 session almost immediately but okay so it is 645 I love that hammer I will say Terry I think you didn't use the hammer enough but anyway our first order of business is in the anticipated executive session so the chair would entertain a motion I'll move to find that premature public knowledge regarding a labor relations agreement with employees would clearly place the town at a substantial disadvantage and further move that we under executive session to discuss a labor relations agreement with employees under the provisions of title one sections 313 a1b of the Vermont statutes and invite police chief Patrick Foley police lieutenant Josh Moore and finance HR director Shirley Gidele Lackey and town manager Eric Wells to join is there a second second all those in favor say aye the the eyes have it we are going to be an executive session we are out of executive session I'm gonna ask Eric if you could summarize the topic before us and then there will likely be a motion yep so this evening the select was asked to consider approving an MOU with a police union that would adjust the current union wage scale it's brought to the select board amid of a very challenging time the job market especially for law enforcement personnel the MOUs intended to assist the town and remaining a competitive employer for police personnel in addition the select boards asked to consider amending the police recruitment and retention program these changes would establish stipends of thirty seven hundred dollars in May 2023 and 2024 for current staff and a ten thousand dollar newly hired staff a bonus split or multiple years there's there's two motions suggested with the manager's report to consider so given that the chair would entertain we could do one somebody wants to make both motions at the same time if that is your desire or would entertain the motion we accept Eric Wells proposal do the reading yeah I move to approve and authorize the town manager to sign them MOU with the New England police benefit BNEPBA local 409 I can't pronounce some of these words excuse me move that the town manager be in here here by is authorized to implement the town of Williston Police Department an amended hiring and retention incentive pay plan subject to allowable adequate funding and appropriate appropriation to include without limitation budgetary savings American Rescue Plan Act funds future budget allocations or any combination there of as outlined in the memo dated April 18th 2023 is there a second second all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye those nay the ayes have it motion passes okay minutes chair wouldn't entertain a motion move to approve subject to modification is there a second second so let's page one I have just one one minor correction every gene has the same one but under the under the motion under where it says page one approval of minutes there's an end missing from genius last night I've only been to four meetings and they've got it wrong twice Terry thank you for catching it both times okay page 2 page 3 all those in favor say aye aye I suppose nay the ayes have it minutes are approved next on the agenda public comment is there anybody in the audience who has a wish to speak about any topic actually whatsoever whether it's on the agenda or not one person then I'll ask about zoom so if you can come on up state your name and give us your comment hi everyone my name is Ryan Allen I'm lifelong resident of Williston other than going away for school I was a premature birth one of the ways that it impacted me was I had club feet which for those that don't know it's kind of like if you were had like skiing slow down feet but all your life turns out that having skiing feet for all your life doesn't really promote to walking but I was lucky enough to have a surgery as a toddler and I also had surgeries for my bladder as a result of those surgeries I have to use patheters but it's a foot long goes in my penis second bladder surgery augmented my bladder by using my intestines so I produce mucus in my bladder that I have to irrigate once a week with sodium chloride fluid there's 3000 milliliters in this bad boy I use 500 every week to a thousand and I really can't tell you how much it's improved my life I was so it obviously makes me mad when I hear people talking about like how like abortion rights aren't good or how like it's bad for like trans kids to like be who they are because I was and I still am allowed to be who I am and I want to make sure that all that that it's just not just Ryan Allen that gets to like you know improve my life by using a catheter and getting to choose when I urinate but after the news reports about John Murad coming out I I don't know if other people will have those rights when acting Burlington Police Chief John Murad when it was reported that he harassed a University of Vermont medical surgeon of course the his day through the system is still going but it's not hard to believe that a police officer would use their threat of violence the threat of either a gun or dragging them putting them in cuffs and dragging them down to the jail cell as the report said and it just really makes me worried about my HIPAA rights my like you know I don't go to the doctor and I don't invite John Murad like hey John what do you think about my bladder problems and John Murad has no right in my medical process in my medical talks with my doctors with surgeons with nurses and it's really messed up that you know not only the the person who was in who had been shot their HIPAA rights were at risk but you know without any consequences from Mayor Burlington Mayor Merrill Weinberger I like are any of our HIPAA rights okay in Vermont do we have HIPAA rights right now or can John Murad just go in and harass anyone until he is able to get whatever files he wants or get what's ever whatever he wants if he wants if he doesn't want if he doesn't like abortions is he gonna respect that we just changed our Vermont constitutional overwhelmingly throughout the state to allow everyone to have their own reproductive or have control over their own reproductive systems that's huge but we don't have those rights if we can't say like without that due process we need confidence that the University of Medical University of Vermont's Medical Center is gonna stand up for our HIPAA rights and it terrifies me it really does like like I I work with kids all day and I just want them to have the the best options and like I shouldn't have gone in mine and then screw everyone else I I need your all help to stand up for my rights for the rights of our Williston community for all of our monitors that are protected under HIPAA all the United States humans were protected under HIPAA I need I need you all to use your influence and your power to let the Burlington City Police and the City Council know that it's not okay that John did these things and he needs to face consequences like a leave with no pay and until his court until the Vermont Criminal Justice Council has their ruling and if you the University of Vermont Medical Center can't guarantee our HIPAA rights then why are they operating in Williston we we need to protect our rights or especially if those are vulnerable I obviously have white skin and I was born with a penis and I get a lot of air time and I got a lot of voice time but really I just want to just I just want to know that everyone else is taking care of too thanks thanks everyone thank you thank you Ryan for having the courage to stand up here and speak to us yeah thanks man the town works real hard on you know equal rights for everyone it's part of our you know our town bylaws we're working on it thanks to people like you bringing it you and Crystal Lee McSweeney and other residents of the town thank you thank you as well Mike you're welcome I hope y'all have a good night I'll grab you to anybody else in the room that has a public comment okay is there anybody on zoom no one on zoom Ted okay okay next on the agenda resolution for a retiring employee so we're here this evening to honor Debbie rotor our assistant library director who will be retiring at the week after just over 36 years of service the town of Williston we're just had the pleasure to attend a retirement reception for Debbie late this afternoon it was great to hear stories and see pictures throughout the years of her great work here in the town and connection with a lot of former colleagues and current day colleagues and friends and community members so I have for the board to consider this evening a resolution recognizing and thanking Debbie for her service before you to consider and library director Jane Jane Kerns like to say a few words as well after you consider the resolution did sorry we did just have a celebration and I just wanted to thank Debbie for her outstanding commitment to Dorothy Allie Memorial Library and the town of Williston for the last 36 years her contribution hasn't been just to our library but to libraries around the state at our Vermont Library conference last week she was honored with the birdie award which is given to a librarian who has provided outstanding service in the field of technical services which Debbie has she's led efforts to keep the shared catalog organized and accessible she's developed one of the best audio book collections in the state provided patrons with exemplary customer service and research support cared for our Williston historical print collection with great great care and supported three library directors and mentored many colleagues through the many changes from the original library which was the Williston Historical Society through the additions in 86 and 98 over her 36 years at the library Debbie has demonstrated service and excellence year after year in her work thank you Debbie so just that so that it's a matter of the record that's the electronic record here if I could read the proposed resolution and then ask for a motion resolution of the Williston Select Board whereas the Dorothy Alling Memorial Library on January 5 1987 and served in the position of assistant library director and whereas on April 21 2023 Debbie Rotterer retired from the Dorothy Alling Memorial Library having served the community of Williston for over 36 years and whereas Debbie Rotterer throughout her career exemplified the mission of Dorothy Alling Memorial Library to provide services and resources which support lifelong learning to the community and whereas the dedication of Debbie Rotterer to serve the community and to the field of technical services cannot be understated and whereas Debbie Rotterer has served as a mentor to her colleagues at Dorothy Alling Memorial Library and to librarians across the state of Vermont sharing her experience knowledge and wisdom now therefore be it resolved the Williston Select Board hereby thanks Debbie Rotterer for her 36 years of dedicated service to the community and the people of Williston as a member of the Dorothy Alling Memorial Library and wish her the very best in her retirement that is the proposed resolution is their emotion I moved to adopt the resolution recognizing the service of Debbie Rotterer is presented and Debbie you cannot be replaced is there a second second all those in favor say aye aye I'll suppose nay the ayes have it and actually we've given if we give another round of applause I just like to say that it's been my privilege to serve the town all these years and thank all the library staff that worked with as well as the town staff for all their support and help it's been great thank you thank you so much so we have two select board members who are participating virtually so we're not going to be able to have a signed fully signed resolution tonight but our town manager is really good and I bet you can get it we'll make it thank you thank you next on the agenda public hearing I have to read unfortunately I have to read most of this so but we're here for a public hearing on sewer allocation ordinance amendment the notice of public hearing states as follows pursuant to 24 vsa chapter 59 section 4 of the town of Willis and sewer allocation ordinance will listen select board is considering the adoption of amendments to the sewer allocation ordinance referred to as attachment a an existing ordinance pertaining to the allocation of public sewerage upon adoption this attachment will designate the portion of the uncommitted reserve capacity that will be available for use during the next fiscal year which starts July 1 2023 the public hearing on this matter is scheduled for Tuesday April 18 2023 is 715 in the Beckett McGuire meeting room the town of Williston town hall a remote participation option is available attachment a may become effective 60 days after will may become effective 60 days after the public hearing by vote of the select board notice is hereby given that any ordinance or attachment there to adopted by the town of Williston may be disapproved by a vote of a majority of the qualified voters at an annual or special meeting as provided by 24 vsa section 1973 copies of the entire text of proposed attachment are available for review at the town web page with that the public hearing is now convened by my untrained eye there is no one here to participate in the room but if we could have a very brief presentation from Matt about that we haven't dealt with this repeatedly but if you can give us a brief presentation and then we'll see if anybody has any questions or if anybody hops on zoom sure thank you attachment a to the sewer allocation ordinance is an amendment to the ordinance that is taken up by the select board annually to establish the amount of uncommitted sewer capacity that will be made available to new users i.e. new development or additional capacity use in existing development during the upcoming fiscal year in this case FY 24 starting on July 1 it's essentially the sewer budget for the town so the town owns capacity at the Essex Junction plant along with the city of Essex Junction and the town of Essex the town owns that capacity in for FY 2024 in the amount of one million one hundred thousand gallons per day of total capacity of that one million one hundred gallons per day we're using currently a little over six hundred and seventy six thousand gallons per day and so that's the rolling five-year average amount that has flown through the meter essentially where the sewerage crosses the border into the Essex Junction plants that's the total amount that we know the town is using in addition the town has sold approximately thirty eight thousand gallons per day capacity to users who have not yet done their development that will use that capacity so in other words we we don't we count that as used and we don't count it when we think about what's remaining available to the town to allocate by recommendation of our engineering consultants we also maintain a seven percent reserve so we always look at how much capacity is available to the town and set aside seven percent not to be sold to anyone but to be kept to handle any fluctuations in usage that come about in the future so seven percent of one million one hundred thousand gallons per day is seventy seven thousand gallons per day so what we're doing is we're taking the one million one hundred gallons per day and we're subtracting those other numbers I mentioned to determine how much capacity the select board has left to allocate to new users this year and in future years that number for this year is a just a little over three hundred and eight thousand gallons per day Williston's comprehensive plan and select board policy has been to consider that remaining capacity over a long term twenty years in this case so we go through the exercise of taking our just over three hundred thousand gallons per day dividing it by twenty arriving at a little over fifteen thousand gallons per day meaning the town of Williston could sell fifteen thousand gallons per day capacity every single year for the next twenty years at which point there would theoretically be no more capacity left to sell and so that's a number to think about when the select board adopts its attachment a every year where it thinks about how much capacity might it make available for sale in the upcoming year and think a little bit about what kind of development is likely to come online in the upcoming fiscal year what's been permitted through the town's land use system and what are typical purchase patterns that have occurred over past years so a very very briefly the town typically makes quite a lot more capacity available every year than is actually sold and I'll go over those numbers real quick in a second so you typically make quite a lot more than the fifteen thousand gallons per day that you could sell every single year for the next twenty years available and over the last ten years the average amount of capacity that's been sold per year is a little under ten thousand gallons per day we might make thirty forty or fifty thousand gallons per day available across various use categories but typically somewhere between twenty five hundred and seventeen thousand gallons per day are sold in any particular year again breaking out to an average of about ten thousand sewer capacity is probably the most limited infrastructure piece of infrastructure that the town has in terms of thinking about how it supports new development it's a finite resource right now capacity might be able to be expanded in the future but it would require a significant funding and technological advances and the achievement of state and federal permits whose issuance is not guaranteed so it makes a lot of sense for the town to think carefully about how it spends its capacity and as that capacity is sold to users and the supply going forward dwindles I've identified on page five of the attachment a memo a few strategies the town might want to think about in the long term thinking about what are the buildout scenarios for Williston that can be supported by the capacity it has thinking about taking any opportunities to purchase new capacity as they come up we're currently in a cycle of purchasing some additional capacity prioritizing the available availability of capacity you know there's a sort of a balancing of meeting the goals of the town plan including things like housing jobs creation supporting existing industry flexibility for existing users etc and as the town thinks about what its goals are in its comprehensive plan it can continue via this process or other amendments to the sewer allocation ordinance making sure that what it does with its sewer capacity reflects what its goals and how those goals are prioritized in the comprehensive plan so I'll go into the numbers again really briefly we have two full page tables tables two and three in the memo table two is about how much capacity the select board has typically made available for purchase a mean of around 35,000 gallons per day capacity made available for purchase over the last 10 years fluctuating from a low of about 29,000 gallons per day to a high of close to 43,000 gallons per day and then table three looks very similar in its structure but the numbers are quite a lot smaller these are the gallons per day capacity that have been sold out of the sewer allocation ordinance each year for the last 10 years and you see there that on average a little under 5000 gallons per day is sold to new commercial users and on average a little over 5000 gallons per day is sold to new residential users and there's a few other categories there residential additions for example when somebody adds a bedroom to an existing home we do have an affordable housing category that occasionally there's a project that's able to take advantage of that we have an encouraging specific development category sales in this category have been used to support expansion at Kerry Green Mountain have been used to support the relocation of a primary care physician into an adaptive reuse of an existing industrial building evergreen family health at the White Caps building last year so those are those numbers and again outside of that there's there's a reserve capacity we don't sell that to anybody so it sits at zero and again the mean sold over those last 10 years actually I misspoke before it's 11,770 gallons per day so again less than the 15 that's typically that 15 that would be available over the next 20 years so the remainder of attachment a really goes into the staff and planning commission's recommendations of how much capacity would be made available to new users in the various categories that the ordinance sets up residential affordable housing new commercial or industrial reserve pollution abatement etc and really all of the difference year to year is in the new commercial or new residential categories as I as I discussed at our preliminary meeting on this matter the biggest change being recommended this year is to make about 30,200 gallons per day available in the new residential category the reasons for that are that we have a couple of relatively large projects in the permitting pipeline that have received approvals that have received allocation through the town's growth management system but that have not yet purchased any capacity to support their eventual permitting and development so this is reflective a little bit of lag in construction that started with COVID and continued through the increase of interest rates and labor shortages and things like that but it's development that the town has planned for that the town has permitted and that will eventually start to come online once that capacity is sold to that user they do pay the town to hold on to it until they begin to put it to use at which point they pay you know their sewer bill so it makes sense and it made sense in the estimation of the planning commission to take a guess as to how much of that development in the pipeline might be ready to purchase capacity in the upcoming fiscal year and support that with some additional capacity being made available in that new residential category there's also a slight bump up in what's recommended for new commercial and industrial going from making 10,000 gallons per day available to 15 that's not necessarily based on any inside knowledge we have of new commercial that is going to use a lot of sewer capacity coming online but more so that that category tends to have more volatile demand we were sort of in a position last year of needing to open up that encouraged specific development category for evergreen health because there wasn't quite enough capacity in the new commercial category to support their purchase that meant they needed to come back have a meeting with the select board and have that request approved under some criteria as opposed to just going upstairs to the public works office above my office and purchasing that capacity makes sense to support the new commercial that's coming with making a little bit more available just just for the efficiency of that because what happens to those new commercial users is when they go to begin their state permitting process and get their state wastewater permit the first thing they have to do is show that they've been able to purchase their capacity from the town so when I talked to evergreen health last year and said well you know it's going to take us a while to work through this but I'm sure that's fine you've got this big long-state permitting process in front of you they said we're not even allowed to start that until we get squared up with the town on buying capacity and I said well wow that's a that's a much bigger burden on on making that use happen than I thought there was so that's the reasoning for that in summary the final table in your memo table 6 talks about historic approved allocations over the last five years and ends in the right hand column with a recommended slate of allocation for fiscal year 2024 the two I talked about 15,000 gallons per day in new commercial industrial 30,200 in new residential a little bit more in affordable housing same amount for residential additions same amount for pollution abatement and encouraging specific development a total new allocation of 65,450 gallons per day to be made available a 77,000 gallon per day reserve and that's the recommendation I'm happy to answer questions I didn't talk about my nice colorful charts this time happy to do whatever of that the board would like thank you any questions actually is there any questions from anybody attending the hearing or comments Eric is there anybody remote nothing on zoom okay any questions from the board I believe we should be conservative on you know our residential sewage allocation the state is relaxing the rules on additions and minor subdivisions we see that coming to the town where any home that's on town water sewer allotment is able to more easily going to you know from a one unit to a four unit so what you're what you're referring to is the bill called s100 the housing bill that's working its way through the legislature right now Mike and one of the elements of that bill is a preemption of local zoning that would require municipalities within the next year to adopt bylaws that allow a minimum of five or depending on the amendment maybe only four dwelling units per acre density in areas that are served by water and sewer so I've been tracking this bill really carefully and always with an eye towards what's it going to mean for Williston the good news is that density preemption doesn't do a whole lot to the majority of Williston's lands that are served by water and sewer we currently allow between three and five dwelling unit equivalents per acre in the residential zoning district three for a conventional project five for one that's at least 30% affordable housing and because we use that dwelling unit equivalent metric where a one bedroom or studio is one half of a dwelling unit what statute requires is either four or five dwellings per acre which we already allow some of them just need to be one bedrooms so my read of where that bill is right now is the density preemption is a non event for Williston's residential zoning district we already allow quite a lot more density in the taft corners area where we also provide water and sewer in the village we do currently have a lower allowed density but we've been working for a year on a bylaw that would go to a more form-based metric and then that again the density preemption would not have any effect on it and municipalities will get a year to update their bylaws to respond to that should that pass so there are there are some things about density there are some things about allowing either duplexes or or fourplexes wherever a single family home is allowed again we we don't regulate dwelling unit type to prohibit any of those housing types in the zoning districts that would be affected again those covered by water and sewer so probably what is happening at the state in regards to those zoning preemptions won't change very much about what kind of development is proposed and approved in Williston if at all so I don't I don't think we're going to have a flood of higher density projects and keep in mind that those preemptions are on density metrics we still get to have number of units on a shared drive way setbacks wetlands and stream protections open space requirements design standards lot coverage whatever other tools we use and the read by most of those who are looking at this bill is that it's your it's your base density rule that gets preempted but not the effect of your total zoning bylaw so if you say well yeah you say you can have four units per acre but you've got a really constrained lot and our rules push back on that and you just can't fit for there those other design standards would prevail over the density preemptions of s100 thank you I still I still like the idea of you know mixed mixed use areas with commercial buildings and those and expansions like you know to see that where we you know we have increased our tax base in the town without you know affecting your school that 15,000 gallons per day do you believe that is enough with what might be coming down the pipeline over the next couple of years sure well it would be just for the next fiscal year we don't have any new commercial proposed or partway approved right now in Williston that would be a really big consumer of wastewater so when I look at what's been through the DRB or going through the DRB recently have another large storage facility for U-Haul we have a couple of 18 to 20,000 square foot flex industrial buildings you could have a heavy wastewater user go into one but there's no indication that that's necessarily going to happen so there's there's industry that creates lots of jobs that doesn't generate a lot of wastewater the industries we have that create jobs that do generate lots of wastewater primarily our breweries and Curry Green Mountain and that's that's why that encouraged specific development decision was made almost 10 years ago to sell them that additional 10,000 gallons the other big user mic on the commercial side would be a new hotel a single new hotel of around a hundred rooms is about 10,000 gallons per day give or take there could be another hotel coming at some point Williston is seen by a lot in the development community as a pretty desirable place to develop new hotels especially as some of the older ones in town begin to age out of being able to continue their franchise which is something we're sort of aware of happening in the background hotel owners have to put so much money into the hotel every so many years in order to keep what they call their flag their brand and that's why you see I stayed once across from a place that had been a Ramada and they lost their flag and they moved the R over and it became the Armada and so you know we have some hotels that are getting on in years they're 30 35 years old now and we have seen casual conversations with folks are interested you know what about another hotel in Williston what about a hotel for travel services next to that brand new park and ride which is a zoning district we have that allows it since I don't know that about any of those that are in the pipeline right now we might not need to sell any capacity to a new hotel in the next fiscal year it might be something that comes up right near the end of the fiscal year but those are the those are the big ones and with breweries and people like carried green mount we have a separate issue related to requiring pretreatment of high strength waste and some of the other permit limits the town faces at the plant so in short I think 15 is enough the kind of mixed use buildings we get where you've got you know some businesses on the ground floor and apartments up the biggest users of water and wastewater and those are going to be if you have a restaurant of some kind or you know bakery coffee shop and even there it's a very very different scale from a whole new hotel or a whole new big industrial user so I think generally supportable with that allocation are you here speaking kind of specifically for the glacier project and trying to get sewer allocation for the site specific plan outside the growth management in the 30,000 GPD proposed to be made available for a new residential I have in mind the Snyder annex project in the taft corners district the cat amount golf slash Summerfield project on Mountain View Road and probably some initial phase at least of the Glaser project whether that project achieves enough of an approval to be in a place to buy sewer allocation during FY 24 I'm not sure it needs to go through the specific plan process which means it needs to be approved by the Planning Commission and ultimately the select board and then it needs to go to the DRB so there's there's a bit of process in front of that project not to mention Act 250 so timing wise whether that specific ones in a position to buy capacity during FY 24 I'm not sure but in a general sense the idea would be all of those major projects would be able to start buying some of the capacity they need to get started Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Then I think we need a motion to close the hearing. I'll move to close the public hearing and the proposed sewer allocation ordinance amendment to attachment A. Is there a second? All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? No. The meeting the public hearing is adjourned. The next on the agenda is whether or not we wish to adopt the attachment A and if that is the wish there is a proposed motion. Actually should we, I'm sorry, did people want to, I guess I jumped the gun a little bit, should people, did people want to have more, are there any questions or comments or conversation the board wishes to have before discussing the amendment? So I'd move to adopt the amendments to the sewer allocation ordinance attachment A as presented. Is there a second? I'll second. Okay. Is there a discussion on the motion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed and aye. Thank you, Matt, for putting together all these tables and drafts and appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Keeps me up at night. You're going to, I'm glad I'm not the only one. You're going to be taking a little break. We have the library thing to go through. Come back. Be back to you. So then next on our agenda is our continuing peace treaty with the library. Jane, did you want to? Yeah, I can lead on. So the board recall three years ago, a town entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Dorothy Allen Memorial Library. And I always look at the date here, March 16th, 2020. And what was going on right after that? So we were able to, both boards are able to get this done and signed. And now it's three years later. It was a three year term, this MOU, this MOU reflects a relationship between both governance entities here in town. The library trustees reviewed this back at their March meeting that I attended. There was no, no concerns raised with the trustees with it. They passed a motion to renew it with no changes. Town staff review of this, it's, it's working well. I reviewed it. I spoke with Jane about it as well. There's no suggested amendments at this time from staff. Certainly open to the board's feedback. If there's anything you would like us to explore further. Should the board wish to continue this MOU? Motion would be in order for a number three year term and we'd prepare the document for signature at our future meeting. Thanks. Jane, anything to add? No, well, I can say that it's working very well. For the library, it's nice to have it defined and clear on who's responsible for what. So it has worked well. Any questions from the board? Thank you for the bookmobile. It's always well attended at the farmer's market on Tuesdays. We'll be there. Love to see the kids all run to the bookmobile. It's great. Thank you very much for doing that. I have a question, Ted. Sure. I mean, maybe it's just a question for Eric, but I was just looking for some clarity on why there's an MOU for a department of the town? I mean, is it because they have their own board? I'm just wondering why MOU? That's exactly right, Jean. You know, the libraries have the trustees that govern the library and the library staff being town employees. This kind of defines the different relationships between governance of the library, oversight of staff, from spending, manager and library directors role. There was a discussion when this was put in place about when a new director was hired, what that process would look like to codify it as well. So those elements with those two different governance bodies that define it within an MOU. It was very well written and I, if it was the first draft and you went three years without stumbling over something that needed to be edited, clearly people did their job to look at it. I think it's an interesting document. But I also think it makes a lot of sense. I think libraries are so important and they're so unique that having professionals run them, the things that are outlined that's in their scope makes a lot of sense to me. Any other questions or comments? If not, an order, a motion would be in order. I moved to renew a memorandum of understanding with a Dorothy Allen Memorial Library Board of Trustees for a three-year term. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. Thanks, Jane. Thank you. Next on the agenda, local emergency operations plan. Eric, did you want to discuss? This is a document the board sees every year. It's required to be updated by the end of April. This feeds a countywide emergency operations plan. I shared it with the board for your review. the fire department's under chief Colette as our emergency operations coordinator. We're through this document each year. Thanks to Jean it got a couple things with on the school side. Appreciate that Jean. I distributed that to the board today. I'll make sure we have all though all our items accurate. The board is requested to approve a motion for this. Should there be any questions I can reach Lieutenant Proudy at the fire station if I'm not on a call right now. Okay, are there any questions for Eric? Okay, me again. It's not about CV this time. No, this is just a little bit of a side, but is there, can you give me a couple of sentences on what other processes besides making a document? I mean do we, do we have practices? Do we have meetings with the other, with some of those folks? Anything beyond just putting a document together with phone numbers? Yeah, that's something we've been looking to formalize a bit more. I've checked with the chief about it the last couple of years. I think it would do us well to have at least a start with a tabletop drill if we were to have a emergency situation in town to have these stakeholders at the table to run through scenarios. So yeah, it's been it's been on my mind to build from we have the plan that we need to practice and execute the plan as an ongoing endeavor throughout the year. Right, I know I can I can speak that the within the school we were very well practiced and well very well organized for an emergency in the school. If it was an emergency outside the school that needed school facilities I don't know that I think would be a lot of bobbling to to get it wouldn't be as smooth as it should be so I think that the school with district would look favorably on them being in part of that as well. I did have one other question and this is not a got you I meant to send it to you so you make sure you knew the answer. The list of facilities in here I didn't know what a tier two facility was it seemed like kind of a random list of businesses. I don't know the answer out the top my head my thought is at some degree of risk assessment I can get that answer from the from the chief and follow up if the board would like. Yeah I'm yeah I didn't I'm sorry I didn't like I said I usually like to give staff a heads up if I have a question but it just seemed like an odd assortment of of businesses and it's not all the businesses but they don't seem that special some of them either so that I would appreciate it if you got a chance. Any other questions or comments. I had just a comment it's doesn't out of curiosity I looked up today what happens if the select board if something happens to a town select board in the in the state of Vermont and the answer is that if they if the majority of the select board is no longer able to function I assume meaning they're no longer around that the minority can convene a special town meeting if a if the entire select board is no longer available I'll say then the secretary state can convene a special town meeting it goes back to the Cold War and I think the legislature must have said you know what if what about the Russians so anyway I thought I thought people would be really really really fascinated by that so I thought I'd share it with you the town will continue okay so that there is a proposed motion move to approve the 2023 local emergency operations plan is there a second second any further discussion all those in favor say aye aye well as opposed nay housing needs assessment overview ready to go go ahead so I'm I'm here just to give a really brief introduction and then Melinda's going to take us through a presentation but as I think evidenced by some of the materials we gave the board to review namely 300 pages of media articles that we harvested over the last year housing and the need for affordable and abundant housing in Vermont is certainly having a moment it's been having a moment in Williston for as long as I've been here and and sometime before Williston has addressed need for housing in many of its recent comprehensive plans over the last 20 years it has convened special ad hoc committees or working groups around the housing issue several times and it has adjusted its comprehensive planning its zoning by-law and yes even its attachment a to the sewer allocation ordinance over the years to attempt to further the goals of including affordable housing or making affordable housing a reality in town and starting about two two and a half years ago when our office began its work on the taff corners project and the taff corners form-based code which allows quite a bit more residential density in that part of town in exchange for quite a lot of design standards that are relatively challenging to achieve as part of that process we did a pretty big wide-open public input session several of them in fact including a week-long workshop and we heard a lot from folks about affordability and about you know are you are you going to make sure that affordable homes are included in all this new development that might be permitted under this development standard and because affordable housing and some of the policy solutions to it are such a sort of a big deal unto themselves our response at the time until a year ago was we're really trying to set the stage with the right kind of land use controls here and the right kind of density that can be supportive of the creation of housing in Williston through this land use exercise and we are going to be immediately upon conclusion of that project going after specifically the housing issue and in fact that's what we did last year we asked the select board to support a unified planning work program item with the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission to assist us in the preparation of a housing needs assessment housing needs assessment is a document that is required under state law for a municipality to have performed prior to adopting any zoning bylaw changes that require the inclusion of affordable homes in residential projects a tactic known as inclusionary zoning so the answer coming out of Taft Corners was we're not doing inclusionary zoning as part of the Taft Corners project number one because the Taft Corners project is quite large enough all by itself without adding in this this housing provision number two because state law requires us to do this needs assessment before we can talk policy in this way number three yes we are committed and we're going to do it so the select board approved that work program request it was funded through the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission and toward the end of 2022 in partnership with the Regional Planning Commission and VHFA VHFA prepared in concert with Melinda myself and other staff a housing needs assessment for Williston we took a couple drafts of that document through review and discussion with the Planning Commission and we're ready now to present that needs assessment to the select board tonight in the background of our presenting this to all of you tonight we are of course talking about well what can Williston do about the need that's revealed by this study and there are zoning policy things that Williston can do there are budgetary things Williston can do there are programmatic things Williston can do and there are many things Williston is already doing that are quite positive in this regard but there is more and we expect tonight to be mostly about talking about the needs assessment itself with a very brief concluding remark at the end about what some of those policy strategies might be we expect to return to talk with the select board much more specifically about very near future in the background we've got the Planning Commission debating those things and thinking about them and thinking about how they might work within the rest of Williston's zoning bylaw but we know that ultimately any changes we make will go through the Planning Commission and come back here to the select board and we want to work in concert with both bodies to make sure that what is ultimately you know shows up as a public hearing item before this board is really contains no surprises and is something that's got some pretty broad support before we go to a hearing so we're going to talk about me tonight we're going to sort of take a take a glance at policy and programmatic changes we're going to come back to that and we're going to hope that we're working all in concert together over the next several months to set a direction for the town that folks feel is supportable around this issue so Melinda when you're ready we can we can start and I'll stay up here to answer questions Melinda be here to answer questions we've obviously also brought the Planning Commission over for a joint meeting here so that they can hear this presentation which they've already seen a version of they can hear some feedback from you and some questions you might have about the assessment that will really be helpful for them as they continue to work on some of the nuts and bolts and we come back together again in a couple of weeks great just to highlight this is this is the first of a number of meetings that is going to have this as an agenda item so I don't say that to stifle anybody's questions or just to give everybody a heads up that this is not the only bite the apple tonight but again I certainly let's have a free flowing discussion great so first of all let me just say that we're going to be talking about some different metrics in trying to develop an understanding of the housing situation of Williston and we're going to be mentioning some numbers and those numbers are not precise even though they look precise so just keep that in mind they're just metrics to try to understand the scope of the problem so the first one that I will talk about is what's called the jobs to homes index one of our key finding one of the key findings of the housing needs assessment is that Williston lacks enough homes to support its workforce so the jobs to homes index is the ratio of jobs to homes and it's one measure of the supply of workforce housing available in an area the ideal jobs to homes index would be one point five that is one and a half jobs to every home Williston had a jobs to homes index of two point seven in twenty twenty which is considerably higher than other towns in shittin and county so to reach a healthy balance of jobs to homes Williston would need to add three thousand four hundred forty nine homes that's without adding more jobs so we can look at how it is we got here so between so you can see that in the from nineteen sixty eighty the jobs to homes index in Williston was actually below one and one point five between nineteen eighty and two thousand Williston gained eight thousand six hundred jobs which was a seven hundred sixty five percent increase without a corresponding increase in homes this is resulted in the skewed jobs to homes ratio that exists today although it has improved a little bit you can see the yellow line there is the the jobs to homes index and it's gone down a little bit since two thousand so this is you can call this a spatial mismatch in other words a mismatch between where jobs are located and where job seekers live so if you have not enough homes where a lot of jobs are then employers will obviously have a hard time filling open positions and this this is a screenshot of a report from two thousand which talked about the spatial miss mismatch in Williston and in other suburbs in shittin and county so so this issue this problem of spatial mismatch has really existed since the nineteen nineties and it it has taken a long it's been here for a long time and it's going to take a long time to correct so consider the sort of regaining a healthy jobs to homes balance as being a long-term goal another metric that we can look at is the targets established through the building homes together campaign so this was a campaign that was initiated in 2016 by the Champlain Housing Trust ever north and the Chittin and County Regional Planning Commission this campaign the intent was to address the reason the region's severe housing shortage and it set a target of creating three thousand five hundred new homes in Chittin and County by the end of 2020 with twenty percent of them or seven hundred being permanently affordable so during that period from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty three thousand six hundred and fifty-nine homes were built exceeding the overall target for production of homes however unfortunately the county fell short of the second goal of the campaign to build seven hundred affordable homes a total of five hundred and thirty six permanently affordable homes were built achieving seventy seven percent of the goal for affordable housing a second five-year campaign building homes together two dot zero was launched in twenty twenty one it's a campaign to build five thousand homes by twenty twenty five for people of all incomes including at least twelve hundred fifty affordable homes so given Williston share of the jobs in Chittin and Chittin and County a Williston share of the county target would equal five hundred and ninety four homes only four hundred and sixty three homes are projected to be constructed in Williston between the period and during the period of twenty twenty to twenty twenty five so so when we try to get a handle on how much housing is needed in Williston to meet these targets there's the long-term target of three thousand forty four hundred and forty nine homes to reach a healthy homes to jobs balance which might be achieved in twenty thirty years and then the shorter term target of five hundred and ninety four homes needed by twenty twenty five to meet Williston share of building homes together so this would require a hundred and seventy two dwellings to be built per year for the next two years for the next two years to meet the building homes together target and if that pace was continued every year until twenty forty three we would close the homes to jobs ratio assuming that no new jobs are created the current ten-year average of home construction in Williston is ninety four homes per year okay so let's see so the second key finding is that housing Williston is becoming less affordable and this is to some degree driven by the key finding number one of having a shortage of housing leads to in affordability so during the period between ten twenty twelve to twenty twenty two home prices increased at an average annual rate of five percent and reds exhibited a similar pattern median household income an average wage increased at a rate of two and three percent annually not keeping up with housing costs and over the last five years this it prices have increased at an even faster rate of forty eight percent from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty two so when we talk about housing affordability it's really based on the relationship between someone's income and their housing costs so housing is considered to be affordable if the monthly cost of the housing including utilities insurance taxes and homeowners association fees doesn't exceed 30 percent of the household's monthly income when a household spends more than this they are considered to be housing cost burdened so the graph that you see there is showing cost burden for both for all households which is the bar on the left for renters the bar in the middle and for owners which is the bar on the right side the blue indicates households that are not cost burdened the orange households that are moderately cost burdened and the red households that are severely cost burdened so in Williston about 70 percent of the nine hundred and fourteen renter households are cost burdened twenty one percent of the three thousand one hundred and twenty nine homeowner households are cost burdened so an estimated seven hundred and fifty to two thousand fifty Williston households live in housing that is not likely to be sustainable for them in the long run because it costs more than 30 percent of their income so the third key finding is that most people who work in Williston can't afford to live in Williston in twenty twenty one there were eleven thousand six hundred and fifty two jobs in Williston the average wage of jobs in Williston is sixty thousand four four hundred the largest portion of jobs are in the category classified as service producing which includes things like retail food services hospitality professional services and health care the average annual wage of service producing jobs is fifty six thousand three hundred sixty seven within that share the largest subcategories retail with eighteen hundred sixty six jobs and an average annual wage of around 38 thousand housing is considered affordable if again if a household spends no more than 30 percent of their their income towards housing costs an affordable at average wage assumes the householder works a 40 hour work week so in this graph on the the upper graph shows median median gross rent is the blue line that you see and the the orange bars indicate rents that would be affordable to workers working certain jobs in Williston the graph below that shows the median home sale price and median home sale price and home sale prices that would be affordable to workers working certain jobs in Williston so a one-earner household earning average wages in Williston can't afford median rent a two-earner household can't afford to buy a home at or above the median home price so one way of trying to bridge this gap is to provide subsidized affordable rental homes in Williston there are 206 publicly subsidized affordable rental homes 92 of these are restricted to residents who are age 55 and older or who have disabilities which means that only 114 subsidized affordable homes are available to working college working age non-disabled renters in town and as as of the end of last year there were no zero there were zero vacancies reported among these apartments as the largest employment base in Chittenden County Williston jobs outnumber its subsidized housing stock by 56 to 1 a ratio that's the highest of the county's larger towns looking at apartments with no age or disability restrictions Williston's ratio is even higher 102 to 1 so that's subsidized affordable rental homes two jobs so keen the key finding number four is that there's a mismatch between the distribution of household sizes and the configuration of available homes in Williston so Williston has has many more three to four bedroom homes where the greatest need is for smaller dwellings based on average household size nearly 61% of Williston households have only one or two people 66% of Williston homes have three or more bedrooms only 34% of Williston homes or 1 to 2 bedrooms so the combination of a surplus of larger houses and an abundance of smaller households represents a mismatch between supply and demand that exacerbates housing unaffordability and why is this because household sizes have been shrinking over time reflecting an aging population as well as people having fewer children or having children later in life from 1970 to 2010 Williston average household size decreased from 3.8 to 2.45 and is expected to decrease from 2.45 in 2020 to 2.12 in 2050 so to address the mismatch between household size and types of housing Williston needs to increase the supply of one and two bedroom units the town has been making progress on this before 1990 only 17% of homes built were multifamily during the 1990s and early 2000s this proportion gradually the proportion of multifamily dwellings gradually increased and after 2010 multifamily dwellings are making up about 75% of all dwellings built so increasing the proportion of smaller dwelling units will not only better meet the needs of smaller households but it will also help to increase affordability key finding five proportionally fewer African American households own their homes than white households in Chittenden County 65% of white households own their homes will fit 35% rent in contrast 17% of black African American households own their homes while 83% rent their homes note that the figures for Williston are not reliable due to a high margin of error so figures for Chittenden County are shown wealth creation in the United States is largely driven by home ownership and black Americans have historically been denied access to housing through red lining urban renewal and race-based housing covenants therefore black Americans have lacked the opportunities that white Americans have had to build wealth and financial equity through these means key finding number six significant needs exist for supportive housing there's a continued demand for service and rich housing the number of households requiring supportive services far outnumber the services available there's a desire for service supportive housing for adults with developmental disabilities that is sustainable and stable provides a sense of belonging and offers opportunities to socialize and participate in the community in a productive meaningful way the town should work with partners such as the the DD hi coalition housing developers nonprofits and service agencies to support the key finding seven availability is a challenge for housing in Welliston the number of Chittenden County households experiencing homelessness is a direct indication of a gap in the housing supply in 2022 the annual point in time count recorded 668 individuals experiencing homelessness in Chittenden County this number is likely an undercount across Chittenden County as a whole the rental vacancy rate is at a 12 year low of 0.4 percent in comparison a 5% vacancy rate is generally accepted to yield a healthy rent rental market for both renters and property owners and finding number eight of course where new housing is is built matters building more homes shouldn't be done without considering location Chittenden County has a new regional goal to ensure 90% of new development occurs and plan growth areas in Williston this doesn't this includes the taff corners zoning district Williston established a designated growth center in 20s 2007 since then a steadily increasing number of dwellings have been built there from 2017 to 2022 76% of all dwelling units were built in the growth center the recent adoption of taff bit corners for base code district allows for building forms that require more efficient use of land and will provide more opportunities for the creation of affordable housing in Williston's growth center we believe that most if not all the need for additional housing can be met in the growth center although through new development on vacant or underutilized lots or through redevelopment of existing commercial lots the current bylaws and for base code can be enhanced by additional work on the programmatic side by investing in infrastructure streets stormwater public parks and green spaces bike and pedestrian facilities by building better partnerships and developing the town's affordable housing trust fund and on the policy side by considering whether the town should move beyond incentives and outright require some portion of new dwellings to be affordable so I think I will stop there and so Melinda presented some highlights from a fairly lengthy report that was also distributed to the board and she started the introduction by saying you know there are these numbers like 3449 obviously that's a very precise number but it should be thought of as a metric and a description of one of the relationships that describes the housing challenge in Williston similar to any of the others there that that said it's a significant number the building homes together goal is a significant number the mismatch on household sizes or the percentage of especially cost burdened rental households and we'll listen those are all pretty large numbers and I think each of them provides a jumping off point for the select board or if you have questions about other ways we might think about housing need in town I think we'd be happy to happy to answer those how does this all relate to the town's overall planning any number of places we could sort of go from here talking about the need side of this before we have any conversations about policy I believe that Williston has a really unique challenge based upon you know the jobs and the homes and you answered you know the rental vacancy rate you and answered a lot of questions I you know I thought of and one thing I missed was the housing you know the old homes versus rental you know the you know the ratio compared to local other local areas I think Williston has a very low you know rental of availability correct compared to you know South Burlington or Essex Junction versus a home ownership do you have the number did we have the number of there's 914 rental homes and 3129 homeowner households versus 914 rental households almost almost one three-year ratio I would say Mike in general you know Burlington Winooski probably South Burlington have larger or are about to have larger proportions of rental homes than Williston does you know the the county sort of that proportion tracks with kind of the development pattern in the various towns of the county the city of Essex Junction probably has a very high proportion of rental homes now now that it's its own city encapsulating some of the new development there and if we were to go back there was the the graphs with the orange bars that either crossed or did not cross the blue line showing affordability and you know one of the realities in comparing what sort of home a typical working household that's working in Williston can afford is that that households more likely to be able to afford a rental home right now than an ownership home and you know I like many people in this room probably started out in a place in my life and career where I could not afford to own a home but I could afford to rent a home and it's often part of somebody's progression through life and where where rental is affordable it can help somebody get ready to take that next step if ownership is sort of the stated goal so a lot of good ways at looking at that and certainly when we're seeing that pattern of greater numbers of multifamily residential being created we do see both ownership and rental in the multifamily world you know we see things like a Finney crossing row home or a flat in one of the nine plex buildings and we also see rental being created in a you know a three or four story apartment building so there's a there's a balance that gets created in multifamily I don't think we've ever I won't say ever I think we have very rarely seen somebody build a single family home for the purpose of rental here it happens at the lows of the economy when when somebody builds one and they can't sell it there were some single family homes in the Hamlet that were were rental homes for quite some time after 2008 I love the town growth center special designation designation at cap corners I think the form-based code I think it's all great stuff that you're doing what there was one ADU what does ADU represent ADU means accessory dwelling unit often referred to as an in-law apartment or a granny flat it's it's a unit that a homeowner builds that is part of their property or even sometimes part of the building they live in and the homeowner continues to live on the property while renting that accessory unit out to someone else so the really important distinction in Williston is when somebody wants to create an ADU they get a permit that I can just sort of sign in the office as long as they meet the standards they they are not doing a subdivision they are not subject to the town's growth management system but they cannot sell that unit off separately from the primary unit they have to stay together and under under current rules at least until recently well under under rules until recently they had to stay living in the primary unit and under current rules they still have to stay living on the property in other words you can't create an ADU and then move away and rent both units out and so it's less flexible than creating another ownership unit would be you see an increase in those ADUs I couldn't quote the numbers at you I think we do about a half dozen a year and I think it's been pretty consistent it really provides a great option to lots of homeowners both to bring an income to build something new to live in and the kids move back home into the larger unit that's been done in Williston or to bring an aging parent home and have them live in a place that's close by where where you can take care of them we see all of those are or to house a child who's come back from school wants to live in Williston but can't afford to otherwise but it's a big undertaking to create one it's it's at minimum a pretty major remodel to a home if it's at a home in rural Williston it requires often upgrading wastewater permit permit for the septic system and and if it really requires changing the septic system most people at that point choose not to do it because the way the wastewater rules work and so you know we see about a half dozen a year I think they're I think accessory dwelling units are great but a lot of homeowners just aren't ready to take on the project or to become a landlord it's it's great for those who can access it but it would be hard to create you know tens let alone hundreds of units in Williston through ADUs other questions thank you yes yeah so I have a lot of them but I know we have plenty of meetings to kind of address some of them and definitely we'll have to take some time to gather my thoughts but looking at finding number one in particular and how drastically disproportionate our Williston is compared to other towns with similar retail and kind of commercial development where do you all think that this we as a town kind of kind of went operated differently than these other towns in South Burlington or Coldchester what are we doing differently that they're not or that they are what are they doing differently that we're not I guess is more appropriate I can try to answer that so this paper that I screen shot up there the spatial about spatial mismatch was quite interesting because it did like go into the history of how different towns developed in Chittenden County in the you know from starting in the 80s and 90s and up to 2000 and what was different about Williston is that it had attracted a lot of like commercial growth at that time during that time and wasn't really building a lot of housing sort of in conjunction with that commercial growth I mean like a really astounding amount of commercial growth like I think the percentage of growth over that 20 years was like 700 over 700 percent and so I think that was the difference whereas you know places like Burlington and Wyniewski housing and particularly affordable housing was concentrated in those places whereas the jobs were moving out to the suburbs and housing is not being built as much in the suburbs but again I don't want to take all the time tonight certainly but I think that this is really highlighting a lot of the things that you know that we've seen that we knew these things existed this isn't I mean while it's awesome to have the this specific data and it's really important in terms of creating policy and changing things going forward I think we've all kind of known and felt all of this already so it's it's really helpful though to see the data to kind of back up what these these things we've we've known Jean where to start I think this is again the data is is helpful but I see our struggle is going to be sort of narrowing down what we want to fix because clearly a lot of these issues are national issues a single retail job is never going to be able to buy a home easily at least with the numbers that we're looking at so I think it's unrealistic that Wilson's gonna double its housing stock in order to solve this problem especially when you very nearby towns like St. George Heinsberg are the other side of 1.5 so there is regional solutions so while it's clear we have work to do I think it'll be an interesting challenge to say exactly which exactly what is going to be the focus of policy and building rules and and everything else in order to get what we find is most important and not try to solve everything here that makes sense anybody else that question and it's more of a I'm not trying to make a point with the question so I want to be clear about that but that the gap the ratio of jobs to publicly subsidized affordable apartments that slide I'm just like I guess what I'm wondering is like it's is that comparing apples and oranges like ratio of jobs is that all jobs ratio of all jobs to publicly subsidized affordable apartments okay and I'm just wondering is that it shouldn't wouldn't be more useful to have a ratio of lower paying jobs I mean if we've got thrown in a whole bunch of people who are making you know $150,000 a year who would never need subsidized affordable apartment anyway I'm not I'm not sure how useful that tool is and again I'm not I'm not trying to flag you know a position I'm just curious about the math it might also be useful to think about what that ratio is in some of our neighboring communities and this goes a little bit to Jean's comment as well you know we we exist in a region none of these towns is under a glass dome where everybody absolutely must live and work in the exact same town it's generally pretty unlikely that that will happen as a county though Chittin County also imports workers and you know has a has a jobs homes ratio that's supported by additional homes outside of its borders and we we know from looking at census data about commuting patterns that are some of our lowest wage jobs are supported by a commuter workforce that comes from multi-family homes in primarily Burlington and Winooski for example and so maybe one of the things we could bring to you would be to look at what's the predominance of those subsidized living situations in some of our neighboring communities that probably lives behind that commute pattern that we see and again the question back to Williston how does Williston want to focus on this challenge how does it want to test its policy ideas against the stated need and what part of the need and those sorts of things I think in general this is leading to a conversation that's more about moving these numbers in what the town decides is the desired direction than it is necessarily moving these numbers to a desired place at a certain time there are a whole lot of other factors outside of the town's control that affects the rate and amount of housing production we're not going to affect the price of lumber or labor and you know we're not going to affect how many people want to move to Vermont but we we can affect a few things and we'll we'll be talking about those relative to the rest is is that it for your presentation tonight or is it's gonna be more about the recommendations unless you wanted to get into some of the recommendations. How are we doing for time Eric? We have a couple of slides with an overview of policy items they could do a brief intro tonight or hold those to the next meeting at the chair's discretion. I think I think it might be better if we just absorb all of this and then stop now but there there are members of the planning commission here I'm wondering if anybody like this. I'll get on the way. Make a comment and give us some wisdom. Megan? Hi everyone I'm Megan Cope I'm the chair of the Planning Commission and I appreciate all the questions that you had tonight I think they show that you really are engaging with with the topics that we're grappling with. I don't have any particular thing to add except that we have been going over the housing needs assessment kind of with a fine tooth comb over and over again. Melinda's presentation and the report itself from CCRPC have been really thorough and you know so our attention is is really starting to turn toward you know what to do next and and that's where we would really value some thoughts from you in our ongoing conversations but you know I guess that's kind of all I I would have to say at the moment but if you have questions specifically for us I'm sure I or some of the others can chime in. What's what's your agenda for I mean like fit chronologically for addressing this is this going to be something that's a major part of your meetings starting immediately are you waiting for the select board to say if you come back with that we're not going to do it anyway. You're probably not waiting for exactly. The scheduling details are pretty much the staffs domain like they kind of help us figure out like what we can fit when but I know that we're coming back to see you folks again at our next meeting on May 2nd. So so hopefully that will give you also some time to to ponder potential policy or program you know tweaks that we could make. I think the you know it's easy to see you know more housing affordable housing as really big just unsolvable problems but when you start to break it down in the slide show that we saw tonight or in some of the the programmatic dimensions that Melinda mentioned things like I mean even something as simple as or not simple but as straightforward as the sewer attachment attachment a sewer allotment you know all of those little pieces coming together are incrementally going to make a difference and so just as the problem isn't really just one giant bundle the solutions can also come from lots and lots of different dimensions or angles and and I think we're we're all very open and interested in hearing from from you folks as well as the community and ongoing deliberations and and process. So we also have several people online and Chapin usually wants to say something so we should see if he's got his hands raised. Step away. There's the commission online if any commissioners online and just raise your hand or type in the chat here. Yep I see Chapin. Chapin I connect you right now just a moment. Hey Chapin you're on. Can you hear us? Hello yes. I just wanted to say two side points. One is that Williston has put a lot of effort into growth management and we have probably very wisely when you asked about what do we do differently from other towns we've earlier on limited our sewer area and designated a growth center and so we've maintained slower growth in the residential and very much slower growth in the rural ag rural areas by focusing development at taft corners. That's one thing and if we were to meet the goals of in that presentation we would have to exceed our growth management goals which have an effect on the town even with putting most of it at the growth center. The other the other point actually I'll just leave it at that for the moment. To me we haven't addressed that part of things. Well no I do want to say the other point which is that we really to me the difference in available housing to what people can afford to who work in Williston is striking and I don't want to see us with a bunch of buildings put up at taft corners that are all affordable units. I really think we want to see affordability distributed in different areas and that's what inclusionary zoning can do where we say a development greater than so many houses must have such and such a percent of affordability units. And so I just want to stress that that I think that that value is shared by most of the planning commission. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from either the select board or anybody in attendance. The town of Williston comprehensive growth plan that's coming up in 25 correct. Yes. I'll address that. Williston will need to adopt a new town plan by at the latest the end of August of 2025. We'll be beginning our public engagement process around that plan over the next fiscal year. And you know in a town like Williston that is growing at one rate or another pretty much all the time. A lot of that comprehensive plan is how will the town address deal with react to and shape that growth to meet the goals that it expresses in that comprehensive plan. There's there's a lot more to the comprehensive plan than necessarily just what will happen in zoning as a result of it. But we will be we will be looking at that. We will probably in the near future as we sort of alluded to tonight be talking about some policy adjustments that can be made ahead of the town plan. But I would expect that the adopted 2025 town plan is going to have a significant element about looking at the performance of any bylaw or other changes that are made. Is the town doing doing better at meeting its stated goals. Does the town want to state new goals about housing. And what is the town going to do for the life of the 2025 plan about this and every other issue that the plan will address. So keep in mind comprehensive plans in Vermont are valid for eight years. So what you consider in 2024 and hopefully adopt in mid 2025 will be the town's game plan through 2032. And it will be you know doing things that will you know maybe not even be visible until 2050. It's very very long range planning. So right now there's a needs assessment that says this is what the needs are as of right now or as of the 2020 census. There are some policy adjustments to think about within the context of the town plan that's in effect right now and how it talks about these things. And then very shortly from now there's a big conversation where this becomes part of everything that the town says. What are we going to do between 25 and 2032. And what's what are we leading towards in the more distant future than that. Thank you. So I'm just a little bit unclear on what sort of the next steps are because it seems like a really heavy lift honestly to figure out figure out where to start. So is I'm just going to say for instance if we're all sitting here kind of stunned that we don't have enough at the gap between what people earn and what they can where they can afford to live in Williston. If you know if that is sort of where we want to make some progress before 2032 you know what kind of levers would that be. And I do understand you can do an awful lot of things like the inclusionary zoning but that might get you a handful of houses but you know is there something that could get you a hundred. So that's where I'm really interested in is just don't throw everything on the wall and see what sticks that maybe really target what our main goal is and how we make it happen. I just don't know how I did listen to one of the planning commission to our conversations on this and it's very complicated and I admire all of you for your depth of knowledge and your ability to to share your thoughts with each other in a really civil very civil and clear way but this is not this is a little more complicated than the library MOU and it's going to take some work. So I'd be interested I don't expect an answer tonight but between Matt and Eric and Ted how do we make some progress as a team. You know really very briefly we are going to come back we're going to talk about as we said some some potential policy adjustments that that might move things more in the direction of solving some of these challenges and at least not in a direction that's away from them and Melinda used the term and I use the term a lot to have programmatic things and what we really mean when we say programmatic is everything else that's not changing the zoning bylaw. We have a housing trust fund. We have a goal of establishing a housing trust fund committee to administer that fund. The select board will every year have before it budget decisions to make about what kind of funds to put into that trust fund and we have some homework to do about how to best put that money to work. There are towns in Vermont making really big programmatic decisions about housing. There's an article in VT Digger today about a project on Main Street and Windsor moving forward. I forget the exact number of units so I'm not going to quote it. It's a it's a three-story building on Windsor Main Street on a vacant lot next to the diner and that project is moving forward in part because the town pledged two hundred thousand dollars of its ARPA money toward that project. That's a that's a programmatic decision. It's a budgetary decision that has a very direct impact. The town of Waterbury recently made a decision to sell a building and site that it was no longer using to a company that develops affordable homes and there was a big a big public meeting about that and a big decision to be made about that. That's a programmatic action. There are communities in New England that are buying and remediating lots with decrepit buildings or subsurface soil pollution issues and then making them available to preferred developers who want to create affordable housing. Closer to home the city of St. Albans announced this week that they're moving forward on a project on a brown field that the city acquired over 10 years ago. Partnering with I believe Ever North to build a mixed income and affordable apartment complex on that site. So there are things that are a lot harder than amending its owning by law that can produce a lot more housing especially the really affordable stuff. And you know we'd like the town to think about all of those things over time as we move forward here. Which was you know partially some some tweaks and regulations were made but some of it was programmatic involving and I'm talking about the Zephyr place which is 72 units of affordable housing from converted from an old hotel. So that's a success story and that's like you know that was a some of it was a programmatic decision to refund impact fees and you know and to and to amend make a bylaw amendment that would allow that project to work. So to be continued it's the answer is there's no answer tonight. We are going to have a number of more meetings about this. The Planning Commission is going to continue its work. I think all we can say right now is we're going to keep asking the right questions and feel our way out and get get resolutions as best we can. So okay thank you everybody for coming. Thank you all for making this priority. Yeah our town. This is really important work and this is something that we really need to address. Again we this is not not new we we've known this is something that needed to be addressed. But I really appreciate that you all are so supportive of this and and you know really have put in a lot of time and work to highlight the work that we still need to do which is obviously a lot but thank you really. Yeah. No good way to segue from such a heavy issue to the next one but the liquor and tobacco license. Select board meetings one thing to do this rounding out renewals here that's just a couple liquor license renewals for consideration this evening. I've distributed in a transmittal in your packet. I will note one of these establishments did receive a warning letter from DLC last summer. A manager has supplied from their corporate office supplied the board a letter addressing that issue for you as well. You have these before you to consider this evening. Okay. So if there are any questions for Eric that would be a good this would be the moment to ask them. Otherwise there is a proposed motion quickly. The deadline is soon right. Like so this will be the last round theoretically theoretically. I checked in the town clerk the other day. There's still are a couple establishments that have not after multiple reminders of submitted there. So there's a possibility if they want to renew themselves could come back for the board on May 2nd. There's a couple but yeah should should be the last but might not be the last. It depends if they want to renew their license or not from people you haven't heard from. I will find it out. I'll move to approve the liquor license renewals as transmitted dated April 18th 2023 for one year period through April 30th 2024. Is there a second? Second that. Is there any discussion on the motion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed no. The ayes have it. Manager's report. Also a couple things I'll highlight from my written report this evening. Towns are fortunate to receive a transportation alternatives grant from my agency of transportation at $300,000 grants. This will be a sidewalk project on industrial Avenue. I believe on the eastern side starting at the route to and I don't think you'll get us all the way up to route to a but I know it's a it's a good portion of I've got the plan map with the application somewhere I can share with the board to put a visual behind it. I'll find that this week and forward it on to you. But good good work for this grant for the town will continue to work to fill in these sidewalk gaps and especially with this a major employment center. We have a town park. I want to end the road some residential neighborhoods as well. So I'm working to tie everything together here. Our community center scoping and library assessment steering committee interviews are wrapping up on the 24th and then the committee is going to be working on the second outreach way, which will be a written survey instrument that that will be sent out to community in May. Anticipating the end work product of the committee working with our architectural consultant is a report looking at these different options in the pros and cons to each and anticipating that that will get back to the select board and library trustees probably late summer. So just seeing how things line up the next couple of months. So that's really a big project on the horizon here to discuss as well. And then up to the board, I've got a couple of these flowers leaving your mailboxes Terry and Jean, but we're we're gearing up for green up day on Saturday, May 6. Really our planning department does a great job in leading this organization and our staff there. This will be our second year of the town fair. It's a way for folks in our active departments and local nonprofits and activities. I think we're having a yoga class to stretch out before they green up at nine o'clock. And we've got some town bands going to have a brief concert. We'll have our fire department there open house of the schoolhouse. So we found a very welcome last year by this event for the community and flew of a beautiful day again, but not will plan to get a tent again to help for any weather and thanks our planning department for organizing this every year. And that's all I have our manager support this evening. Okay. Other business. A couple of brief items for the board. I am currently the communications union district representative for the town. I'm anticipating so I've been serving to help get the governance in place for this regional entity since the turn of the year. I've found myself as chair of it right now as well, helping to move it forward. Happy to do it regionally, but planning to post this position to see there's any community members would be interested in serving as the primary probably in the next month or so. We'll get that posted. I think the board will be in a spot where it starts to get more technical here as we look to bring on consultants. But I realize you don't have any alternates right now. I'm planning on some leave coming up. I want to make sure we have representation at these meetings if I'm not able to attend. So I was on the board to consider appointing assistance to the manager Aaron Dickinson to the alternate to the communications union district board. So she may attend if I'm not able to for a couple of meetings here. Any questions for Eric on that? If not, there is a proposed motion. I move to appoint Aaron Dickinson as Wilson's alternate to the Chittin County Communications Union District. Is there a second? Second. Discussion on the motion. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed nay. The ayes have it. Is there any other other business? Two catering permits from the board's consideration. One that came in today. It looks like it's on May the 3rd from 3 o'clock to 9 o'clock at Gordon's Window Decor on Leroy Road in town. It's using sugar snap catering. It looks like to be a private celebration party. It looks like a staff party at that location with a care that we've seen in town many times. The board will need to consider action on this catering permit. Staff has no concerns as it's presented to us. Move to approve. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed nay. The ayes have it. Second catering permit. It's a wedding at the Eicham Family Barn by catering by Dale event. And it is out June 17th is the wedding. Again, it's established a facility to host these events. Town staff has no concerns with this application. Move to approve. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed nay. The ayes have it. Okay. That's all I have. Any other business? Hearing none. We are adjourned.