conflict with the MS4s or something that the Clean Water Advisory Committee is doing on the RPC level, we can make sure that the MS4 community's interests are protected. And those are kinds of things that I do as the representative for the RPC for the town. It's actually, I think we're commissioners, right? We're commissioners. We're commissioners. It's the board of commissioners, so we're board members, but we're technically commissioners. We're not planners or anything like that. And I think we work well at the town outside the village with the village on the village's priorities, just like the village supports our town outside the village priorities. And when we're together, we get half the weighted votes of the city of Wellington because we're the second largest community when we're together. I see. Okay. On MPO issues. On RPC issues, it's one vote per town and per interest group area. There's ag, there's environmental, there are representatives, socio-economic ones. There are representatives for issues as well as municipalities. On MPO issues, it is a weighted vote for just the municipalities. So we always are clear in our, in our agendas, what is RPC business versus what is Metropolitan Planning Organization business. And the Chittin County Metropolitan Planning Organization is the only Metropolitan Planning Organization in Vermont. I'd like to open it up for board members to ask questions if you have any. Can you remind us how much we pay you to be a commissioner? I get to come to meetings and talk to you. And like I said, just like when I sat on the select board, it is an obligation that I feel that I have. It's something that I can offer to the community. And I'm grateful that the community will have me do it because even though it consumes a few nights a month, it's still fun and it keeps me involved in the issues. And it keeps me involved in the issues in the village as well as the town outside the village. And for some reason, when I was the select board member, I got into the habit of being interested in that stuff. So can you answer my question? The answer is we don't pay you a cent, and yet you've done it for 18 years. So the community is better for that service. Write a nice note to my wife. Yeah. That's actually her support, I presume. She turns over and visits us sometimes. And I would like to add that Jeff's long tenure is well-recognized at that commission as well, because there are many people who have fewer years than he. Well, you've been there a long time, too. I have. How many years have you been there? 2007 in July. I was appointed the commissioner for the RBC. Long time for four years there. Okay. And I tell the organization they are in deep serious trouble if I'm the institutional knowledge. Which you are. Pat, you had a question. So forgive me for my learning curve is probably still pretty substantial. But could you, just for my clarification, tell me what the difference between MPO and the RPC is? Well, they're actually not different. They're very complementary. The MPO is a specific federal charter that covers a requisite amount of population within a metropolitan area. And it is responsible for managing all of the federal transportation dollars in cooperation with the state that comes into the state in a zero mark for our MPO. And so it involves a whole bunch of things, a whole bunch of planning functions. Probably the most important to which to the town is the projects that are advanced through the planning process by the MPO, allocating the, it's a fixed, it's a finite amount of resources and prioritizing those projects for how they meet the obligations, the needs and how can they can be obligated to address the needs of our county as a whole. But also we represent individual communities and we want to make sure the projects that are important to our communities like 117. And things like that are done correctly. And our, you know, we keep them going forward to the best that we can in cooperation with the town public works department. And I've known Dennis Lutz for a long time. I work well with Aaron. And we are frequently in contact about things just like I also serve on the tri-town committee, which is the wastewater treatment plant. So that, you know, involves a lot of interaction with our public works department with George. And with, you know, the representatives of the other community on the other side of the river. Great. Thank you. And the Planning Commission does the statutory planning functions that come from the state, the agency of commerce and community development. We have a, we actually have a work plan that's supported by a state grant to do certain plan planning functions, one of which is we are in charge of approving and reviewing the town plans or the village plans or the city plans of our individual member communities according to state statute. And as you might have recalled, I don't know if you remembered or not, but recently, and Lyrene made a substantial contribution to that, we have elevated the planning of energy projects to the, we've elevated that at the town level to the point where now there is deference given to each individual community that meets the state statutory requirements for energy projects and planning. And that had been a sore spot with the communities for a long period of time because that's a function of Act 248, Act 250. And the communities had only limited input into the siting of various renewable energy projects until we went through this process in the town completed, town outside the village completed its upgrade of its energy plan, which Irene worked very hard on. She, when you're an alternate, you get to serve on committees. Right. Okay. And the RPC is a committee driven organization. A lot of the work and the background work is done on the committee levels. And even though I may be the board member, and Irene's the alternate, we encourage alternate members to sit on committees because that's where a lot of the work is done. And that's a good way for the alternates to get to understand what the planning functions of the RPC is because eventually, you know, a lot of times, alternates become members when members do things like get hit by buses and stuff like that. Thank you. I'm being facetious. I understand. I was joining you. So you said you're a commissioner, so you're on, is that essentially the board that runs the CCRPC? That's correct. I mean, we're a board driven organization. The executive director serves at the pleasure of the board. It has a rather strong executive committee. Which is composed of a board chair, a vice chair, a secretary treasurer, a representative from the communities above a certain population level 5,000, and then a commissioner that represents the communities above 5,000. And then on the executive committee also sits the media past chair. And so they do a lot of the personnel functions and all those kinds of things. I sit on the finance committee, so I work, you know, with the finances and we often the finance committee and executive committee have joint sessions about once every three months. I also sit on the board development committee and I've been able to avoid the UPWP committee and those kinds of things. Because those committees have a lot of responsibility and we meet frequently. So you're involved in a lot of stuff. The opioid thing was, I'm not sure if it's still CCRPC. No, that's moved on. So I guess my question is along the lines of is it from the standpoint of the breadth of the things that are dealt with, you know, the whole EGOS plan, all that stuff is that are things spread too thin and are you doing an adequate job on the things that you say you're going to do? Well, that's a good question because you may not have realized but the opioid thing was only ever going to be a temporary assignment for the RPC while it found a home. And when all that came up, we accepted the responsibility as we often do because we serve our member municipalities. That's what the organization is. We took that with the idea that a system would grow up around it at some point in time and it was housed at the RPC and we had an actual employee that was dedicated to that. Mainly because there was no other place to house it at that particular point in time and we wanted to move ahead with it as fast as we could. We have a very active program. We are constantly reacting to legislative proposals which seek to expand our areas of responsibilities with about concurrent increase in resources to do so. We had quite a deliberation and debate as part of the clear clean water funding proposal which included a requirement that there would be local enforcement of clean water projects for people that maybe weren't doing what they entitled to do and they were making noise about putting that in the lap of the RPC. And we didn't think that was a very good idea and so we kind of pushed back on it. So we have a function and they often look to us, particularly our staff, our executive director Charlie Baker who comes in frequently to speak with our board. I try to be with them when that happens. The state relies heavily on him for trying to understand the ramifications a lot of what they're proposing. We're not allowed to lobby and so we are there in an informational and educational role and we draw a clear distinction, we do not lobby. But at some points and times we have very strong opinions about what our role should be and the amount of resources that we have to fulfill that role. We are also a consultant driven organization so a lot of times we're involved with very technical things. We're getting involved at the early stages of self-driving vehicles and what the transportation ramifications are that the RPC right now through its MPO function is in the middle of a major study on interstate 89 improvements specifically between Richmond and Colchester exits because that's a very, that's projected to be a very highly underperforming part of interstate system. We're evaluating exits, we're evaluating the potential for an exit to the airport. That would happen between the Winooski exit and South Burlington exit. We're looking at all those things as part of what it is that would help the transportation network function more properly. It's a long term view, it goes out 45 years. That's what we're looking at. So all those functions are on our plate. There are two distinct functions. The transportation, planning, and funding function. And then there's the statutory responsibilities that the RPC has to execute the state's planning functions as it relates to our member municipalities. And the RPC has representatives for things like the environment for socioeconomic issues, for agriculture, for business that are voting members of the RPC that are not voting members of the MPO. The MPO is strictly the member municipalities that are part of that. And there is one municipality, Buelles Gore, that still doesn't have a vote because it is Gore. And Gore's transportation budgets are handled by VTRANS, agency of transportation. So there's an issue there with, you know, given VTRANS, another bite at the apple on the voting side. VTRANS has one vote on MPO issues. It's a very powerful vote, but it's one vote. I know that the CC RPC has a public participation plan. I think it was updated in 2017. It's your view of how that process performs, whether you've seen it used to good advantage. Is it something that maybe should be proliferated to other entities? Well, I mean, we've developed a public participation plan that works for us. Whether there are some attributes of it that are superimposable to other people's experience, I think is really for them to decide. And I think it's a very good public participation plan. I think it's very innovative. We took it to another level when we did the ECOS planning effort where we unified, you know, more than a dozen individual planning efforts that were going on kind of in their own silos. And I thought that, you know, one of the things that we did through the ECOS was we brought a good higher level of integration between the various planning functions that were going on and we had many stakeholders. Most people don't realize that in that public participation plan, we did things like pay people's childcare in order for them to participate in our participation. We actually paid people to participate. Now, we had to be very careful about that. When I first saw that, I kind of went, what? We're going to do what? But it was very thoughtfully and tactfully done, and it was done to make sure that all the points of view were represented as we were developing and passing the parts of the ECOS plan that you see. And we have a very, I think, robust website with lots of metrics, and they're updated every time we can get a new metric. And I suppose we could always get better at it. But I think that the RPC deserves a lot of credit, and the staff at the RPC deserves a lot of credit for taking that public participation really to a level where we did not leave anybody out. And if they were left out, it was because they chose not to participate, not because they didn't have the opportunity, and I think that was the most important part of that. One more? Okay. This question I ask everybody in your similar shoes. We have a number of regional entities, yourself, the bus company, the water district, the waste district, that all have back office things that they have to do like payroll and accounting, purchasing, those kind of things. Seeing that you're on the finance committee, is there any consideration as to whether some of those back office functions could be shared among the regional entities so that you're not all paying for an IT department, you're not all paying for an accounting department, you're not all paying for personnel? There may be some things that could be done in that regard, but I will tell you that when we spend transportation dollars, they're very strict about the way that we can spend those transportation dollars when the ACCD tells us, gives us our planning grants, they're very strict about how we can spend those dollars. I like to think that our management is progressive and aware enough, if there were opportunities to do that and they could be done, that they would have been doing them by now. I don't think there's anything that I see in the staff of the RPC that's building a kingdom, so to speak. A lot of our overhead budget on transportation issues is federally funded through the state, and it's a circular I-80, whatever the number is, reimbursement that really is driven by anything that's reasonable and as long as they feel like they're getting the throughput in our work product, they don't deny us adequate resources to fund our overhead on our transportation issues. And that's a critical function because planning for transportation in a rural area, even that's a little bit more urbanized, like Chittenden County is, than most places in Vermont, we still have a lot of rural areas. And one of the things that we try hard is, and as a representative of a core community, which is Burlington, South Burlington, Williston, Essex Village and Essex Town outside the village in Colchester, those are kind of the core communities, we're very, very sensitive to the needs of our rural members. And there's a long history there of, there were several groups that came together like 25 years ago, where there was a rural transportation funding, there was a more urbanized transportation funding that all came together. And I don't want you to discount the financial synergies that we got when we merged the RPC and the MPO together. They were for 20-some odd years separate entities with two fully staffed executive suites and two executive directors and those kinds of things. And I'm sitting there, you know, I'm scratching my head wondering how this happened, you know, how they were separated, how they became separated. And that's why we brought them together. And so we, you know, we merged two organizations with separate overheads together. I can't remember, everything's blending together now, I think it was seven or eight years ago when that was put together. And I led the charge to do that. If you could marry planning and transportation and solid waste, maybe there's an opportunity there, I don't, you know. Use a common payroll platform, use a common, that's what I wanted to do, the kind of questions. Maybe, maybe, I want to think up through the confidentiality issues and all that kind of stuff, you know, things. I just, this is kind of the first time I've even put a brain cell on it. So sorry for that. Okay, I have a best Charlie this question before too, and I got to. Sorry for, sorry for kind of like just giving you a mind dump that everything that comes to my head. I, my thought is, is that if it was easy, it would have been done by now. But that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be done, couldn't be done. I have a question for both of you. I'd like to hear from both of you on this. Sorry, it's okay. It's a process question. How does, how do the wishes of this board and our planning commission get transmitted to CCRPC? Is it like, is it through you or is it through other ways? And what do you do when there's a disconnect or a disagreement? Perhaps you feel like the select board's wishes are not being represented by what the CCRPC is doing or your personal feelings about what's being done. Don't agree with the direction that's being taken. What do you do? And I would like to hear from both of you on that. Well, I don't get to do it as often anymore, but we certainly have our own voice and we are free to speak as individuals and then say, but I represent Essex and Essex feeling as this, or I represent Essex. And we all feel this way, which may be in contrast to how the rest of the municipalities feel. It's like on any other board. Okay. And in fact, regional dispatch was one of those things that we did very recently with the help of the RPC. There were many, many meetings that I attended. The RPC gave form and shape to that and I believe they still are. Essex felt very differently. Yeah, we ended up not taking part. Yes. What I think doesn't matter against what the board wants and what the elected representatives community want. So I'm a functionary of that. I have a phone number that I give out to everybody. I'm not going to do it on channel 17. But and I'm always open to any board member that wants to call and talk about what's going on. I am and I always talk to the manager about what's going on whenever I have a question. I'm in a lot of contact with the public works department over transportation issues and sidewalk grants and all that kind of stuff. And you know, whenever I see like, you know, something with the MS4, like I said, you know, the Clean Water Advisory Committee was going to propose something. And I said, well, you know, I saw the briefing packet and I called up Charlie and I said, well, how's this going to affect MS4? Nobody thought about that. So I called Dennis and I even think I don't know who I think I called the village. I can't remember if I did or not. I think I called the village planner and wondered, you know, well, how do we feel about this? And so, you know, I think I understand what the board wants. I do stupid things like watch channel 17 all the time to find out what's going on. That's not stupid. Well, my wife thinks it's weird. And I read minutes. And if I have a question, I call. But I don't think there's really ever been a time that my view has been in conflict with the board's view of what was in the best interest of the community. And I don't even, I can't even remember a time that there was any conflict with the village, George. So I always try to stay out in front of it. And whenever I'm not going to be there, we always have a lot of communication about what she's going to see and what I think she should do. And I always, if there is something going on at the RPC level that is in conflict with the town, I look for common ground and I make sure that the RPC knows what the view of our community is. So what we're going to do is go into executive session at the end of the meeting to have a conversation about appointments, reappointments. And in the meantime, though, I would like to thank you on behalf of the entire community for your very long service and for giving us the benefit of your institutional knowledge, both of you. It's a big deal that you're on that board and you serve so long. And it's a lot of hard work that gets done at that board. It makes a big difference in Essex. So thank you. Serve at your pleasure. And, you know, I always want you to let me know when you think something should happen that isn't happening. And if at some point in time when I was a lot older, you were decided that a sitting select board member wants to take this position. I, when I was on the select board, I always thought that one of us should be a sitting select board member. And I still adhere to that. And you won't break my heart if someone wants to position more than I do. No, I'm fine. Thank you both so much. We appreciate it. Thank you. We'll be in touch. All right. Item five C, approve the energy committee expansion to eight seats. Greg, can you start the conversation for us? Sure. So this came up. The energy committee has an open seat. And it has two people who have expressed interest. Both I think which bring a compelling case as to whether or not they should be appointed to the committee. Sort of thinking about that, that the energy committee has been very active as of late the past couple of years or so. And sometimes it's hard to get volunteers, so you hate to turn people away. I think that was to expand the committee energy committee up to eight seats. The board chair or commission chair will dodge was supportive of that. Since then we've heard that there might be another seat opening up so it might be a moot point but still wanted to bring it to the select board and get your take on whether it's worthwhile to open that up or make a decision between two potentially good candidates. Is it a commission or a committee? I'm sorry. No apology necessary, I just wasn't sure. Thoughts? Greg, has there ever been a period in the past where there's been difficulty filling seats on the energy committee? I mean I know with every committee at some point ends up with seven seats and maybe only five interested people. So I'm just wondering if we expand this to eight and there's been a significant time in the past where, you know, they've had trouble filling seven. I'm not sure that the temporary appointment up to eight would be just that a temporary one and we would consider dropping it back down or I guess I just kind of want to get a feel for how often something like this might happen on the energy committee or if this is a pretty solid eight people and we're going to probably be sticking with eight. The membership has been flowed over the years. I see David in the audience, I read in the audience and had some other people audience. Have some other members who might be able to speak more to it. My memory is that probably about three years ago membership was down for various reasons. I think a lot of people moved out of town for personal reasons. I had to step down from the committee since then it has seen a real uptake in the number of membership and activity and interest in it. But that's it does it has ebbed and flowed in the past. You don't have to be a member of that committee to attend the meetings and participate as almost like a board member, except you don't have a vote. That's the only difference, right? Correct. And I know we had more people interested in the planning commission at one time and although that's more difficult to change the number there. But we asked them if they would be interested in participating in another committee until a seat opened up. So I'm a little hesitant to set a precedent to change the number because there happens to be a little bit more interest in it right now because I have seen it ebbed and flowed. We don't typically have people knocking down our doors. So my preference would be to encourage the members to, or not on there, but to still go and participate. And it sounds like there may be a seat opening up soon anyway. I assume that with seven members quorum is four. With going to eight the quorum will go up to five. So unless five members are present you can't have a meeting. That's five appointed members there to have a meeting. I guess that would be... I was one of the founding members of the energy committee. I got thrown off because they didn't go to enough meetings in life. I've seen it up and down. I think that we'd be back here lowering the number at some point because of concerns about getting enough people to have quorum to hold a meeting. So I'd probably prefer to keep it... I would prefer to keep it at seven and allow... I mean, open meetings anybody can come. Annie, do you have any thoughts? I think there's all good points. I don't know enough about the players or the... I have some thoughts that I don't think are fully formed enough yet. I'm going to wait and see what y'all... I agree that changing it because we happen to have a lot of interest at the moment is not really a consistent thing to do. And more often than not we're like looking for people to volunteer to serve on boards. So my tendency would be to agree with the rest of you that it should stay at seven. There's several members of the committee in the audience. So I was wondering if anybody would like to speak. Stand up and give us your name. Thank you. My name is Natalie Rohn and obviously I'm here because I'm on the energy committee. One of the things about being a member of a committee is that you have a higher level of commitment to that project. And so indeed you can absolutely come as a citizen of wherever to attend the meetings. You're not a voting member and just in general just as a psychologist and knowledgeable about social commitments, etc. If you are a member I believe there is a stronger commitment, a stronger energy. This is a massive challenge now. I feel in an energy, a climate emergency. And so I feel like we have the option of mobilizing far more people around these issues and holding a more of a psychological commitment if there is a membership in the committee. So that would be my thoughts about 8 versus 7. Thank you for that. Any of the other energy committee members in the audience want to? Sure. David Skopin, a member of the committee naturally. And what she's alluding to is that we get the very strong feeling that more and more people are waking up to the fact that climate change is something that either we get involved with or our children and grandchildren look at us and say, what were you doing at the moment? We required a great deal of change and we're there. So hopefully we'll eventually need 12 seats. And if we don't, I think we're missing an opportunity. And I know that that Swedish girl who is apparently going to come to the United States would have words to say to us right now. So with that in mind, I would encourage us to be bold, even if we're taking a great risk as in suddenly finding ourselves not having five participating members arriving at the meeting. I would like us to go ahead and do what Will is requesting and bump from 7 to 8. I'm not under the impression that the chair is requesting that we add another member. No, he was one of the options we had talked about. Right. He was okay with it. He's also now okay with the potential stepping down. He seemed to be okay with that. That's what I thought. This wasn't a specific request from the committee to add a member. It was more addressing some vacancies and reappointments. So I completely understand and I admire Greta more than I can say. And I would not want to be in front of her to hear her words. That said, I think the committee has done amazing work in the last many years, bringing the s extension onto the dashboard so that all of our data is together and landing at least two solar projects. I believe so. You guys have done amazing work and I'm excited to see that your membership is so engaged and is coming to us with more and more projects. That said, I think the sense of the board is that in my personal sense is that we should stick with the seven. If we have an overabundance of interest of people who want to take ownership of projects, we could probably reopen the conversation. But at this point, I think we're probably going to end up sticking with the seven and refilling the positions as they become available. Sure. One more. Okay. He's applied. He has been recommended. When can we think that that might happen? I'm guessing within the next meeting or two, we'll have those interviews and appointments. And how will he know? That's the region will come via staff. Absolutely. Great. Okay. So are we making a motion on anything? It's just a conversation at the moment. If you want to keep it at seven, I think we're fine. Get the sense of the board and we'll just leave it at that and schedule some interviews. And just confirming it's a sense of the board. We're going to keep it at seven. For now. Okay. All right. Thank you. And thank you everyone who contributed. I really appreciate it. And again, your committee is doing amazing work. Please keep up the good work. Okay. Five D approve human services funding. Take it away. Evan. Thank you. Um, so we have, um, two new members on our select board. So maybe not familiar with this process. Uh, many years ago, the voters, uh, at town meeting, uh, voted in a 1% human services amount of money of the budget this year that, uh, this fiscal 19, uh, that amount comes out to 140, um, on about 100, a little over $143,000, uh, to be given away. Uh, in years past there have been, uh, attempts to get applicants. Um, or sometimes and not, uh, we have monies that are above and beyond what has been asked for. Um, but staff has been looking at the way we've been doing these. Um, and so I wanted to take a little bit different focus from last previous years. And so I, uh, wanted to put together a committee of staff members and a trustee, a select board member. So, um, put together a committee, um, that had, uh, select board member Watts, um, Brad Luck, um, Tammy, uh, from the village, Wendy, uh, Hisco, from the library, uh, Chief, uh, Gary. Um, I wanted to get Brian from the school district. He wasn't available for the meeting, but he had given me input, um, and myself. And the reason for that is we wanted to look at, uh, the fundings and decide what to do in the future. This year's kind of baked into a lot of things and a lot of, uh, our organizations, uh, do rely on these funds. But we wanted to take a look at, um, the priorities of Chinton County and Essex as a town as well. And so, um, a lot of those, uh, priorities and the monies that are spent, um, need to follow in our community. And, uh, Andy, I know you sat in under a couple of meetings. You know, um, do you think this list that, uh, we are presenting for recommendation, follow that general purpose? Would you say that's... Yes. Yeah. Um, and so we have a lot of very good agencies. They're both homespun and county-wide, and, um, they all do a great deal of good for the community. And so that's why we've recommended, uh, the list and the amounts. This is coming about one meeting earlier than normal. But one of the things is, in the past, the select board has had, um, deeper discussions about monies. And, but these, uh, funds need to be distributed in June, uh, prior to the end of the fiscal year. So with that, uh, you have the list of what was being, uh, recommended. And I'll be happy to answer any questions. Evan, thank you very much. Um, I'm sure that the board members all saw the scores of pages of applications for this process. And I'm really happy that there's a committee of staff that have reviewed them. And the folks on the committee are on the ground seeing the need. And so they are the most informed about whether these applications and how these applications should be prioritized. Board members, do you have any questions for Evan about the list of, um, applicants about the award recommendations or about the process? Max. I'd like to just say thank you for assembling this committee to do this work and getting input from others, including the school district like through Brian Donahue. It was wonderful. I know Andy participated. I know this is near and dear to his heart. And I want to thank him for doing that. A much more robust process, I think, by doing it the way you did. And I'm reviewing these, and they look, they look really good to me. My question is the, um, the visiting nurses, they're paid, we decided for FYE 19 back in June of last year. And I thought we talked about trying to get them on our fiscal thing. Is that happening? They are current, this now currently will be in our fiscal year. Okay. Um, so one of the things we will also be looking to do is in the future for this next year, not this year, the next year, we want to simplify the application process. What you got in your packet is not really commensurate with what we even review for the most part. Um, we want to get it down to what, what are you asking for? And how are you going to use it in our community? And how are you going to address the priorities established by the select board? So if it's English as a second language, or food security, or senior care, or youth services, or mental health, what does your organization do in these areas so that we're looking to get a couple of pages at most? Not, you know, your financial W990s and all the stuff that even if you looked at it half of us wouldn't know what we were looking at. Um, you know, so we're looking to do that. So we will also be reaching out to these people, giving them a new application form and talking to them about our process and how the funds will be given and try to do that early enough so that they can participate. Also, one of the things the committee is very concerned with moving forward is that the select board's funds from the town of Essex and the community of Essex is not great enough that if they don't get it, they can still do their mission. They don't go out of business because they didn't get our funds. We want to be a supplement and a targeted supplement but not their main source of funding. So that's where we are with VNA and others. Andy. Well, I had another question about the money that's left out of this. It looks like there's $2,432. Is that correct? That should be allocated somewhere? I think we're supposed to be balanced. We're at zero on the manager recommends column. We're at zero. Andy. I had sent an email and I think Greg said that he didn't actually get it, but I think there's some confusion about the VNA thing. There was no specific approval last year for FYE-19. It was from 2017 was the last time that we did that. I think, I know Elaine, I saw your response to my email. They've asked for the same amount three years in a row. So the dollar amount looks the same. And so that's not a, there's not a confusion there as to what, I mean, I've got the, you know, the, in our minutes, we put the motions in verbatim and there's no reference in last year's about the VNA getting their amount for FYE-19 pre-approved. 2017 was the last time we did that for FYE-18. So we're already from the VNA standpoint, we've got them off of the pre-approved and prepay cycle. We had to look into one item of whether we're under any contractual obligation with these funds. We cannot find anything where the town is contractually obligated. And Andy, if I might, there wasn't a specific motion regarding the VNA funding last year. However, there was a motion approving the entirety of the awards and the VNA is listed on there. And so we did approve. We did approve that money, but not for FYE-19. No, we did. Yes, we did. That was a bundle, but not explicitly. But there's a line item for VNA on that page. But if you read the memo we got from Evan, it says that it does say in that we've already approved that money for FYE-19. That was the question I was trying to clarify. No, we did not approve that money for FYE-19. FYE-19 is what we're approving tonight. In the materials of the previous meeting, the line items, there's a line item for VNA. It says that it's for the following year, and then we approved everything in one lump motion. So I was concerned that you were worried that we were awarding money without having approved it. And I don't think that's the case. It's all water on the bridge at this point. And for the record, we think the VNA does a fantastic job of what they do. Right. And they are a vital resource in the community for senior care and in-home health care. It turns out this year the committee felt, you know, we had the funds to be able to do it. We just don't want to commit that they will always get that amount of funding. Right. We have a lot of worthwhile causes. And they were one of the original receiving members when the community voted this one percent. I think they were over half of the amount or so is what they received. Yeah. So they were an important part then and they continue to be through today. So does anyone else have any questions? Annie or Pat, this is new to you. Yeah. I had a few that more probably process questions than anything else. When I've done previous charity work for organizations, we would be looking for organizations that, I don't want to use the term like unsexy, but organizations that maybe weren't like as large scale things, they would bring in a lot of revenue. You know, we want smaller things where we know that the money that we put into it is really going, you know, to be used directly for, you know, whatever organization we're donating to. And they may not necessarily be something that's like a national organization that people, you know, are going to more easily, more having a really hard time phrasing it. I think you kind of get what I'm going for. Like I said, we've used the term homespun, local, local focus. You know, as you look on the list, you could have an ant dots place. I don't think that's a national organization. Yeah, no, absolutely not. Although you have the American Red Cross, which is, it has a local chapter. But when you look at what they've done over the years during our disasters, which we do get unfortunately frequently, they have used those funds in this area. Yeah, so as you sort of look at these and review these, is that something that you take into account? Like, you know, you're looking for places where, you know, our dollars, if we're donating a thousand dollars, you know, for some organizations, that's just such a small drop in the bucket. Yeah. Versus, you know, looking at something where a thousand dollars is really going to make a serious impact, like right now. I'll let Andy take it first, and then I'll jump in. Some of what, I mean, Evan has already commented that we don't want to be such a large part of somebody's budget that if we don't give them the money, they go out of business. Right. And so one of the discussions that we've had is to not allow an organization to get more than some percentage of their budget from us. And that's, we think it's going to be a fairly low number, like 5%. Okay. I think is what we talked about, because, you know, it, you know, if, you know, our other intent, the other thing we've discussed is to tell these organizations they may not be able to get an award every year. They may have to skip every third or something like that. Just so that we're spreading it around, we're making a conscious thought about who's getting the funds, and that's, you know, those things. We're also, we're looking at focusing on, you know, specific known needs in the community. Like I think we said, mental health is number one on our list. Is, you know, from the CCRPCZ goes plan, from the drug addiction, actually it was from the UVM hospitals. Group community surfing. Community needs assessment that they have to do every three years. It just came out a couple months ago, and we, you know, we like to use some sort of rubric and a scoring mechanism to see, okay, how, how much do they commit, how much do they serve our local community? And I think that's, that's, that's more the focus of the, make sure that we're, that the money goes to places where it's, where it's needed. We certainly could put something in there about, you know, how local is this entity, but I don't know that we want to, I don't know. Yeah, it was more of a curiosity question rather than any like, I'm not. And if you look at this list of people at home, won't be able to see it, but you could see it online. Most of the agencies have a local affiliation and are providing a direct service to our area residents. Sometimes that ebbs and flows. Habitat for Humanity isn't currently building a, a building in our community, but they built one last year. And, and we know what they're doing and they have to talk to us. So we really do try to keep a real local focus. And when we don't get that local focus and we are going a little broader, it's what's their mission here and what are they doing here? And then the second, again, more of a process question than anything else. But you guys look at, you know, for these organizations, obviously, you know, I've read through the materials and I saw that they provided, you know, a pretty healthy glance of their financials. Do you ever look at and see, well, you know, these people are bringing in 1.1 million, but they're spending 950,000 just on salary. How much money is actually going to help, you know, the people who need it and how much is just being taken up with salary. I know that was part of the questioning there. So I was wondering how much something like that might come into play in the decisions this group makes or who gets what. As we go on, obviously, we would, you know, it's very hard to tell in some respects. You could see that in some respects, but if you only have one full-time member and one part-time member and whatever salary, let's say their salary is $75,000, but they take in $150,000 of funding. It looks like 50% of their funding is to salaries. Right. It's hard, but and we're not really in that business yet. What we're trying to say is we're looking to see what you're doing with the funds we give you and how does it apply in the next iteration in years and coming forward. That's kind of where we're also focusing not so much in the big picture. Here's a piece of money. What are you going to do with it in this community? Are you going to spend it on salaries and staffing and copiers and what not? And we also don't want you spending a lot of money filling out our forms. Right. We don't really want to spend a lot of money filling, copying your forms and putting them online. What we really want to know is what are you going to do with it? How are you going to affect our community? How do you get to the priorities that the select board put in for the years that you're there? And that's what we really want to do. Put some teeth to it that that's what we really want. And we're going to do more about your answers than just your paperwork. Yeah. That really was what I was looking for as an answer. Like if our local tax dollars are making a real impact versus, you know, and I'm not, I mean, all of these look like fantastic organizations. We just want to make sure that we're not running across a situation where- And let's be clear. Biders down the road, you know, we find, oh, you know, this charity group, in fact, spent 1% of what they were taking in on the end users of the charity. I mean, it certainly has happened before. And let's also be clear that everybody on this list and probably more and more that we will come across in the future are worthwhile causes. They have missions. They will help people in our community. At some point, we have to make a call as to what it's going to be. But the process is that we would, again, this is this year's list. In the future, we will, in the next couple months, come back before you with goals and process for 2020, let you establish those priorities, and then we, the committee will go back to work on the application process, the process for getting the word out, and then come back about this time next year for the awards before next year. Thank you. So knowing that the staff and committee are going to come up with a new process for this and will make recommendations on priorities, I wonder if it would be helpful if the board could review what you're going to use as the recommendations for the priorities, like the coast plan, the UVM report, and any other reports or standards that you might refer to. If you could let us know what they are so that we can all read them, and then when staff comes back and says, these are the priorities we recommend, we could say, yeah, they do align with what we're looking for, or we can reorder them in whatever way, but we're informed about what the basis of those recommendations are, and that would probably be helpful to get those. And I can tell you, I will certainly do that. I will tell you, mental health is right at the top of the issues. Food security is in there. And in talking with the school district, you know, 20, I'm sorry. Yeah, you don't have that. I'm sorry, I'm going to, you know, parrot, I know you hear this very well. About 27% of our students in our school district are on some type of aid for food and other things. And when you take that and take it down to our process and our departments, our recreation department, both of the village and the town, work with the same children and population as the school district. Our police department deals with the same families that are in the school district. Our, everything that we're doing in libraries is paralleling the education system, the mental health system, the UVM county-wide region. We're in many of those same instances. We're seeing the same, you know, parallels. And that's why we're figuring maybe we should be aligning our priorities in those factors. And then there's always the other ones that are doing things that help our community and the neediest of our community. And we want to leave money for those two. Thank you. But I'll put that together. That's a lot of hard work. Annie. Being new to sitting at a political table such as this, I'm not sure where this insert I have goes. But during this business item of 5D, there seemed to be a minor dispute about a fact. And the aggression shown in the dispute made me uncomfortable, and I feel that there should be a decorum of professionalism amongst us as a team. And I don't know how to address that, but I believe it must be so. I appreciate your sharing that. I certainly didn't intend to be too aggressive to make someone uncomfortable. You received aggression? Well, thank you for pointing that out. Information for you is I saw you very politely absorb aggression. And I did not feel it was warranted. And I'm grateful for who you are as a person that you believe that you were aggressive. Thank you for your concern. I really appreciate that. I didn't feel like there was aggression coming toward me. Maybe I'm just new to all this. Don't be surprised when there's disagreement. I don't know no concern about disagreement. I'm just concerned at a level of frustration felt for such a minor detail and what that might feel like as we move forward and things actually can be complex. I feel we are a team and there must be some professional decorum and kindness within our dispute. Absolutely. Thank you. And thank you for sharing your reaction to that. I appreciate it. That's important as well. Thank you. Okay, so we have our list of recommendations from the staff. We have a new process coming to us in the future, which is great. So I think what we're looking for at this point is to approve the recommendations of the awards of the Human Services Grants. There is a recommendation on the bottom of page one of our memo on this topic. Would anyone like to make a motion? Matt? I move that the select court approve the manager's recommendation for Human Services Organizations for the 2019 funding request as presented. Is there a second? Second. Andy has seconded. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, so we have unanimously awarded the Human Service Organization Grants and Andy, thank you for serving on the committee and for always being the select board member who sort of rides herd on this process. It's very important to you and Steph, thank you so much for putting together a new process. Well, can I also add I'd like to thank the good residents of our community for being willing to put 1% of our budget. Considering how much our budget has grown, that's a very generous of our community. Absolutely. Thank you for all of your input. Okay. All right. Our next item is a discussion of a lease option and because it involves real estate, we'll be going into executive session. So we're going to save that for the end of the meeting so that Scott can pack up and our guests can mosey on home while we continue our business. So let's move on to item 5F, update about governance subcommittee. Yes, if I may, Madam Chair. The subcommittee met last week and it's made up as you know from the Village Trustees is George Tyler, who's with us tonight. Hello, George. Raj Chawla. Andy and myself. What we did that night last week, we chose a chair and a vice chair and George was willing to continue to be chair. I was elected vice chair and Raj was the clerk. Okay. And let's see, one of the things we did was we set our meeting schedule. So we have our next three meetings scheduled for May 23rd, June 6th, and June 20th. Yeah. It's, you know, the people are very busy doing other things including this. Let's see, subcommittee member Andy Wants submitted a list of governance-related legal questions to Dan Richardson. We discussed some of those and those were very thought-provoking. So interesting to see what Dan Richardson will have about that. We also, the subcommittee also agreed to a two-phased process and one was to hire a third-party marketing slash outreach firm to conduct a series of community member focus groups over the summer to help identify important general attitudes, issues and questions among the community members regarding governance and governance consolidation among town and village residents. And we are aware that summer people leave but we don't want to just wait and lose that time but we hope to be able to engage people through the summer who we can and then more when they come back but we have a lot to do so we don't want to just stop because it's the summertime. We'll try to get this process underway as soon as possible and the staff is going to supply a list of possible providers for our next meeting and that's still good, right? Okay. Subcommittee will also begin piecing together a community survey. We agreed that a survey of some type is needed to get out there so we can get as much input from folks whether they typically vote or not we need to hear from as many people as we can and the elected, let's see. So we can understand the more specific concerns among the community members for various aspects of governance change such as tax equity, representation and there's a number of other things too. So that's the work we're doing and we will always bring back what we churned through back to the two full boards to get their blessing. We don't make decisions, we just collect the ideas of things we want to bring forward and if I missed anything, George or Andy, please feel free to add. Thanks for your notes, George. Does anyone have any questions for Max? Andy, Andy. Sorry. I am, as you might know, very concerned that we not do what we always do and get a number of responses about so I I'm still concerned and I'm taking my head a little and if we do what we always do we're going to get what we always get and if we kind of do slightly differently we're still going to get what we always get so I'm imploring you to please ensure that we work very far outside the box to get something larger than what we always get back in response from our community because I really believe that people want to be heard and get involved and so, just saying. As you do these things and create these things get really far outside the box. And if you have thoughts that are way outside please do share them with the result committee. I will but let's make sure you really want, I don't want to overwhelm you either so I have a lot. You might want to invite that and not just say randomly tell us, Annie. Well it sounds like perhaps if you have the time to come down what you're thinking and at least give them some bullet points of your concerns and thoughts because we're looking for that kind of impact. I absolutely have a bullet. We agree we want to do we don't want to have the same old same old. I'd love to actually come to one of your meetings to have a 10 minute I don't know whatever number you decide to talk to throw ideas around I would love to and then you can put me out the door. We have to talk with staff and handle that because we'll have a quorum with a select board and that would be probably considered as Oh, we can't do it. No, no, no. We can. Warn it as a select board. That's all, we just, yeah, it can still happen absolutely. Georgism? But don't do it if you're thinking to yourselves it's alright, I can handle it. Annie, please. I'm super amped about it and I really think do something new. And on top of that we have our strategic advance happening on June 22nd and we have two professionals coming to that to help us I know you're not able to attend but they're going to help us flesh out the things we want to do it's going to be one of the many things we discuss that day so I completely understand your feeling that we need to ensure that we go outside the box because you're absolutely right. Thanks for hearing me. Absolutely. Thank you, Max. So that's all the business items the last decision item we have is the consent agenda and just as a reminder the consent agenda items are all business items that the board needs to approve but don't necessarily need discussion at this point in time however if anyone wants to remove an item from consent to discuss separately we can do that otherwise if not I will accept a motion to approve the consent agenda I move approval of the consent agenda with select board comments We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second That has seconded Does anybody have any comments, concerns, or questions? Andy The item C there the stormwater improvements on the corner of Fairview Drive in Main Street that's in the village Is it coming from the town budget? Is that why it's coming here? It's being paid out of the town stormwater money Consent item 6a and the tax policy in it it talks about taxes become delinquent as of midnight on the due date which I knew and then it says postmarked are accepted as proof of payment that's it's always been if it's postmarked before as long as it's postmarked okay accepted as proof of timely payment timely payment so a lot of times people say well I mailed it a week ago again it may come the day after because it's postmarked for those we also accept if you put it in our drop box first thing the next morning we assume it was there but after we do the first poll everything else is past that and the charter says that's an 8% penalty right off the bat with a 1% per month that's correct okay so we encourage our property owners to meet the deadline we have no take no pleasure in charging penalties so one of the items on the consent agenda has a star next to it as an appointment and before we will include that in our executive session regarding personnel but would you mind talking to us about what a sexton is and what they do I'm going to give this to Greg because he's working with them directly that's just an option you don't have to go into executive session but basically a sexton is the person who kind of oversees the cemetery it's a volunteer position they're not there every day but they're the person who the family member wants to visit a loved one they'll take them into the cemetery show them where the site may be they're the ones working with maintenance kind of overseeing what needs to be done in terms of upkeep those types of things kind of oversight of the cemetery and connection for the town and the people who might be visiting it it takes a special volunteer yes and Charlie Cole who's also your fire chief has volunteered and stepped up to do that the cemetery commission has appointed him upon approval of the select board okay thank you any other questions about the consent agenda that's good we have a motion and a second please signify by saying aye aye opposed the reading file part a is select board comments so any comments, questions or thoughts from select board members on anything that suits their max on the upcoming meeting schedule again thank you for putting that together we might want to consider putting the June 22nd meeting on that complete that together any other comments, Andy? yeah there's a joint meeting next week on the 28th I have a scheduled meeting work conflict on that date that was on my calendar before we had this one to the calendar so I won't be available for next week's joint meeting will you get us your questions and comments beforehand? absolutely well assuming Google actually delivers them I got them yeah late this afternoon sorry I had it you didn't see it I thought you said you didn't get it Andy? yeah the other thing is it was in my email 7D the summer paving in the memo there's a reference to a map being attached there was no map included given that it's a reading file it's not critical but I guess at some point it would be helpful if you could get that the unsworth parcel thank you for being there and Evan and Greg I don't remember if I saw you in the picture for driving down to Montpelier and taking the time out of your day to make sure that the family was able to get the recognition that they deserve for the generous donation that they made it was really I love the picture I love the donation itself incredibly generous gesture more than a gesture okay any other further comments? so the rest of the meeting we need to go into executive session for the appointment of a public officer and for negotiating for securing of lease options item 5e we have a executive session motion on there I'm not sure we have language for the personnel look at this language for the personnel part Andy would you make a motion please I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss the appointment of public officers in accordance with one vsa section 313a3 and to include the unified manager and deputy manager I'll second it all those in favor please say aye opposed alright and then we have a second thank you I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss the negotiation of lease options pursuant to one vsa 313a2 to include the village unified manager and deputy manager all those in favor please say aye opposed okay we are now in executive session are we going upstairs? Scott enjoy your night we'll recess briefly while we relocate