 Ready, channel 17? Everyone ready? Right now. Welcome to the Essex Junction Trustees Meeting. Please join me for 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. Welcome, everybody. And if you haven't signed in, please do so. Evan, do we have any additions or changes to the agenda that you're aware of? No, sir. All right. We don't need to vote on the agenda. So first order of business, members of the audience with questions, comments on anything that's not on the agenda tonight. Anyone out there have a particular comment or question about anything? The village ordinances dealing with dogs, particularly Section 5-1. And we have a situation on Upland Road. Can I just ask you for your name? I'm sorry. It's Carmel Turborg from Upland Road. And we've had four dog attacks since Christmas by one dog. Obviously, the owner is not being responsible. And we had the last one at a children's birthday party. I've had to almost tore apart another dog in front of the six-year-olds. So that was one of the neighbors. Mine was the first attack that I know of on Christmas Day. So we need to look at what is the definition of a public nuisance and how to deal with some enforcement. OK. Thank you. I will make the comment that the village trustees and the Essex Town Select Board, we have different duties that we perform. And it's fine to bring it to us. And we do have an ordinance. But we kind of just pass it right along to the Select Board. Luckily, the unified manager is the same manager for both boards. Elaine Sopjaks hits on both boards. And the lady to your right is also on the Select Board. So they'll be aware of it. But I think the next step is to would, and we can certainly advocate for you for something like that to just pass the message on. But I think Evan will do fine with that. What was the street? It's Upland Road. Upland. Next door, I was holding. Yeah, there was a phone call. I think either today or yesterday. I have a call into the chief. We have a, you know, so I think we've heard just yesterday. Yeah, it's the same dog. It lived at 13. They recently sold that or are going to be selling that house and they bought number 24. So it is the same dog at 13 and 24. So. OK. OK, thank you. Any other members of the audience have a question or a comment about something that is not on the agenda tonight? OK, hearing none, we will move along. And it's my pleasure to introduce Sarah Reeves, the general manager for the CSWD. Sarah, come on up and join us. And thanks for coming. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you tonight about CSWD's budget. As you mentioned, my name is Sarah Reeves. I am the general manager for the Chicken and Solid Waste District. And the Chicken and Solid Waste District is a municipality that was created as a result of Act 78. And our duties are to implement solid waste management mandates as legislated by the state of Vermont. We function similar to a school district or a water district. And our district happens to encompass all of Chittenden County. We are the largest solid waste district in Vermont. And we manage the waste of around 153,000 people and over 6,000 businesses. We are governed by a board of commissioners who are volunteers appointed by sleep voice and city councils. We employ a little over 50 people, about 55 people, in five main departments, administration, finance, facilities, unregulated hazardous waste, and communications and outreach. And we manage or operate five types of facilities, self-officenters with the environmental depot, the rover, materials recovery facility, and Green Mountain compost. So tonight I am here to ask for your support and your approval of our fiscal 19 budget. First talk I want to give some good news. There are no increases planned for or budgeted to the solid waste management fee so that fee will remain the same at $27 a ton. We are not looking to implement any new trash fees at the drop-off centers, so those will remain the same for this year. Nor are we proposing any municipal assessments like a per capita assessment. That is, none of that is happening, which is great. Also the fees at Green Mountain compost are scheduled to remain the same. We raised them last year and they will remain the same in the material. The tipping fee or the disposal fee at the materials recovery facility did just increase as of May 1. I'm going to talk a little bit more about that as well. The administrative fee for biosolids as well to go up this year do, in part two, the two parts of that increase. One was because we need to ramp up our capital investments and replacements. And the other reason is how we allocated costs across all budget centers. And the one last item which caused a bit of consternation among my staff was we are now charging for blue bins. We had never charged for blue bins and we are now trying to recruit the costs of those bins. We would be charging $5 at the end. It cost us around $5.64. So we're still not recovering the full cost, but after 25 or so years of free, we do need to let folks know that recycling isn't free. So it'd be among a small cost for us to recover. We're budgeting this year in our general fund revenues of $11,131,561,000, budgeting expenses at $10,597,613,000. And this year we're anticipating a very high capital spend in the tune of $1,755,000. That, the majority of that capital is going to our materials recovery facility. We are, we receive revenues through the MRF, Church of Power Facility, in a couple of ways. Tipping fees, as I mentioned, and for the sale of materials. We own the MRF, we do not operate the MRF, so we contract for that. In that contract, we have certain capital requirements. This year, we need to buy a new baler. And the baler is that machine that basically all the material goes into. After it's sorted, comes a cube, that cube goes out to a truck and goes out to market. That baler is in sorry need of replacement, and that will be about $700,000 to $750,000. We also need to replace the floor where the material physically is tipped out onto. About $100,000, $7,000, $20,000. In addition, some of the capital that we're expecting to expand also on our drop-off centers, there are several that need some work that we're planning on either designing or doing the actual work. And we also need to plan for the beginning stages of perhaps building new drop-off centers. So there's a lot of activity going on this year, as well as replacing the biosolids trailers, as well as replacing drop-off center containers. So this is an usually heavy capital here. And those are my general overviews. I like to try to keep it at a pretty high level so that I can get to you all so that you can ask me your more specific and pointed questions that you may have. So I invite any questions. I had one, it's not relevant directly to the budget, but there was one thing I was interested in which came across my email, which was you have a study looking at travel times to drop-off centers around Chittenden County. Could you just elaborate on that a little bit? What's the long-range goal of that? Yeah, so when I came on board almost two years ago, one of the items that the Board of Commissioners wanted me to do was to take a look at all of our systems, just do a general system review, so both internal and then infrastructure. So the first year of the review was Centro-Nagry Mountain Compost, and we are partially, probably 50% of the way through, making some pretty significant changes as we're ramping up to 2020 when the Organics Land Bill ban kicks in, we need to make sure that we're ready to accept that digital material. The next part of the infrastructure that I wanted to look at were the drop-off centers. So this is part of a general review of that system. The next phase will be the Materials Recovery Facility, so we'll be looking at that as well. So the travel time is just part of the general information that we're gathering, so we can bring that to our Board of Commissioners to see usage, how people are using the drop-off centers, where people are coming from, how many cars are in there given Saturday mostly, how long did it take to get there, and are there efficiencies that we can begin to incorporate, and people are waiting a long time in line, why are they going from center to center to center, what's the reason? Are certain centers overused on a Saturday, and so can we redirect, and if so, what does that mean for drive time? So it's all part of that research. Another question I had, sort of jogging my memory back, I remember back a few years ago it was a discussion, and Al, I'm sure we remember this, about consolidating areas for carriers, so that instead of having one street is served by five different carriers, and where did that, did that just become too complicated to do, or what happened to that? Yeah, it was before my time that I heard a lot about it. Okay. So we're talking about consolidated collections of private dollars, or franchising several different terms for it, yeah. So we engaged in a very public process conversation about it, five or more years, about five years ago, I smell it, and there were a lot of strong opinions on both sides, and so, and you had a mix of opinions, some loved the bot of only having maybe one hauler go down and collect on a given street, others say, no, I love my hauler, please don't take away my choice. So there was not a good resolution that the district could come to, other than just saying, you know what, we're going to do this or that, so I was like, you know what, the time isn't right, but we are assisting municipalities who want to look into that on their own, so as part of our general technical assistance, then if you or anyone wants to look into it, we can help do that. Okay, thank you. George, one of the things I mentioned to the trustees last night is that when we lived up on Saxon Hollow Drive, I got all of my neighbors in the condo association across the street to go with one hauler, and that worked out well because the prices dropped, you know, was, you know, and I can tell you that, you know, we live at the commons just beyond the Mormon church, and I think we've got to lower the trash rates in the county, and we have 35 units, and they're in and out of there, like seven minutes now, and so if neighborhoods would get together and work together to get a single hauler, I think they would see a reduction in their trash rates. Interesting, okay. And it's fairly easy to do it, yeah. Good idea. Thanks, thanks a lot. Trustees, anyone else have a question? I just have one other piece, so I know when you came last year, we dealt with this, and it's interesting how the decision made on the other side of the world impacts our fees, and the Chinese government turning down, turning mixed paper, but you're expecting that could turn around within at any time? No. No, okay. I wasn't clear on what you said. Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. It's a, so to bring folks up to speed, for years, China has been the main recipient of many of the world's recyclables. It was certainly at the United States, particularly paper products, fiber, any kind of fiber, cardboard, box board, mixed paper, newspaper, and during that time when they were consuming, consuming, consuming, then pushing things out as products that were alive, they were also wrapping up their own production kit building within China. So they started first with themeurfs to process the material through and to make new products, and now they have also started to, or have implemented collection efficiencies. So their collection system looks drastically different than ours, but it is now strong enough to where they can start to feed their own mills with their own material that they are producing within China, which is always the goal. So that was happening on the one side. The other side, the other part of the puzzle was the government was starting to crack down due to, I think, global pressure on environmental issues, and they initiated the Green Fence about five years ago, four or five years ago, which was the initial solo to we're going to be doing things differently in January of this year. They implemented what's called the National Sword. National Sword essentially banned because the contamination, technical contamination level was so low, essentially banned certain materials. A lot of materials are things that we wouldn't put in our blue bin anyway, but the material that impacts us here and across the world, but really us here, it is paper, junk mail, mixed paper. So the contamination, allowable contamination rate is less than 1%, 1.5 of 1%, which is essentially a ban. They just recently, last week, as of May 3rd to June 3rd, have also implemented additional bans on another 25 or 30 different materials. So they have basically stopped any recycling from coming into China for a month. That I think is in reaction to retaliation to some of the policies happening in Washington. But where it affects us here is that where we used to be getting paid for a paper, we are now having to pay to move it. So we are experiencing significant loss in revenue. Mixed paper represents 37% of what our MIRV processes. That's a problem for us. So what we all can do as recyclers move a lot is as much as we can, and we are as guilty of it as anybody, reducing the amount of paper that's produced that goes into the MIRV that will help, and which reduction is critical, never more so than now. So that's one thing that consumers can do. What we've had to do at the district is raise the tipping case. We, like I said, we raised them on May 1. We implemented a differential, price differential, in-district material versus out-of-district material. That will need to most likely change again. So the end is not near. In fact, probably another two years before we see any kind of possible relief. And that relief will only come if there's an investment made in this country by the remaining mills. We are seeing that the one company is making a $2 billion investment in the United States in the next two years, and that as that becomes successful, other companies will follow because they don't like what we left behind. What we need to do is, in addition to reducing our waste, but we also need to look at our technology, our facility, because right now we're hand-still, hand-thirty, a lot of our material. And that will never get us the quality that China needs. So we have to, again, this part of the infrastructure conversation. So I'm talking to a lot of different people about how to make that happen sooner rather than later. But putting those puzzle pieces together is tricky. But that is a high priority to be able to at least get our products as clean as they can be to where they can be accepted in multiple places. Now, when you say we, you're speaking as a country or we as a state, you can see us here. What were you, just try, I'm just track here. Oh, so, right, in the United States. And so I'll step back and then go. As you've said something about the sorting, the process, I mean, is this across the board around our country, are they hand-sorting or our facilities in California and New York or other states being automated? Yeah, no. So other states have and large facilities have made investments in just their general sorting equipment. And we have been in a position here in Vermont to not necessarily have to make those same investments and along the same timeline, in part because the investments were made initially not for fiber, but for containers. And because we have bottle bill here, we don't get a lot of those plastic bottles and the cans into our recovery facility. They go through the redemption system, which does not come to either one of our single stream facilities, but here the most I know are down in Rutland. So we've been able to kind of get away with not keeping pace with some of the technology and we can no longer do that. So we need to not only improve our container sorting capability, which just makes sense. You wanna have as high quality as possible, quality as king, it always has been and always will be and is even more important now, but we need to get ahead of the paper. So if we had the technology in place to sort for the office grade, we would be able to sell that any day of the month. And then it could buffer the losses on the other side. So other facilities across the country, and the West Coast is actually the worst place because they ship off garbage. And they're probably the problem, they're a big problem, have made those investments all along, but they're still need to make additional investments. That's why I need to do some faster talking. And then the only other thing, now this applies to us here in Vermont. As far as I know, the only existing landfill operation in Vermont now is up in Coventry. Correct. And what's the timeframe on Coventry to their capacity? Right. So their current existing capacity is about two to three years. However, they are in the permitting for another phase, which would be about another 25 years behind. Okay. Quick question going back to the need to sorting paper. You were talking about how the need is there to do it automated and not to do the hand sorting. Does your capital plan support that? The current capital plan does not support that. That investment is a multi-million dollar investment. So it go the need to be talking to folks about how we can look to fund that. So right now the investment is solely to support the existing facility under the existing sorting scenario. And there's no way that we could put in the technology to be able to sort to that half of 1%. Something's going to need to give their regardless. So right now what we're going to be doing is coming up with that plan. Again, our Board of Commissioners needs to strategize this and then talk to folks in the state, talk to folks in the federal government and put together a proposal to come back to you all within a couple of years. Okay. Other questions? Sarah, I will just comment. I really appreciate the thoughtful way you laid out this budget and your dialogue in front. It's very, very clear and it's a nice narrative. So I appreciate that. Thank you. Thanks. I think the CSWD likes us to approve, indicate approval of their budget. So I will make a motion that the trustees approve the CSWD FY19 budget. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for coming out. Yeah. Thank you very much. Good morning. Yes, thank you. So we are now on to the bid award for the Main Street Pedestrian Bridge Project and Aaron is gonna pinch head for Dennis. Take this through. We have that all on your. We have it all here. Yeah. We got the whole package. I've got all 32 pages. We don't need a total review of this discussion. So, little brief history on the projects. This was a grant award, a class two of structures grant where the village was awarded two years ago and brought it through design. Now it's at the bid or was at the bid. Yep. Early this spring. We opened the bids April 20th. We have the prices down here. And the engineers estimate was considerably larger than our low bid of 115,400. We went through the process of reviewing the bids, reviewing the references. Both myself and the design engineer Tim Dahl from the engineering ventures both agreed that we probably needed to seek further references for this project. So what we did was we requested additional references for the past two years from both the low bidder and the second low bidder. What this allowed us to do was actually see what type of work both contractors were doing over the past two years and whether or not it was comparable to the work that we had bid out for Main Street. Upon review of that, there were a few, the references provided by the low bidder, they just weren't there. A lot of them had to do with farm and agricultural infrastructure. There was one bridge he noted on one of the references, but it was in the middle of the field kind of thing. So there was no traffic control obviously involved with something like this. All of the references provided by ECI, the second low bidder were comparable projects, bridge repairs and such. So we went ahead and drafted a letter by which he confined 31. Yep. And in that letter, it details the four major reasons why we felt, the village felt that the low bidder was not capable of handling this project. And it's not just the overall low bid but the actual expertise and references of what she provided us for the past two years. So I'm sure you all had a chance to review the correspondence back and forth. That's the bulk of this was the email I wanted to talk about in every step that we took. So yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would say that you did, or I should say overall staff did a good job explaining, obviously the bid process, we wanna see the low bid, but when we don't go with the low bid, we have to have ample justification and I think you've satisfied that. Staff has satisfied that with a lot of backup information. So I, that's my opinion. I share the opinion with you, the amount that we received this time is certainly significantly more than we typically do. Granted, this is a little bit of a different scenario and I appreciate being able to come in here with a very informed opinion. Yeah, Evan. I appreciate all the efforts of the staff but one of the other considerations the location of this project is on Main Street. It is a highly traveled, high impact street. There will be a lot of lane constrictions and modifications. This is not some place that you decide to maybe take a chance on a low bid. You have to check your references. So I commend staff for catching that quickly and being so concerned. We did go through legal. And so if you have any other questions you can grill Aaron further. No, and I note that the look at the other two bids they were well over $100,000 more. I mean, you're really not the low bid and the ECI bid or really not all that. There's not a huge difference between them. So it's. And I'm of the opinion that ECI has the capabilities and the depth on their bench to handle a project like this. Okay. Okay. Any questions for Aaron? Do I hear a motion? All moves that the trustees concur with staff and award the Main Street pedestrian bridge rehabilitation project bid to the second little bidder engineers and construction corporator. Second. Lane seconds. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Great, thank you. And don't go away because you're going to lead us. You got one more for us. Traffic signal major. Traffic signal major. I just saw them over on Park Street on my way home. The very gentleman we're going to speak about right here. Right now in a discussion here there's a brief history that is provided regarding how we've maintained our signals and intersections in the past. We don't have the capability, technical know-how or the equipment to manage our own by the town or the village. So a lot of that was subcontracted out to a company that no longer exists. Yep. So there was a stock gap kind of measure to try to figure stuff out with the state. We kind of piggybacked on their signal maintenance crew to help us through problem solving, troubleshooting intersections. The gentleman that was in charge of the state signals decided to retire and he went into private practice with East Coast signals. These folks know their stuff. They're currently installing all the signals throughout the 15th corridor from the town right now. Steve Gallette has the experience. He can troubleshoot just about anything. He's been key to our whole Susie corridor. Limping that along at times. So... Steph is very comfortable with the recommendation in PIC. We're familiar with them. Yeah. And Ricky works with him quite a bit and they both work well together. He knows five corners very well. Yep. That's good. So what we did is we put together a contract here. We had it looked at by all the legal folks. They made their adjustments to the draft and we're looking for approval to sign the contract. Okay. Any questions, trustees? You're going to do with this. Okay, I will make a motion that the trustees approve the signing of a traffic signal maintenance agreement between the village of S-Exjonction and East Coast signal. Second. We're going to go ahead and wait a second. Any further discussion? We have a dance seconds. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you very much, Aaron. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And we are now on to an amendment to the open burning and enforcement ordinance. And I will, since this is on the agenda and I had invited members of the public to speak earlier about something that was not on the agenda, but now if someone in the audience would like to speak about this, then that would be the time. Yes. All right. You could just state your name and just, yeah. I'm Judith Grades, a village resident. Yeah. And I would like to be able to open my windows in the summer. I have not been able to do that. There's been burning in my neighborhood two, three times a week. Sometimes the fire has been large enough to singe leaves on overhanging branches. Yeah, the first thing I did was, first thing I tried was to tell my neighbor, you know, the smoke's coming from my house and the burning continued. So I guess I'm asking that the burn ordinance be strengthened and also, one very windy day last fall, there was burning and the fire chief came and told me about, I think I'm stating this right, there's a catch 22 that because there's no burn ordinance, he can't tell them to stop burning if it's too windy. But mainly I would like to open my windows and not worry about smoke coming in. It lingers in the house long after it dissipates in the air. Okay. What street are you on? Athens Drive. Athens Drive. Okay, thank you. You can't, you can go back. You're welcome to stay there or you can go back. I'll talk to you. Wherever you're more comfortable. Okay. Evan. So with the, this is not the only complaint we have received throughout the village, staff took a look at our current ordinance sat down with the fire chief. A lot of times when we do get a complaint or people see smoke, just rising up, they call the fire department, depending upon what is being called in, they will go out there. And our ordinance was not as complete as one would hope. And so when you are burning leaves or brush or things like that, we wanted to update the ordinance so you'll see the new language. Also we wanted to install some teeth in the fines because when we do have to send a fire truck out to a, out to a property, it is going to cost the taxpayers several hundred dollars for that truck to leave the station, go out to the call, find out what's going on, extinguish it if they have to, but more times than not, it's on private property and it's just somebody trying to burn something and is becoming a nuisance. So we feel that through the fire chief and myself that this language would be sufficient for us to enforce the burning and impose fines. Now, in my conversations, I don't actually want to find anybody. I'd rather get compliance and I'd rather people be good neighbors be considerate of what they're doing. But failing that, we would have to find people to get their attention. And that's why you see the fine schedule the way it is. Again, taking how much time we have to pay our paid uncle firefighters to come out, assess the situation, come back, et cetera. That's why you see what you have before you. Okay. I will add that I was in one of those meetings with Evan and Chris Caborio. And I'm confused because I thought we were gonna say burning brush leaves, pine needles, trash or debris. I thought it was going to include pine needles specifically, but maybe I'm wrong. We believe that the term brush and leaves cover all those types of things. So pine needles would be included. It's all in there, that's correct. And the other sentence in there is burning of materials cannot create a nuisance. Okay, so if anybody has actually burned a piece of wet wood, it brings out a lot of smoke. That could create a nuisance. Technically, you're allowed to burn wood, but not create a nuisance. And so when you have high winds or whatever, or the wind is blowing into your neighbor's window, while technically legal to burn wood, you cannot create a nuisance while doing so. More times than not, you will be told to stop or understand where the wind is blowing or what you're doing. Sometimes when you just don't want to change your habits, that's where the fine comes in. And you can see the first defense is a warning, which is zero. The other thing we just heard from the Chittenden Solid Waste District and we heard about the investment that's made in our drop off centers. And one of their big costs is collecting brush and leaves and pine needles from residents, particularly in areas where they can't be burned. And so will the fire department, when they go and they see people who are burning and be believed, could they also remind them that they need to pack the stuff up and bring into a drop off? I actually believe they also have things like leaflets when they tend to go out there, but of course, sometimes they don't have them in the truck, but they do tend to do that because we're customer service friendly. What happens with subsequent offenses if someone is continuing to burn and they're either paying the fine or they're not, is there additional consequences? Because these are ordinance violations, the last remedy would be to take them to court. I'm not sure with the last penalty of $750, many people are gonna continue. Great, just thinking about frequent burnings and the flames, raves it's talking about, just curious. Yeah, so we'll see how this plays out. We'll keep an eye on not only this situation, but we have a couple others that we're gonna wanna keep an eye on. Okay, can I ask you a question? Yes. I'm concerned about the interpretation of firewood. You mentioned green wood. I'm just saying you cannot create a nuisance. You can burn wood, but if it's smoking to a point where neighbors are complaining, that is a nuisance. I agree, I guess I hate to call and complain, but I have. And sometimes the police came out and said, well, it's clean wood, you know, fire pit. Again, if this is adopted, the police will be getting a copy of this change of the ordinance and they will be the determinant of the nuisance. There's the adjudicators, them and the fire department who are called out will determine if it's a violation of the ordinance. So if they feel when they go out there, they're seeing smoke coming out of there, being wafted into the resonance of the complainer, complainant, they can act before they had no language to act. Now they will have a language. At least our village attorney believes so. And I think I just want to mention, it's not, we know no one likes to complain and I get it. So by, we're not saying, when no one's implying, if you just want to be able to open your windows in summertime and everybody should be able to do that. And when you can't do that, that's in my, I think just about any definition, that's a nuisance. So it's not really complaining. It's being normal, I think, so, yeah, yeah. I hate to. Sometimes the nuisance part of it happens just when someone comes out there to look at it. The initial, you know, the initial smoke is gone and it just looks like a fire in a fire pit. And also the pine that's being burned across the street from me. When it dies down, it smolders for a long time. And again, you know, the town official that comes out is not there for that. Okay, quick question with a fire pit. So it talks about cooking or outdoor fireplaces are allowed. Nowhere does it mention a fire pit. When I think of a fireplace, I think of a well-contained item that you have purchased. A fire is designed to be put in this, not a hole in the ground that might be clear with, you know, some stones around it. So I wonder if, I don't know how this would play out in that, would a fire pit then be deemed not allowed in our ordinance? We were very careful to be, to give a wider birth to fire pits, it's not the pit itself. It's what you're putting in it. It is not a fireplace. It's what you're putting in it that is creating the nuisance. We don't allow leaves now, or we're looking at it. We're trying to tell people what you can and can't do. It is not the council, it's what's being put in it. And while I feel for you, ma'am, we cannot be everywhere every time. If you call, we will come. I would start with the police. Their ability to get there is quicker with those types of things instead of, you know, depending on what happens with a fire truck, you may have to wait a few extra minutes for the pay-down call to get there. It takes usually four or five firefighters to have the truck leave, the yard versus, you know, and sometimes the fire jeep drives by, et cetera. Sometimes it depends on where they're going. Just call the police, we're not that far away, but if it dies down, then it's nuisance. The period of nuisance is if he starts the fire. If by the time we get there, it has the nuisance part, the smoking part has died down. You know, we can deal with what we see and what is going on, and we will try. I think our police and our fire know what's going on and we'll be able to deal with people who are violating the ordinance. 100% I don't know, better than we were able to do before. And I appreciate the difficulty of writing in ordinance. For anything, really. We want people to enjoy their yards, we want them to enjoy their properties. We're only dealing with the nuisance part. And as I stated before, it lingers in my house long after it's dissipated from the yards. I understand. Irene. If I may, this is the first time I've seen this. This sentence that's completely highlighted, it talks about burning of materials, cannot create a nuisance. I find to be, as a daughter of an English teacher, a little bit concerning because burning of materials can create a nuisance. And I think what I just heard Evan say is you're trying to allow or disallow behavior so my humble request would be that we change cannot to shall not or may not because those are permission words, whereas can just talks about possibility. And I think that it always could create a nuisance, but if you say it shall not or it may not, then it seems to me to be a little bit more in the language, the type of language that I would expect to see in ordinance, but. I get you. Especially this was reviewed by the villages in term attorney, this is the language he chose. Why don't we for, and you point's well taken Irene, but for now, and I know there's still probably some concerns, but why don't we see what this does? We'll give this a shot. Mary had a suggestion that, you know, maybe when the nuisance is going on, you take a video with your phone if you have one. Oh, I have pictures. You've done that? And you've done it with other people? And it's just, that's what we can see. Yeah, I sent it to Paddingham. And I read a very good suggestion, but we did run this by attorney. It is the village attorney who tells us whether something is enforceable with the language. I'm not an attorney, so I'm reticent to recommend a change. Yeah, it's an interesting, grammatical question because you're not sure who you're addressing. There shall not, is it the, stop being burned itself? You need to explain it to the stuff being burned, that you shall not create a Hemi-Night, or it's an implied subject. The person doing the burn shall not do that, so yeah, it's interesting. But I think this is good enough. Let's see what it does. I do have neighbors that have, you know, they burn seasoned hardwood, you know, and it doesn't bother anybody. Yeah. And also, I think the smoke, there's a difference between the smoke of, like you're saying, a seasoned hardwood smoke in a wet or a pine, or any kind of vegetation, what have you, you know, there's a difference, obviously, because we're all aware. So I agree, I mean there's, I've experienced it. So the question, we don't do ordinances all the time, so I'm not sure, this is a public hearing. This qualifies as a public hearing. I am not clear. It's like it's the introduction of the pine, yes. And then we have a, we have a 30, 60 day, I'm not, well, but this is the beginning, we know what it is, it's written down somewhere, but yeah. Usually you do a first reading, and then you do a second approval at the second. Yeah, okay. I didn't know if it was a 30 or 60 day period. I'm not clear, but we'll know. I read. I read. So that just begs the question again, because I don't do ordinances all the time myself, is not the public comment period, the time when you take comments, and then we take them back to the interim attorney and say, hey, we had the suggestion, does this work for you? Because I don't know what the point is of a public comment period if the answer is, that's what the attorney told us. Because again, this is an interim attorney who I believe is new to this ordinance as much as we all are. Right. So that's just what I would offer as a public member. Who doesn't even live in the village? Yeah, no, I get it. But he just loves grammar. The question is if we change this substantively, then do we have to start it over again and do yet another, you know, and so then we're a month or two behind because I think we'd like to just get this on the books. I'm blaming. I'll tell you what, I will check with the village attorney this week. And we'll know by our next meeting. We'll know. And if he or she decides to change it substantively, I'll let you know, and I'll also ask the question a long time. But it is, it has been a little bit overdue. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you, Irene. And now we need an update. And, you know, I had known about this and it slipped my mind, the sewage problem at the Brown Hill Library, I meant to bring it, but I'm sure you're very much aware of it, Kevin, so you're gonna tell us all about it. Sure. A couple weeks ago, we had a backup from one of our sewers that leads from a bathroom. It's an older pipe. We have some tree roots that are pretty much the culprit, that along with what is being flushed down the toilet in that particular bathroom, sometimes it's paper towels, sometimes it's other products. So in talking with Rick and the public works gentlemen, they flush the lines. They are doing some tree root cutting through that line itself. Usually they do it every couple years. Apparently we have a tree that is decided to go a little more aggressive on us. So we're gonna do it a little bit more often. We're also looking at the elimination of paper products in those washrooms to a hand dryer. Yeah. Several thousand dollars to be able to do something like that, but a whole lot less expensive than a sewer backup multiple times. We do get some, whether it's kids or other people that are doing this, but it also turns out you can have cameras in bathrooms. So the idea, yeah, you're smart. Maybe you can have it outside, but we will look at doing the hand dryer and other things and try to eliminate this problem in the long-term future. The question I had, Evan, is who's paint has just come out of Brown L's budget or a village budget? How does this work? It'll be a Brown L budget expense and one of, it didn't rise to certain things, but we will look at it. We will, when the expense comes, we will find it. It's the appropriate thing to do. It's a service-level issue. And I would say that this, not only the employees, but mainly the patrons of the library would like a clean, non-fouled bathroom. Yeah. Which bathroom was it? Boy, I didn't know that question was coming. I don't know which one it is. It's right near a closet. I guess my question is more, is it on the side of the really old tree? In front of the building or on the new tree? I think it's the old tree. And so one of the things, like I mentioned to Rick Jones, we have had a schedule of taking a tree router through the line every so, every couple of years. In our conversation last week, we said, let's ramp that up more often and get that on an annual basis. And so as a matter of fact, one of the things we're looking at is how we're gonna do that at all of our public buildings and how we're gonna start looking at maintenance schedules in all the buildings and who is looking after those things that is not, in my opinion, not appropriate to have librarians thinking about building maintenance nor assistant managers or managers. We've got our minds on other things and we have some really good talent both in the town and the village who can think of these things and put it on schedule. Yeah. The only thing, I just, my two cents about this is that I don't normally say this, but if there's two possible solutions of doing the most economical thing that kind of works and gets it going or doing the thing that really fixes it long term, I'd prefer the option to. I'd prefer to spend the money and get it fixed right, then just clean it up and kind of get it working. Well, don't you mind? Well, as somebody who's dealt with this personally at his own home. Yeah, exactly. Last year I took down a seasoned maple tree from the front of my house and took it down by myself, but that solved the problem. Other than that is to dig up your sewer line and replace the old cast iron sewer line with a new plastic line and it's impervious to the tree roots. It doesn't have any cracks in it. And we did look at some of this stuff. If I remember my conversation with Rick Jones, parts of this line go under the corner of the buildings. So removing this and replacing that line is not going to be economical and that's why we're gonna do this, this way for a while and see how it plays. If in fact it doesn't, if it gets worse, we are gonna have to address it further, but right now. Well, that's why I was mentioning who's, because if it's brown ale has a limited amount of money to spend on something like this. And so I would rather say, okay, let's try to get it into a capital something and do it right instead of trying to do it on the tree. I will also have the villagers tree warden take a look at the tree and see if he has any suggestions. It's lots of maple trees. Maple trees seem to grow really easily around here. Something about Vermont. If it was Ash, we would. Ash, the Emerald Boar. The Emerald Boar is coming around there. Off at the tent. I'll just have Andrew drive down in New Hampshire and, but no, we're sort of in that middle space with this one. Okay, good. Any other questions about this? Are we good? Okay, so we are on to the managers report. Okay, I gave you most of it, but I want to give you a report of last night's water main shut off that occurred right outside 81 main, which was very interesting to have a public meeting where we had to notice the public to, if they wish to use the restrooms to do so before 830, because our water was going to get shut off. But the reason for that was a really great piece of planning and coordination with the village and the town and staff of the issue that was at hand, which is a 12 inch water main and a six inch tap. So we had to do a 12 inch valve and a six inch valve replacement right at the water main. The 12 inch goes around Densmore, since you guys all know your flood from this last winter, was around Densmore and heads out over to the condos that are over there. You also have a doctor's office that is served by that line, as well as the town hall and several other homes and businesses right there, not the high school, which is great. So we're thinking, oh no, we don't want to close down a doctor's office in the middle of the day, which would be convenient for us. But if you've ever had a doctor's appointment that took two months to schedule and now you're not available, that's not a good customer service thing. And so we figured, okay, if we can shut it off starting at about eight o'clock, get the word out, then kids and parents could have dinner, they could get all the showers and stuff done, and then we could be shut off with a goal of getting turned on by five, six in the morning. It took that long. Water was restored right around 5.36 in the morning. So we had traffic to deal with, darkness, it's a sunken pit, it would water and stuff, but the guys of Public Works did a great job. The communication was pretty darn good this time. I did check with the office, we've got four phone calls today, last night and today. One mention of it on Facebook. There was not much mention in our Facebook, et cetera, so I'm encouraged. But just to see the departments talking to each other, Shannon from GIS to be able to give them a good map, the guys went door to door with flyers. We worked with the medical center over there, it was a nice clean team effort. So I was encouraged to see that. George, I don't know the price. Oh. So. Okay. Other things, we talked about, we're getting ready for certain upcoming meetings. We're always meeting, meeting, meeting, things of that nature. I do have a lunch meeting scheduled with Global Foundries. Trying to have a more of a working relationship with them. I did bump into them at the Chamber of Commerce meeting about a week or so ago. And I don't know what the relationship was with IBM and the Village, but Global and some of their new management staff really seem like they want an engagement with the Village and the town. And so they were encouraged when I asked them to have a meeting, they said yes immediately. Sometimes when people say that you can't get a meeting for four months, we are working on seven days or less, which is kind of nice. One of the things that they, and another, I believe they're in the town revision, they were talking about was the need for affordable power, which the town just last night approved a two kilowatt battery operation in a solar, which is helping, will help to try to lower the peak, which is why you get a high rate during the high peak. And if you can imagine, Global's electrical bill, they pay about $36 million a year in electrical. So any penny that they could shave off the electrical price is millions of dollars. Revision was talking about attracting and retaining talent and both of them were talking about workforce housing, workforce affordable housing. And some abilities for the county, not just villages or towns, to consider, like most of us don't know already how expensive it is to live in Chittenden County. And what is that is actually doing is, it is pushing the workforce further out, driving further distances and hurting, recruiting and retention. So they spoke upon that. And when we mentioned what is going on, not only in the village, but the town, they are encouraged that we at least understand that not everybody wants to live in a 2,000 square foot home, not everybody can afford to live in a 2,000 square foot home or say a 1,300 square foot apartment, but what is being built in and around this area is helpful. They understand it, it needs to continue. So those are just some of their comments, but that's pretty much the manager's report. Okay, thank you. And I'll answer questions if you have any. Questions? Is revision pursuing anything in terms of workforce housing? No, not right now, but revision, I don't know if you know the company, they make eyeglass wear and helmets and stuff. Military contacts, they have another office in manufacturing, is that Newport? They are, he just was talking about their challenges. I did not get a chance to talk to him. He left before the actual end and so I will be looking to link up with him soon. But they actually did a very smart thing several years ago. The US military was one of their main clients. They segwayed into other militaries around the world and when the US did its sequestration and other things where they also cut back and didn't pay vendors on a timely basis, their ability to have other contracts to really save their bacon, they're growing. They are a Canadian firm that came down here. They love it here, but they need to compete in the world, not just in the Northeast. Okay, thank you, Evan. Trustees, any comments from trustees? I just wanted to remind, reiterate what Carmell Turbore said. She had emailed me and Lori today with photographs and details regarding the situation with the dog on their street. So I wanted to just confirm that I had told her to come and talk. Okay. George, yeah. I did get something this week. I did get a hold of the chief. Him and I are gonna be meeting about this section to be looked at and beefed up for dogs and other things. I'm also seeing on Front Porch Forum multiple references to some dog issues at Indian Brook. Not that I have any details whatsoever, but there's a lot of stuff going around about dogs at Indian Brook. There are some issues. I have spoken with Allie Vile. She's the town director. Yes, but one of the things we're not looking forward to at any time like this week, or is that issue? Cause it is not going to be an easy issue. Comments. I really want to thank the bill of staff for the water work that was done. The fact that it was done at night as someone who was affected, greatly appreciate that it happened at night so we can sleep easily with a, if our son needed to go to the doctor, the fact that that wouldn't have been interrupted and greatly appreciate the forethought into that. With regards to revision in the workforce housing, I think this again kind of speaks to the need of what Mark Hollins had come to us before about, and if we have the time and the bandwidth to create affordable housing committee would help to, would really help our planning commission and us to make sure that the homes that are being the new construction that happens, while it's great to have it happen when they're selling for $350,000 beyond, is well beyond what the average family can afford in the state. As well as with many of the rentals that are coming up, many of them are as well beyond what the median can afford to stay and even as county can afford. So it's pricing many out of our own community. You know, I couldn't agree with you more. I would hope that, and I just think that if I've been here two months, I need a little more time to get my way around me, but I can see the need to have some guidance in these areas. There's plenty of meetings. I know Irene, Renner, and I were at the same meeting, Irene, two weeks ago, some issue on housing and what other communities are doing. And there's not much money in it from other sources, but whatever little dent you can make, it is important. I know that the village's accessory structure, allowance for homes is helping not only this issue, but helping people stay in their homes and having it be affordable. So, but I do think a housing commission in the future with the right mission and the right guidance would be a good thing for not only the village and the town together. Other comments? I wanna note, one meeting, it's in the manager's report, I wanna highlight it, it's a joint meeting with the Planning Commission and the trustees, and I had asked a while back to have Regina Mahoney come and give a just a brief synopsis of what I thought was an excellent meeting that the RPC offered on the economics of development, housing development, affordable housing development, why developers don't like it. And I think it's, but I think it's important for us to know. And so that's, she's gonna lead off the joint discussion between us and the Planning Commission. And that's on Thursday. You're not gonna be here, Lauren's not gonna be here, but Greg Duggan, who's gonna step up to the plate, and Greg being a former planner is probably the right person to have, so it's fine. That's fine, but I just wanna draw everyone's attention to that, because we've got, there's another, because there's a joint meeting with the select board two days earlier, so. And I would say that as part of whatever the commission is doing a study on what we currently have in our communities and its status is important, because while I was looking for a new house, I did go into several structures without my manager had on. I don't know if I actually could ever do that, but I saw some places that I would say we're on the edge of standard or substandard, so and what they were charging for rents. So you can have lower income, lower rent in some places, but you also have to make sure they're safe and their quality as well. And so there's a balance. Working on that, that's been brought up, prior to your arrival. I'm not the first, now I'll be the last. Hopefully next week or so by the time that legislature adjourns will know whether the downtown, excuse me, oh, I forgot what the name of it is now. There's a tax credit going around, homeowners to improve existing stock within designated village centers. So if that does pass and makes it all the way through, we should be marketing that, along with our accessory apartment, just to remind people that these are tools they can use to improve their housing. Exactly, but getting back to what you said about the substandard conditions. Burlington does have a renters registry, they go around, they check, we met with the person from Burlington, came to a meeting six months ago, must be, but it's an issue that has to be addressed. But in particular, faces renters as opposed to home owners, single-family homeowners. We deal with that with ordinances that we have in place for block dated structures and noxious weeds, what have you, and other issues that. Yeah, but again, before any step of that nature, I would want a housing commission or some group to give us an assessment of how many units we have and the density and what's going on before taking on a mission that may not provide what we think it's going to provide. And I want to make sure that when I get my head around certain things, I know what the issues are and how they look at it and how other people are addressing it. And well, you mentioned Burlington. Burlington has a lot of rental units. In fact, I saw their number, it's absolutely inversed to actual home ownership, which is ours is probably way the other way, homeowners versus renters, but Burlington has the opposite. Correct, but that's the trend. I said in the region planning commission, it's been brought up by the commissioners that that's the trend they want to go towards. Home ownership is not as much as rental properties as where it's at, we're short on, they have a lot of rent properties, but they're short on what they need. A lot of student housing. Right, and it's also elderly people with the baby boom generation aging and getting out, there's, like you said earlier, with the accessory apartment option we have here in the village, people take advantage of that. As you said with the age of somebody that's elderly may not be able to maintain the property. They have somebody there that can help them with things. But also as that inventory, that stock of large single family homes come up, it's at a price point that's probably above what a lot of people could afford. As well as the fact that now those people want to move into something smaller, it's manageable, we have some new housing, it's me coming up here in the near future in the village, and that's, so it's all placed together. The other interesting thing of the senior housing phenomenon is the seniors are, the people that are leaving these larger homes of the $300,000, $350,000 variety are actually in competition with younger, first time home buyers in that size range. Yeah, we've seen that in here, it's all good. Very interesting how we're seeing that, look forward to months of more meetings with the committee, but it's for the right thing. I mean, not only does your business community want it, your residents want it, people want us in the beautiful communities that they live in to be affordable and safe. Okay, can I have five minutes to go on a rant, please? Because I just got my water bill, and I noticed that nowhere on the water bill is there an option to pay my water bill in person at Lincoln Hall anymore. And I don't remember, I thought, where we left this, that wasn't gonna happen. And so, I don't mean to blindside anybody, I don't mean to bring something up, but I wanna mention this, I do wanna mention this. The reason that I don't think it's a good idea is not out of territoriality or village versus town politics, it has to do with the need to try to bring people into the village center. If we are going to say, if we're saying we're trying to redevelop the village center, one of the golden rules is you don't shut down your post offices, you don't shut down your, whatever existing government entities you have in your little downtowns or village centers, you keep them open because you don't know, I'll bet there are probably several hundred or so people that traditionally have come into this building to pay their water bill. I don't know, Lauren, would you have a general guess about that, how many people over the year normally would come in and pay their water bill? It's a pretty steady stream, a lot. Although none of those people will be walking into this building anymore. Yeah, go ahead. Not to reign on your parade, but I mean, we're talking the village center, 81 Main Street is a chip shot from the village center district. So I really don't feel like we're losing a lot of people outside the village center, because when I go over to 81 Main, which is about a one minute, two minute walk from here, I think they're still in the village center. They're still in the, well, technically they're not. Wow, that's cool. But my point is that if you've over the last 10 years, we've put a million bucks into this building, outside and inside, and we spent about $150,000 just with that office to make it customer-friendly. If the train station brings in a few hundred people over the course of a few weeks, every other little thing you do brings in several dozen people here, or a hundred people there. I don't understand why someone can't come in here. If someone wants to go to the library and go to Martins and then pop into the village office and pay their bill, they are now going to, that's not an option anymore. I agree with you. And I don't understand why someone, it's so hard to just have someone collect that bill in the office here and then bring them over to 81 Main Street. I'm sorry, I know, it's just a thing, but, sorry. I said it was a rant, it's a rant, but I, it's- So they still can pay it here, it's not mentioned. It's not mentioned, and so it's kind of saying, it's not an option anymore. It's saying to me, if I look at the bill for the first time, I'm looking, I can pay this at 81 Main, or I can pay it online. It gives me all kinds of options to pay, except bringing it in person to Lincoln Hall. Okay, we can look at the language, sir. It's also on our website that says you can come here. But it doesn't say it on the bill. We can fix that. Okay. Yeah, if I buy something at, if I buy something online through a retailer or something that says you can, did you have to return it to the website, I wouldn't then go to the store to return it. I return it based on what my bill said. I didn't know it didn't say that. Yeah, it does. You haven't been kind of encouraging people to pay over there. I know, and I understand it. I get it, I get it, I get it. Well, we can, we can do music. So I'm the president of the Board of Trustees. I get to rant from time to time about these things. Okay. That's all I had to say. It's a drill. Yeah. There was, okay. I think we're good. I think we're good. Did we cover everything? So we've got joint meeting with the select board. I would mention to you folks, we have a big, big writing assignment. I hope you're all. Homer. Homer, no. It's kind of like a multi, I'm like five or six hours. Is this generally the absolute latest? Yes. Yes. Yes. I qualified and said you don't have to have everything. That's true. You can say absolutely nothing if you want to. You can say nothing. But the select board might feel differently about it. He might on their behalf have to say something. Okay. Are we on to the reading file? So the, I just want to note the resignation of Joe Weith from the Planning Commission. Yeah, that's a bummer. And so yeah, it is. He was a very knowledgeable person. Long story, too. Yeah, so we're going to have to replace Joe. It's an opportunity we'll have to advertise the position. Did you, was that a volunteer? No. You wanted the volunteer? No. I wanted to know what the procedure was. Patty will know. It's, we advertise it and we interview people. Me and Joe. Okay. And I think we're good. And consent agenda. We approve the consent agenda. Second. Any conversation? All in favor? All right. I'll move the adjournment. Second. Any further conversation? All in favor? All right. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Mike.