 Okay, then I will call the June 4th, 2018 Select Board meeting to order and invite you to rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I'd like to welcome everyone to tonight's Select Board meeting and thank you for coming out. If you have one of these, you could turn it off or put it to silent, that would be greatly appreciated. And if you have not done so already, please do sign in. There are five members of the Select Board with us tonight, though you only see four. We do have one, Mike Plagueman, on the phone. He's actually on vacation, but wanted to join us. Anyway, so thank you, Mike, for being there. You can hear us? Okay, great. So then we're going to go on to additions, agenda additions and changes. I see we have a couple of things here, Greg. Two things. One is the Essex Community Historical Society Audit of Financial Records. They just dropped that off today. That can go with the approval of FYB 18 Human Services Funding, Item 6G. 6G, okay. And the other item is a memo from me. It's actually all the executive session memos, the motions combined into one just to make it a little bit easier if you can choose the one during the executive session. Okay, excellent. Thank you. Anything else? What I'd like to talk to the Board about is on agenda Item 5B. We have a presentation from Sarah Reeves, the GM of CSWD, and she has a couple of or three of these tonight. If it's okay with you when she arrives here, if we're still doing the 5A, if we could interrupt that to allow her to do it. I think it's a 10-minute presentation. And then our questions. Is that okay? Okay, great. So, do I have a motion to amend the agenda with these additions for 6G, the executive session wording, and the flexibility to move 5B early? I have a second. Second. Thank you. I think Andy got that one. Okay, any further discussion on amending the agenda? Okay, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Motion passes 5-0, unanimous, so no roll call is required. Okay, then we're on to public to be heard. This is a time for the public to speak to the select board on items that are not on the agenda tonight. Is there anyone here wishing to speak during public to be heard? Yes. State your name for the record if you would. Please. Andy Suntuck. Basically, I have a couple things that I want to say about the decision at the last meeting to reduce the amount of minutes that you plan on doing. I saw that and it really rubbed me the wrong way because these days everybody's talking about transparency and this seems to be cutting down on the transparency of what's going on here. I'm a concerned citizen. I like to find out what's going on in the town, what's going on in here. But I don't have a couple of hours to spend every other week watching the video or listening to an audio tape. It takes next to no time to read what you have in the minutes. For argument's sake, I listened to the whole discussion that you did two weeks ago and it took me 45 minutes to go through the entire thing. When I read it, it took me like no more than five minutes and that's going through everything twice so I could fully grasp it. The thing here is so few people really care about what's going on that they take the time to find out things. The five of you should be making it easier for us to take part in what's happening to our community rather than taking the attitude, well, if you really want to know, watch it on TV, watch it on the computer or we'll even give you the audio tape, that's discouraging people. I think people will spend the five to 15 minutes reading things but we don't want to just get a capsized summary. I don't want a verbatim. I don't need to know every word that all of you say. But I do want to know who said what and how the decision process went so I could realize what was going on. Also, I am partially deaf and when I'm watching TV, I use closed caption. Channel 17 does not have closed caption and it makes it very hard for me to digest what's on there. I want to watch it on the computer. I can go back if I don't hear something. A number of people have disabilities as you get older. It happens. Make it easier for us. Also, at times, even though this gentleman sets the microphones very well, sometimes some of you don't speak into the mic or you speak fast, you mutter, you speak low, it happens. We all do that but that makes it even harder for me to grasp what some of you are saying sometimes. Next thing, Greg, you did a great job in compiling what every other town does. It was detailed and showed what they do but I hate to say it. I don't care. What others do is relevant to them but it's not relevant to our community. Our community has been doing something a certain way for a number of years. I haven't heard any complaints that the minutes are too long. Nobody's ever said that. I don't see why we have to change it. I want to say that we should change it because of others. I misbehaved when I was a kid and I said, all the other kids did this. My mother always said to me, well, if they all jumped off the Empire State Building, would you follow them? Just because South Burlington or Shelburne is doing something differently, it doesn't mean we have to get into that temptation. Just like if some other community are writing longer minutes, we don't have to go into any longer details. I've only been here two and a half years but I guess the ones who've been here a long time, they're used to it a certain way and unless somebody could tell me that they signed a petition saying, make the minutes shorter because we can't read through the whole thing, I don't see why we have to change what's successful. Also, it was brought out that even if we reduced it, we would still be meeting the Vermont statutory minimum on the minutes. Why do we have to settle for the minimum when, again, it's the same type of situation? If something is working, why do you have to give a dumbed-down version of it just to meet the minimum? I don't see the need for that. I guess the biggest reason also for why it should stay the same is so those of us who care can find out what's going on. Elaine, you said that the purpose of the minutes, and I'm quoting on this from reduced minutes, were not meant to memorialize the board. That's true but they're meant to provide an accountability for those of us who are interested. We don't have too many ways to determine whether we want to vote for you again and whether you're following the mandate that we voted for to begin with. By seeing the decision-making process and seeing the names of who said what during the meeting, that tells us, you know, this person is following what I'm interested in following. I want that person as my rep for another couple of years. If I don't see that they're doing what helps my interest, I'm going to vote against you the next time. And that goes for everyone. We want accountability and if somebody's not willing to be held accountable, then an elected office is really not the way to go. That's why we put you here so we can follow you. I remember at the last select board trustee meeting, you were coming up with ways to evaluate Evan and including setting goals and everything. Well, you can evaluate him based on the goals. We can't evaluate you based on any set of goals. It's only how you talk the talk and walk the walk. That's really what counts there. And finally, at the last meeting when the public talked about the minutes, there were five or six people. They all spoke and all six of them said they saw no reason to change, but yet you all voted five to change and zero to keep it. To me, that was showing that if the people who were interested and who spoke were telling you, leave it alone, you basically said, we don't care what you think. We're all voting against what all of you said. And no one even gave an argument saying you should change it and going through all 45 minutes. I didn't hear one real argument from all of you as to why it should be reduced. Evan, you said that it would cost X amount to hire somebody to do verbatim. Wouldn't I ask you for that? The recording secretary has been doing a wonderful job. So I said, I look at the minutes and without going through the whole thing, I think I understand what went on. I'd like to keep it that way. I hope that after you digest the next few meetings that you're using as a trial, you go back to the way that it was. I think all of the citizens would appreciate that. That's my thing. Thank you, Andy. You're welcome. Anybody else? Yes. Your name for the record? I haven't been in at all the meetings, about the minutes. I was here when the discussion started, which was about a month ago. And I would support what Andy said, but I have a different context. I just consider this a matter of respect for the civic process for the citizens of Essex. And I don't see that it is helpful or it doesn't have any good to start pruning out what people say, and especially leaving out the names of who says what. And I got concerned enough about this that I called the Secretary of State today, and I'm waiting for a call back. And they may tell me this is legal, and that's fine, but that doesn't mean it's ethical, or that it's the best thing for the citizens of Essex. And I have a different context in my head on this that I'm going to tell you about. Last May, I was at a conservation committee meeting, and something came up about their minutes. And it had to do with what would happen if we formed subcommittees, and whether that would violate the Sunshine Law, and a lawyer gave an opinion that it would be a real problem. So I called the Secretary of State, but I called him for a reason. First, I emailed Doug Fisher, and I got an email back from him that was a real surprise. He said that he was very hesitant to give me a ruling on even something that minor, because Essex has been overruled so many times on these kinds of things by Montpelier. And he sent me an attachment that is a list of all the times Essex has been overruled in its lawyer's statements by the AG's office in Montpelier. And that's why I called the Secretary of State again today, because quite frankly, in my opinion, the lawyer who was paid by the town has been saying too many times what the town wants to hear. So if they tell me that this is legal, that's fine. That doesn't make it the best thing for Essex, or make it ethical. And the other issue I have with this is that I find this, I don't know what word to use, irresponsible comes to mind, that you are spending so much time on what is basically housekeeping. And for the last three years, Mara Collins and I have been trying to get onto the table, just onto the agenda, a discussion of an affordable housing trust fund. We can't get that on here. And when I was a meeting with the unified manager about a month ago, he said himself that the biggest problem the companies have told him they're having with getting people to move here is affordability and particularly affordable housing. We can't even get something that critical on the agenda, but you can spend all this time arguing over what you're going to put in the minutes. I do find that irresponsible. I find it unacceptable as a voter. And I'm sorry I'm sounding angry, but I'm really angry about it. I think you need to get off this and move on, but I think you need to respect the voters enough to give them what they're asking for. We elect you and if you're staff, we pay for you. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. Is there anybody else here tonight wishing to select word on items not on the agenda? Thank you for your input. Appreciate it. Okay, we're going to move on to business items. And again, as we said, we're going to start with 5A, and that's the reappointments to boards, committees, and commissions. And we have a number of them tonight. We actually have, it's like five. So is Mary here? Marie. Marie, for a shell? For a shell. For a shell, okay. You could please join us up here, if you would, at the table right over there. Yeah, by that microphone, we would appreciate it. And you're on the library board of trustees and up for reappointment. And what we do as a practice is to invite all members who are up for reappointments and whatever committees to come in and let us know how things are going and what you see are issues that you think we should know about on your board. Well, I think the library is one of my happy places. And I feel very privileged to be on the library board. I was a member of the Friends of the Library for many years before I was asked to be on the board. I think the board works very well together. I think that they listen very well to the head librarian and the members of the library staff as to what they see the needs of the library are and respond. They give, you know, they ask questions about the budget and they also hear what other things the staff and the librarians need and try to accommodate that. One of the things that has been in the process since December and we still need to move forward is looking at some of the policies that govern the library. Such things as the smoking policy or the non-smoking policy in terms of, you know, what constitutes library grounds and is the steps okay but the, you know, not okay but the sidewalk is. There's another policy about how young a child can be in the library without supervision and what do we do if after a Lego club somebody isn't picked up, what's the procedure in terms of how we get in touch with parents or, you know, authority figures to take care of that. So I think one thing that we need to continue to work on and bring to fruition is looking at the policies and updating them. Okay. Thank you. And could you just remind us how many, how long have you been on the board? This is the end of my first term. It's your first term. Before that I was a liaison between the friends and the board. Okay, great. Thanks, Marie. Questions for Marie from the board? Andy. I just have to disclose that my wife is a library trustee but I think I can act impartially in deciding whether or not to. And I would agree. Everybody okay? Great. Okay. Any questions or comments for Marie? Irene? Is there anything that we as a select board can do to help your board work more effectively? Well, one thing that we've talked about is trying to get our own website so that people don't have to go through the town website to get to the library. And that might be something that we might, you know, I mean it's not for me to speak for the board because I'm only one person but that's one person thing that I've heard come up several times. You want to comment on that, the website? Thanks for your comment. One of the things staff is working on is actually integrating the websites where you can still potentially have your own address but it'll be managed by IT. So we'll be looking at that. We don't want 12 or 14 different websites per se, 14 different web hosts, but we will be working on the fact that you could have your own address but it will be part of our bigger site. The other thing I should mention is that we have hired a townsperson to help us design a logo for the library. Over the years we've had several different things on letterheads and we're looking to unify that. Yeah, we're actually not really excited about having different logos for the different boards and commissions and committees because we have a logo for the town of Essex that has been designed so before you go too far down the path we should probably have a discussion as a board as if we all agree to that. So I would just caution you to go before spending much time or money. One we're looking at actually has the town logo on it. Because there was another committee, I can't remember which one wanted to do a logo and we said we have a logo that we're trying to have a brand and to have too many of them out there then it loses its impact so that's kind of the reason. Yeah, good to know. Okay, anybody else? Andy, you had your hand up. Did you have some? You're good? Elaine, anything? Mike, any questions for Murray? Okay, then I'm good as well so I want to thank you for your service on the Board of Trustees for the library and thank you for your service. The process will be we will go into executive session later and we'll have a discussion about all the reappointments and then come out of executive session, have a decision, make a decision and somebody from the manager's office will contact you tomorrow. Sounds like a plan. Okay, thank you again. Appreciate it. Thanks for your service, Murray. You're welcome. Thank you. And Sarah is not here yet, right? Okay, so we're going to move on and since there are three reappointments for the planning commission tonight, we have Ned, Jonathan and Josh. Our practice is that we'll have the first one on the agenda, join us here, and we'll ask the other two, if you wouldn't mind, to step out so that you don't have an advantage of hearing Ned, for example. But Max, if there's three seats, there's three, and there's three spots, is it? Yeah, we should. The reappointments are up. If you're okay with that. I mean, that's better. I'd rather not. I think the reappointments, they've got the seats. You want to have everybody? All right, you're good? Mike, you're good with that too? I didn't hear it. Normally, when we're appointing somebody to a commission or committee and there's several people, we usually have just the one stay in the room and the others leave. It's being requested just since it's a reappointment to have all three here. I think she was saying she'd like to put words in. She's asking that they stay in the room. Yeah. Well, then, is this Sarah? Yes. Okay, all right. Saved by the bell. Saved by the bell. Okay, Sarah, you're right on time here. So we amended the agenda to allow us to be flexible so that when you arrive here, we know that you have another place to go right after this. So gentlemen, we're going to hold off on your interviews and we'll invite Sarah Reeves to and Alan Nye, our rep. And whoever else? Yeah. So welcome. You just came from Milton, I think. I did, yes. Okay, there wasn't too much traffic. Thank you. Appreciate your flexibility. So we received your CSWD budget a while ago. Thank you for sending that to us early. I greatly appreciate that. And so if you want to kind of walk through the high level of it and then if there's questions from the board, we'll fire a match and then hopefully we'll let you go quick. Absolutely, great. Thank you very much. As you said, my name is Sarah Reeves. I'm the general manager for the Chittin & Salloway District. And I will start on the 30,000-foot level. I will get down to maybe about 5,000 on one or two items because they're pretty important this year. Big differences and then open up for questions. So the fiscal 19 budget this year, we are budgeting revenues in the amount of $11,131,561. We are budgeting expenses in the amount of $10,597,613. And our capital this year, the anticipated expenses are rather large. We are budgeting $1,755,000 in capital projects this year. The bulk of that for our materials recovery facility. And we'll go into more detail on that as well. We are not proposing any increases to the solid waste management fee. So that will remain at $27 a ton this year. We also do not expect any increases to the trash fees at the drop-off centers. Those will remain the same. You may remember a few years ago, we had implemented what we called at the time a double bump. So we raised the fees at the drop-off centers enough to be able to create a minor surplus that we hope would carry us through the three years it has. And this is the third year of that double bump, which we anticipate drawing down on those reserves. So the fees will remain the same for the trash fees at the docks for fiscal 19. We are also not proposing any municipal assessments or per capita assessments. So we're not doing that. And because we raised the fees at Green Mountain Corpus last year, those are remaining the same as well. So those are all the no increases. That's all the good news. We did increase the tipping fees or the disposal fees at the materials recovery facility on May 1st. We have a split fee at the moment. That will most likely change over the next few months due to, again, issues that we'll go into a little more detail on. We raised the fee on May 1st from $21 a ton to $25 a ton for in-district, meaning for Chinning County members. And our members are all 18 towns, cities and towns of Chinning County that belong to the district. And it's $50 a ton for out-of-district. Seems like a big jump. You should know that the regional tipping fee at Murph's has recently risen to anywhere from $75 to $100 a ton. So we are still under market, and it is that market adjustment that we'll be seeking over the next few months. In addition, the administrative fee for biosols did go up this year, and that is also partly due to an increased tension we need to pay to our capital needs for the biosolids program, but also to a change in how we allocate our expenses across all of our budgets in this year. And last but not least, we're going to, I think for the first time, start charging for the little blue bins, the 16 gallon blue bins. Most of our communities do use carts. Very few still use the blue bins, but we will be trying to recoup the money that we spend on the blue bins when we're charging $5 a bin. The cost is about $5.65 a bin. So that is a change. Part to kind of move folks who can move towards the carts, embrace it, and put those carts in play. So those are the $30,000 foot. Coming down to about $5 or $10, I do want to talk a little bit about the Murph. I mentioned that is going to eat up quite a bit of the capital this year. We have contractual obligations for capital replacement with our vendor at the Murph. We own the building. We own the equipment. We own the land. They operate it for us. So this year is a big year. We are due to replace the Baylor. And the Baylor is the life, blood, heart, brain, everything of that facility. You don't run without a Baylor. And it's being held together with bubble gum and Band-Aids and maybe some duct tape, family allowed duct tape. So that's going to be about $700,000. Just that one piece of equipment is necessary. The other big piece that we have to do at the Murph is the tipping floor, literally the floor that the mature comes out on. We're seeing some rebar in some areas that cannot be patched. It needs to be replaced. That's about $120,000. It's right there. There's a big chunk that we know we need to expand. We're also looking at making some upgrades and repairs to our top-off centers, probably at least four of them. And we also do have in the budget to replace Heinsberg, which is still closed due to the town of Heinsberg building a new highway garage. So we're still waiting for them to finish that. When they do, we'll be able to take a look at the land they have available for us and begin evaluating the needs there. We also have to make some improvements to the Essex Top-off Center just south of Burlington Top-off Center. Burlington needs some attention. Milton needs some attention. They all need some attention. So we've budgeted some money to make some capital improvements and then the biosolids trailers need to be replaced too. So a heavy capital year this year. Did you have anything more? You want to come down a little lower? Are you good there? That's a good question. Again, we've had the budget for quite some time, so I appreciate you going over the high level. Okay, I'll open questions up to the board for Sarah. Is anybody? Irene. How long do you expect the MRF to be closed? Or will it close at all while you replace the floor and the baler? Yeah, so the baler will just be a swap. That'll be a few days. So that's not an issue at all because we're not having to replace the conveyor system. We did that a couple of years ago. So it literally is just the area of hooking and wiring, moving it out, moving it in. It'll be a couple of days, so maybe down for one day. We don't run anything on the weekends anyway. So we do have those solid two days. We might do maybe a half shift on the Friday. Clear thing out, make sure everything is ready to go and then have some extra time. But that won't be a problem. The floor, yeah. There's a little bit of a different situation. Concrete obviously needs time to cure. So you want to make sure that that's ready to be rolled on and scraped before you do anything. That we may need to arrange to have the material go to the Rutland MRF for a period of two or three weeks while that floor cures. So that'll be built into the price of the project. But that would be the plan for that. Other questions? Andy. Yeah, at this point, there's a number of regional entities of which you are one. There's the water district, the planning commission, or the regional planning folks. There's the bus company. Question I think I've asked you this before potentially is whether there's ever been any discussion about combining the back office functions like payroll and IT and so forth so that the rate payers in your case aren't having to pay for, you know, services that could potentially be super regionalized, I guess. Is there any effort in that direction? That's a great question, and I probably didn't have a good answer for you last year, either. One of the things that we are looking at, though, because of the pressures with particularly recycling markets and really with the need to look at the infrastructure of the MRF, it is old. It's 20-plus years old. It really can't be expanded upon. Are there potential regional applications for something like that? In that case, yeah, obviously, you would want to consolidate the administrative functions for that particular operation, et cetera. That is just kind of brainstorming at the moment. I really haven't gone into any detail about that. We do work through VLCT and PASSF and so where there are other municipal consolidations of efforts or at least pricing leverages that can be had, we do work there. We do have the ability to kind of piggyback off of other municipal bids if we want to. I don't know that we do, nor do others piggyback off of our bids. So there probably could be more coordination and that's something that I can bring to the District Manager's Association meeting to say are there ways that we can better coordinate, consolidate on some of these administrative functions? We each operate a little bit differently. So it's hard to know where some of those might be, but maybe it's on kind of the borders of maybe some of the drop-off centers. I don't know, it's a good question. Now that I've been here a little bit, I may be able to think more creatively about that, but I have a better answer right next to it. Good. Did you want to add something, Alan? Well, I think, you know, I'm on the finance committee of the Board and I think, you know, what I have seen is the personnel portion of the finance is very minuscule compared to all the other finance issues that the Board is dealing with, and not that it might save, you know, a portion of a person, but there are hundreds of invoices that go through the office every month, and so we can talk about it at exec board meeting and see what options there might be out there. One of the things we are doing is we're looking to just, in general, streamline our finance system. So we're looking at ways to reduce the amount of paper, those paper invoices that go through our system. We're looking at ways to streamline our time sheets, and so we're looking at other efficiencies internally that, you know, perhaps if we can implement them well and now if we can roll them out or show them, share our experiences with the other regional entities that may be able to, again, realize some of those cost savings without necessarily having to combine entities or share, it just gets tough as far as the governance, so we would have to think that through, but not saying that it would never happen or could never happen. It's an intriguing idea. Okay, thank you. Other questions? No, Andy. Yeah, you mentioned paper, which I understand is a problem you have to pay to get rid of it now. Yeah. Every Friday my recycler, actually this is every other Friday, now the recycler comes and I open my mailbox and there's a piece of mail that I get every Friday that I'm unable to unsubscribe from that I would love to not get delivered to me, that never goes into my house, it goes straight into the recycle bin. Is there any pressure that you can put on the legislature maybe to allow people to opt out of junk mail so that you can pressure off your paper issue? It's a great question and there are services where you can opt out of certain junk mail and yellow pages of people still get yellow pages and yellow books. You can opt out of some of them, but as you mentioned, not all. There are some pieces of mail that the post office is required to deliver and that would be something that we would probably want to take a look at and you're right, because a lot of those pieces of paper are maybe newsprint, which has even less value these days than some of the other pieces of paper. Office papers, if we could sort that, just as is, that has great value and that's one of the things that we are looking at is how can we pull the value out of that mixed paper that China has now changed its specification so much to where it really has very, very little value? This does. So if we can pull this good stuff out, it would help to buffer the losses on the other side. Not saying that we don't want to reduce that, we do and that really is the key is how can we employ more waste reduction techniques and tips to help reduce that load, as you say. That's a good idea to see there's something that the legislature can do, whether it's, I'm not sure if I'm a fan of bans, but some other incentive slash disincentive to reduce that amount of unwanted, unnecessary mail. So is that from the mail you're saying? Yeah. And also in the newspaper, I bring my newspaper and I hold by the corners and I just shake it over the bin and it's a lot of waste going on there. Yeah, absolutely. Interesting. Okay, Irene. Did you mention staff? So I'll just give a shout out to your wonderful communicators who market your events and everything that happened, your leads on Johnny is fabulous. I never thought anyone could hold a candle to Claire, but I have already told him he does. So congratulations on continuing to hire fabulous public communications staff. Thank you. Johnny is a great resource. He's so creative and really enjoys what he does and does it very well for us. Thank you. Good to hear. I have a question or a comment about the blue bins. My neighborhood used to just use the blue bins and it's on Fridays and it seemed like it was always a windy Friday. And our neighborhood would just get just trashed, so to speak. We've since moved to the bins everybody and that problem has disappeared. So it'd be nice if everybody, if there was a way to go to those other the carts as opposed to the bins. That is one of the reasons to implement the fee quite honestly is to help maybe nudge the few communities that still are using the small bins in the carts because you're right. It absolutely helps reduce the wind blown litter. It provides more quantity, more volume to be able to put more recycling in there, which is what you want. And if it's raining, it's exposed when it's in the blue bin when it's in the cart. And that's what we need. All the materials to be clean, dry. Containers must be empty and rinsed. So properly preparing the recyclables just adds to the volume and allows us to continue to support the programs. Absolutely. And a compliment too on the fact that now you can take those little caps that are less than two inches, stick them on the bottles and be able to do that's awesome. Absolutely. Caps on. Just make sure that the contents are poured out of those bottles and containers. And you shove them into the bottle or is that not okay? Just on the outside. On the outside. So you put the original cap back on the original bottle that are in their cycling bin. So that was a nice move. Good. I mean, you had a question that we took to the Executive Board with respect to trying to assist low-income families or low-income households with we had a considerable conversation on that. We haven't thrown it totally out the door yet. But we did talk a lot of issues with management of them. You know, a lot of our discussion revolved around that a lot of the low-income housing in the county is in Burlington and it's in houses that the landlord pays the trash removal through the rent. And so we're we haven't thrown it out yet, but we're discussing it still off and on, but we didn't make a decision to do anything. I should just add that was in the context of people illegally dumping on roadsides and things, and that was what Mike had said to me about in the first place was is there a way to encourage people to go to the dump rather than leave things in full view. Thanks. Mike, do you have any questions for Sarah or Alan? I do, as a matter of fact. On page 5, line 59 the computer systems maintenance took a jump, but I didn't see any narrative on it, Ms. Reeds, and I just wondered if you could speak to that or perhaps show me where I missed it in your presentation, because I couldn't find it, but I just noticed that there was a pretty good jump in that and I just wondered if there was a new system coming online or something that needed to be replaced or what? Which line item was that, Mike? Number 59 on page 5. Computer systems maintenance. Budget summary. Do you see it on your... Yeah, so that could be it's probably two different things. So we have a small amount of that actually that would be just the finance system. So that's just the one thing. So that is the, referencing the new finance system that we're looking to put in. I mentioned earlier that we're upgrading our finance basically our whole department and we're implementing some putting some new software in and we are also that line does not include the cost of the consultant to help put it in. That's just the software. So it's the software and supporting software for a new finance system. So we as you do that's point of sale as well? Okay. So last year we implemented a new point of sale system in our drop-off centers and at Green Mountain Compost and part of that fee is still to continue to support the ongoing roll out of that new system but the other piece is a management system and budgeting management system. So that will be going in fiscal 19. We're very excited about that. A lot of municipalities do kind of organically grew over the years and our management software did not grow with us. So as things have become a little more complicated we've decided we wanted to simplify and so we'll be putting in a new finance management and budget management software system and that's what that is. Okay. Anything else, Mike? Thank you very much. That's helpful. Thank you. Okay. And we know she's on a schedule so if there's no other questions what's the board's pleasure on approving the budget? Do I want to make a motion towards that? I don't think there is a recommendation. The board approve the budget as shitton solid waste district as presented. Second. The FY 19. The FY 19 budget as presented. Thank you, Elaine. Irene, any further discussion on approving the shitton solid waste district FY 2019 budget? Hearing none. Hearing none. All those in favor of approving the budget to signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you for all the great work you're doing. I appreciate your flexibility. Thank you very much. We love having Alan as our rep. So do we. Love's talking trash. Have a great night. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. We're going to jump up to business item 5a and if it's okay with the board since we want to keep them in the same room, why don't we invite all three? Sure. On the same board. So if Ned, Jonathan, and Josh, come on up. All three at once. All three at once. Keep things moving. Just for them? Just shy. Right? There's seven of us. So if, when you speak, just remind us of how many years you've been on it and just tell us how things are going from your perspective and things you think we should know about that's going on. So who would like to go first? We have board since 2011. Grab the mic, please. State your name. John Chumacher. I've been on the board since 2011 and yeah, I think that's as long as I've been there, but I think that what I've learned over the years is that it takes a while to train somebody to be on a planning commission and so I'm more than happy to keep going with the experience that I have and keep contributing to the town because that's what I want to do. So that's my spiel and that's when I start. Ned Daly been on approximately four and a half years maybe a little more I'm not sure. It's been a great experience because I think we have a mix of opinions on the board. I think all of us come at this whole process with slightly different outlook which I think it complements the things that we want to accomplish going forward. Great. Yeah, it's good to have different opinions and perspectives. Yeah, Joshua Knox I've been on since I think it was the winter of 2013 so a little over five years and I would just second these two gentlemen that it's a nice group of people, different perspectives and we work together well and I know Ned wouldn't say it about himself but his idea about the movie nights has been really fantastic and I think the movie was really great and thought provoking and my personal interest on this is more things like the planning side as opposed to development review and so I really liked a lot of the deep thoughts we got on the box there. Yeah, I really appreciate it. It's a good group. We do have a lot of different backgrounds and different opinions and they all come together at meetings. Oh yeah, absolutely. There is a learning curve. Yep. Personally, also doing something like this there are some frustrations and personal frustrations and maybe I get part of it from moving to Vermont from the Washington DC Beltway community but the pace up here of getting things done is frustrating and it takes so long to get things done and one of our tasks needs to be to streamline some of this. I ran into some of this second hand sitting on the bench with my wife trying to get on that's place a non-profit food shelf serving the entire community went through about four layers of approvals and submissions to get something like this done and it works both on that level and on the larger level of attracting things to town and it's one of our goals I think is to streamline some of these processes so that we can get things in place and continue to grow. I had a long speech so I'll give you the short version. I'll save these guys into a speech. I think it's a town that's on the cusp of making either a great leap forward or stagnating as the rest of the world so to speak makes these changes and I think we have to adapt we have to find ways to build affordable housing we need to find ways to make energy efficiency we need to figure out how to reward through density or whatever people who build totally energy efficient buildings we need to come up with the guidelines or the regulations to encourage them so that makes it worthwhile to do that I think these are really some of the things I look at moving forward I just and I'll finish real quickly I'm about three quarters of the way through a book titled Our Towns written by James Fellows and his wife Debra who he's a writer for Atlantic magazine and they took over the course of four years they flew all over the country and visited primarily small towns and developing towns and when you read this there's just such a wealth of things that other towns are doing I would highly recommend it to everyone and this is sort of why I end up promoting movies and stuff because I like to open up everybody's minds to the new things I think that's really what I see as part of my role as being the old guy on the planning commission and I have time to do those kind of things so ways to be able to keep us attractive to people wanting to move here or do businesses here is vital to our sustainability so going down looking to see what you could do and recommend for changes I think we'd love to hear about your ideas yeah absolutely it's the future right? that's why I'm so interested about the town center rezoning that we're doing because it does give us the opportunity to do a lot of interesting things potentially it's in the right place now I'm getting a little outside of the interview process that's the right place if you're going to build or be more attractive or do things that's the place to do it not out in the parking garage the process is there for a reason but if there's a way to do it more efficiently and still maintain the same protections that those ordinances and so on are there for and if developers folks know about those in advance and we follow those I think that would be kind of a win-win part of it the base of that is looking at the protections themselves and are they still all valid today or 25-30 years ago the whole concept of that has changed I challenged the assumptions that were made a while ago you might come up with a different a new baseline okay anything else you want to miss any questions from the board Irene our energy committee here in Essex has talked about the stretch building codes that South Burlington has have you talked about those are any of you familiar with those that's something we could beg borrow or steal maybe from another town that seems to be effective in helping them build more energy efficient buildings we primarily only look at it from compliance with the basic state code I think our next step would be to incorporate in our building requirements the stretch code and those are pretty basic and those are simple steps at least we have included any approval now that they submit that certificate of compliance with the base code before they get a certificate of occupancy and these guys have heard me bring that up more than once before we close out a case and I think that's important but I think I raised the issue about sustainable construction for the energy what do we recycle how do we recycle and I would lead this to the energy committee set some guidelines and again it's the carrot and the stick to get there Elaine you're right on with that fellow's book and a lot of the concepts in fact from an economic development perspective the book points out that rural areas like ours are actually attractive and a center for innovation small scale businesses that are innovating and that's something that we can keep in mind when building out there to encourage businesses to relocate I would be interested in hearing all of you your opinions on what you would do in the town center now that we're working on that plan and redeveloping that plan what are your visions for that that's not there right now what I would say referring specifically to the town center sort of old mall part and I think I said at a meeting when Peter Edelman came in mixed use walkable density type stuff in that part but where I expanded on that at our last meeting is I like the idea of then stretching the walkable concept and sort of repurposing I forget I think it was class one road idea on route 15 to sort of extend that all the way to where the library is say and I had this idea of extending that almost maybe to sand tail to give this whole like unit of you've got the old town center with its charm and the library and the church and the Christmas tree and everything and then slowly almost phase that into mixed use walkable density and if done properly with the kind of economic innovation you're talking about that could be incredible. We're right there at 289 and it blends and you're in old New England and you're in this new thing and that's like I said that's what I'm really excited about the potential of that really coming together nicely and Edelman had the energy part I see two things I'd like to see out of that one is we need to deliver out of that conflict that the change is a way to get some more affordable housing to attract younger families which everything you read in the state says this is one of the things that's a problem with our economic development we don't have places for people to afford to live I see that's one issue the other issue is the old town center we really I don't want to develop the one end of the shopping center here and forget that other end because it is part of the town and we really need to figure ways to spruce that up we'll look at some of the uses which are questionable at best and they certainly don't add much to the general part of the town so we need to carry as Josh has carried that development concept all the way down maybe to Sand Hill Road we'll ditto it about for what they just said the density I think is probably the thing that I'm most impressed with I think that that's the right place for housing both affordable and otherwise get some shops in there some people are attracted to it and it's all walkable I think we have to be careful if we're moving down the roof 15 corridor that we don't end up with sprawl that's something we would want to be very careful of because the only way to really prevent that is due regulation that we may not have the teeth for if we're not careful so however we rewrite those regulations we just want to be really careful that we don't allow that to just become kind of a spread out bunch of shops or something like that once we walkable, once we liveable interesting but I agree that there's an opportunity here to really think about it and plan like planners should plan sounds like town's in good hands well it's a good group it's like you work well together Mike you have any questions for them? I don't have any questions Mr. Chairman but I wanted to I wanted to thank Ned, Jonathan and Joshua for their service I also wanted to echo having served on the planning commission myself for six years that there is a learning curve and I'm just very appreciative of the fact that these three gentlemen want to step up for another term I think that institutional knowledge that they gain with every application that they're looking at just can't do anything but help Essex grow in a smart and in a controlled manner so I thank you gentlemen very good thank you also be nice to find a way to have better communication maybe between the planning commission and like the energy committee I had a breakfast with the chairs of many of the committees and that's one of the things that they were hoping to be able to find a way to be able to work across the different ones to find that synergy together and maybe be even more powerful but I know it's a lot of hours that you put in not just at meetings the audience can be a little bit rough on you at times and you get paid nothing for this this is the goodness of your heart for the community we appreciate that most you know a lot we really do so thank you any other questions or comments so you heard the spiel about the executive session right and how we do all that so you know the so we have package deal too you know nice try you know actually this worked nicely because you get to kind of see that synergy together so it's very good so Josh, Ned and Jonathan thank you again so much we'll be we'll be in touch okay and last but certainly not least we have Greg Morgan who's the chair of the economic development commission has been there for how many years Greg? right and who works who works tirelessly for our community I'd agree with that so welcome, thanks for coming here tonight and you're up for reappointment and just tell us how things are going and what you think we need to know about actually I brought notes so well, not exactly but so yeah I've served for over 20 years and I've been the chair for quite a while we have a great commission now there's five of us as you know since you've appointed them all and it's a nice it's a good balance the thing we're working on and one of the pieces that one of the things on my list is sort of the messaging issue for Essex how we frame who we are and present ourselves so we're working on that and found a great resource in town who has a significant GIS experience and she's working with us to try to do some things that are beyond my digital IT abilities but I can try to follow along so you'll see some of that as we move forward great and we're also trying to align with the state's messaging on reaching out so you've all seen the campaigns to attempt to attract young families and we actually believe as a commission and talked about this that's one of our target audiences young families perhaps with children and we'll try to promote that as we go along and try to align our message with the states who are adopting the same same effort or similar efforts so we'll see where that goes but that's what we're working on now and I would just say on the large company front I think it's great to see the economy having changed over the last three or four years we're seeing activity in Sand Hill that we've never we haven't seen for well now we get to the over 20 years that I've been watching pretty closely and there's a fair amount going on there right now some of it quite visible some of it below the surface I think but we should see more activity and larger employers many are expanding building warehouse base that kind of thing and we're hoping that others will find their way so with an active developer out there the other piece that I know I've worked on and our commission has certainly been supportive of and I've worked on too is the notion of innovation and co-working that idea of the small companies and the start up so we're actually up to our ears now and trying to recruit for road pitch which several of you have attended I think July 30th this year and we've coordinated this year with LaunchVT trying to because they have attracted a whole lot of more companies than they could accommodate I think they had eight pitching in their recent competition but we're talking to some of the others who haven't pitched so but they're credible and LaunchVT has been helpful to us around recruiting so that's good same same time same basically same place same story but of course different companies and it's always different so be fun to see and the other thing that I think is perhaps most significant two things have happened one you may have seen Accelerate Essex moved and they've moved to EarthLogic which when I first heard this might happen I got a little nervous but I think if we can energize the EarthLogic building and the owner and EarthLogic principal Chris Kessler seems quite committed to having more activity in his building because right now it hasn't been full although he does an incredible amount of things there so that's one important piece that I think is going to end up being a plus although it's a work in progress the other thing though is that the Essex Hub for Women in Business have spun off now three additional co-working spaces I find this astounding tremendous energy and so it's Main Street Studios which is a co-working space for sort of artists and crafts people and that's over the quilt shop I think then Words and Pictures is across the street and that came out of Steamfest last year and Words and Pictures is a collaborative of cartoonists and self-publishers who knew? I had no idea there was a market for this or interest in this and a terrific young woman is running it so we'll see how that works but they've leased out space in conjunction with the Hub with a successful GoFundMe right, yeah, they did a Kickstarter and raised six grand so six thousand, yeah astounding and then the final one is there's going to be a wellness cooperative next door it's where Mark Keller's offices were if you know I mean sort of upstairs and that same on the same side as the farmers market is now in Main Street Studios anyway that effort is evolving so that's three collaborative co-working shared spaces for innovators I don't know where that goes but I think that's a terrific sign pretty tightly clustered too and frankly we're also now talking given all the changes not that we've done that much but you've seen activity out at the town center already as it's being rebranded, repositioned and we think there's potential room out there for co-working opportunities too but we'll poke away at that as time goes on so that's what I have a lot of exciting stuff Greg yeah, that's great questions for Greg, anybody Elaine? First of all I want to commend you and all of the members of the commission your activity level over the last two or three years has been challenging and you're everywhere I look and promoting Essex and promoting our businesses and it's really impressive and there's not a lot of towns in Vermont that have economic development commissions and you guys are really doing an excellent job so thank you for that I would like to ask you Greg what your opinion is on what you need from this board you know I've gone to a meeting or two of yours I've had conversations with most of the members of your board what you need what do you need from us well I think look we get if we we have this communication channel we developed we're sending you more advisories a couple of years ago than we are now but I think you'll see more of that we have a way to communicate with you I think I mean in my opinion it makes sense for Essex to devote resources both volunteer and staff to economic development I think you guys hear that I mean I know the board hears it and I also realize there are realities to running a town so but I think there's interest and we're we're interested in more people not less thinking and engaging on this issue so we're glad to keep sharing and if we see things that we want you to know we'll sort of send you send you a note right okay anybody else I think sorry I just want to remind the board that when we had we had homework about what kinds of committees we wanted our boards jointly to work on and one of the things the committee that I really think is desperately needed is some conversation with the EDC and both the select board and the trustees on economic development in the entire town I think it's a golden opportunity that we're not quite ready to take advantage of yet and I really would like there to be more cohesion and conversation about where we want to go in the future what kind of businesses we want here how we want to support our local businesses that are already thriving thanks to so I really think that we are at an opportunity we're at a point where we need to kind of seize this great opportunity and make it even better so I would really like to see someday in the near future some dedicated time talking amongst the commission and the two boards and possibly even the planning commissions about economic development in the town it's really important right maybe getting eventually to the one planning commission so that that'll kind of all be part of that absolutely yeah can I just add to that that I think one of the things we did two or three or four five years ago is inviting and getting buy in from Robin Pierce so we have staffing for our commission from both the village and the town and given how planning and zoning is set up that's actually pretty helpful and it allows us not I mean we think of ourselves as dealing with the town as a whole and it's great to have Robin in place too along with Greg and talking with Greg I think I'd love to hear your enthusiasm for startups getting a lot of feedback there Scott maybe give us a little bit of why you go after startups versus everybody wants to go get Amazon but now we don't want to go get Amazon but we're going after startups and we're going after smaller growing some individuals whose companies are growing maybe give a little taste on that and then the types of spaces that they are looking for and what we have available yeah well that's a great question actually the no it is the spaces part was the best question but why startups and I think most of you know in Vermont we're not actually after Amazon I mean that's not going to happen and what we've seen is that if you incubate small companies some of them take off and create jobs and revenue and vitality you can see that in I mean the history is pretty neat I mean you see Ben and Jerry's you see some of the was sort of the flagship of that but then you have the more recent ones dealer.com and well I mean there's a long list of them but they're the large employers a lot of them are homegrown and the trick is to grow them it's a way to create jobs and build infrastructure and our tax base so that's the idea and we look for the Essex Hook on all these so ideal when we do road pitch we're always like you know can we get somebody who's interested in being in Essex or lives in Essex or went to Essex High School I mean I'll take any hook and that's helpful in terms of space this is and I'm not sure quite what we do about this but there really isn't if you look at Winooski we don't have the older buildings that are convertible to industrial space or commercial space that you see in some places so we literally had one company saying yeah we really want to be in a barn with a view of the mountain and we're a tech company and that's what we want to be in Essex and the problem is if you start looking around it's hard to find a spot that's zone commercial with a view of the mountain that you can build a barn on I know that's a specific and I think that issue's been resolved but we don't have some of those older space that I see around and Saxon Hill is going to build out for the most part that I believe because of the RPDI requirements it's industrial but it's also different and there's an advantage I would just mention the mountain biking piece too as this board thinks about what we do with mountain biking our commission believes it's possible that becomes a hook for businesses that can offer their employees a world-class mountain bike right after work or before work for that matter or during lunch hour so attention to that issue is we think important and I know that actually the trails committee and the village bike walk committee both may agree with that maybe issues there just one last thing one of the things we're trying to do is go out and meet the business community small, medium, and large I have met with global foundries to start a relationship I have the beginnings of talking to revision military who was just recently in the news and through some collaboration with the economic development they are providing me with some backup materials and then also questions to ask them to be more business specific in that relationship so we are certainly using their value and so I thank you for the service and for your committee because I know they want to do a lot not everybody sees every little piece in our 36 square miles we get enough and we keep it going and I like the biking thing because when I was in Wisconsin and they promoted that within 10 minutes you could be on a top 10 world trail of hiking and what not and people like that and companies believe that we just following on that note the Vermont league of cities and towns has their economic development conference on June 14th one of the sessions will be about the community of Burke and how they have leveraged kingdom trails to improve their community improve their businesses and improve their home values so you might want to go to that we are going to that several staff members are going to that it is way down it is in Killington we have to be back that night I'm in the same boat as you sorry depending on how you vote on the van you might be in the same van any other questions you heard the spiel right about the yeah again you've been on this for a number of years and chair and I know we're in Rotary together and I do get a chance to talk to you at least weekly I'm always thinking about what you can do for Essex we really appreciate that and the rest of the commission as well thanks Mike the disembodied voice just as sincere have a great night we're going to keep moving here we've got business item 5 C now which is a waste water allocation request for 70 Essex way and we have welcome Dennis good evening both this item and the next item I told Erin and Annie to stay home I'd covered for them tonight no sense having the whole crew here tonight I think it's fairly straightforward under a sewer allocation policy if an applicant comes in more than 125% of their current capacity it's not approvable by the manager it's got to go to the board so we're here to request to approve additional waste water capacity for an additional 1,700 gallons per day for black rock basically they're taking over the northern lights area and back there where there was the climbing thing that's now going to become part of that operation which is this continuum of elderly housing moving into other facilities that are active in one complex there is capacity in the sewer system to handle and that's not an issue there's significant capacity available they do have to purchase the additional allocation and the request is that the select board approve it okay any questions for Dennis can you just help me understand because this is new to me so you have a map of sewer allocation for the entire area out there and so when a development needs additional allocation that comes off of the other properties in the entire area no there's there's a very long history when we actually got our grant back in the early 80s there was a strong commitment on the part of the state planning office to require we're one of the last three communities to get major grants Williston, Essex, Essex Junction and they're all tied together and the biggest concern then was the same concern now and that is keeping the accelerated growth out of the rural area and so when we did the wastewater system and we looked at the town of Essex specifically they required us to have an allocation policy so that we would allocate the reserve that we had and would stay within a sewer core so the sewer ordinance and the sewer core says thou shalt not go beyond this core and that tracks with zoning the zoning is if you're R2 or higher you're in the sewer core if you're rural conservation you're outside the sewer core if you're AR1 and the zoning and the sewer core go together and my discussion with the planners and with the boards in the past is if you want to change that you change the zoning and the sewer core follows it isn't sewer core first it's really a question of what do you want to have as a land use pattern so we've got this boundary within that boundary we have purchase from the village capacity our current capacity is about current usage is around 500,000 it will vary now within that map we have allocated users we've also actually had people purchase who haven't built yet or in the process of building so if you take that 500,000 gallons and add about another 80,000 gallons out there that we've allocated where people have actually paid their connection fee and they're going through the process of building 100,000 gallons a day the rest of the map shows based upon maps that go back to the the 80s with current zoning what an approximate usage might be for that particular parcel there's a large portion of the town that's not served by sewer down off a Sandhill Road Forestdale Development the west end of town it's very expensive we've tried in a couple areas to build sewers to make it more affordable and it's never met the muster of either the board or the users to pay for it and a lot of those are on large lots we have a few problem areas with small lots but they're managing but a large of the Sandhill area for example, large lots sandy soil septic systems that can be replaced on site for all intents and purposes so we've not reserved capacity for everything in that core for sign capacity periodically we do a study to look at where are we with that that study is now on my desk it's on Aaron's desk too we've both read it once we've got to read it a second time to go through it the study was done by Hamlin Engineering because Hamlin designed the source system actually I designed the source system when I was working for Hamlin so there's a track between their records and then we went into the allocation policy and everything else so we're looking at that now we have capacity within the source system and opportunities arise for example and I don't have the exact number but I'll give you an approximate number where the solar panels are going off of River Road that was destined for development it's in the sewer core 20,000 gallons per day because the original owner had planned to put an industrial commercial zone in there well it's now going to be solar panels so there's 20,000 gallons a day that no one's going to be pushing toilets to solar panels so that now becomes available capacity and there's additional available capacity if you add up all the numbers on the map there is additional capacity that the select board can utilize when requests come in at this point we're not at the point of robbing Peter to pay Paul so to speak we don't have to do that if we get to that point that's a totally different discussion and that's why the sewer study has to be done every four or five years the sewer system is very vibrant has the ability to handle significant additional flows it doesn't mean you don't or it does mean you have to replace some pumps you have to do some other stuff the system is designed to handle a lot more than even 1.1 million gallons per day in terms of pipe size and layout so the question really becomes ultimately how do you allocate that capacity what is already out there that's kind of indicated for empty lots and then what hasn't been allocated out and how would the select board what's the select board's intent to utilize this in this particular case Blackrock is already connected we call it the map so they're already shown as being connected they were built, they were approved it's done then they acquired the northern lights parcel adjacent to them and so they want to expand their usage so it's not like on the map there was capacity set aside for that because it was a rope climbing facility an exercise facility so it was that type of facility it was in the sewer core it was a community user who has capacity who wants to expand it's a logical expansion to do that for that business or in this case for housing but each time it goes over that if it's 125% it will get a lot of cases where there's 500 gallons and they want to add two more seats to a barbershop or something like that you never see those because they're below that limit but the ones that come in they're above that number in the ordinance right now have to come to the board and that's why this one is before you it's a long good explanation other questions there's certain assumptions that are made as far as gallons per day for usage so it's like 100 gallons per day in a multi unit building and a single home I think is about 200 yes do you have do you revalidate those assumptions and see how accurate there are we've done it a couple times and every time we've done it we've validated those numbers within reason so if you take a single family house you could have a two bedroom house you could have a four bedroom house you could have a four bedroom house where the kids have all moved out and only mom and pop are still living there and so those numbers will change from time to time so you can't go by bedrooms you look at the flows you can look up we used to categorize properties by EU so you could look up every EU which was a single family house of one and you could add up the flow now we've got to go back into the data to say to the finance department give us all the single family billings we can back that out and we have done that the last time we did that it came out to be like 212 gallons per day it's 200 gallons a day we look also at apartments because apartments tend to not have gardens tend to not water lawns tend to not do other things that required are smaller usually and we ran those numbers that was back in the 100 gallon per day range have we done it probably in the last five years no so as part of the study that Hamlin has done we're going to look at that as well to make sure that those numbers are in the right right range he's probably more important as you get closer to the end of the allocation when you start to get down to the point where you're saying hey we're running kind of short of capacity I mean we thought when we built the sewer system in the mid 80s that in 20 years 2004 we're going to be at capacity we're 2018 and we're still only using about 50 to 60% of our wastewater flow one caveat that's based on normal domestic waste you get two or three breweries move into town with high BOD level because you not only look at flow at the treatment plant you look at organic load so and we've had some users in town fairly large companies that we've encouraged to come in but we've also had to go back to require pre-treatment because of the high organic load they place on the system again a little bit off the topic but we have developed a system whereby a small brewer comes in we want them to come in it's good business hopefully it's good beer but what you want to do is encourage them to come in but require them to pay a surcharge until they reach a certain capacity so if they come in they pay the surcharge we're using that money to kind of offset their extra BOD load at the plant but at some point they're going to do one or two things go out of business which happens move which happens or expand and if they expand in town then they have to build a pre-treatment system and that's fairly expensive so we're trying to establish a threshold from the economic development side that says we'll let you come in early but if you're going to really build you're going to have to put a treatment system in in advance and we follow that pretty carefully we don't have that many breweries yet we have a few I heard from someone this winter who lives on cemetery road which I believe is in the sewer but they've never gotten sewer and I think she said it was 48 years she's been waning so do you check in with the residents when you do these sewer studies to just be like we do sewer but it would cost you 15,000 do you check with them or not really we've done it more from the other end there aren't that many out there I think that may still show up on our capital plan as a project but in the same way with the area over on pinecrest that's substantial it's very expensive and the system is set up that if you want sewer you pay the cost to extend the sewer and it is a net range of 12 to 15,000 dollars a lot to put in sewer and in some of those cases if you have to today replace a septic system you may pay that same amount the problem is on cemetery there's four houses and so if all four system failed at the same time we'd have sewer what happens if one fails and they've got to pay 10,000 to replace their septic system they're going to go ahead and do that because they can't pay the 40 to 60 it takes to put the sewer up the street and they can't convince other neighbors that it's time to do it that's been the dilemma so we've had a few residential expansions but not many that's the problem we've been in I move that the select board grant BlackRock LLC wastewater allocation in the amount of 8.5 EU 1700 gallons per day for the proposed Essex residences to be located at 70 Essex way with the following condition the applicant will be required to purchase the approved sewer allocation second any further discussion about approving that 8.5 EU allocation for BlackRock I have a document here that has to be signed by the town manager if designated representative for this particular motion so we pass that to Evan well I'm assuming that's part of this because it's included in our packet so any further discussion all those in favor of increasing that for BlackRock to 8 additional 1700 GPD you signify me saying aye aye motion passes unanimously thank you Dennis thank you everybody while we have you up there Dennis we're going to move on to 5D and that's participation in municipal road grants and aid program the memo that accompanies this bottom line is last year the state provided grants to communities we elected not to participate and one of the reasons we did that was it was tied to some of the state designated areas on these hydraulically connected segments and a number of communities were concerned about that it also was tied to class 4 roads and a lot of other issues this year they decided to come out with a program where the state wants to accelerate what's done with improving the lake and this was a means to get state money out quickly to communities they've changed the requirement now where they're much we can essentially decide and we've already worked on that with them which areas in town are hydraulically connected the village can also but the village grant is much smaller it's about 3,000 in change ours is 34,000 I think I've come to a couple meetings and said we're up to our neck with stormwater grants well we are but this is the type of grant where it's you don't really have to apply it's like they're giving you money we do have to apply but it's free money almost free money to do what we're going to be doing anyway which is working on sections of the gravel roads so a section of gravel road that we would work on this summer anyway instead of using town funds to buy the gravel put the stone in the ditch we can do it under this program and end up having costing us 20% match so this is a win-win to go after it I have the application to be signed here that they didn't give enough space but they said duly authorize representatives and since we didn't participate last year I'm assuming it's the board the actual document if you do approve it to sign that but they're easy conditions putting up a sign to indicate where the money is coming from and a series of other things but the request is that you go ahead and have us apply for this and use those funds they needed us to validate those they needed us to validate those in prior years we couldn't agree with all their hydrologically connected segments they did theirs through a GIS mapping program using an office in Montpelier we did it with the Regional Planning Commission and actually field work going out and looking at the various areas and so it got to be very complicated in terms of what they were tying us to they released those restrictions so at this point it makes sense to take the money and use it on something we're going to have to do anyway right and that grants for 34,719 and 20% match that means we need to find $44 and where does that that would come from the capital stormwater account that we've set up in the town between the town and the village and that's the one we looked at where when you look at the if all the grants we got today had to be built today we would go broke but the truth of the matter is those grant projects take three to four years to get to a point from conception to actual construction and so when we did that and provided that to you when we did the capital plan we showed a five-year costing out of when those grants would come in for construction money and as long as we continue to put money away at the same rate we've been putting it away we are more than solvent over that five-year period so we have room to afford this within the financial package okay, other questions? I just have a motion unless there are questions I would move the select board authorize the public works director to sign the letter of intent to participate in this wall roads grants in a program Thank you, Ari. Do I have a second? Second. Any further discussion? Yeah, just looking for a clarification because the the motion authorizes the public works director to sign but Dennis, you mentioned... My recommendation would be to actually have the board that says duly authorize representatives that's more than one person so my assumption is rather than jeopardize getting the grant if it was signed by the board it would probably be more appropriate so that is a change Do you want the board chair and the town manager or what do you mean by that? I would recommend that the select board sign sign the letter of intent I'll accept that as a friendly moment I did Very good. Any further discussion on allowing that grant to go forward? Hearing none, all those in favor see that five is saying aye. Aye. Thank you. Another unanimous approval there you're on a roll Dennis while you're up there we have the next item which is 5e That's mine Oh, yes it is I can state this question Ricky, you want to join? We brought another friendly face to the crowd Rick Jones from The Village First, as a prelude you all have the memo, you all have the documents I want to command Rick Jim Jutras, Dennis Aaron, and many others for their work over the last couple years on alignment and some of the work on consolidations that they've done and their consolidation is kind of a the wrong term but they have started to work together coordinate together and do projects together but they're not consolidated but they are aligning and their agreement the original agreement expires on July 1, 2018 so Dennis took it upon himself along with Rick and others to start meeting about what is going to be necessary over the next couple years to continue that work and as the boards have come together and said they want to do one community, one government that process has to go on inside of public works both at the village level and at the town and then in the other departments as well so we put together a draft of the extension of the Memorandum of Understanding we sent it to the town attorney and to the village's attorney they have both opined and edited the document that you see here the thing of probably the most significant other than asking for five years which could be less depending upon what actions are taken by the board and village board and select board is item number three item three in this agreement other tasks actually spells out the work over the next several years that we believe the public works committee and others should be working on to get ready for a full consolidation the committee and the departments will be coming back many times to the select board and to the village board with those work products to be discussed, adjusted agreed upon maybe agreed upon maybe not agreed upon and brought back and so this is basically just a continuation of your original Memorandum with deliverables and with that these two gentlemen and I will be happy to answer your questions okay we'll open up to questions for the board looks like Elaine can get it here I do have a question about part three when the committee on the public works consolidation to date met made recommendations that last summer that's right and we presented findings and the boards both accepted them one of the recommendations was to have all of the employees in one agreement and I had understood that that might not be a thing that we could do but I'm seeing on item three here a hierarchical chart describing employees positions in a fully consolidated public works department and job descriptions and so is there is there is part of your considerations for this going to include an agreement or reconfiguring existing agreements I'm not sure if I'm treading on labor discussions I shouldn't be saying in this forum but I just I'm curious about whether there's an issue there well we have union agreements and things and you cannot violate them because you merge or consolidate so you have to work with them I think what we want to do is what does the animal look like you know forget you know who's where but what's the best structure to use our assets that we currently have and by the way some of our best assets are the brains and that are sitting right across from the table and the people that we gave the night off for you've already any Jim Jutris Jamie in the village department you have Aaron you have so many good people and what does that structure look like so if you brought both of them together what would it look like who reports to who what buildings are they in where are they going to be located and then how do we start working together both in capital planning and equipment processing and things of that that's just planning of what it would look like and then ultimately as you start thinking about it we have people who are going to retire so what positions do we need to refill which ones would we adjust it may be not fill that position but go to where we think we need some more presence for instance neither the village nor the town has anybody who does property maintenance we do not have like a building superintendent we have no one we ask our librarians to watch their buildings we not to make fun of librarians we ask we've had a lot of challenges lately especially at Brown Hell we do have challenges we ask our assistant manager Greg Duggan to watch this building and as a person who used to do that and learned a lot more than anybody should about HVAC systems we all have busy jobs so we don't really have anybody dedicated to any of the buildings both village and town so as people maybe retire or we have positions available or the ability to acquire some skill sets in our workforce what's that going to look like and where does it fit so that's a lot of what we'll be doing one of the things that we've done just as a background what Evan said is Ricky and I and we convened the public works community Evan, Greg Rick Hamlin Jim everybody we've had a couple of sessions work sessions and I think there's maybe and I'll say it out loud there's maybe a mistaken impression that we're one family yet looking towards that and we've done a lot but you start to get into the weeds and you find there's a lot of things that we have to work on so the question that I raised with the group and it's kind of a prelude to this is where are we now and you can think of IT you can think of communications you can think of buildings you can think of water sewer funds you can think of capital all of those things I mean there's all of them out there so where are we now that's maybe within buildings what ultimately would if we were going to run this as a aligned complete community what would you need to basically maintain your buildings that's outside and inside and I don't have an answer yet but I'm saying that's what would it ultimately look like and that's I think what Evan said what are intermediate steps that could be taken and what are the short term things we could do along the line to get to a point where if the decision was to merge the decision is not to merge you still got a better community because you're operating together in a lot of areas if you do decide to merge then it's easy to kind of flip the switch turn the lights on and things are working if you get to the time you flip the switch and you haven't worked out all those details you're in trouble and so I think that's what we're trying to do and then what are the impediments what are the problems what are the attitudes that hold the ultimate solution back what's preventing us from getting to that alignment thing and time frames are different things it might be very different depending upon the opportunities that we get in terms of retirements or whatever else I mean there may be if we had a person retire in a particular position and there was a way to work it you know, it's still being village employees towns still being town employees but you could work a way to have a buildings person that maybe did winter sidewalk plowing I don't know but you know I'm saying some way to look at that you might not have to go to the budget to to find the money to hire a buildings person you might be able to utilize that existing workforce and what do we do on our long-term super to promote from within do we hire off the street at the lower level to get to that if you're thinking not just in terms of what do I need for tomorrow or for next winter storm in progress how many trucks do you need how many everything the intent was to come up with basically what I would call a vanilla document that it is that moves you towards that solution where you want to go but provides that opportunity for the manager and us as he needs us to come back and say here's what we're doing in progress here's the next step here's what we think we want to do to get to that point and to bounce those kind of things because ultimately those decisions rest at the policy makers not they don't rest with Ricky or me at a much higher level they would get enabled through the budget process yes you know we've started talking about process and procedure you know if Ricky's guys come over to do a project with Dennis who's rules are we doing well if the rules and the process were more aligned we wouldn't be asking that question they would know whether you go there this is how you do it when you go over there this is how you do it when you come over here this is how you do it and they're not that dissimilar but they do have some quirks and our systems and our equipment are a little bit different we have different things but I'll give you for instance I've talked to these gentlemen did anybody notice that in the memorial day parade there was town trucks and village trucks blocking the street that wasn't there well I'm sorry but there weren't and by the way they were all bright and shiny and they were all in the right places and with a good plan instead of having barricades that took forever to set up and take down in traffic we used our dump trucks and we also used them for security reasons and it was smooth and the guys working together in tandem on the same radio channel it wasn't for show it was because there was a rational reason to do that resulting in more efficiency because we didn't have the trucks either we didn't have that many trucks Ricky didn't have to use his crew every year to spend another two hours my whole crew works on barricades so the extra stuff that we got added on that we didn't have the manpower so we talked about it the side benefit is it got to show off the equipment and he got those big trucks in three or five corners and my employees are working under our union agreement under our guidelines the village is working under its association agreement and its guidelines but we work together and nobody's looking to say how come and the more that we communicate and work together the more projects we realize we could be doing together and the more the more savings there is know in the knowledge of what grants are out there what assets we have in house already that we don't have to go out and get that we already have and the taxpayers are already paying for and the hard part of it is from our perspective is at some point we probably need to document what the savings were quite honestly there were savings inherent we know there were savings inherent and it's a pain in the butt to do but if the residents want to know are you becoming more efficient yes we did here's example X, Y, Z whenever possible that's another piece of this where are we going to document those kind of things so we have that information and as you've heard me say I don't know if we'll ever truly document everything about did we save money because as you guys realize things change over time the regulations change over time we have needed to have you know with state regulations and federal regulations you need people on staff whether you hire them or you hire it out those types of things a new grant program comes along and all of a sudden we're doing certain things because they're going to give us money for something we really needed to do anyway we have probably needed to adjust our workforce for what is needed to be done and haven't done it but now we're doing it so did we add a position did we save a position or did we always need the position for those quantifications but watching these guys work together and start thinking together and start finding not inventing reasons to be together but finding out where they can make a phone call to be better and more efficient it's been very nice to see and to have Ricky here after eight o'clock this is going to cost me a lot Mike do you have any questions or comments no I'm good Mr. Chairman thank you so this is really kind of information for now we don't want to sign this tonight I take it I thought this was going to go on the joint meeting agenda this is going to go on the joint meeting but we wanted any comments or direction it will go to the village board next and then to the joint for discussion and hopefully approval you'll be okay with it alright thank you both thanks for being here Rick thank you see you Rick so you've been an extra 15 tomorrow alright we're going to move on to 5F now and that's negotiation and use of Susie Wilson Road corridor impact funds be interesting to understand why this is an executive session item the biggest issue was that we've been there's a personal property on Susie Wilson Road that's been sitting idle for a very very long time and the biggest issue with that whole piece of property has been traffic and the impact on the intersection we've also been working with the state to implement the Susie Wilson corridor project which is that 7 to 10 to 15 million depending upon where it goes down the road well intersection the state's project is 5 to 7 years out and we have levels of service F right now on two turning movements that conflict with each other the left turn on Susie Wilson Road the morning is not near so bad the morning is works the evening the left turn on Susie Wilson Road into the village conflicts directly with the left turn from cars coming from Burlington in and those two conflicting movements use up your time on the intersection and so if you don't do something in the next 5 years if we don't do something that situation is going to get worse so we have impact funds for Susie Wilson Road those impact funds are contained in I don't know if they're really part of the capital plan but that's where they sit and they're enough to be able to afford us some fixes we did not do the study but an applicant came in to work with that particular parcel we've been 6 months and probably 3 or 4 reviews between myself and a traffic engineer that we hired to help us Lameron Dickinson to look at that traffic study first one was a definite no go we had some issues with it, significant issues they went back we've been meeting with the planning department of community development at the same time because this applicant has kind of done a concept sketch to show what they would like to do it's a use that would impact not really impact significantly the AM traffic but the PM but it could have an impact on the PM traffic because it's already so bad so their engineer went back with our suggestions and looked at what could be done in that 5 to 7 year period we've got 2 things going we could make that ourselves using all our impact fees and fix that and bias that 5 to 7 years you could use some of the developer impact fees which would enable that development to come in the door the problem is that actual project hasn't fully come to the planning commission yet as a project and we have to staff public works has to do a review letter and if we provide additional funds to fix the problem the review letter is going to say don't approve the project which is crazy where if we combine both their funds and our funds we still have residual funds left over in our account but it will allow us to do that so the intent was to provide a little more detail on specifics during the executive session and to get the board to enable us to negotiate using some of our funds and some of their funds so when we do our review letter we can essentially say we would be able to match some of those funds to solve that problem otherwise it puts us in kind of a dilemma not knowing if we can get at our own funds because they're really funds that fall within really your purview to release or not but if the development doesn't come in and you don't do it we would we would still want to have if that development were to not pass planning commission muster I would still want to implement this because it buys us that five to seven years with what needs to go in to our system it's not what we're doing for another party it's our system that needs to be fixed two of the signals need radar so we can better tell what's coming we need to isolate the signals there's three signals that need to work together 15 in Susie Wilson Road the lowest signal and the Pinecrest signal but right now two of those signals work together and we need to have them work both together and separate because if they work separate you can free up the timing that you need to make things work and the controller boxes and the controller boxes it could be an open session if the board were to decide that you would allow us to utilize that money then we can utilize that money but still go through that process negotiation so is the intent to preserve some confidentiality of the business that wants to go in there so that we can have the discussion and feel more comfortable to understand what's going on and all of a sudden oh that's what we approved or alternatively we could just improve it without that knowledge I didn't want to presume what was going to occur because the actual application hasn't come in the door yet but you need to know at least maybe more of the background of what's going on with that application you've reviewed it a few times but it hasn't gone to the planning commission to get it set up so that if they do and they will be coming in that we can essentially write a clean review letter that says we can't participate in this process and here's what we're going to do so it's sort of a real estate discussion then because this yeah, yeah I think it's without disclosing the use or whatever on and I just really didn't want to do that in the open session I didn't want to prejudice the decision or prejudice the decision that the planning commission might have to make okay you have a contract issue as opposed to real estate because you'd be entering into a contract with the company if you decide to go forward with this okay so it's a real estate issue but for executive session purposes you'd be entering the contract everybody comfortable with that okay, great, yep thank you Dennis for clearing that up, appreciate it okay then we're going to move on to 5G and that's approval of the FYE 18 human services funding and we got that package that was a thousand pages I think back in April Elaine and we had a lot of time to review it and I want to thank Andy again for putting that kind of matrix together to help us kind of score things, very, very helpful so you want to I just wanted to say ahead of time my girlfriend is recently hired by one of the companies that's requesting funding I don't think it's going to have an influence on me being here but I wanted to bring it up just in case you wanted me to leave the room or anything she has quite risen to CEO yet I was comfortable with Greg's name thank you for the full disclosure we greatly appreciate that well in your packet is a cover memo and a spreadsheet for my recommendations I think there are a couple of ones that some members have individually expressed their opinions on this particular year we actually had two new submissions one is Easter Seals and the other one was the Essex Historical Society and we actually had more pardon? four new ones? on Dot's Place on Dot's Place Easter Seals the Essex Community Historical Society the Vermont Family Network is also new I apologize and so with that we also had more requests than funding when I first made we were talking with the Essex Historical Society they are actually in the town's budget they do get a small amount of money I think they get like a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars from us they are looking to get some greater insurance which is a cost to them for their board members they take in funds, they have a collection they have a fiduciary responsibility and then the town does some internal work for them on their bills we don't really think it's appropriate for us to do some of their postage and some things anymore we don't do that for anybody else we were looking to separate those activities and at the time said well there is at the time when we had this conversation we thought we had a little more money than we did total allocation so that's one thing with them and then when we did this we took the total amount of money and what was over and did some mathematics and basically lowered everybody by the same a percentage to get to the totals where we see the actual amount in the fund to the actual amount being given out and then of course again with the historical society people have reached out to me a couple of people don't feel that they should be in this grant fund and then there are a couple of questions so with that I open it up the discussion to the recommendation and I will accept any changes you make because it's really just my recommendation as in been here three months the only people that I'm familiar with a few of these people and let me go back one step inside your packet is an article how interesting timing is in life from that was in the Burlington Free Press about how the United Way is cut back on some of its funding and I would imagine some of these agencies are funded from United Way because they are probably the largest of funding sources to agencies such as these not to belittle the town of Essex in 140,000 but the United Way gives away is a clearing house for millions so with that thank you for going through and making the recommendations for all these comments on any of these concerns I see Irene first and probably Andy next I'm a lifetime member of the Essex Historical Society I just want to say that in case you think I should recuse myself for talking about their funding you're not going to personally benefit okay Elaine good Mike good and one of the things thank you and thank you for disclosing that I think in this maybe in this particular case if you don't personally benefit everybody knows somebody or is married to someone or in that respect and so I appreciate that but if you don't personally benefit from it I don't think there's a conflict and if there is money that if you decide not to give someone something what I would suggest is that we just go back to the formula where we took the total and whatever whatever you move we will reassign how we assigned it this way we'll just go back into the formula because we'll drive ourselves nuts moving $50 and $100 around Andy yeah so first I need to apologize for providing some misinformation in the email that I had sent out that ended up in the May 21 packet where I stated that we were actually $4,382 under requested I made the mistake of using the FYE 19 budget number rather than the FYE 18 budget number so instead of being too under requested we're actually over requested by $3,486 if you include the Historical Society which wasn't in the earlier information so I may have been the source of your thinking that you had extra time and the source of Travis spending a couple hours trying to figure out why his numbers didn't come out correctly but that's okay he learned a lot okay and then moving on if I can in 2014 there was a a committee that had been commissioned by the select board to review the funding process and that committee came up with a definition that was proposed for what human services are and I don't believe that the Essex Community Historical Society fits into the category of human services so I would be in favor of not providing that funding through this budget for the Essex Community Historical Society we could when we do the budget for FYE we could increase the budget and then the human service maybe it goes to the existing one that's what I would suggest so if we can make sure staff puts that on to remind us that definition with me at some point pardon I do have more thank you I'm sorry I didn't bring copies of the human service definition that was generated by the committee I can certainly make that I got it from Irene actually I'm glad to read it in the record after Andy's talking or I could read it in the record since I grew up what do you do that because then we could talk about you know we think that doesn't meet the criteria back when this was put together there was a proposal to go out with an RFP in fact we did go out with an RFP and I must mind understanding there was no responses came back from that at the time but the definition that was proposed was human services are organizations that serve to meet human needs and improve the overall quality of life of residents through knowledge, prevention remediation, direct service and improved accessibility, accountability and coordination of services social service programs and facilities include but are not limited to those that address transportation, nutrition, medical childcare and other rehabilitative services for persons with low incomes senior citizens children, disabled persons drug and alcohol abusers and persons requiring employment to eliminate their need for public assistance so does everybody agree then that the doesn't fit that definition? I think it could be argued that they try to improve the quality of life of residents through knowledge because they want us to appreciate that so what's the board's feeling on that one? I would say we're not trying to eliminate any funding for them just trying to move it to a different source so we should have perhaps take it out of here and move it or have that discussion when the time comes for the budget to move. Is everybody okay with that? Mike, you okay with that? Yes, I am okay with that. I continue with my other my other suggestions here in the past when we've gotten new funding requests from new organizations we generally haven't taken money away from others we've underfunded the new ones in their first year with the intent to try to fund them fully in the next year so I would like to propose that we accept that we fully fund everyone's request with the exception of cutting out the Essex community historical society I would like to increase on Dott's place to 2500 so that it's equivalent to what we provide to the Essex Jericho Underhill Ecumenical Ministry food shelf so we're at least funding them at the same level that we're funding the food shelf that operates in Jericho and then I would like to reduce the Easter Seals from $3,000 to $1,514 the that organization or that the intent for this two years ago we funded Vermont vet to vet they went out of business they had funded them at the level of $1,000 so it's my intent I'd like to propose that we go to 1500 as a step up from the thousand that we funded two years ago to the other organization that serves veterans so this is for Easter Seals I'd like to propose that it increased to 1514 I was just giving the justification why I went I essentially cut them in half and gave them the extra $14 that ends up left over at the end what's the vet one that you said so there was two years ago we funded an organization called Vermont Vet to Vet throughout the business and so we funded them for $1,000 last year we funded the Blue Ribbon Mothers which is also another veterans organization they didn't ask for funding this year and so my intent for going from to 1500 from $3,000 is to put it closer to where we had funded veterans funding previously again the intent would be the next year that we could try to fully fund them to $3,000 so I may be going a long way to my explanation but that's why it's there so that's why I ask that then the other the other change would be to reduce the Vermont Family Network from 2500 to 1500 and I believe that gets us to the amount if you reduce the Vermont Family Network because they're a new a new requester and rather than as I said in the past we've gotten new requests we haven't generally haven't fully funded them I'd like to make an exception for Aunt Dot's place because I don't want to fund a Jericho food shelf at a higher level than we're funding one that's in our own town so I'm proposing a $500 increase to Aunt Dot's place a $1486 decrease to Easter Seals and a $1,000 decrease to Vermont Family Network based on their request and fully fund everybody else okay before we move on let's talk about that so the increase so the 500 increase to Aunt Dot is above what they asked for yes it is I'm not real comfortable giving people more than this before personally so I would not support that and I'm fine that the Jericho one is getting more if that's what they say they need as opposed to giving more if somebody hasn't requested it and has that been a policy or a practice that we under fund new ones I didn't recall that yeah that's generally what we've done every time that one new has come in we try to fund them fully but then they we short changes into the right word but we we give them what we can generally in the first year and then fully fund the next year it's been my memory right but if you're following that logic then Aunt Dot's place doesn't deserve any more than the 2000 not only did they not ask for more but they also weren't funded at all last year to give them a full 2000 that they did ask for given that they're new so shouldn't they be given like a thousand this year with your reasoning? I'm just saying they shouldn't be given not that they don't love them I just want to I don't want to be well I'm concerned about the fact that I have no connection on Dot's place I will confess I have been a past board member for the EJ, Ezek Jericho Underhill Ecumenical Ministry food shelf and I still do their purchasing from the food bank I still I've been doing that for 10 years or more but anyways so the my again my thought is that since we're giving we're giving Essex to a we're actually giving to it'll be three food shelves now because we're actually giving $5,000 to the Chittenden emergency food shelf but they do other things other than just provide food they also do job training and there are other other things that they do there but I guess I'm just saying that using Essex town tax dollars to $2,500 going to a food shelf that resides in Jericho I'm just I am proposing that we fund the food shelf in Essex to the same level if that's I mean most of these don't a lot of these don't reside in Essex but they do serve Essex so I don't have any problem having the money what if we fully fund those that have been funded in the past and we how much is left to be able to spread across the new four of them and could we do maybe the same percent of what's left you know what they're asking or what's left or something whatever the formula was that you had I'm just trying to be consistent in there Elaine I agree with Andy and I think I think it's okay well I think it's okay to increase the contribution to AntDots because outside of I think AntDots place is the only other entity on this list that actually serves only Essex actually I don't know that AntDots doesn't serve other Essex but it's based in Essex it's primarily Essex and I think it might be safe to say that the intent of the voters when they approve this is to this one percent is that emphasis should be on Essex and secondly because we're struggling with affordable housing and we're struggling with lots of other issues I think improving the contribution to AntDots is a good precedent we want to encourage this food shelf to stay in business I just think it's I would not have a problem with increasing the contribution to equal the amount that's being given to the non Essex the Essex Jericho under Helicovanico food shelf Do you have a comment on that or thought? Kind of wondering why Mark's place isn't being part of this discussion I mean if we're talking about they don't have a 501C3 Right I checked with them last Thursday and they don't have a 501C3 nor are they really applying for one I don't see them coming to us in the future at least near future I guess I'm still wondering about Andy's comment about typically underfunding first time requesters I typically don't typically I don't recall that being a philosophy of ours when we've considered this item in the budget I guess so I'm a little bit confused about that I don't I don't know that I feel that I don't know that I feel that on God's place just because it's an Essex food shelf and God bless them I think it's definitely needed but I don't I don't know that they necessarily have to you know we have to artificially bump them up to the Jericho Ecumenical one so I'm having a little bit of trouble following the logic moving the money around quite frankly I'm glad we're having this discussion because I'm having a little bit of trouble following the logic I'm just I don't like the practice of giving them more than what they say they they need that seems other organizations that we're underfunding could use that money because they're saying that that's the money that they really need from us so that's my view, Andy? we've done that in the past but we've given more than was requested in fact CHIPS never asked for $12,000 we move it up to there they actually lowered the request and we ended up giving them I believe the request in that year was probably $10,000 I don't remember Howard Center also we gave a residual money to we gave more money to because there was concern about the folks that are on the street that we joined that other program that has the other people right so there was some funding that was lost for that we ended up giving them more than they asked for so we have in the past done that it's not typical and also I agree with Mike we didn't have a policy where we underfunded the newcomers but it's been pretty much the practice from what I recall and I volunteer at a flu shelf and I do see the need in the community for that so I'm just trying to be consistent but you're right we have the president setting things that we've done that before Irene do you have a hint of what's next I'm sorry Irene excuse me which one do you volunteer for it was the heavenly food pantry the one that does not have a 501C3 so that they're not on our list nor will they be and I told them that that this money is available but one of the criteria is having a 501C3 designation and they don't have it so they're aware okay so and I volunteer I also volunteer at the Essex Charcoal Flu Shelf once a month I see the need but the question or the argument was being made that something is based in Essex and therefore it should get a president's well I'm hearing that the Essex Community Historical Society based in Essex Center is not getting money we're just moving that money to a different line we're not talking about it today age well I believe it's still headquartered in Essex County at least for the moment so I want to make just if we're going to talk about Essex based things let's personally I think that you have a pretty low weighting it should be does it potentially impact or impact Essex residents regardless of where they are Andy so I did some quick math and I think it comes out to 1838 per those if you give 1838 to Aunt Dot's Place Easter Seals and Vermont Family Network and fully fund the rest of them it adds up to 137086 1838 1838 for each of them and I'd be happy with that too what do you mean 1838 for each of them $1838 if you give that to Aunt Dot's Place Easter Seals and Vermont Family Network that adds up to the 137086 that we have to allocate yep I just did the math I just did the math I believe also gets it to where we are not giving people more than what they've asked so that probably solves just about everything it does except we're going to deal with historical society and the budget we'll have that discussion when the budget time comes so is everybody okay to handle it that way that Andy just articulated I think in the future would be nice if we had a live spreadsheet because I'm not sure you can modify what's on this screen but if we could you know Doug used to sit here with this laptop it would be really nice to modify that and have it short of the sort of Mike can you okay with what Andy proposed yes I can support that so Easter Seals Vermont Family Network we fully fund all the others and what's left is divided among those three to a total of 137086 yep just for the motion okay cool so is that a motion yeah okay I move that the select board allocate funds per human service funds per the fully fund all other sorry I'm going to start over yeah do over I move that the select board fully fund all of the human service funding requests with the following exceptions the reduce the sx community historical society to zero increase or no sorry reduce on dots place to 1838 reduce Easter Seals to 1838 and reduce Vermont Family Network to 838 for a total of 137086 second on that any further discussion about how we're funding the human service organizations all those in favor signify by saying I pass unanimously thank you all very excellent discussion that was well done very well done Sam do you want to copy the definition thank you okay we're going to move on to business item 5 H that's a discussion of pending litigation with council so we'll go into executive session to talk about pending litigation anything else you want to say about that that's all we need to say okay we're going to move on to business item 5 which is approval of the minutes of May 21st 2018 with select board corrections motion to approve the select board minutes of May 21st 2018 with select board member corrections second let's start on page 1 page 2 okay line 82 says the missile object talked about many ways actually on the tape I believe you just listed the tape and the videotape Elaine so could we say several ways or at least take out the word many I'm open to flexibility there line 82 yes about two thirds of the way through I would change the word many to other descriptive enough sure thank you anything else on 2 line 94 it says verbatim actually it was when there have been more pages not more verbatim so we're changing the word verbatim to pages and then it says there have been instead of less mistakes fewer additions thanks everybody go with that okay page 3 line 124 this is rounder giving an example of Mr. Lutz at an April meeting used yes used insert more thorough minutes as a backup for his position as opposed to reference for presentation anybody go with that mm-hmm anything else on 3 alright line 130 I don't know if this counts as adding too few words to be worth mentioning but I'll risk it this is rounder stated she's not willing to go with even shorter we're inserting the word even shorter minutes corrections as needed I think that's a bit much this this is where we were going with this conversation last time this this is not concise enough in my opinion I wouldn't agree to that change so you don't agree to the change to 130 I think it's irrelevant I think it's fine the way it is okay well keep 130 the same Mikey you okay with that yep anything else on 3 page 4 4 page line 177 doesn't make sense clarification of the town's jurisdiction on the town's liquor hearings and in fact the word towns on set 177 was not used on the the word towns on 177 so yeah that's what I asked for is clarification of the town's jurisdiction on liquor hearings is what it says on the video tape so you want to take out the word the word towns on 177 it doesn't make sense that you would clarify the town's jurisdiction on the town's liquor hearings because it was the VFW hearings we were talking about and the backstage pub hearings what you said was the liquor hearings on the tape so we don't want to be inserting words that weren't actually spoken right well this this this isn't a quote isn't in quotes because it was a quote it's in quotes because it's what's been changed but I don't care whether the second towns is in there the town's come out okay anything else on 4 and page 5 Irene surprise the end of line 240 I'd insert a period I checked this with Mr. T. it didn't make sense as written line 241 should say it is not a good practice giving money to people who have not requested it okay ready to carry that 241 okay page 6 okay all those in favor of the slick word minutes of May 21st 2018 with corrections see if I was saying hi hi okay so motion passes unanimously we're going to move on to consent to Jenna do I have a motion to approve the consent to Jenna please the slick word member comments I have a second second just comment the check warrants I think of we're of May 24th of May 20th minor thing any comments on the check warrants or the removing the ban so I don't know have we talked about how we're doing consent agenda now that and agreed this item B asks for our approval typically in the past we've always had that on the regular agenda if it's specifically asked for our approval or are we well you could keep it in the consent and I know how that works just that in our April organizational meeting where we established our rules of orderly conduct of business we didn't bring up the concept of changing how we handle the agenda and I just want to make sure that we actually have that discussion and not just do it and assume that we all understand what the intent here is and how it works so I guess I really don't understand your question you want to know how consent well I should be in consent I want to make sure that we all on the board who attended the organizational meeting and established our rules for business agree that this is the way we're going to do it going forward if that's what you're proposing if that's what's been proposed or what's been implemented I guess not understanding what's different so yes right so in previous agendas because this particular item specifically asks for select board approval of an action right in the past in our history at least that I've been involved in with the agenda item that specifically asks for select board approval that has always been in the regular business agenda always this is a new way of doing it for this board that I've seen I've never seen it done before where it's asking for approval I recognize that we approve I know the procedure that yes if it's in the consent agenda and any of us think that it should be done that's how the planning commission does it but we've never done it that way and we've never had a discussion about changing our process I just want to make sure that we're all okay with changing the way that we're operating let me just verify that my understanding is that we've had things in the consent agenda requiring approval but it was in the consent and we could talk about it or not but we all read it and we approve the consent and therefore we approve what was requested to be approved by the select board I think we've done that in the past many times if I may speak to the whole thought process behind this a little bit I can't think of a specific example you've had a big action item an action item in the consent agenda apart from check warrants sometimes we've talked about grant applications or something like that something that comes to mind that type of thing where public works is going to go after a storm water grant they put a memo in the consent agenda that they're going to go for it it gets approved as part of the consent agenda and then that's what they can submit as part of the grant application that yes the select board has seen and cut after that they haven't phrased it in a way of requesting the select board make a motion to approve the grant funding application for such and such project this was looking at and I thought maybe we had touched on it in a meeting but maybe it was internal discussions and I was getting hung up a little bit but part of we have a reading file now and so the reading file used to be consent agenda we had sort of talked about creating a reading file to ease up on a consent agenda so you're not just approving the fact that you've read certain things that are kind of more just informational which is what how consent had been used this is going to take a look at just is there a faster and easier way to get through the agendas and I heard your comments I haven't shared them with me today and looked through the rules and regulations for orderly procedure I didn't see anything about specifically consent agenda and how it's processed one way or the other either historically or going forward so the thought here was kind of just try this out try some stuff that staff thinks is relatively minor that can get approved by the select board and properly maybe that's part of the cause for concern asking for approval from the select board for a specific item but the reasoning I thought was that for these kind of what staff thinks is minor things to put on consent agenda just have an approval process as part of the approval of the consent agenda like the check warrants but with the option there being if you wanted to discuss it further pull it off and we can go through some more details so that's the reasoning that we had but that was that's what the thought process was every meeting we have check warrants in there those require select board approval and we sign them before the meeting starts so there's an action that we take and it's the thing that concerns me is it's a change of our procedures that we've not discussed that we don't necessarily make that needs approval but we put them in there so to continue on yeah you did the I'm just going to repeat myself if I say it again sorry I'll stop this strikes me also as something new especially because there's a cost attached to it and I would appreciate seeing things like this on the agenda because I think it pulls it out for the public to view as a business item as well as for us to draw our attention to it as opposed to something that's just sort of check it's been the past practice for as long as I can remember on the village trustees and as many many other boards I've served on consent agenda lumps together minor administrative things that might have lower costs or no costs that just require an awareness on the part of the board members and a blanket approval and the materials are in the packet so it's not like they're not being shared with the public and then board members have the option to pull them out for discussion at any time I I'm not surprised at all by this this is common practice all over the place so I don't have a problem with it I just want to see if Mike wants to Mike I can't see if your hand's raised or not so I'm going to go to you and see if you have a comment on this I don't I think I don't think we're giving anything short shrift by by changing it a little bit so I I agree with the change I really don't think I don't think I don't think there's as much here as we're making it okay thanks thanks Mike Andy I don't object to doing it this way object to the fact that we changed the process without having a discussion about it that's the thing I'm not object I agree with putting small items in the consent agenda and if I think it's a big deal at the beginning of the meeting when we're changing the agenda I can say hey I think this is when we had to talk about pull it out and put it in the agenda I agree with that what I don't agree with is changing how we how we conduct our business without having a discussion about it and it sounds like we were and we're having that discussion I'm in hold on I want Andy to finish I was just about to say the same thing we're having the discussion now Andy yeah yeah it would seem to me that we're fully vetting this now and I believe this is the second go round if I'm not mistaken so I certainly I certainly think there's been enough daylight shed on it that that we can't be accused of not having a discussion about it that's for sure I see the change is that we added a reading file and that took things out of consent agenda we've always had things that needed approval that were in the consent agenda more minor and we always had the right to be able to pull it out in the beginning if we want to and we still do so yeah have it first Andy thank you for that last clarification that that's fine we were talking about it's a minor issue in many respects except that it's a change not only for you but for us because I didn't know that there was an auction list and there was an activity where you guys specifically wanted to do things if this was just a fix a vehicle it wouldn't come to you at all because it's in my purview and we needed done the actual action was to take it off the auction list and hold on to it for a couple years but it is a change and the only way to actually do sometimes the change is to show what it is and then have the discussion so again I appreciate the clarity and the conversation and we'd be happy to do consent how the board feels about it but to have the conversation first it might as well have been on the agenda then but you have to have the first one to notice the difference okay so let's say it's a change is everybody okay with the way this is currently okay Mike you go with that yep alright so any further discussion on the consent agenda hearing none all those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying aye motion passes unanimously we're on to the reading file questions in there the the resignation from the Cemetery Commission we had a candidate who interviewed for that position that we turned down and she was very disappointed she was very excited she wanted to be on the I don't remember her name it was the Joan right the woman who was taking classes working on a degree and with the I don't remember what her last name is she was very excited she wanted to be on the planning commissioners hoping we could reach out to her and let her know that there's a seat available now and ask her to come either come back to interview or do we just can we decide just the well I guess we'd have to she'd have to apply for it and I think the recommendation I think Irene made is can we keep these open for a certain period of time and then at the end of that time see who applied and then do them at the one as opposed to saying the first person that applies gets the interview so this is probably a good practice to try that I don't know how long you want to keep it open we should we certainly we could certainly reach out to her see if she's still interested and open it up say first what's the reason what's the reason the length of time to keep it open which one I think if you go too long people may just find something else to do with their time and say you do I would propose four weeks I don't know if anybody else that's certainly longer than we've done we'll do two things we will contact Miss Janssen and open it up for 30 days and see who applies but let her know that there's an opening and that we're going to wait 30 days and hopefully her enthusiasm stays high I yield target okay have the concerns that were raised in the email from Jody Landon have been addressed in any way great yes and that's my fault I'll take full blame for that I met with Jody Landon I think it was back in late January and I just had so much other stuff going on I did not give it the priority it should have gotten but we have answered the questions I've worked with the finance director and there are some questions about how the cemetery commission is funded where the funding goes for the cemetery fund had some questions about the turf and the field and the cemetery and the quality of it so we've been answering the questions that have come up and trying to find some solutions and work with the cemetery commission and we've been offering exit interviews and many people have been taking them I've been collecting them and sharing them with staff and when we get a certain number I think we'll be getting that on an agenda to have a discussion to synthesize those inputs, very valuable they've been very open I've been really excited about what they've been saying so I'd like to offer one to what's her name? Jody, thank you and I did ask her if she would reconsider to stay on a little bit longer and apparently that was going to cause some type of problem at home so she had been frustrated a little bit so we're working on some of those issues of frustration of the operations and of the committee so she said that she may be open to coming back at some point and I think it's a different person then a different person okay anything else thank you then we do need an executive session for a number of things so we have the new thing that we added at the beginning could we get us into the executive session, Andy I move that the select board make the specific finding that premature general public knowledge of the town's position concerning the proposed contract discussion would place the town at a substantial disadvantage thank you, Andy second on motion one any further discussion about motion one all those in favor signify by saying aye aye that passes unanimously Andy I move that the select board make the specific finding that general public knowledge of confidential attorney client communications regarding pending civil litigation to which the public body is a party would place the town at a substantial disadvantage Andy, I have a second on that one second any further discussion about motion two all those in favor of motion two signify by saying aye aye that motion passes unanimously Andy I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss the proposed public official appointments pursuant to one VSA section 313 A3 to include the unified manager and the deputy town manager contracts pursuant to one VSA section 313 A1A to include the unified manager deputy town manager and public works director and confidential attorney client communications regarding pending civil litigation to which the public body is a party pursuant to one VSA section 313 A1E and one VSA section 313A1F to include the town manager deputy town manager and town attorney second on motion three second any further discussion on motion three all those in favor signify by saying aye aye passes unanimously thank you all we're going to Mike we're going to end the call with you here and we're going to move upstairs to the small conference room and we will be connecting in shortly okay will that work yes sir okay good thank you alright so how about we take it