 give me a chance to get it yes okay so call them in to order it is some of the clock we have two sets of minutes to take a look at tonight and the first is for January 15th 2019 is there a motion to approve move to approve the minutes of January 15th 2019 but any amendments or divisions there too in page one and page two during no comments regarding the minutes of January 15th all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And we'll be on to January 22nd. Is there a motion to approve? Move to approve the minutes of January 22nd 2019 with any amendments or divisions there too. And all second? Motion made in second. Page one. Page two. Just had one slight comment on correction on item number five at the top of the page. The last sentence said the consensus of the select board is to have the staff appear actually it was a it's a consensus of the majority of the select board in this particular case there was one who did not agree. But I believe me I'm fine with the change but isn't that what can sense see if my diction is correct is that what consensus means a majority? Consensus really would be a unanimous vote on it yes but but by saying that it was consensus of the majority I think that defines it. Great you learned something new every day. Not sure if number 10 the fire truck purchase is correct it's the replacement of two existing fire trucks with one quint truck I think it was the replacement of three existing fire trucks with one quint truck and one other truck. Yes you're right. Page three. Page four. Here no further comments or corrections all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye opposed and no abstentions. Move on to public comment is anyone in the audience who wishes to make a comment on anything either on the agenda or not on the agenda tonight? See no hands raised and we'll move on to I don't know for the liquor license application this is a application for a first-class license from Blisby restaurant it's your representative here from Blisby yeah the plan should come up to the the table with the microphone and that's doesn't project your voice it just records the voice for the camera and our our program so if you would I gender introduce yourself and then tell us what you'd like to do Jed Davis my own restaurants in the area and we're opening a restaurant at 30 Hawthorne Street Williston in the maple tree place and it'll be a fast casual counter service restaurant approachable price point and we wish to have first class and eventually third class license would all be inside service I presume indoor service there's also an a patio in on the southern portion just outside the building which we've applied for outside consumption permit with the Vermont State DLC could you describe the location and so I'm clear I'm right next to Starbucks where the old rehab gym was okay okay so right now it's only the first class you're going for the third class does that come later or typically I believe the first class application goes to the town when approved that gets forwarded to the state DLC to be approved the third class is in the outside consumption are typically submitted directly to the state I believe yet our consumption would also go through the town for the plan would okay so I'll have to get that to you talk a little bit about how you will deal with the issues of underage drinking or serving people who shouldn't be served I own four restaurants in a catering business we have almost 30 years of combined history zero infractions with Department of Liquor Control we all staff will be trained through the Department of Liquor Control to serve properly it's something we take very very seriously we envision this restaurant having a pretty low percentage of our total sales will be alcohol but we do want to offer it to people it'll be a very short list of canned selections beer cider wine and eventually we'll have a third-class license for a very very short list of house cocktails and it's the restaurant just to get it the restaurant setting it'll be both take out but also yeah oh yeah absolutely that's the patio yeah there's 60 in 55 indoor seats and then the outdoor patio is about another 50 seats thank you sorry calm reading you have a great experience with other restaurants yeah yeah so you're not this is not your first venture no no any further questions regardless the motion then would be in order I'd move to grant first-class liquor license to awesome times LLC doing business as bliss be through April 30th 2019 discussion of the motion very none almost in favor of the motion say hi hi any opposed congratulations you're doing the outside consumption in the third class for May 1st so that I believe I haven't submitted those for that reason though the yeah we'll probably open a week before May 1st but I didn't want to spend all the money thank you thanks so next is the appointment to the board of civil authority Deb back up town clerk is here to explain why we need to do this well three of four of you know that this was voted on at the board of civil authority last night this is was kind of one of those issues that was wasn't quite sure if it's a board of civil authority decision or a select board decision so opted to go with both actually you are all part Jeff you weren't there part of the board of civil authority which is kind of why we also came tonight but so we can get it you know both areas that covers all bases essentially what it is is our justices of the peace we have 15 13 are on the Democratic Party to on the Republican Party which is fine except for anything to do with elections it doesn't give any kind of a balance for election purposes state statute allows that there be a minimum of three per major political party the Republican Party people did authorize and send word that they would like to have that third person represented on the board of civil authority and that being a ginger Morton who was recommended by the party the party and the three members of that local party supported that decision ginger was 16th on the election you know the election numbers so we could pick 15 she's also been a long time justice of the peace and election official and has done just an amazing job in all you know aspects of that so it was approved last night a board of civil authority unanimously to appoint ginger Morton to the board of civil authority with all the responsible of an authority for election matters only doesn't carry forward to any of the other duties and responsibilities of the justices or the board of civil authority just I'll try to be real quick real brief and sorry about mixing the meeting last night so the board of civil I know I automatically get on the board of civil authority because of being on the select board and then the other positions in in the BCA are either justices of the peace or or is it justice of the peace and the select board so the board of civil authority is comprised of the 15 justices of the peace five select board members in the town clerk in the town clerk okay so there's no election or anything like that we voted on the JPs in November that's thank you that's absolutely true that's absolutely important but what I meant is is people run for select board people run for justice of the peace and along with that comes this other aspect as a justice your responsibilities are elections your election officials as a board of civil authority your election officials board of abatement and tax appeals primarily and JPs can do weddings and so there's this whole concept of the political affiliation where you want to try to have a balance or at least you have to have a balance at least a minimum number and that's you have to have so if you're doing like delivering ballots to those that are you have to have someone from each party if you're doing recounts you have to have different parties if you're opening absentees you should have one from each party whenever possible okay I get it okay I would hope that folks on the board of civil authority could put their political you know affiliations aside and focus on the issue at hand but I also get why it's a good okay so that's that's it for me any further questions for I'm sorry one other did anybody else choose to run or it's not a question of choosing to run oh the 16 so we pick 15 so you immediately would go to the 16th or the next one that was of the party you were trying to have that parity with or if someone from if the chairman of the town committee the Republican committee had said no we would like so and so appointed they could do that or they could give a list of people to be okay I get it now any thing further motion then would be in order for this I move to appoint Ginger Morton as a full member of the board of civil authority for all matters related to elections for an unexpired term through January 31 2021 sir a second sir discussion of motion very none all those in favor of the motion say aye all right thank you very much here we have to highway mileage certification Eric I think you're doing this it's a that time of year again when the board has to certify number of highway miles in town for the HEC transportation this is used to help calculate our local aid dollars that are sent to the town update the official V trans maps so not a whole lot to update this year there was an administrative oversight a few years back that Bruce Hoare the director of public works made aware of we accepted 580 feet of Avenue a as part of the new public work facility back in 2014 we forgot to add the point one one miles of Class 3 Road to this certificate so that's an administrative just kind of catch up for this form and then the board probably recalls discontinued a couple small segments of Class 3 Roadway at Chapman Lane Hurricane Lane recently that amounts to one one thousandth of a mile and we that's and that's just Chapman Lane Hurricane Lane we don't measure it's not Senator Lane mileage so we'll supply the state with the discontinuance orders and just asking the board for a motion to approve this and we'll have this for signature if so approved questions for Eric regarding the mileage again the motion would be saying discussion on the motion very none all those in favor of the motion say aye aye any opposed so we're running away ahead of schedule here and okay I need to sign the meeting more not right so exactly we'll go on to item number 13 the town meeting warning 2019 revised if you recall we had a whole bunch of articles relating to various charter changes and there are various editions of this going back and forth between myself and legal counsel and they weren't necessarily the same document and so when I was preparing the warning for the board's final review and at the your January 22nd meeting one of the articles was not included and so I picked that up when I was doing preparing the flyer and suggested the board go ahead and sign a revised warning which the board did and this is just a confirmation we actually had for different reasons we had to do the same thing last year it's not unprecedented answer a question for Rick regarding this we do need a motion made for this as well I'd move to adopt the revised official warning for town meeting and Australian ballot vote to be held on March 4th and March 5th 2019 second discussion on the motion if not I was in favor of the motion say aye aye any opposed so we've done that to go on to managers report a couple items I wanted to touch on in my written report and there's a couple items that aren't in my written report I want to mention the first item that is in my report is we are starting up this month a citizen response program using some specialized software for this purpose software is provided through the company that provides the services for webpage and it's a very powerful software actually allows us to do all kinds of things and we're doing a rollout now but we're doing it kind of soft it's because there's lots of bugs in a view in fact we discovered two or three already but our goal is to have it fully operational by town meeting and so I do want to give a brief description sure it's a it's a resident portal and we can also input requests as they come in so some examples a public work examples if someone wants to report a pothole they saw maybe some branches down on a trail we've also set up some they have a permitting question a zoning complaint and we can expand other departments to dog license question issues that come up around town so it's designed to give folks a web portal to submit the request the tickable route to the appropriate party in town once it's resolved and they'll get a notification with an email a text message and automated phone call saying the request has been fulfilled it also is pretty powerful we can create these knowledge-based articles so someone's typing in a question how is my say utility rate calculated we can have a article loaded in the site that will pop up someone can read the article they can let us know if it's helpful or not we can kind of build that database over time so it's a pretty powerful tool and it's going to take us a little time to fine tune it operationally with our routing and training staff on it but hope to have them you know in a good place by town meeting that will start formally announcing and promoting it a bit more this is something I've been wanting to do for years and for variety reasons we didn't pursue it one was cost and the other was staff time but they cost has come down significantly and the fact that it's offered by the same company or through the same company or that's partnered with our web page made it much more cost-effective so we're excited about that I like the idea it has good mapping capabilities to you can drag and drop this little icon the also my written report I mentioned the manager annual evaluation process I believe I've included a couple forms that we've used in the past if the board is okay with that I will also prepare a report that report it was good I probably won't get that done told towards the end of next week it was kind of filled up but that's the plan that's okay with everyone will proceed with that the other not in my written report I wanted to mention that I mentioned this before but remind everyone to please put this on your calendar we're going to have a major substance abuse forum on April 10th details of that still need to be worked out we have a committee that's working on that as we speak they've been meeting weekly for the last several weeks and include school officials and others from around the area we were really pushing we want to have a big turnout so at this point we're just asking people to put it on your calendar and when we get details about the actual program we'll make sure that gets distributed but we think this is going to be a very important program and the goal of course is to see if there's interest and and maybe some ideas on how to prevent abuse this isn't just about learning about it it's about working towards preventing it and among young people so that is our goal be in the evening I will say 6 30 we're thinking about maybe even having a dinner as part of this we actually got a little grant to help pay for some of the expenses $3,500 grant and we have a project manager that's helping us out who has an interest in this and some of the money may go to the food some will go to publicity and other materials the final thing I wanted to mention and this is one that Eric's going to need to provide more information on but there is a several articles in the press just I don't know when it appeared this afternoon again so it's really fresh about the software that we use for various municipal functions called we call it NEMRIC which I'm not sure what that stands for we've talked about this before in different contexts but it's part of the budget process saying that this is update software their municipalities all across the state they're using it and we're all concerned about the fact that this may have a limited life in the future because it's kind of a small operation and anyway there's these articles apparently have focused on this software and found out there may be security leaks or I guess there are security leaks in the software and because the what he's using the company's using as a base is very very old it's I think base software from the 80s or something like that was wasn't that one? Yeah I think the latest Fox digital or something 2001 version that's not supported by Microsoft anymore or something so anyway it's a huge concern and Eric's going to be checking with our tech people tomorrow to see what this means and I'm sure it'll be towns all across the state doing the same thing it's a it's a big concern yet no if we have anything to be concerned about even other than it's there's a fault in the software at least there was so that's so I had for this year so when Rick sends out the evaluation forms to you I need to have them back by February 14th and I think Rick will put that in the memo that comes to you as well okay I'll see what the next board meeting will be on the we can put that well I need to have enough time to co-late them too and so get them but let's put that number in for the time being and we'll see if we can come back or things can work out anyway so I'm not sure we're waiting for Matt to get here for the public hearing at 730 well only other business but well is there any other business that people like to talk about tonight no just going to a recess for a few minutes waiting for Matt to get here yes we have a few minutes left to go this is a momentous thing I would have stretched out the letter that was sent off to the tax department confirming that they've received it and they will make a decision hopefully timely and so we'll stand a recess for a few minutes and so that was April the 10th correct okay here and it's time now to open the public hearing on the bylaw amendment for growth management I'll read the part of the warning listen select board will hold the public hearings received comment on proposed changes to chapters 11 and 36 of the existing will listen unified development bylaw pursuant to 24 VSA section 44 42 and will listen unified development bylaw public hearing will take place on Tuesday February 5th 28 2018 well that's interesting that was last year at the 2019 at 730 p.m. here in the in this room and I'll ask Matt to tell you about the proposed changes to the town's unified development bylaw up to comments from the public so that please thank you so there are two chapters of the bylaw as you mentioned proposed for change and there are major and broad reaching changes to chapter 11 which is about growth management and the change to chapter 36 as a reminder in the industrial district is an unrelated change adding and allowed use of financial services non-retail banking to the industrial zoning district West so one one very simple and one with a whole lot of different facets and and not really the two related at all except they required the same public hearing process so they've been consolidated so that said growth management is a piece of Williston zoning that regulates the pace and geographic distribution of new residential development in town it does that as an interim step subdivision review process and it because it establishes a limited number of dwellings that are available to be created through the subdivision process it is competitive and projects compete with one another based on a set of incentives that are laid out in the growth management chapter and our awarded points as part of that process growth management is handled by the development review board and they use their scoring system to inform allocation decisions and to plan for future growth as they're reviewing subdivisions so that's the broader context as far as we know Williston is the only town in Vermont that that handles growth management quite in this way through this competitive process it adds significant amount of time and effort to the subdivision review process but it does afford the town another opportunity to ask for and sometimes get attributes and developments that it sees as desirable or achieving the goals of the comprehensive plan so that's the the broad view of growth management it has existed in Williston in some form or another since the mid 1990s and tonight what is proposed for review and potential approval is a whole set of changes to accomplish a couple of broad goals one is to lessen the administrative burden of growth management this means the amount of effort that it takes the planning staff to administer the program and address some of the complexities that arise when you start saying things like you can build a house on that lot but not until this year or that year there's a couple simple ones like we currently have a bylaw that says when you get growth management allocation you get a certificate that's kind of like a stock certificate or a coupon and you turn it in when you go and get your permit that hasn't worked well people lose them we end up spending a lot of time despite knowing exactly what the allocation schedule was for a project resurrecting these things finding them marking old ones void things like that it's honestly easier from where I sit to simply review the decision the DRB made and make sure that the permits being issued are in line with it redrafting the scoring criteria within the bylaw so that you're not talking about it's 10 points weighted by a half or 10 points weighted double but rather straight numbers 5 10 15 points so we started as a baseline with the idea that each category would add up to 100 points and following the waiting as a starting point assigned full point numbers to those rather than saying this is worth 10 points but it counts double just say this is worth 20 points and trying to make that a little more consistent and then redrafting those scoring criteria to make them more readable and understandable for applicants so there's things you know you're saying you want good neighborhood design but not necessarily guiding applicants what should an applicant tell the DRB about their project that means good neighborhood design so pulling some of that out of the town plan and expressing it in language in the bylaw I'll try to be as brief as I can though so you can fire away next are a set of changes designed to strengthen the incentives so it's competitive and it's an incentive based program sort of made that may the development that brings the most incentivized attributes to the town win the town's had a good track record of getting some of those incentivized attributes but there are goals that have been added to the comprehensive plan over time that the planning commission wanted to see added into the scoring criteria on site energy generation or energy storage the so-called smart grid or you know small-scale energy production green energy adding the opportunity for projects to complete compete for allocation by constructing sustainable transportation facilities very small scale park and ride secure bike locker transit stop type facilities that allow people to be more flexible in how they get around strengthening the energy efficiency requirements for allocation we were citing to energy star currently which has become somewhat outmoded and difficult to administer we're talking now about for my energy codes and the stretch code things that are more easily identifiable within the way energy efficiency is looked at today we're also suggesting or proposing to limit the exemption for minor subdivisions that don't meet the minimum score which in in Williston is 30 points in this system there's always a few units that can be given out to projects that are not able to meet that minimum score we're proposing limiting that exemption to projects on parcels smaller than 10 acres in size the the embedded intent in the by-law has always been well what about the the small-time landowner who just needs to split their lot often to convey a development right to a family member or to sell it off and make some money so this just sort of corrals that we've had a few instances in recent years of larger projects on the four and five unit scale saying well there's four units of exemption available I'm going to go for those because it's easy and you know a five-unit project in certain parts of town is a pretty large project so there was a desire to limit that the next broad category is to meet that demand for residential development in the RCD and allow flexibility in the construction schedules to meet the market and the constraints of construction while still maintaining the cap of 80 dwelling units over a 10-year period that the town has become really accustomed to experiencing so the way you do that is growth management has traditionally been a 10-year window and when you get to the end of that 10-year window we come back to the select board and we say okay next year is the last of the 10-year cycle we need to adopt amendments to this chapter to create a new 10-year cycle the proposal here creates a 10-year rolling window essentially you're in year one whatever wasn't allocated last year in in former year one is now on it's no longer available to be allocated but you're always looking forward 10 years and there are rules about how much of what's available in that 10-year horizon is allowed it's only about a little more than half of it once you get a year out is ever available this makes the system a little more complicated but it means you're always looking at the same amount of unit availability across the same amount same number of years one of the challenges of the 10-year window is when you're in year one of 10 it's not all that competitive you've got stretches out till year 10 and when you're in year 10 even the best project in the world might not be able to get allocation because it's all been given away or almost all of it's been given away another change is to adjust the geographic target a little bit this removes a few units from the growth center and two units from the ag world this increases the other sewer service area where we currently allow for 12 units a year to 20 units a year so this is the residential zoning district area between Mountain View Road and Williston Road and the village that's an area with significantly higher density than the 12 unit a year ag rural district and the greatest amount of demand we've experienced over time so slight shifting of the unit counts between the three geographical areas the next one is to allow flexibility and construction scheduling by allowing projects that have commenced construction within their allocation schedule to proceed with building all of their allocated dwelling units at any time within their overall schedule what this means I guess I'll back up and describe how this has worked in the past a project gets allocation to build out they get a certain number of units and they get them over 7 or 8 years usually before it makes sense to start that project the developer needs maybe the first three or even four years of that allocation to be available so they wait so we go through this whole approval process hearing process final plans everything else and then nothing happens for a couple of years and then suddenly there's construction and then depending on the timing of the market sometimes the experience of the town has been some construction happens the market dies back or tastes change or things need to change the project doesn't complete the way we thought it would there are projects in Williston that we're finishing up back in February less than a year ago or maybe just a touch more than a year ago that were in progress when I got here in 2008 small projects projects with fewer than 20 units that's a long time for a single site to be under construction so what this would do is it would say to the applicant you have your allocation schedule once you start you can keep going until you're done and what that means is a system that has always been a little bit lumpy in other words we don't get exactly 80 units every year would still be a little bit lumpy but the lumps would be able to be aligned with market desires infrastructure constraints and other things that are faced by someone who's trying to get a project off the ground the other benefit is if the if things are going well the project finishes sooner and builds out in a shorter timeline the last part of that is on the 10-year horizon there's no difference at all it's still 80 units a year over 10 years but just when they happen within that 10-year window may shift a little bit a couple others replacing the outright expiration of allocation with a slow build provision the first couple years I was in Williston 2008 to 2012 we spent a lot of time with folks who had maybe one or two units left in their project but their allocation window which was originally four later extended to five years had expired they literally were the owner of a platted lot that had no right to develop anymore that can be hard for the person who's trying to sell that lot because you know now you can't build a house on it until you come and do some process with the town it's also hard for everybody else who lives in that project because it's not yet a completed homeowners association and there's this lot where there was supposed to be a house where there's now not a house for maybe some years while we wait for the you know re-opening of allocation so what that what this replaces that with is a slow build provision if you have a small project what happens is maybe there's a lot or two that you don't build when you thought you were going to you can still build one or two units a year even as you come out of what we thought was going to be the outer limits of your allocation schedule pretty much meets reality slow build though if you have a very large project something more than 30 to 300 units the slow build provision does allow you to continue building if you if you go past expiration but it's so slow you would never want to so large projects would be heavily incentivized to come back and reapply and regain allocation with a project that would need to meet the bylaws as they sat at that point so that's the slow build the last part is just to subject all the units approved under prior prior versions of allocation that are unbuilt now to the same set of rules there's been times in growth management's history where we've had up to three if not four versions of growth management to administer going back in the old files how are they doing it back then what are the rules about timing expiration this would would change that to say all units that are unbuilt as of the adoption of this are going to be administered under this system so nobody would expire anymore for example everybody would go to this slow build provision then we have a category the last one to encourage highly desirable types of residential development by exempting those types of development from the growth management process and the 80 unity year cap entirely so this is what in in conversation with the planning commission we kind of called the high flyer standard if a project brought things to the town that the town had said it really really wanted a very high level of energy efficiency production of affordable housing including units that are affordable at 80% of median income which is the kind of housing we've really not gotten very much of in Williston at all energy efficiency energy production enough things in this system in this new scoring system to score 70 points or more there is no project in Williston today that would have scored 70 points or better under this project under this proposed revision so we're talking about a sort of next level project that we haven't seen yet in Williston that combination of affordable energy efficient major open space asset protected forever that sort of thing so there is within that the possibility that 80 units are building under the regular system and then there's this high flyer project out there we think we've drafted it in a way that it's hard enough to do that that not everybody's going to be a high flyer if they were you'd get a preponderance of really innovative progressive new developments in town you know producing most of their energy on site providing lots of affordable housing etc etc but we think we think that the points have been set up in a way that it'll be a real challenge for somebody to meet that but it sets that high bar and says if you're really willing to do all these things you could you could end up not having to do growth management the other part is exempting units that are 80 percent area median income affordable from allocation requirements so if I have a project and I'm going to build a hundred units and 25 of them are going to be affordable at 80 percent median I would not have to obtain allocation for those really really affordable units so the idea here is there are other levels of affordability this system recognizes affordable at a hundred percent median affordable at a hundred and twenty percent median but the most affordable stuff the bylaws pulling for if you're building that you just would not have to go get allocation for it you'd have to get allocation for all the market rate stuff in your project but not the really really affordable stuff so that's the that's the totality of the changes that are recommended under this and don't forget about industrial zoning district this added use good thank you so this is the time when the public has their opportunity to make any comment you wish to or ask questions if you have some and if you choose to do so please identify yourself for the record anyone who wishes to speak yes it is yes sir my name is Chris on a sec I've been a resident of Wilson for about 12 years we're the developers of Chatham Woods on the Wilson Road as well as Chelsea Commons we've kind of got a long history with your growth management system we've been through it since the early 90s and I'm just want to say that I applaud staff's recommendations as well as the planning commission's hard work in putting together what I think are sensible reasonable changes to growth management that will bring more clarity to the process and I think will in the end get the town of Wilson to a point where they will get more of what these growth management policies have sought to gain which is more affordable housing more energy efficiency and more more people coming into the town to actually develop because in my my world will listen is probably one of the towns you don't want to do development it you know we've been here for a long time we've seen how things have evolved we've been through just about every facet of growth management that there's been and so what I would say to you is at least carefully consider what he's proposed because I think in the end it's going to mainstream processes that have become kind of convoluted in the past and I think will gain everybody what they're looking to see Wilson become thanks if you haven't signed in before you leave if you would please sign in that you're here anyone else who has any public comment on the issues tonight and I know Jeff you have some questions does anybody else it's an awful lot so it's it's a little bit hard to absorb at one time so I'll try to be as brief as possible and the other thing is please do not take my questions do not infer whether my questions show that I support or do not support what is it's more just to make sure I have an understanding the undergrowth management that the first item you brought up is less than the administrative burden and was that a problem the administrative burden I mean you explained how there's a fair amount of work but I guess I'm asking from the question was was it holding up your ability to get projects before the DRB or process them that type of thing sure well the first part was the permitting process using the certificates was immediately untenable projects were bought and sold between developers who ended up not conveying those magic pieces of paper we had printed the bylaw contains a reestablishment of valid growth management certificate process where I was supposed to charge somebody thirty dollars and go make a photocopy and write an opinion that it was now the valid certificate and if they ever found the other one they couldn't use it and it sounded great but it just didn't work and and made the processing of those permits for new dwelling units more challenging than they needed to be when all I was doing was going through the motions of something the bylaws that I needed to do when I already knew the answer because I could go look up the decision and I and I knew how many permits in a project we'd issued and how many more you know we had available the other part is the scoring criteria and the waiting in part it's administrative in terms of when we staff the growth management here annually in front of the bylaw making sure that we're accurately communicating draft scores based on the waiting of the projects the other part is it made it really opaque to applicants so they would read in the bylaw that something was worth ten points but not see that really with the weight it became twenty points because those two things were not expressed next door to one another in the chapter it was really only coming out during the hearing we wanted to take that away so that somebody going through this process even a you know a landowner who's not a developer could sit down and understand what this was asking for and how they how they could meet what it was asking for so those were some of the challenges we faced so I mean to in your mind clearly and I assume the planning Commission's mind clearly it was if this is a benefit that reduce administrative burden and I on the third bullet I like the idea of making it more readable and understandable for applicants that's good but that probably also means the same is true for the public and that's good too don't really have anything to mention about item number two except I was surprised to hear and you'll hear why in a little bit that 30 points is the minimum so 30 points means you don't get any whatever ranking any prior you get no right to proceed on your project so today there are 30 there's a 30 point minimum and up to four dwelling units can receive allocation in projects that don't meet the 30 point this this would reduce that one of the items I'm having a little bit of trouble visualizing is the 10-year window for the 80 units versus the current and you made a comment that first of all it keeps us within this this amount this 80 units per year that we're happy that we're used to but how will we how will the change that going to the 10-year future window versus a you know a block of 10 years and you get you start it and you get close to the end how I guess I'm asking you the question is how is that a benefit and what are the benefits of that but also what are the liabilities what are the potential liabilities is what I think I would like you to focus on the potential liability of the moving 10-year window is that it takes away something that you had to do with a fixed 10-year window which is every 10 years you had to assess should the next 10 years look like the last 10 years can we still support 80 dwelling units a year do we still have the sewer allocation the services and everything else so in the time I've been here when the 10-year window was expiring we would as the planning staff say okay so for growth management to work at all we've got to get back in front of the select board with a bylaw amendment to set up the next 10 years this would say until you change it 80 units a year 10 years at these numbers is is what's going to be available so the way I would foresee that being different is you might start thinking about changing what that 10th year out looks like based on some other feedback that you're seeing as select board members we really are having trouble covering emergency services we're not sure we can buy enough sewer allocation to continue to support this as beyond the 10-year horizon it's already got and there's numerous places in this draft where there's caveat saying all of this is only true if there is sewer allocation to sell for these projects and and if there's not this doesn't mean you know there's some right to do it without that because because it's just like everything else you need to make a project happen you need to be able to go go and get that so to some degree I think modifying the numbers modifying the pace of growth becomes something that the staff and the select board have to pay a little more attention to but I think it gives you that longer lead time and you know you don't ever feel sort of locked into that one 10-year period you can say well jeez we just did attachment a and I'm kind of worried about what sewer looks like 10 years from now staff I want you to you know dial this back and bring us a proposal and bring us a bio-amendment sure please do at the end like the last two years is so painful and for people you just want to build a house on their property they just like sorry come back in four years when we have allocation or two years it's just it's ugly because it's really nasty this just makes it just rolls in your ear would it be fair to say that it kind of is like an equity or fairness issue because if you happen to if the time in which you happen to be able to move ahead with the development is towards the end of the 10-year block you're kind of you know up the you know you you have very limited options which ultimately may not work for you if we have the rolling 10 years probably not all of that goes away but at least some of it goes away or a fair amount of it goes away so it's a more fair equitable way to do allocations is that a fair comment you asked me or Kevin well I'm the whole planning commission is welcome to join in I would say that your characterizing it as equity is very similar to how I say the town experiences a more consistent amount of competitiveness in the system and the 10-year block if you're in year 9 or 10 you can have the best project in the world but there just might not be units to give and the rolling allocation would would do away with that kind of artificial impact on competitiveness there were two parts of all most this is tweaking incentives and so forth the two things that to me were significant that I gave the most thought to were the 10-year rolling period and really right now we have a bunching where there's a whole lot of pressure and difficulty at the end of the 10 years and then suddenly everything's open again and this just evens that out it was hard to wrap my brain around it at first but it means that it's a consistent process and the other one is about being able to build your units once they're allocated not having to wait for an annual allocation that one to me it means someone could build a lot early and then the economy could go down and you could have some a developer get ahead of the market on the other hand what we're experiencing now is things don't get built and then by the time they're ready the market isn't in the right place and so we have sort of an artificial push-pull and if someone if a project is approved I've seen things like Northridge where people are upset by the length of time to develop and I see this solving that problem which is you're still getting the same number of units over a long period but the development of building schedule has more flexibility so I had to give careful thought to those two all the rest to me we're tweaking incentives and making things run smoother and so how you feel about those two is most important I think thank you the next one which is the geographic distribution it sounds like we're taking units away from the growth center which somebody might argue wait a second that's where you want growth to occur that's probably where our town plan wants growth you want our growth to be focused but yet we're taking units away from that sure so a couple things the town's commitment across the 20-year lifespan of the growth center is to do at least half or more than half of its growing in the growth center so at 56 12 and 12 the distribution we have today we're doing way more than half in the growth center at 50 50 20 and 10 which is the proposed distribution here that's still true the other thing and and planning commission members test my memory on this is we spent some time looking at what's been approved and permitted and allocated in the growth center as it's mapped and what's left for land and what's left for potential development within the kinds of densities that the town is comfortable with today looking at Finney crossing looking at Cottonwood crossing and then looking at what's left in the rest of effectively taft corners there simply is not another piece of land where you're going to be able to build under the current density rules another Finney or Cottonwood what there what there is is a lot of opportunity for residential infill in between some of the retail buildings there's some room for some redevelopment a lot of it is on the scale of projects that might have 30 to 60 units in a building or in two buildings something like that so there's a question of scale and there's a question of the capacity of the development community to build into what's left in Williston and I think informed by those things taking six units a year out of the growth center and moving it into the other sewer service area didn't seem like it would undermine the town's goals as it relates to the growth center I think this will be it for me the high flyer standard so what I've heard tonight is the cap the highest you could possibly get if you added up all the points is a hundred thirty is the minimum if you don't get 30 your project doesn't go and 70 is it's the 70 that I really have the question about is the at least the number that's there that gets you under that high flyer standard and I just don't know how to evaluate that sure one way I could use to evaluate that is when I was in grade school and I would come home with my report card my parents saw a 70 they didn't slap me on the back and say good job they probably said we need to figure out how you're going to work on on this so I guess what my question is is why 70 why does that make sense is that really truly high enough to create that high flyer standard well let me let me give you some context Finney crossing under the incentives as they exist today which are significantly strengthened and tightened and toughened under this draft Finney crossing received a score of 70 points Finney crossing under this revised scoring system would not probably score 55 points we don't have enough of the on-site energy generation or storage we don't have the transit facilities designed in we don't have the 80% area median income affordable housing component although we do have some affordable housing so you you would have to imagine a project like Finney with a whole lot more green energy a whole lot more integration with transit a lot more affordable housing in fact you to score full points on some of those you really some of those incentives becomes things you have to do to make it up over that the other thing that I would say maybe not as directly about Finney but we've clarified and tried to put some structure around some of the more nebulous criterion here so we had things like neighborhood design compatibility provision of neighborhood space that were causing well they provided a neighborhood pocket park but is it a five-point park or a 20-point park this proposed revision puts a lot more structure around that gives the town a lot of tools to evaluate those things so like I sort of started that section with saying nobody in existence in Williston today would score 70 points under what this is asking for and it seemed that you wouldn't want to say that to be a high-flower you had to have a hundred points because then you're really just turning everything into almost a requirement and also there are certain things that certain projects because of the piece of land there on may not have an opportunity to do if you're not on a transit line you're you know we you're not on a transit line the way we're incentivizing development being on transit lines is that 50 of the 80 units need to be situated in the growth center so there are other structural things at play that anyone else in the audience who has any comment tonight before I ask for a motion to close the public hearing so the high-flower status you're saying Finney crossing does not meet the 70 whereas they would have when they first applied bill and so our standards are constantly you know we're always redesigning rebuilding everything more energy efficient so with your 10-year window you have a rolling 10-year window you're building at the end of 10 years you've got a big development going in so you've got a high flyer that scores a 70 at the beginning of that 10 years they're building towards the end of that 10 years they don't meet that anymore so there's some things about the 10-year cycle that are true today that would still be true with a rolling 10-year there are there are rules about how much of the available allocation in any one year can be given to any one project so today and in this proposal if you're looking out at a at the available units in a year in the future you can only give a maximum of three quarters of those units to any single project so 25% of whatever is available has to be left open even if nobody else is asking for it has to be left open for some other project to come in and take so there's always some room for new projects to come in the other part I would say is yeah you know once you once a project gets its allocation it has it and it gets it's it's essentially vested in it if it's gone through the rest of its approval process and it gets to build to whatever standard you know it obtained that allocation under but one thing that has come up a couple times and I would expect to continue to come up especially with large projects is they change over time people want to do different things it's very important that in the system we have today and in any system going forward that when the development review board sees a change they're able to say even with this change this project is still meeting the things that it scored points for in that system and if it's not if the change is big enough that the evaluation should change then the decision by the DRB and the one I would advise them to make is to say this project needs to go back to sketch plan pre-application and compete for allocation under the new rules so you know it's it's a truth of the the business we're in that projects and applicants do get vested in the standards under which they got their approval that's that's when the property right is essentially conveyed it's also true that if things change enough they may have to surrender that and come back in and compete again and so you know the scoring criteria may get more difficult over time new projects and applications for reallocation would certainly be subject to that because I'm concerned that you're looking at developers with deep pockets right that can afford to build and you're saying go ahead and build as much as you want as long as you meet your 70 but now you know if they're not meeting a 70 every year of that 10 years then they're not the hot liar and you know that maybe that would be not be living up to standard that you said yeah I I should be clear that if the scoring criteria were to change it would be through this bylaw amendment process so there's no built-in ratcheting up we're going to go from one set of rules right now if this is adopted to a significantly more stringent set today with a bunch of these other things and if if another adjustment was considered by the board at some point in the future you would want to look at that high flyer score and you'd want to look at what the capability is other you know solar panels suddenly became much much less expensive if suddenly there was lots of money available to build affordable housing you might say well gosh those things aren't as hard to do as they used to be maybe they're not worth as many points we still want them but or maybe there's some other attribute that you want so I would I would encourage everybody to think about this system as being all of a piece and you have to think about how all those parts work together when you're making changes to it and that's that's sort of what the planning commission did with this this round of proposed revision very frustrated with the lack of what I feel the town listening to the residents in regard to the Northridge development I did a walk-through on Metcalfe today talking to neighbors and I'm watching as the flooding waters are washing out sidewalks that aren't being prepared by the town and that's without building and they raised concern after concern after concern that as the blasting and the building and digging and the roads being put in both that flooding is going to get worse I some people have listened but not enough and I'm very disappointed I'm concerned about the high fliers being able to build as much as they want I'm concerned about where I understand there's a need for the housing proper terminology you know build as much as you want the developers some of whom are on the development board which I feel is very wrong are going to continue to make money there are empty retail spaces that aren't being filled the field of dreams mentality of building and they'll come is great to a certain extent that it starts affecting the residents and start ignoring those who live here and have their homes here future growth is necessary I understand that I appreciate it but I feel like it needs to be done with care and communication and respect I was embarrassed when I stood up in front of the development preview board I remember the board and I won't say who but I'm a resident that's not right so I feel like all of this really needs to be carefully thought through and that open-ended building by a certain developer that can meet certain criteria and where a smaller developer can't we have to be really careful of those open-ended building allowances I am also speaking to criterion 11.9.3 provide the paths and trails so the Northridge builder was asked to provide for a trail along the outside edge of their property and that means tearing down wooded areas bulldozing them blasting whatever they need to do and setting down a beautiful cement half without regard to the Southridge residents concerns of public being in their backyard that already exists and also the wood wetlands and wildlife that lived there five minutes ago the environmental person that came and approved Northridge was a joke not him personally but the squirrels and the chipmunks on the list that he checked off was ridiculous I had a bear sitting in my driveway last fall there's tons of wildlife that were not accounted for I feel like that whole thing was pushed through pathways built to connect residential areas is wonderful however we already have a bike path that goes right through Southridge and connects Coyote Run and Allenbrook all the way out to old-stage road so you're spending money you're ruining weapons and wildlife I'm just I'm not seeing the care and the concern our voices are not being heard and I really really feel like these need to be gone over in fine detail all of the criterion and not just voted with EA or a day in a movement manner growth is wonderful and it's necessary but it needs to be carefully considered and I don't think that the town of Williston is considering carefully enough with the empty retail the number of banks that are going in repeated businesses it's unnecessary and there's certain developers that are making a lot of money and they'll continue to do so happily but there's a lot of residents that are and we need to be heard and that needs to be considered so was there are there any further comments regarding the proposals before us to adopt new bylaws I have a couple of follow-up if I can that I just want to make sure I understood you correctly as you were explaining the high-flyer that's probably the only thing that I sit there in question to what's the actual feasibility of somebody get taking to account the unlimited amount of land we actually have left to put something of that kind of project on what's the feasibility of somebody hitting a high-flyer status well what I would say is it doesn't necessarily have to be a very large project although it's probably something more than a two or a three lot project so you know we talked a lot at the planning commission about what kind of attributes that might involve on the smaller side it might be a project in the ag rural zoning district that provides a really big open space asset and serves it up as perpetually protected by a third party that kind of thing but maybe also is providing some affordability or some of those other things I talked about there is there are examples nationwide of projects that have successfully integrated all of those attributes that this calls for there are very few examples there are no examples in Williston and I can't think of any really good ones even in the county that have pulled this off I mean the the the idea was to ask for something the town really wants but to set the bar really really high the meeting the diversity of housing types in one of our challenges a lot of our projects are essentially a monoculture you know it's sort of the same or very similar types of housing over and over again a big project like Finney has a lot of ability to offer some diversity of housing types this criterion goes into that much more in a much more detailed way and if somebody was really pulling for that high flyer they really aren't going to be able to build that same house over and over again and get there but it's it's going to be a mix and I really could not predict the ability of somebody to to achieve all of that in in one project of any size I think it's possible I think it's physically possible I am not an expert in what it takes to to create a profitable development and whether whether somebody looks at that and says well I can I can make money on that and it's worth it to me because then I won't have to do growth management maybe but I think we've I think the Planning Commission has made it challenging enough that it doesn't just open the floodgates the other part is procedurally the DRB would have to see this at sketch plan they would have to agree at that sketch plan pre-application stage with the developer I think you might have a high flyer here and then the developer would have to do all of that engineering and design to go into that discretionary permit level and the DRB would have to make that finding as part of their approval that they felt it was a high flyer and that they felt it could be permitted without going through growth management like all decisions the DRB makes that decision would be appealable and you know and any interested party could appeal that decision and go to state environmental court and say I I don't think the DRB really gave this the right score and you know growth management allocations have been appealed in town in the past oftentimes by applicants because they felt they deserved more points but that is an appealable event by the DRB and I'd make that clear as well. Do you need it? I would view growth management as it has evolved through the years as a tool that has taken on a lot of a lot of utility and a lot of meaning for the town. It started off we just need to regulate the pace of growth so we can keep up and it's just about the number of units we get and it's turned into well what if it's competitive and then well if it's competitive what will people compete on and one of the things we look at really hard with the planning commission is should the town continue to have growth management or should we just have really high exacting development standards as much as anything I think High Flyer is a chance to test that out a little bit and say what if we just said not everything but anything that doesn't engage in this competitive time limited process if you really wanted to know you really wanted to get through subdivision review in something less than 18 months what if somebody could meet this bar and that was a lot of the thinking that went into establishing that so do you need it I don't think so but I do see it as another step in the evolution of the process of going from we just want to keep up with the pace of growth to we really want to articulate in all these different ways just what it is we want out of new development that comes to the town. I don't mean to keep questioning I am hung up on this a little bit because it to me when I first was looking at it it was kind of like that fast-pass thing at Disney that got completely out of control and it's been a nightmare and it's now like you don't want to go to Disney because everybody can get them it's a disaster do you see and I didn't mean to in any way undermine or whatever that do you see the ability for this to get abused in that sort of a manner. I don't think you I would call it being abused I think a lot of if we're in a world where it made sense for a lot of applicants to utilize this process you might start to look at it differently you might start to look at making it more difficult to achieve you might start looking at saying well maybe this is the baseline and maybe we actually want to this is now growth management and you know now the minimum score is not 30 now the minimum score is 50 or 60 or 70 and something beyond that becomes becomes that but I guess what I'm really saying is I think the board through its legislative process has time to react to those sorts of things I think today a 70-point project goes far beyond anything the town has seen before if in a couple of years it feels like well geez every everything's like that now raise the bar one last question do you feel that there's enough oversight to make sure that once that project you get a fire in there that you can oversee that project enough to make sure that he here to the guidelines and the plan that they set out yeah the the only condition that really requires a lot of ongoing oversight is the affordable housing the maintenance and I would say that it's challenging it's as challenging today as it's going to be going into the future there will just be more units to keep an eye on I'm finding myself in my role and with some of what's going on with perpetually affordable housing in town having to keep a closer eye on it out of the planning office there may be a point where the town wants to source that to another department or contract that monitoring out but it's that one thing where you do have to keep going back and checking to make sure the price controls are in place and that that perpetuity has been made being maintained especially with the scale of projects that get built in Williston so we don't tend to have really really gigantic projects with you know hundreds of affordable units that a big housing trust is willing to take on and maintain we're going to be kind of in the do-it-yourself mode in terms of monitoring that for the time being and I would say that given it's one of the highest rated goals that the town is set for itself in the comp plan to have affordable housing it's a worthy one of spending some town energy online make sure I heard correctly or maybe I'll use different words to see if I heard it correctly you then at right now the way you've been following development in Williston for quite a while you do not anticipate that the high flyer whatever we want to call it provision will cause the 80 units per year on a 10-year rolling average let's say to be exceeded by much if any at all well no I mean the first part is that the performance of the system has been much closer to 60 units a year so the town sets 80 as a target as a maximum what it experiences over the last 20 years is something maybe 61 62 so that's that's the first part is what what you're feeling out there is is not 80 even though that's been set as as a limit you know the second part is and I think this is you know it's worth leaving 80 as the limit for now but when the town set the 80 year limit this was a really different place with much much smaller administrative capacity emergency service capacity school capacity sewer capacity all of those things were much better that said 80 units a year as a limit as a maximum has proven to be a manageable rate of growth able to match with its scale and its provision of services and if there were sort of a run on on the high fliers let's say do you feel that the town would have adequate time to respond to that and go in and revise the bylaws I think you would I mean given given the pace of new development that comes in the demand of the market the the complexity of putting a project together that meets this and keep in mind you know this is this is one chapter out of 46 chapters in this bylaw there are wetland setbacks there are all kinds of other things there are densities in the zoning there are infrastructure construction requirements there's lots of other things that go into what shapes of development this is almost the extra stuff that we don't outright require but really want is what gets embedded in growth management so I think given all of those things that all tend to manage the pace this is just another tool in the toolbox are there any further comments regarding the proposals before us tonight from the audience right but making you know in an open-ended build as much as you want if you're building this type of housing with this type of housing that doesn't I live grew up in Shelburne I moved to Long Island for about 12 years it was like culture shock I'm here that's home for a reason you want to avoid the Long Island you know sprawl and it's I'm just you know open-ended building maybe somebody does need that standard and they you know take off and then where we had if you I mean you're saying you can adjust quickly enough if you don't anticipate that I'm just you know it just seems like maybe there's another way and another incentive for rewarding those builders I'm not sure where that's coming from well there are there are attributes of development in Williston that are incentivized through other forms of land use control we allow taller buildings when they build affordable housing or parking structures we allow greater densities when we get affordable housing have the ability to reduce impact fees when somebody's building affordable housing projects that build a piece of transportation infrastructure can sometimes count the cost of building that against their transportation impact fee liability so there are some things like that can they be adjusted can they be changed I you know I think they can and it's always worth thinking about all of the different things that the town can do in this regulatory sphere to get the kind of development it's comprehensive plan says it it wants to see fear of the fear of the gaming system in Burlington there was a high rise I got an extra height bonus for saying affordability and then they said oh shucks you know I just can't do that after they've built and they said well just finance and they set up spending on our million dollars on the portal units they only made 300,000 to the town building for a fine so it is what you have to be careful I think all the people saying caution and people getting assistance really have to be very careful about that okay last call for comments if anyone has any you before we close the public hearing yes I just want to respond to things one is that I feel like the planning mission has spent a lot of time with us until we have all of our meetings are public and we have spent enormous care of putting into these things so I just want to affirm that I think another thing is that you know repeatedly when we have done all the feedback that we get is that there is inadequate affordable housing in Williston and none of our present incentives have actually moved the dial very much we still do not have out of it we have over 10,000 jobs in Williston and fewer than that number of residents and many many of those jobs are low-wage work in the retail sector in industrial sectors and in you know other kinds of low-end service jobs and there is not a place for those folks to live locally so as we think forward if we if we as a town truly do care about affordable housing then we need to do something else than what we have already done to to start moving that dial a little bit this is a pre-low-risk attempt at that 80% of AMI is very you know very admirable goal and and I think we actually got some housing any housing at 80% of average median income that would be tremendous and I really don't think I mean we have to all over here who can give us a quick answer but I you know that is going to be difficult financially to pencil out to to create very much affordable housing at 80% AMI is a huge ask and so I just feel like this I don't feel like this is going to be something that's going to go rampant out of control you know we have tried other incentives they haven't moved the dial much let's give this a try it's it's not opening the floodgates there's still lots of forms of review as Matt points out there are many many other requirements plus all the public review of all these things DRB was of course everyone can attend those if they choose and appeals processes and so forth so you know in in my view what I've heard from the channel we're nowhere again is affordable housing is a huge problem okay here's a chance to see if we can do something about that and let's give it a try and it was very carefully thought through any further comments regarding yes I'm a financial advisor and I'd like to be able to join my compatriots and our attorneys and accountants and be able to work any further comments before we close the public hearing see the motion to close the public hearing would be in order I'd move to close the public hearing and propose changes on the Williston Unified Development bylaw discussion of motion very none all those in favor of the motion say aye aye opposed and they'll move on to consider adopting the proposed amendment are there questions from the board at this point well the only question I have or maybe it's a comment is it's pretty major decision is there a need to make a decision quickly well one thing that would make administration easier is if this is adopted prior to the growth management hearing happening on March 22nd and the only reason for that is we had to think a lot about when would the new scoring criteria become effective had this been adopted prior to the end of the calendar year it would have been a little easier we could have just said it starts with the next calendar year that said we rarely ever see any residential pre applications until the second half of the year but the way the draft is written right now says this takes effect immediate any changes to this chapter take effect immediately following the prior growth management here so applications that come in get reviewed under the new criteria everything we're going to be reviewing with the DRB in another month or so we'll get reviewed under the criteria as they exist prior to any changes so we were to wait to our next meeting if possible which is in two weeks I tonight was very helpful and I very much appreciate all the input but I don't I if possible I would like a little bit of time to think about what I heard possibly receive some comments and if so if it's at all possible to wait till our next meeting that would be my preference what's the what's the statute say after we pass a change in the ordinance it takes effect 21 days after anybody done the math in our next meeting versus what you want it's the 19th right two weeks from today would be our next right 22nd 22nd oh they don't ask Rick to do the math so and then you need it by the 26th did you say of March so that seems there's that any vote are you folks it's okay with me do I hear consensus that to postpone the vote on this until next to meeting thank you thank you everyone thanks for coming everybody so move on to the public hearing on the VCDP grant application mr. Longstreet looks like you might have we misnamed you perhaps long stretch it should be the so if you would give us a brief outline of what your proposal is actually I should read the the warning the town of Williston resources considering making applications of state of Vermont for a VCDP implementation grant 2018 under the Vermont community development program public hearing will be held at 8 p.m. more or less on February 5th 2019 at Wilson Town Hall to obtain the views of citizens on community development to furnish information concerning the amount of funds available on the range of community development activities that may be undertaken under this program the impact on a historic and archaeological resources that may be affected by the proposed project and to give affected citizens the opportunity to examine the proposed statement of projected use of these funds so I'll turn it over to mr. Lawsrith thank you so much for let me speak tonight and for your interest in this project we resource moved into Wilson in March of this past year and are we renting a facility at 329 harvest lane with the intent to purchase it in in January of 2020 when when our option becomes available resources a nonprofit for those who don't know we we have four sites Burlington Barrie Hyde Park and now Wilson and we operate workforce development and training programs for low-income disadvantaged individuals people who are blind or visually impaired folks with other disabilities and help them get into jobs we also work with some in-school youth to get them and help them improve their skills so that they're better equipped when they graduate from school to be successful in the workforce and we we do those training programs through our social enterprises that that keep things out of the landfill we also run programs that support high school dropouts and do construction training and get students certified in NCC ER certifications all of this really depends on having the right space and the Wilson site is our new headquarters it's our largest space it's really critical to supplying the other three sites with goods when we have about a five million annual budget 60% of that is coming from our social enterprises and those social enterprises really are fundamental to providing this workforce development training and really the only way that we could afford this this building is acquiring it ownership will save us over 300,000 a year and that funds a lot of training programs and the VC DP funding is one of the few significant amounts of funding for this type of acquisition so we we hope that the town of Wilson will support this and really the there's no cost to the the town resources preparing the application in hopes that this will be be supported by the by the town and then it's it's federal money that gets passed through the through the state so I guess maybe I'd just stop there because I could go on and on and really try to answer questions as they as they may exist try to explain what we're doing maybe just briefly on the overall we have an overall capital campaign that this actually looks like some of you I may have copies of this I can make these available we are about 30% of the way towards raising the 3.5 million that we need to fund this overall project this overall project the biggest piece of it is acquisition of the building but it also included some of our moving costs the cost to rehab the space we are using in Burlington and to acquire a classroom a modular classroom a used modular classroom from Maine that we've plopped on the site in on Pine Street that we use for training programs still in Burlington so the the capital campaign we're about 30% of the way towards our goal but the VCDP piece is a pretty key part of that and so we can request 500,000 as a public facility that would support the continued job training workforce development programs and so I love to answer any questions so part of that building this is being used by another company it's not that's right there's two tenants that we would inherit as our tenants that would help us pay the mortgage because 3.5 million is the fundraising and then we have 4.4 million of debt that's the overall capital campaign so the project we're submitting to Vermont Community Development Program is just for acquisition which simplifies a lot of things there's a lot of we did a similar project in Barrie when we expanded to central Vermont in 2009 received a VCDP grant through the city of Barrie and it was a because it included construction it was much more complicated and so acquisition is is simpler I'll leave it there if you know the VCDP process you'll so this is a public hearing there's any members of the public here that wish to make any public comment on this that this is the time to do it there are none I'll ask the board if they have any questions or comments regarding the project no our involvement would be similar with how we've done this in the past with I think the Cots project in Burlington and I think there was one other the school conversion project sorry I'm not drawing the name and so the only question I have is Tommy made the comment has no impact on the town just to verify that with Rick and Eric particularly if we have to do one of those over $750,000 worth single audit his I've already question Mr. Longstaff about that and he agreed that that cost the incremental cost of doing a single audit would be covered by the organization the grant I don't know which but well I know I think it would be it would be resource I think I think because we would we want to keep it as simple as possible in terms of application so we would just if there's and partly because we're not sure that that's going to be required so I think we will just commit to covering that incremental cost so that the town doesn't have to bear that cost and and we'll help try to keep you below that threshold the well maybe you want to be above the threshold or for other reasons but last year we had the joy of being a thousand dollars over that threshold so you know in retrospect you could have met it we could have managed this a little better but if the the limits 750,000 and your grant is 500,000 I would say it's fairly safe to be to say that you're going to require a single audit okay and then we we should we'll plan on that and we'll figure out what that cost is but so and but the other point is that as far as out of pocket cost that is the only one that I'm aware of there is staff involvement and it's not extensive but there is some involvement and so you know I don't want to overlook that but we have done it with other programs my only concern is but I think both saw that soon we don't have a finance instructor right now well we kind of have one but it's not yes so where my hope is that we'll have someone accept a job offer on that position before the end of this week so that may be taken care of in a matter of a month or so anyway other than that conditions with other thing I just I did note I think in some of the written material just some of the ways that this project supports the town plan and is consistent with that we even though we are structuring the VCDB application so that it's just for acquisition one of the improvements we plan to make to the building is to put solar on the rooftop that would cover 100% of resources electricity needs we would also install replace do a lighting upgrade and replace a bunch of fluorescent lights with LED lights that are more efficient and also with motion sensors so that we would just consume much less electricity and I guess as part of the solar insulation we also would have an opportunity to replace an ad insulation on the roof which is I think under insulated any further questions from the board any further comments from the audience if not then a motion to close the public hearing is an order I'd move to close the public hearing on the Vermont Community Development Program grant application discussion very none all those in favor of the motion say aye aye any opposed and we consider authorizing the manager to sign the application is there questions regarding that or is there a motion I had moved to adopt the resolution for the Vermont Community Development Program implementation grant in support of the proposed capital project for resource is your discussion on the motion favor the motion say aye aye any opposed congratulations well thank you very much to it thank you thank you so much so we have a document to sign on next there's the kind of my property project and we've had a request from the member who's absent tonight to postpone the action on the motions before us she emailed me and asked that since could it be not on the agenda I told her no that it has to be on the agenda because it was worn but if she had and she would like to be present for the vote I asked her to if she had other objections to the to the proposals to send those to me before tonight's meeting and she responded that she thought that she did have some problems with a couple of parts of the other proposals and would like to have a discussion on that with a chance to dissent and to have more debate on the issue I also told her that the board would make the decision as to whether or not to continue with discussion of the project the proposals tonight and whether it would have a vote on it and that's either a matter of motion to table from the board or a consensus that we would not take it up tonight so I think about that in the meantime I think there's a question as to whether or not we need to take action tonight on this so Kate and Melinda I think maybe we could give us at least some kind of answer in that we'd love for you to take action if you are able to further delay I mean after you guys approve kind of the documents it still needs to be approved by four of the large funding sources so if you were to make changes two weeks from now that would add additional weeks on to the closing time period we did get extensions to two of the grants that ran out in the end of 2018 and those have been extending to the end of March but we are worried about further delays especially if the federal government were to close down again on February 15th which is a possibility so it's up to the board as to whether you wish to discuss the proposals and vote on tonight or not I think in any case the board may want to at least listen to some of the issues that in some of the research having you come tonight already have us and can you come in two weeks so I apologize for that and I remember missing the vote that we had this summer because I was traveling and being very disappointed but I didn't think that I should ask it to be held up because I was traveling I don't know I just so let's hear from one of the endcaked so that the items that you have tonight are amendments to certain agreements the purchase and sale agreement have to do with the receipt of a land and water conservation grant which the town did receive more excited voice $280,000 they gave us the full amount that we requested which was 208,000 that puts us at the top of what we're needing for the funding of this project and you will have a stewardship endowment of 20,000 for immediate or longer term costs congratulations great great well it was a team effort both of your parts so yeah that being said there's an amendment to the purchase and sale agreement I think yeah so section yeah section 2a basically place some of the following sellers so it talks about the $208,000 grant and that the waiver of retroactivity that we've got to get to submit an application and so this just says that in the event the funding from the United States American Land and Water Conservation Fund exceeds $260,000 which it does then buyers shall set aside any funds in excess of $260,000 as a stewardship endowment and I missed the first part if the funds exceed $200,000 basically we're going to reimburse the trust for public land for $60,000 and the extra 20,000 will go towards the stewardship endowment and then the second part just acknowledges that there the results of the environmental phase one assessment the site reports and the ground water monitoring reports having to do with the buried fuel tank and that 0.08 acres of the property are being impacted by this underground storage tank so it's just yeah it's just acknowledging that and that the remediation will not be complete as of time of closing and that the trust for public land has advised the town to enroll in the brownfields reuse and this this must be done if we want to do it before closing in order for the town to be eligible and in fact we had submitted an application to Brella and where we were accepted as you know so we we are indeed enrolled in the program so that that's what I wanted to update you on. Is there a concept of I don't know what the right words are it's like this small easement piece of the easement is going to be delayed and it being transferred I don't know if that's the right word I'm just trying to understand first of all how does that work and is there any liability anything we should know about that that could come back. So how that works is that there's some language in the conservation easement that basically excludes this point 08 acre parcel or piece the town will still own that piece but it won't be under the conservation easement until such time that the town gets a letter of complete basically a letter certificate of completion from the state that we've done all we need to do as far as site remediation and my understanding was that monitoring would be ongoing even beyond that time but at that time the state will have made a an evaluation of the monitoring that's taken place thus far and if it's contamination has subsided to levels that are underneath the state threshold for whatever yeah under the threshold that they will issue a certificate of completion at that time. And then as soon as the certificate completion is recorded in the town records that automatically triggers the easement to then cover those point 08 acres. What is the liability if that certificate of completion isn't issued and the easement thus doesn't get whatever the word is transferred is there any issue with that no it's just a small hole in the easement if you will. Yeah I mean it's not like you can build something there on point 08 acres because that would actually be against the federal community forest program rules so there's nothing you could really do there even if the easement didn't cover it. I'm asking this of everyone it's this is really it's an issue but it's a non issue in terms of any sort of liability or long term use or conservation of the property. According to the state DC staff. Back one more time. Why are we giving 60,000 back to the seller? I know we had this discussion and I thought we were not happy with this discussion. There were two issues. Kate asked that because at the time we didn't know where to get the grant or we didn't know how much we're going to get and we thought we'd get some. So Kate had asked that if we only get $200,000 can some of that go back to pay some of the expenses for trust Republic land and I had said that I didn't think that was an acceptable proposal and clearly the board agreed with that piece. But then there was the other piece that well if they get a grant above the 200,000 which is what we had committed all along then what happens with that money? Trust Republic land incurred additional cost or costs that are not being that you anticipated would be compensated but but not for this grant would not be compensated. Right. So we're putting 60,000 of our own money into closing into capital to buy the land and then when the LWC grant comes through the money should come June or July depending on if the government shuts down and how delayed they are then that will kind of reimburse us for the extra money we've put in. And I think like originally we were I think only intending to apply for 200,000 but then as the project was trying to close and we still had a funding gap we decided to apply for more to cover that gap as well as the stewardship endowment. So questions on the on everything or the whole thing all four parts of it. Is now the time to talk about the EURF or okay that's what I meant this is just on purchase and sell okay no I'm good. Any other questions on other parts of the proposals that we have? No but one of the questions I was going to ask is if we're going to go on to a discussion of another document do we want to one decide if we're going to vote on this and then two decided we want to vote on this in part so that we're not trying to is that I don't know it's out of order. Well there are four different motions proposed to deal with each of these sections that we're dealing with if you wish to deal with the later discuss all of them at one time and then go and vote on those afterwards seems like a logical way to go. I should mention that the first three documents we're talking about the board is already approved and so what we're talking about is some reasonably minor changes I think the biggest issue that we've had to discuss when we discuss that on at the board's meeting on January 8th was this whole contamination matter because that it was the scope of that was fairly we didn't realize the scope of that until more recently and when we so that's why we brought to the board's attention on January 8th and so you've had some time to think about that issue since then but that was the big issue when we were talking about these all these other documents are very very pretty much minor issues which we've shared all the details with you on those as well. It also sounds like from the trust for public lands perspective and possibly also from Linda I don't want to put you know words in your mouth but there is concern about moving this forward. Yeah definitely there's the time is getting short. Bottom line is I would appreciate hearing Terry's comments or concerns it's not about that I just scheduled hearing concerns about hoping that we can move this forward because there are concerns down the road government shut down what have you I don't know I guess I think the comment I would add to that though is that those concerns have been stated and brought up already and then I believe we've been addressed and that's why we're back here again. I don't know that I know that without meaning any disrespect I don't want to go and rehash the same things over and cause another delay. It's something new and different and she didn't elaborate on that. So I can tell you what she said that I do not support the licensing agreement any more than I did before and I would support the purchase if we have access to the appraisal for review. Those are the same things we've already heard. I wasn't here for that meeting. Did she vote against the license agreement? No. Got them aware of. I think she did. Okay I don't recall. Okay. And then her other comments you'd like to see the appraisal. We've heard that before. For us to see the appraisal. If you recall the sorry. Yes, I mean one of the conditions was that that appraisal has to be reviewed before we close on it. But it was not it was an administrative view not a board for you because there's there's no policy issues. I'm not arguing that I should review it. I just wanted to know that is a condition of the town has to review it before the closing. Okay. And that would include a legal review and all that. I don't know if it requires it. Okay. And the town currently has the appraisal. What's that? The town currently has the appraisal. Okay. Good. In the appraisal review from the federal review appraiser. I read. Yeah. The fifth one made it. It's something like that. Okay. Did you have other questions on the documents? Well, I can do these all at once. Well, I'd like to have all the questions raised on all the proposals we have and do it. The environmental reserve fund. The request from that is 600,000. So my only just a couple follow up questions. I assume the conservation commission concurs with that recommendation. What are the liabilities? Okay. First of all, I'm sorry. I don't have the ERF amount in front of me. If 600 comes out of it, what is it left with? After reimbursement of the land with after reimbursement from the land and water conservation. 600 minus the 200. So we will be left with 200 thousand after reimbursement from land and water conservation. Looking your crystal ball looking down the road, the near future is having quote unquote only that's still a healthy amount, but only $200,000 in the era. Is that going to be it's out of concern? Um, I don't see anything on the radar, but it doesn't mean that you know, something couldn't somehow magic not magically pop up. But I think the conservation commission has recognized that to be a risk, but has thought that this acquisition is worth it. One other point is that I believe we have another, I forget that I don't somewhere between 40 and 60,000 budget for next fiscal year to go into it. So that would be added to 200,000. And I don't know if you also included the amount that's being budgeted. It was budgeted for this current fiscal year. No. So, you know, we're looking maybe at 300,000 being in that fund in the very near future. So if I could complete the my thing about this is the tax implication, if you will, of trying to restore the environmental reserve fund down the road after this amount is taken out this amount, the 600 minus 200 doesn't appear to be it's not small or insignificant, but it's not unduly large either. It's along the normal lines of what we have been doing in the past. Okay. Okay. And the only other comment I had now was in your memo, Melinda, you had regarding the license agreement. The you make the comment, the board could make the changes or wait to make the changes if the funds are awarded. And I just my notes just say now seems best. Yeah. And the memo was written before we knew we'd gotten a grant. So go. Okay. That's it for me. I actually have a question. There was some discussion about one of these documents needing one further change from some organization. And I don't know which document it is because I Well, both the easement and the license agreement needs review by Vermont and are to make sure that it conforms with the Land and Water Conservation Fund stateside program rules. It's been reviewed by the program staff that is in charge of that program. But she has been trying over the last three weeks to get it in front of the an our attorney and has not been able to get her time because of the legislature. Because of the attorney's involvement in things in front of the legislature. So it is there is a possible a small possibility that the an our attorney may have comments on either that the easement or the license agreement to make sure they conform with LSD of stateside rules. But we don't know that yet. The license agreement can change at any time post closing. The easement cannot. So if there are changes to the easement that are really minor, we'd love for the board to give authority to Rick to approve those in his discretion of whether they're consequential or inconsequential. Otherwise, we can come back in two weeks and see if those changes cause any heartburn. But I don't know if there will be any. It's fresh. I find it very frustrating. We've gone this far and the state hasn't weighed in on these documents at this point. Welcome to my world. Yeah, we gave him to the state on January 2nd. So further questions. So we do have four different motions recommended. Are we in agreement that we want to unless I hear a motion to table? I'd like to move forward. I'd move to approve the First Amendment to the Catamount Property Purchase and Sale Agreement and authorize the town manager to sign on behalf of the town. It's your discussion on the motion. Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Next. Move to approve the amendments to the conservation easement and authorize the town manager to sign on behalf of the town. Second. The session on the motion. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Any opposed? I forgot to say I. So it's four to zero and no opposition. Next. I'd move to approve amendments to the town's license agreement with the Catamount Outdoor Family Center and authorize the town manager to sign on behalf of the town. Second. Discussion on the motion. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Next. Move to authorize the expenditure of up to 600,000 from the town's Environmental Reserve Fund for the purchase of the Catamount Property. It authorize the town manager to close on the purchase of the property on behalf of the town and execute any deeds and legal documents required for the transaction. It's a discussion on the motion. Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Any opposed? We've done it. Thank you so much for all of your hard work. We'll now invite you to the closing party. In the springtime. The amount of work that I suspect we don't even know that appreciate it. Both of you. She didn't lie and share. It's been fun. I would recommend the trust for publicly highly to the next town that wants to do a community. Well, my daughter is signed up for a week at the Little Bella's camp on the new committee. Catamount Community Forest in June. So we'll be back. It's great program. So next is the page property conservation easement and both of your speak on this. I presume. Okay. We do have a memo from Melinda. Yes. So as you know, you know, the pages have actually agreed to donate 17 acres of their land to the town forest. In, in doing so, their, their remaining land is no longer eligible for current use and it must be withdrawn from current use. And so landowners who withdraw their land from current use incurred land use change tax, a one time one time fee, which in this case would amount to around $16,000. And the fees collected by the state and a small percentage goes back to the town, I think up to $2,000. So in trying to figure out how Steve can could donate land to the town and not have it cost so much money to him, we thought of a concert having, if he has a conservation easement placed on his remaining eight acres, it would substantially reduce this land use change tax fee to something in the neighborhood of $2,500. The pages are agreeable to the, to the town holding up this conservation easement, both in order to reduce these costs and also to ensure that, that a little more protection of land and the town has done this in the past. So the advantages are obviously the reduction in costs and also that some additional land is protected around the town forest. There, there's what I see as a minor disadvantage from the town's perspective, just a very slight reduction in tax revenue from the parcel. But I think we had at one point estimated what that reduction would be for the entire community forest. And it was pretty minor as I recall. This is only eight acres. So an acceptance of a conservation easement. This is an easement that the town would hold over Steve Page's land would require select board approval. And we recognize that the conservation easement has not yet had a chance to look at this. And you'll probably want a recommendation from them. And it's on their agenda for tomorrow morning. So we're not expecting you to make a decision tonight. We're requesting a decision, but presenting this information and asking you to consider it for the next meeting, perhaps. If there are questions for more on the proposal, I would recommend that we have a consensus to proceed with this pending recommendation from the Conservation Commission. I'd be willing to join that consensus. I just want to see. So they're going to, they want to donate 17 acres to the Catamount Community Forest, but because they would be hit with taking the property out of kind use, they want to weigh around that. And the way around that is to also give the town conservation easement over eight more acres. Yeah. All right. That's that's my question. Thank you. Any further questions? What the next step? So in effect, the entire, their entire parcel is going to be most of it. Yeah, with the exception of what, two acres around their house. Yeah. And Steve is also here. Have you see if you want to ask him questions to my question would be is what are the next steps? And it sounds like the next, the first next step is the conservation commission needs to weigh in on this. And then would a conservation easement document be drawn up or would we would, would the next step be we authorize you to enter into an agreement? I think we bring it, prepare a document first. Okay. And then bring it back to the board. Okay. I, I, one of the reasons we're talking about now is I, I wouldn't want to spend legal money getting it all together and then out of the board. So, you know what? We weren't interested in this. So why do you even bother doing it? So, yeah, okay. But it would need to happen at closing of the catamount community forest at the same time, because if the boundary line adjustment between the pages and the trust public land is done without it, without the easement, then that triggers the land use change tax at that time. So the easement would need to be done basically immediately before the boundary line adjustment. So it's all tied into one. But we either trust public land, or if the town attorney wants to draft an easement, we can get that done in, you know, the next couple of days for review. And so potentially ready for our next meeting. Just a off the hand comment. It really seems like the current use program should fix this little, but that's an unusual situation. Okay. We tried. Okay. It didn't work. Okay. They got them stiffer as opposed to more lenient. Right, right. And I tried to work with them. Any further questions? Sounds like we have consensus to go forward depending on the recommendation of the conservation commission. And just, you know, Ditto to Steve and Debbie for their donation of that land. That's, that's pretty amazing. Yeah, for sure. Thank you. All right, then we have completed the agenda. Unless I asked for other businesses before, or is there any other business now? I do. I do. Okay. I've got an item. Okay. I didn't write it down, and I couldn't remember it. And it was, or anyway, the, we have personal rules that have been adopted by the slack board, and there's a grievance process that's outlined in those personnel rules. And so we've, I agree with this filed recently. I denied it. That individual wants to appeal out to the slack board. It is not a disciplinary matter. So because we've had once before, actually it was under union contract, but it was a disciplinary matter. And that was rather involved, as you may, some of you may recall. This is not a disciplinary matter. It's a matter of a holiday schedule and pay. And it's, it's a fairly simple issue. So the question is, does the board want to hold this in open session or closed? Because you have, I believe, the option. And the employee has not expressed, did I know of a preference, one way or the other? I should think the employee wanted it to be a closed session. I would think so. Deliberative session and closed session. I think so, but that wasn't communicated to me one way or the other. I, the individual asked whether it was going to be open or closed. So obviously it was on this individual's mind, but I said it was up to the slack board to make that decision. Closed session. Closed is made. I don't have a strong opinion. So I'm going to go with what I think are those who know more about it than I do. And sure, closed. As I understand the way the process of work, you would, both sides would give testimony and the board would then afterwards be tasked with the, coming up with a written decision. And that's not something I can write. Right. We'd have to figure out who's going to write that decision. I don't know. Maybe we could have Eric do it. And then you can have it reviewed by legal counsel, perhaps, as long as I'm not the one writing it and as long as it's consistent with the direction the board wants. And then, you know, that can be part of the deliberative session. Yes. And then when, if the board agrees after it's been written and reviewed, then you just signed the decision and issue it. So it may require a second meeting of us for a deliberative session after the original one, or maybe not. Again, this is not a complex issue. So I think it's going to evolve a lot of time. I think the, given the schedule for the meeting on the 22nd, 19th of this month, I keep reconfusing it with January, but we did have a meeting on the 27th. I think the agenda is light enough that, and this issue is not comfortable enough that we should be able to do this at, as part of the regular meeting, you know, after the, maybe towards the end of the regular meeting, so we don't disrupt the flow of the meeting. And the, the board will also be talking about my evaluation. We'll have a new board in March, so we didn't need to do that. So, and I think as far as the, the, once you've deliberated, and I forget what, I don't know if the personnel policy has a timeline on it, but in any case, it would be good to have a written decision before March 4th or 5th, I guess, when then new board is elected, right? A new board starts, right? So, a closed session, it sounds like what can we do, all right? Anything else under other business? Then we're adjourned.