 the town of Essex Select Board Meeting for Tuesday, October 19th, 2021. Okay, we have that computer joined. What's that camera up there on? It's a swivel one. Oh, okay, because I thought it was that one up there. So Scott, should we be seeing it? It says CCTV guest and there's an icon there. Should the... Should be. She knows that. Not seeing it. What about my voice? It's louder than I expected. Yep. Thank you, Sue. How are you doing? I'm good. So we're not getting a picture. Okay, I guess also, I guess, are there any, maybe we should move on to the first agenda item. I don't know that you need to see us for the question about the agenda edition changes. Evan or Greg, are there any staff changes? Any staff? No. Board members, elect board changes? No. Trustee changes, anybody have any changes? See a lot of shaking heads. All right. So we'll move on to public to be heard. Public to be heard is a time for, I guess maybe, can folks hear me? Can you hear me online now? Okay. All right. So public to be heard is a time for the public to bring issues before each of the boards, items that are not on the agenda. If you would like to speak to the boards, please be brief, please be civil, refrain from using inappropriate language, address your remarks to myself as the select board chair or to Andrew as the village president. Please do not attack others or town staff. If you are online, please keep your microphone muted when you haven't been recognized. And also, if you are a member of the public, please leave your camera off to avoid distraction from that. So if there is anyone who would like to speak during public to be heard, you can either raise your hand here in the room or you can raise your hand online. If you're on the phone, we will allow for a time after others have spoken to speak in there. I see one hand in the room. Please come forward to the microphone here and state your name for the record and Gabriel Handy. Hi, Evan. I just need like five minutes if I could. Go ahead, sir. And I said brief, so hopefully five minutes is brief. I built the 43 unit on Park Street for the senior housing. I provided 11 parking spaces on the school side with the understanding that my overflow seniors could park there. Last winter, a sign went up saying no parking after midnight. So I didn't want to battle with it last year. Plus I was gone for most of the winter. So I didn't want this happen this winter for my seniors. Walk an extra hundred feet has taken a big risk in the winter for some people in mid 70s, 80s fall down, get hurt, slip. So I created the parking behind the old Domino's building on 17 Park Street. But now they have to walk all around to go into my senior was made it further. So I made the donation out of my own pocket to put those 50 55,000 with. I also provide parking at three main street for the last five years for 3540 cars for the village to use for free. I never asked for any money or any reduction in taxes or anything. I also bought one main street, the gas station. I don't need a third of that to the village to create a park. So I'm just saying these things to let you know that I do. I don't just take I give more than I take. I'm here to have the sign in front of those 11 parking spaces said no parking after midnight. What I put in is to be taken down so my seniors could enjoy using those parking spaces. They don't have to walk an extra hundred plus feet and taking a chance of falling and getting hurt. So that's what I'm in front of you for tonight. And I hope that's small requests from me from what I provide and for the town where I do. Okay. Thank you. The issue out of Andrew. I could very simple. Last year they were I wasn't local. I was out of town vacationing in different country. But when I returned my son informed me that he was contacted by the road foreman or the over thick air is the park for that school area that any cars parked there after midnight they will be gone. They'll be told away. And when I put those spaces in there that was not the understanding. Otherwise I wouldn't have done it. Okay. Well I brought you my concern and now it's in your hands. Thank you. Thank you. I'll call you tomorrow or the next day. Thanks. Good night. Good night. Thanks for coming out. Okay. Any other public to be heard? Okay. I don't see any hands in the room. I don't see any hands online and I don't see anybody participating by phone that may need an alternate opportunity to. I just saw a hand go up Raj. So how is the sound in the room? Are you hearing from the speakers the PA system in the room? Are you only hearing? Okay. We'll see what we can do. I don't know. Can you shut us off? Unless we're going to speak because we're going to be listening. Would that happen? Can we, can we. Give me a minute to talk to Scott. What do you got? Did you hear that right? Okay. Thanks. Try to resolve the issue as we go along. Okay. I don't see. Oh, and now I see Mary post. Go ahead, Mary. This is a joint meeting. I think the, I don't know. I think it's a good question that. That. The. Possibility that was posed late earlier was that, uh, the discussion would come back as part of our budget discussions. Um, I don't know, Evan, if that, if you have any. That sounds familiar. And I. Under the impression that there will. It was likely not to be a memorial hall committee. Commission. Well, the, the discussion was to change his mission and have it work on. You know, potentially work on. Programming. Rather than the physical building itself. And so Mary, it sounds like, uh, we're still. Considering any other. Comments for public to be heard. Okay. If not, we'll move on to the first business, uh, item, which is, uh, And for five, five ABC and D, um, I am going to recuse, recuse myself because one of the candidates is a close friend of mine. Um, and I will recuse myself from both the interviews and the discussion later for making the appointment. And I'm going to slide a copy of the agenda over to Patrick and he's going to run it from this side. I'll leave the room. Somebody please let me know when you're done. I'll try not to be too noisy with my ukulele. At worst we'll have a great background noise. All right, so, uh, we will move on to item five a, uh, interview and potential appointment. Um, first, uh, I believe we have a Rupesh Asher. Uh, so if you'd like to come up to the seat and the microphone, uh, at home or online, if you can just let me know if the volume improves at any point, like with a thumbs up or something that'd be great. Otherwise I'll advise everyone to just project. As my old theater teacher used to say, um, imagine you're talking to someone in the back of the room so that those at home can pick you up. Okay. Uh, great. Uh, Mr. Nice to see you again actually. Um, yeah. So you, uh, interested in, uh, the potential appointment for the housing commission, um, usually have an opportunity for the candidate to talk about themselves. Uh, if you'd like to do introductions and then we can open it up to the two boards if they have any questions, uh, procedurally just so yourself and the other candidates are aware. Typically we'll go through the interview process and then adjourn to executive session at the end of the meeting to decide on an appointment if one is coming. Um, so sometimes we have information at the very end of the night, but it's typically just something that you will hear about the next day. We'll give you a call and let you know. So, uh, without further ado, yeah, you would like to take it on. Well, thank you for having me here today and my name is Rupesh Asher. Uh, I have, uh, lived in this community for about, uh, 21 years now, uh, serving, uh, as sex, as ex-junction, uh, clients, uh, when I was a pharmacist, um, got to know a lot of people here and, uh, I have three kids. Um, one is in college and two are in middle school and, uh, I thought of, uh, you know, giving back to the community by, uh, stepping my foot into the housing, uh, committee when it opened up. So that's why I'm here. I know I can make a difference and contribute with my knowledge, uh, as part of the member. Great. Thank you very much. Uh, since, uh, I'm here in the room, we'll do the select board first. Um, and we can keep an eye for Sue as well if he raises her hand. That'd be great. I apologize. I don't have a computer in front of me. I got it. Yeah. Uh, select board. Any questions for Mr. Asher? What do you see as the biggest housing concern here in the town? Uh, the concern for, for, you know, there's a big shortage. That's what I hear, uh, most of the time and, uh, like concern from, uh, the residents or people coming, uh, in the area or what, uh, kind of, uh, either one. Yeah. The new people, when they come, I hear they have really hard time finding the housing in, in junction in Chinan County itself. So there's a big shortage and that's the biggest concern I, I hear from people. Uh, okay. I think Sue does have her hand up. Yes. Okay. Uh, Sue, go ahead, please. Uh, yes, uh, definitely for the housing commission, I applied for the select board last year, I remember. Uh, for the housing commission, I, it's, it's a stepping stone for me again. Uh, I want to serve my community in Essex and, uh, I love the area that I'm in right now and making sure that, uh, with the level of expertise and knowledge that I have, I know that I can help the community. So that's why I want to serve in the, uh, serve my community and learn myself of what, how everything works. Thank you, Scott. Um, uh, trustees, uh, open the floor to you guys. Any questions for Mr. Asher? So looking at the future, is that the question is, uh, how, how do I see Essex in next, uh, two or three years is, uh, what, what you're implying as a question. The purpose of, uh, of what the job description was is to provide, uh, the information and see if we can work together as a team to relieve the housing crunch and, you know, get, uh, affordable housing, uh, come, uh, like make it happen in Essex. So if I was on the committee, I'll work with all the parties involved to see if we can, uh, help out, uh, relieve the housing crunch. Great. Uh, any other trustees? Yes, Mr. Asher. Um, this may not be, uh, a fair question and I'm not trying to put anyone on the spot, but I'll ask it of the others. Do you see, um, if you look at this issue, because this is an issue, not just for Essex Junction and Essex Town, but it's an issue around, do you have ideas? Have you seen things that other communities are doing that you think might work here? And I know that you're not, and that may be unfair because I know you're new to the situation, so please don't feel like I'm putting pressure on you, but I'm wondering if you have some concepts. Uh, so what other communities are doing to bring, uh, to relieve, uh, the best of my knowledge, I don't have the experience, I'll be honest with you, of what Burlington, Milton and other Chinatown counties are doing, but, uh, you know, as, and my reading is not that vast as well, of what other cities, uh, have done, but we can have some ideas of, you know, bringing partnerships between, you know, uh, different kind of organizations. See, there could be profit in non-profit organization or profit organizations, and see what we can do as a team, uh, to relieve, uh, the problems. Uh, I'm not aware of any, you know, examples that I can give personally. That's fine. Of, uh, what can be done or what should be done. But, uh, again, when there's a will, and you know, if we work as a partnership with other counties or other states and see what they have done and learn from them and try to implement here, it, it is definitely beneficial for the community. Thank you. Thank you. Can I ask a question? Andrew? Yeah, please. Um, anyways, my question would be, if you're not selected for this position, is there another position within, you know, the realm of community volunteering, maybe on Trails Committee or, or, another board, you're saying, to that new initiative? Uh, definitely if there is an opportunity out there, and if I have interest in it, and you know, like to do what I'm doing, then definitely there is no doubt that I will not step in. It's, it's something that I want to devote my time, I have time now to, to the community. And yeah, definitely a trailing, a trail committee will be good. I'm an outdoor person and play tennis. So, uh, anything sports related will be definitely, uh, a plus for me. Housing is dear to me and that's why I volunteered for it. Thank you. Okay, great. Uh, then, uh, Mr. Asher, thank you very much for coming in today. Um, as I said, we'll likely be in touch sometime tomorrow with the decision. Um, but, uh, you can feel free to sit and listen to the other interviewees if you'd like. Um, or you're all set for tonight if you'd like that out. Thank you, Bevin. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. All right, uh, next to Allison Levy. Good evening. Hi Allison, good to see you again. Thank you, nice to see you all too. Uh, so, uh, much like with Mr. Asher, if you'd like to take a few moments to introduce yourself to everyone on the board. Sure. And, uh, talk about your interest in the housing commission. Hey, um, Max and I've lived here for 24 years at this point. Um, I would tell you that we lived in East Fishkill for seven years before that and two years in Essex before that. And so even though it was only two years initially when our first child was born, we knew that we were not going to stay in East Fishkill and we knew that indeed we were going to come back to Essex. So we fought hard. And when we had that opportunity, we came right to Essex because we knew this is where we wanted to live. Um, and to raise our kids and we did, we have four children who went through the school system. Um, and we are happily involved and committed to Essex. Um, I just retired from 17 years of teaching at Essex Middle School. It was hard to give up teaching and to give up the influence that a teacher has over children. Um, but one of the main things that I've been excited about is that I have time now to give back to the community, working mostly with adults, but, um, that's a change. And I'm excited about that. I have joined Vue, the vision for inclusion in Essex Westford, because Vue is doing work that I believe in, which is to make Essex equitable and welcoming for everyone who is coming here. Um, I am volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. Um, I have been really fortunate to have secure housing, but I know that is not a given. And, um, so Essex Housing Commission is next on my list. Um, as a teacher in the school system, I have seen the changing demographics. Um, dawn years ago when we were on the Essex Town select board, Essex Town school board together, um, the percentage of kids who qualified for free or reduced lunch was about 7% and it's now approaching 30. So the demographics have shifted. Um, we know that Essex has had the biggest population increase in the state since 2010. And we have a lot of people here who are struggling to find housing. Um, so I have had students in my classes who were homeless, some of them living in cars, and I know what that does to impact their learning. So I am looking for a way to be a part of that solution to helping us move forward. Awesome. Great. Thank you so much. Uh, select board. Uh, any questions for Allison? Yes, please go ahead. Uh, what do you think the top three housing needs are for the community in the next 12 months? I am sorry. I'm going to have to ask you to repeat that. What do you think the top three housing needs are for the community in the next 12 months? Top three. I guess I didn't think about it like that. Um, but I would say that they're, um, in order to address the problems of affordable housing, there needs to be some concrete action and recommendations taken by the housing commission. So that the board and the trustees have suggestions on how to move forward. Um, I personally think that we need to move toward inclusionary zoning and think that that's a recommendation that, um, would be helpful to get builders in partnership with us for solving the problem. Um, I think that we need to, the housing, Essex needs to work in concert with the CCRPC to make sure that this is seen as a countywide problem and that we're all as a county working together because it's not an Essex problem. It's, I suppose, a national problem, but it's certainly a county problem here. Um, additionally, I would love to see the housing commission guide Essex to be intentionally interconnected so that the people setting policy for education and housing and offering employment opportunities work together. Um, so that people who work here can afford to live here. Families whose children are here can afford to have access to affordable and stable housing. But I think that the focus is on increasing our longterm, um, supply of affordable housing. Sorry about that. We had a weird sound issue in the room. Okay. Great. Thank you. Awesome. Uh, Sue, uh, question. Or Allison. Okay. Great. Then I apologize also before I ran completely ramshod over Andrew. I'm just calling on people everywhere. So Andrew, I'll hand it over for you to speak to the trustees. Well, I guess sort of what I was just, I think there's some overlap in what I just answered that I would hope that we would have gotten inclusionary zoning underway. I would hope that we would have come up with a system for different stakeholders within the community to be working together on the problem, meaning the educational community and the business community as well as the select words policy and the planning commissions. Um, I don't have a number of units that should be developed or how that should happen. I look forward to learning more about that. But I think, um, that and working intentionally with the CCRPC would be the three things that I'd like to see happen quickly. George. Hi, Allison. George. Go ahead. Um, I'm going to ask the same question and, uh, again, not to put you on the spot at all. I don't anticipate that you, uh, you're just coming into this, but have you, do you see anything? Have you seen anything that's going on in other communities that have innovative ideas that you think might work here? Um, I would say that the work that I've done since I went to the last, my first commission meeting was to, um, look into the, um, the zoning piece. And I know that South Burlington and Burlington and Heinsberger involved in that. Um, so that seems like that's something that's well established within the county. Um, beyond that now. Okay. Uh, any hands online? I'm not standing. Okay. Then I think we're all set. Uh, Allison, we do have a presentation after these interviews by the housing commission and, uh, with some of what you're speaking, I think you might want to stick around for it. Yep. I'm planning to. Great. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks so much for coming out tonight. Uh, next, uh, not sure if she's online, uh, but we have, uh, Tatenisha Rededa. Uh, Tatenisha, are you here? Okay. It's unusual. She's usually at most meetings. Um, I don't suppose on the offhand, we have a contact number for her. No, just. I do not. Okay. Great. I mean, if, you know, she can arrive before we move on to the next business item. Great. Um, but, you know, if not, then it is what it is. Um, Yeah, we don't usually take public. I can just use a hand. So then finally, uh, Elizabeth White. Elizabeth, are you online? Maybe any didn't need to recuse himself. Okay. Um, Greg, I don't know if you could make the same outreach. Hello. I now worry that since we've reached the end of the business items for the interview process, I'm hesitant. Uh, move on and then jump back with interviews later on. Um, But oh yeah, Greg. Okay. All right. We'll see if they can arrive and someone wants to get Andy, then we can continue on with the meeting. Thank you, Dan. Hmm. If Andy comes back with a cello, I'm going to be really surprised. Okay. Nope, we didn't hear you. Uh, so just, uh, so you're aware, um, Hottenisha and Elizabeth White were not online. Oh, so we didn't do those two interviews. Greg is going to try to reach out. If they arrive later, then maybe we can jump back. But okay. That's where we are. All right. So, uh, then, uh, Uh, I was explaining that we'll, we'll go and execute a session. Um, It'll be an executive session I need to discuss. Okay. So, uh, moving on to the next agenda item. Uh, 5 E is presentation and potential action on inclusionary zoning. Who's presenting here. Hi, thanks for having us. Just let me know if we need to move somewhere. Um, to make this work. Can we bring up the presentation? Um, I'll start by introducing, um, ourselves. I'm Mia Watson. And this is Mark. Um, we're here today to talk about inclusionary zoning, how it works, um, why we think it might be a good policy for Essex. And we're here to just get some basic buy in from the two boards to see if this is something that. You think is worth pursuing in Essex because it will require a pretty intensive research and outreach process. So, um, this is just to get the ball rolling and see where we all stand. Um, So, um, let's go to the next slide. So I would like to center this discussion on Essex housing needs and why the need for more affordable housing is so urgent. So the standard of affordability is that household should pay no more than 30% of their income towards housing costs, like rent, mortgage payments, and utilities, but one in three Essex residents paid more, um, more than 30% of their income. Um, three Essex residents paid more, um, than that. And nearly half of Essex renters, um, pay half of their in, uh, I'm sorry, nearly half of Essex renters pay more than they can afford. In total, over 1100 Essex households pay more than half their income towards housing costs. And this puts them extremely high risk for eviction and foreclosure and even homelessness. So it's a really pressing issue in our town. Next slide. So the reason that most households are paying too much for housing is because housing prices are so high. You can see that the hourly wage needed to afford a two bedroom area apartment at fair market rate is over $30. But the hourly rate wage earned by the average renter is, is barely over half that. Um, at minimum wage, you'd need to have 2.7, um, full time jobs in order to afford that two bedroom apartment. Next slide. So the demand in Essex is growing and it's only likely to increase. As you probably know, Essex had the single largest increase of residents, um, of any town in Vermont over the last decade, according to recent census results. And that demand has really been reflected in higher housing prices. Um, the demand is really concentrated across the state in Chittenden County. So Essex is definitely feeling the effects of the job centers and the general need for housing in the county. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the, uh, cost of a home in Essex has increased by nearly 10%. Um, far exceeding, as you can see from the slide, what, um, can we, can we scroll up a little bit just to see the, the labels on the graph? Oh, sorry. I guess scroll down. I'm sorry. There we go. Yeah. You can see that, um, the in the first half of this year, um, the median home in Essex sold for almost 330,000, but the median price that's actually affordable or the price that would be actually affordable for the median Chittenden County household is barely 271,000. Um, we don't have post pandemic rent figures yet, um, because the census data lags so much, but anecdotal evidence really suggests that, um, vacancy rates are even lower than they were, um, before the pandemic and that there's a high demand for housing. According to our planning staff, the new buildings that are, um, being constructed on Maple and Park Street are already fully leased up, which certainly speaks to the demand. And when you have such a constrained supply of housing, it tends to really put heavy pressure on prices. And, um, we've certainly seen that over the last decade. So next slide. I'm going to hand it over to Mark. Sure. So what is inclusionary zoning inclusionary zoning incentivizes private developers, all right, to sell a rent a certain percentage of their units in a new housing project below market rate. Inclusionary zoning can be voluntary. All right. But 80% of the programs nationwide and all of the ones in Vermont are mandatory for all projects above a certain threshold. Usually if you're going to build 10 or more new homes, you have to have inclusionary zoning. Developers typically receive some incentives to partially offset their costs. This could be density bonuses. It could be reduced permitting fees. It could be priority review. And it is recommended in the recent Essex housing needs assessment and town plan. Next slide, please. So how does inclusionary zoning work? So every town's inclusionary zoning policy varies somewhat, but policies are really usually follow into some basic features. Most policies apply to both rentals and for homes for sale. So if a developer was creating a new subdivision, that would apply to them in most cases, although that's a choice that would be decided for this policy. Usually between 10 to 20% of units in a project are required to be inclusive. So at the sample project in the right, if it's a 30-unit apartment building, it would have, say, six inclusive homes. So prices for those homes must be affordable to renters earning a specified income range. Usually that's 60 to 80% for renters or 80 to 120% of home buyers. And that would be something we would have to decide as a policy. And as you can see from the figure on the left, it really varies depending on the family size. But at 60% AMI, that would be a two bedroom apartment rented at a little under $1,300 for a family of four earning $57,500. And so as you can see, it's not really intended as a very deep subsidy. This policy really isn't used to help very low income households, you know, households earning, you know, households at the poverty line, for example. Those projects tend to be very difficult to pull off without, you know, essentially vouchers from the state or the federal government to make that feasible. But of course, having these inclusive units wouldn't preclude someone who had a voucher living in there. So sometimes developers are permitted to make a payment to a housing trust fund instead of building the homes. Or if inclusionary zoning is in a specific part of town, sometimes they're allowed to build in a different part of the town in addition for an extra fee. So there's some flexibility in citing, which again is a choice that would be made when we draft the ordinance. The ordinance could be townwide or only in certain areas of Essex. So it could be the entire town. It could be in the village center or it could be in the town center or vice versa. That's again something we would have to choose. And it would be implemented as part of the zoning code for whichever areas adopted inclusionary zoning. So next slide. So the big question that people often have is, well, if you make developers abide by these rules, will they just build somewhere else and potentially put a chill on development, which we don't want because, as we described, having a constrained housing supply really puts pressure on housing. So hypothetically it could make the problem worse. However, most research on inclusionary zoning suggests that if it's cited in an area that has sufficient natural demand to build, it generally doesn't discourage development. And you can see from the graph that Essex actually has currently more development over the last five years than South Burlington and Burlington, two towns that have inclusionary, mandatory inclusionary zoning in at least one area. Burlington is citywide. South Burlington has it in their city center and is considering expanding it to other parts of the city. Heinsberg has it as well, but obviously there's less development than in Essex. Contrary to what people might expect, Essex has more development over the last five years, more building permits, that is, than Williston or Winooski, two towns that do not have inclusionary zoning. So we would have to study the circumstances that are unique to Essex very closely to make sure it's an appropriate policy, but the available data suggests that Essex has abundant demand from developers. And the idea is that if developers want to build an Essex, they want to make money in Essex, it's not unreasonable to ask them to contribute to the community by building these inclusive units. Mark. Last slide, please. Okay. This shows you the process. Tonight we're at the beginning of the beginning of the beginning. Okay. We just want to see if we even like the idea. If you like the idea, then we have to do research. Okay. We've got a research inclusionary zoning case studies. We do all that. Then we create an inclusionary zoning plan. We develop outlined inclusionary zoning priorities. Then we do outreach where we present to the select board and trustees. Then we do a draft ordinance. Then we review the ordinance and then you adopt it. So you can see there's a lot of stages before we actually get to this. So what we're here tonight is to see, is this an idea? We don't want to do all this work and then go back to step four and find out you don't like the idea. So that's why we're here. Go ahead. Go ahead. And as you can see, in step three, we would present a plan before actually drafting an ordinance. So some of the things where I described where would we put inclusionary zoning policies in place and what income levels. We would present that as options and get the select boards by and trustees by and again before going to the effort of drafting an ordinance and drafting an ordinance would probably require a consultant. That's what other towns who have done it have done just because it can be difficult to write an inclusionary zoning policy effectively so that it sits well within other zoning laws and doesn't have unintended consequences. So tonight we're not asking for, yes, let's do inclusionary zoning. We're saying, yes, let's embark on the process of inclusionary zoning and start to do the outreach and the planning work that's going to be necessary to write a good policy. And we on the housing commission really think that this is a great time. Like I said, the demand to build in Essex is there and the urgency is there. When you start seeing runaway prices and rents and homes, that's when you start seeing people priced out of a community. And that usually happens to lower income people who are more likely to be people of color. So Essex's long-term future and vibrancy are really at stake here. Inclusionary zoning is really one of the few municipal level policy levers that's been really shown to have measurable impacts on housing affordability. And we've talked, you know, my son's 18. Mrs. Levy was one of his teachers. I'd like him in a couple of years after college to at least have the opportunity to live in Essex, you know, to run a place or maybe even buy a place in Essex. And I think if we let the forces of supply and demand go as they are now, that's going to be out of reach for him. And for many of our children and grandchildren, we'd like to have our children and grandchildren at least the opportunity to live in Essex because it is a wonderful place to be. So this is one way that we can at least make strides towards ensuring that. So that's what we're here for. And we would love your questions. All right. Thank you, Mia. Thank you, Mark. Go ahead, Dan. I guess there's a couple of questions, but one, I think it's a great idea. Just trying to look at it in the aspect of how this is kind of a dynamic situation. It changes as employment and you're talking about the income levels in your children. So if you look at the minimum of affordable living here, one aspect of it, obviously, the matrix is the aspect of this is the wages that are being earned here. So if there are jobs that pay wages that are can afford to buy properties in the women community, isn't that one aspect, one way to look at solving a problem is to look at why can't people afford it? Is it because they don't have a job that pays affordable wages or what's the root cause of this? I mean, going back 100 years ago, I mean, people came here without much and somehow managed to develop this community to what it is today. Obviously, IBM coming here in the 50s was a big part of that. Right. I mean, I think it's both. I think we need to see wages go up. We're seeing wages go up, but we also need to see affordable housing. So there's got to be some crossover. Yeah. I mean, that's definitely true. Wages have stagnated over the last decades relative to other costs. That's obviously a complicated economic issue. I think the housing one is more obvious. We're building a lot less. I think we were building about twice as many homes in the 1980s than we were today. There's a lot of different reasons. Zoning has gotten more complicated. I know that's something that the planning commissions are actively looking into, but over time, it has gotten more complicated to build a home, and that definitely results in higher prices. So that's one factor. Currently, material costs are really high, much higher than they were in decades. And also our construction labor market is not as strong. I mean, you could trace that up back to our education system, which is another thorny issue. So I think most experts who have studied housing have definitely pointed to the fact that the housing supply for the reasons I described is not keeping pace with the demand. And settlement patterns are changing. Chittenden County back in the day didn't account for such a large portion of Vermont's population, but now it's where the job centers are and where the demand is. Just to follow up on the long net line, there's a big push for density within the state of Vermont is supposed to sprawl. And with density comes larger buildings. I mean, people have been reluctant to see four or five-story buildings going up. But you know, basic physics, you get an area, either you build out or you build up. So somewhere who's got to be given take here, and I'm just curious on your opinions on that. Yeah, I mean, I'm personally fairly pro-density. When I see a lot of what is going up at, for instance, five corners, a lot of what was removed was like warehouses and homes that was in pretty poor condition. I think you can make development policies so that it's smart so that you're building attractive buildings that serve the community well. I don't think it has to be, you know, necessarily, like I think it can bring a lot of positive changes as well. It can support local businesses by bringing more residents. And I think it really can support environmental conservation. If we build more densely into small communities, not huge metropolises, but small dense communities, we can save our forest areas from suburban sprawl. And we can make it much more efficient to offer sustainable transportation. Right now, you know, we've talked about ways that we can get the Chittenden County transportation systems to serve areas better. And they say, like, well, if there's more demand, we'll build more transportation. But you don't have to come together and go out really, really together. And I think you always have to consider the negative downsides, but housing brings so many positives with it as well. This is Sue Cook's hand up. Was that next? Go ahead, Sue. Yeah, so we've spoken to South Burlington. I think we'd like to do it again. It's such a big issue. We've kind of only had surface-level discussions, but we have spoken to them and I've read a lot of the there's for a very long time. So they have kind of re-tinkered with it. I think one of the big things is you have to be really careful how you craft a policy so that to put it bluntly, developers can't get around it. There's all sorts of ways that you can, you know, if you're not careful, people can basically not fulfill their ends of it. Like for instance, making sure that inclusionary zoning units are the same quality and the same types unit composition as the other units in a building. So there's one example where Burlington over the years has gotten a little bit more strict in saying, okay, this is what the quality of the units has to be. South Burlington is at least fairly demographically similar to Essex and has a similar level of development. So we've taken a look at their policy and I could see using theirs as at least a starting point. Not that we would model ours exactly, but essentially saying, okay, what do they have and what are things we'd like to change? Yeah, I learned a lot from South. South Burlington, we can learn a lot. I learned a lot. I was part of the research on that and they have it nailed down, you know, and she said the developers wanted to develop. They want to build. There's building to be done. But she said, if you're left to just supply and demand, you're not going to get affordable housing, you know, so you need some form of government intervention in order to provide affordable housing. And then how you do it from there, there's a million different ways to go. But we can learn a lot from South Burlington, I think. Yep, absolutely. That's in our roadmap. It's, I think it's one of the first things we'll do to understand, you know, obviously it's just one perspective, but, you know, what they think they can do, you know, we don't want to make it, as we said, too burdensome for them to develop at all. So we'll have to get, you know, ask for their honest opinions on what they think they can make work in terms of requirements. So I'm very interested in knowing, you know, what's the deepest level of affordability that a project can support? Let's look at some budgets that they have and see what, you know, rents would be required to make a project feasible. We definitely want to be fair to everyone involved in the process. Thank you. Yes, I Andrew Brown, next. That's true, right, Mia? Yeah, I think that's what we'd planned to do. Like I said, nothing has been decided yet, but South Burlington, Burlington, and I believe Heinsberg all have the policy for both rental and home ownership, and usually it's the same percentage. So say, 10% no matter if you're building homes for sale or homes for rent. Usually the compliance process is a little bit different, sorry, more difficult for home ownership, because you have to plan, you know, what's going to happen when someone sells this house in 20 years versus when someone moves out of this apartment in two years or three years. That's something that's been done successfully. I think a lot of communities have leaned towards Champlain Housing Trust and other nonprofits to help them manage it, since they do have experience. So we'll definitely be talking to them and other nonprofits to see if there's a way for us to make the process easier. But I agree, I think we don't want to leave homeowners out of that unless there's, you know, I think that's the plan. George, saw your hand. Yeah, thank you. I first of all don't know if you are aware that there are 50 units of affordable housing going into Essex Junction going to be starting sometime next year. BlackRock purchased most of the property where the Lincoln Inn is and where the V, the Triangle, I don't know if you're aware of this, are you aware of that? Keep going, keep going, a little bit. I don't know if you, I can put you, the other thing I just want to run through a few things, listen, because I've worked pretty extensively with a lot of the developers who've put in the big buildings in Essex Junction and I haven't met one and I don't mean to burst any balloons, but I haven't met any that think density, density bonuses tend not to be an incentive. What we've found has been great incentives are two things. We do tax stabilization, property tax stabilization, which I would strongly recommend the town do. We do it in the village, so that when they increase the value of their property, they remain with their old property value for a period of years and then slowly integrate it in. That's worked really well and the other thing that has worked really, really well that developers love is the Vermont Neighborhood Program, which again we have in the village, which excludes them from Act 250 review and it's not what you don't all love Act 250, but when you're looking at it part of the world that's already been developed for 100 years, it's not clear why it needs to go through Act 250 review. As you know, that's just double jeopardy for developers. It delays their projects and delay it for up to a year. It dramatically increases their costs, their upfront costs. I would just recommend that you look at some of the things that we have done in the village to try to work with the developers. What are the things that they like? What are the things that they're willing to compromise on? Because what I've seen is a lot of the things that we think tend to work from the governmental point of view, they go, you know, big deal. But the stuff that they want, usually you can find that common ground, but those are the two things that we found have been very successful in F6 Junction. Good. Thank you. Yeah, we'll definitely look into that. I will say that I think there's only so far incentives can go. That's why voluntary inclusionary zoning policies are not common. I think usually because they don't tend to work very well, I think we need to both balance how can we help developers comply with this, but also how can we make developers comply with this? This is a business and this is a business that's possible because of all the assets of the village and the town. I think it's fair and reasonable that developers shoulder some of the burdens that the community is facing. As long as we do it fairly and try to figure out what's the most we can do to help the developers make this process easier. I think you're on track there. I think that's the thing. I think working with the developers and looking at them as partners in this is really the best way to go. When that relationship becomes adversarial, then a lot of stuff doesn't get done. So, yep. Absolutely. Yeah, we'll look into both of those things. Definitely. Thank you. Tracy. Yeah, quick question. Well, a question and then a question slash comment, but I noticed in your presentation that you talked about policies and ordinances a lot. I just want to verify that the ultimate goal would be to codify these regulations in the zoning standards and not just have a policy or an ordinance that would govern this. Yes. I'm a little out of my depth as not a planner. I usually hear them described as ordinances, but I've confirmed with staff that yes, it would be written into the existing zoning code. So, yes, I'm probably playing a little fast and less, but it's absolutely part of the zoning code. Okay. And sort of to George's point, I was actually on the Planning Commission in South Burlington when the inclusionary zoning regs were developed and approved. And one thing that we did was we regularly invited developers in to talk about what, quote unquote, carrot would you like, what incentives would work best for you, in which areas, what type of housing, things of that sort. I don't think that those conversations and collaboration can be understated. Absolutely. That's right. Okay, Rash. We've talked about a lot. I mean, sorry, we could get this done, big picture in a year. I don't know if that's way too ambitious or not. I think there's a couple of factors. One is just getting on the select board and board of trustees agenda. Obviously, a lot of big issues are on your plate. I think this work can continue, regardless of what else is going on, just because there's a tremendous amount of research and because it's part of each municipalities zoning code. So it belongs to basically the geographical area and I think we can continue no matter what happens. That said, we do want the boards buy in and it depends on getting on their schedule, of course. At the same time, I don't think we have to do this from scratch just because we do have several Vermont-specific policies that I think we can essentially take South Burlington's, start redlining, seeing, okay, we like the way this is phrased but not this and we'll grab something from Burlington. So I think a year is reasonable. I'd love to complete our initial outreach, meeting with developers, talking more closely with staff and the planning commissions within the next three months. Again, I'm hoping that's not wildly optimistic but that's kind of how I see this happening. Thank you. Thank you. So let's see. I don't see any other hands so I guess I will go ahead and jump in. We had Charlie Baker from the CCRPC here last night at the select board meeting and I understand he spoke to the trustees last week in their meeting. One of the things he talked about is the missing middle and there was also a discussion about the lack of homes for people to downsize into. We talk when cars drive down the road with empty seats but we don't talk about houses with empty bedrooms and so there's a lot of housing capacity that's not occupied that is that part of the targeting here to try to free up available housing that's not actually being used to take some pressure off of or is that completely outside of you know? We haven't really talked about that. I think it's linked. So I think this is missing middle housing. I mean I think we're talking about affordable and inclusive housing but a lot of this is targeted at people who are earning close to middle incomes or just below for our community. So I think in a lot of ways these are the people who will live in these homes already in our community they're just paying way too much for housing and these are people who have decent jobs but the housing prices are so expensive they really can't afford what's on the market. I think the downsizing is a more complicated issue just because it's hard to bring new stock online that really makes sense economically. So developers tend to build at the high ranges of you know basically for the luxury market because that's what they can afford or that's what they can make a profit on just because you know the incentives that when we added a lot of our housing stock in like the 1950s and 60s and heavy government investment are not there now. So I think it's hard to say that would help. I think it's basically saying you know let's take what building is happening and make sure that a chunk is reserved for people earning middle income or slightly below. That's how I kind of see that working. Okay okay so yeah because it's a it's a it's a hard sell for somebody who's in a four bedroom house and they are essentially trading it for a two bedroom condo right that's the same cost. Right definitely. Yeah that's definitely true and I think we'd have to look to other policies like you know making development easier you know and potentially lowering the cost of development so developers are more incentivized to provide you know more entry level or downsizing homes but it's a really tricky puzzle and housing experts have not solved this one. All right any other. Well one line is what Andy's talking about. I know one thing to address it's only temporary but accessory apartments in units where maybe senior somebody that had a family you know maybe one spouse one partner passed on they have this large home they rent out a space or have you also possibly maybe another thing to look at would be rezoning instead of single family to multiple family multi so that could change the use or the areas that could be designed you know to allow for multiple units close to single family. Yeah absolutely I think the planning commission so the planning commissions are currently reviewing the zoning code so I think they are hoping for more density in those in terms of accessory dwelling units they're required by law you can't ban them and I know both the village and the town planners have done what they can to kind of tweak the code to make it more welcoming. Our housing commission will also be bringing proposals for a housing trust fund to you in a couple weeks and that's something where I could you know I can't speak for them yet I don't think they've gotten that far but that's something where you could potentially invest in in smaller projects like that through the housing trust fund yeah. Okay Sue is your hand up again or is that the leftover or am I I think seeing well no we're not we're not going to the public quite yet I think I'm having the same problems having last night where your hand was still up even though you took it down sorry yeah okay any other any other board questions before we open to public all right so this may be a mistake but I see Mary Post's hand Mary is your hand up or am I seeing a mirage again it's gone okay as soon as I say it it disappeared okay Patty Davis yes we can thank you Patty thanks yeah um these units would definitely be it's the responsibility of the property owner to to maintain the the income requirements so they're responsible for certifying to the town that they are um occupied by the people whose incomes um are are required by the ordinance um usually that's something the developers are pretty familiar with just because other towns in the area have it so I don't see that being a challenge um I think it doesn't have that many short term rentals um it's just not um compared to other areas of the state with that are closer to you know ski resorts and stuff so I don't see that being a huge issue but it's definitely something to look at to make sure that the affordability um requirements are written carefully to make sure that the the homes go to people who um are entitled to them all right thanks patty um I don't see any other hands up any hands in the room nope okay so uh you're looking to us for a thumbs up to continue with with your effort this effort is that correct I think a good thumbs up word cited sounds like uh you're seeing a bunch of thumbs up don you okay with it I did yeah yeah yeah yep sues got a thumbs up when I see trustee thumbs up sure wonderful and like we'll definitely have more opportunities for buy-in as we clarify the criteria but I think this is a great place to start with um and we'll follow up with what we've learned from our research and what we think are the um the specific policies that will make um inclusionary zoning work in Essex yeah this is great now please please please feel free to come back whenever you whenever you this is a great great to showcase what the work that you're doing and it's uh it's important work great thanks for the time tonight and the support thank you yep yep okay um thank you and let's see moving on to the next agenda item which is uh I've asked uh discussion and potential action on tentative agreements about shared services between town of Essex and the independent city of Essex Junction um there are some documents that were provided yesterday that include that are uh a combination of select board comments and trustee comments um those documents those specific documents were not the same ones that are included in the packet that went out for this meeting um I believe what's in the packet for this meeting was the the most recent trustee edits and did not include the most recent select board edits so I guess the question is whether we want to review those here um given that the public has not had the opportunity to review what we're going to be talking about uh if anybody have any thoughts on that in the boards should we go ahead and there are a couple of big issues that some of them highlight go ahead Tracy you know me my usual my preferences it needs to be in the agenda the public needs to see it in order to give you know some some input on what the substance actually is um I'll be very honest by the time I got home at quarter after 11 last night I was out of the office yesterday I was playing catch up I started looking through the document at quarter of five this evening um so I haven't even had time to digest uh that consolidated document is sue I see your hand up to that did you have your hand I yeah I was actually going to say something similar I was at work most of the day and I pulled out my computer and it stopped working so I didn't even have access to the documents after 4 p.m. today all right so uh Andrew I see your hand up you've heard comments from the select board were reluctant to move forward with documents that haven't been made available to the public or were not really available to members of the select board either I think the the two two sets of documents came out kind of in parallel unfortunately the the one in the documents that that Brad put together yesterday combined the two uh edits the they were the documents that were in the so so and there's an interesting sequence of events right there's a set of set of nine documents that are in the in the packet we got six more on sunday afternoon and then we got the the collection of how many last night five last night right so there's 20 documents that that reflect changes from both directions not of them not all of them are consistent and the select board is saying that they'd like the opportunity to take some time to review those to verify that we have consistency the correct updates are all in there that we understand that with that that what's been provided and truly reflects our intent um it's it's it's also a question of whether the public has had had has had access to those documents you know we we um and yeah you know timing is a is a is a difficult thing um with you know when the when the packets uh are have a deadline of going out on friday and documents show up over over the weekend or later then yeah it's it's it's always problematic um and uh we really want to make sure that we have full public engagement on what we're doing and we're reluctant to go forward with reviewing documents that the public has not had the opportunity to review so see what you get your hand up so andrew the way our edits are proceeding is we sit with our legal counsel our legal counsel takes notes on our comments and then chooses what our legal counsel believes to be appropriate language to put in there so we have not necessarily seen the actual edit we understand yes the intent but we may or i mean we likely have we have not necessarily seen the language that our legal counsel chose to put on the paper subsequent to our meeting where we discussed it yeah it was downloading the idea of working on a couple of them at a time rather than trying to do you know 20 documents at once yeah basically just to expand a little bit this weekend i had three different copies all track changed with different track changes um i looked at all of them i tried to figure out which was ours which was yours which was the response to ours and finally i just said you know what i i i can't um i have not had the time to look at that consolidated document and raj as you just said like you know give the public a week to digest it do your research i haven't even had the opportunity to do that as a select board member so i don't feel comfortable hearing a response and then immediately having to give a response this evening and have an informed conversation about what's in that document at the drop of a hat so that's my can where i'm coming from with my concern so go ahead tonight can i make a comment whoops i write rajah's hand okay okay he's waving off go ahead go ahead i just just commented to dan it so reminds me that when you go into the fast food restaurant in the store you don't get waited on but the people who are the people online get served first so i'm gonna jump in here my apologies no i'm just kidding i'm just kidding we're just a just a just a board and board joke i think that uh i i think it speaking for myself as a trustee i think if one if the select board is not comfortable discussing these tonight i think for the sake of harmony and unity or and good relations i think we should uh not discuss this tonight although i will say can i make one snide comment sometimes when two elected boards know that they're going to be doing something where a lot of documents get exchanged and lawyers are involved they appoint subcommittees just kidding for george i thought it was funny george okay i have a bad sense of humor so take for that while you will that's good uh su did you have another comment yeah what's the harm in delaying a week to look at these documents go ahead andrew so i think yeah well no su the the target was i think much earlier than that we we were asked to have all these resolved before the the trustee warned the um we insisted on taking our time and and make sure we get things you know we don't miss anything or so we're working to schedule that we feel works for us and in this in this scenario i think that if we look at these documents tonight we'll be looking at them with the same amount of detail next week and we'll be repeating the meeting so i i think it's i don't see that the select board being convinced that it's appropriate to review these documents tonight brad luxe hand up oh sorry that's not sorry no it's cool cool um i mean i hear what everyone's saying and i think that we're gonna come down on not revealing reviewing these tonight which is fine i haven't seen them i'm typically willing to go through and do the documents you know as they come but i agree that if the rest of us aren't comfortable so i would do want to just add one thing about the timeline question is that i appreciate the trustees being understanding as well you know the delays the deliberation how we process and go through these with our lawyer you know obviously as you guys know a very time consuming a process for us so though i you know feel that we aren't ready tonight just because of the document timing um you know we appreciate that you guys are helping you know kind of role on this when the accelerated timeline was you know tossed to the wayside quite a while ago appreciate that yeah especially since you know the trust or excuse me the trustees do oversee a part of sx and that's nearly half of our constituency as well so it's they're asking for this in a timely manner in a timely fashion i feel we have to do our best to provide for all of our citizens uh brad go ahead do you want to consider reviewing the documents that didn't get subsequent changes in the middle or over the weekend it wasn't clear to me which ones to look at so i have not necessarily looked through them for you i the stormwater one didn't come in a new packet though brad no it didn't that's what he's saying it was in the it was in the old in the packet that went out warning this meeting and uh in that for that one though brad what the way the way the select board has been handling these documents is when if there's a new document that we've never not never reviewed we the select board would review them in executive session to have our own discussion before having a public discussion about them and so we haven't uh we didn't we didn't do that yesterday we had and so we haven't had our own discussion about those documents because of the confusion of which documents we should be looking at and we and and and bill and our our legal council wasn't available last night so we didn't have that discussion uh dan go ahead well i've heard you know the same thing battered around here a bunch of times so it's obvious that we're not going to move forward with this i propose that we move forward with what we have left here to do okay so move on to the next agenda item over and over again can i ask a clarifying question go ahead tracy um may i ask a clarifying question of brad sure um oh if he's okay with it brad did did you indicate that the police services agreement hasn't been changed since the last time we discussed it because one thing i am noticing is that the equity and inclusion group um and roger patrick you had a good back and forth on this uh and you agreed that the reasonable rec presentation language would remain but in the version that's in the packet uh that's crossed off and it still has the proportionate to the total population in there so that's um confused on so brad it's not good version is the good version go ahead greg i see you got your hand up yes please thank you okay andrew we're proposing that we move on to the next agenda item you're okay with that you may not be happy but okay uh next agenda item is discussion of personnel we'll go into executive session you have that discussion um then after that is the reading file uh there's no consent agenda on the here uh so any board member comments associated with the reading file or any other any other comments on any topic not here in any so it's yep yep okay yep talk about that andrew it's a good suggestion any other board member comments okay so uh i guess the there's two potential executive sessions is the is the intent for that i wasn't here for the interviews for the housing commission is the intent to go forward based on the two that interviewed or do we want to try to reach out to others or i don't know what the if there was a decision or thoughts on that uh there was no decision but i would it is awfully odd that we've had two people the one that we know very well not communicate um so we'd like to find out if something happened with our communication to them so i don't know if you're ready to make a decision but we would at least from a staff perspective because we've had a change in staffing this week um something may have been a mess i don't know but we have no way of contacting either of them to right now tonight to find out if it was on our end um i i leave that up to all of you i i think you're right on evan i mean if the if the two individuals weren't here because they were not they didn't receive notice that they were supposed to be here it would seem profoundly unfair to make a decision even that that they were excluded from the meeting from the interview process because it was our fault uh that doesn't seem right so i i would agree with you just my opinion but i know how i would feel yeah i concur okay i'm seeing a lot of nods thumbs up from andrew okay so we will we will not go into executive session and if you were lurking about waiting to hear if there's a decision tonight i'm sorry sorry we'll uh we'll uh we want to make sure that we do our due diligence and interview all of the candidates who've pressed interest um okay given that then we only have the one uh executive session on a discussion of personnel does anybody have the motion up for the select board i moved that the select board entered into executive session to discuss the employment of public employees in accordance with one vsa section 313 a3 to include the select board village attorney i'm sorry select board trustees village attorney town attorney town manager deputy manager second okay thank you don thank you pat any further discussion okay all those in favor please say aye aye okay motion passes five zero for the select board i'll make the same motion on behalf of the trustees second okay so i guess the question do we do we i don't think we anticipate coming back to public session we would just adjourn we would do the andrew do you think we're gonna need to come back all right so uh we will we will adjourn those that are here in person we'll go upstairs then we'll start the other uh meeting um and i'm slow this this meeting uh we won't come back to the uh the live meeting we'll just adjourn from so thank you though for those who uh attended this evening um and have a good night