 Ladies, everyone ready? Ready? Audience, are you ready? Everyone ready? 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. And welcome everybody, and welcome particularly St. Michael's Friends. And also, if you would like to, you could sign in at the little podium right there. We'd love to have your names. First order of business is agenda additions. We have two, sir. One is the agenda itself. We need to change the language on the executive session to the new agenda that is before you. And it means the executive sessions are anticipated for the employment and evaluation of public officer or employer. That's the same on both select board and our agenda. And then for 7E, on the Trustees Meeting, we needed to replace a memo. There were two words incorrect on a memo and the recommendation, changing minutes to motions. And I have an additional piece to add to the, it would be under new business. I'm very brief, but it's a memo from me to the Essex Junction Board of Trustees regarding the Park Street School and the Planning Commission. I'll move. We accept the agenda with the presented amendments. Secondly. Any further discussion? I'll in favor. Aye. And I forgot to mention Trustee Andrew Brown is not going to be with us tonight. Okay. So moving right along, we're going to get to guests, members of the audience who have a question, comment about something that's not on our agenda tonight. Anyone have a question, comment about something that's not on the agenda tonight? Okay. Hearing none, we'll move on. First order of business is preliminary engineering study for the Main Street Bridge. Dennis, welcome. Good evening. Good evening. If I join you, Dennis, you're good. No, come on up, Tim. Okay, very good. Tim Dahl. Yeah, Tim, we know Tim well. So he's going to engineering for engineering ventures on the bridge. Yep. Provided you a memo dated the 18th of October based upon what Tim had provided me and what we had talked back and forth on numerous e-mails and phone calls. But we said we'd come back to the board to let you know what's planned for the design of the bridge, what it might look like, any issues. Since you've gotten the memo, I have talked to Dick Hosking at V-Trans. And if we want to include the fixes to the spalls on the bridge or maybe to that head wall, he would support that. We're going to be well within the costs that were allocated for the project. The only issue there is whether to do that we get hung up on a whole lot of permits because we can do the pedestrian bridge without touching those and handle them at a different date, right? So we've got to do a little bit of permit research to see where we go with that. But otherwise, the recommendation is that you accept what we presented as far as the alternatives. You've got an estimated cost that Tim came up with. And again, it's preliminary because we haven't done final designs. We're going to have bids out all that, but it's there. So I guess if anybody has any questions? I didn't have any questions, but I'll throw it over to the board. I'm glad to get this done. And just go over again the timeline, Dennis, just approximately you're starting next spring and what Tim, what do you see is happening, like the time and so forth? Oh, I would say a couple of months, two, three months tops for a duration. I mean, it's going to go fairly quick. Okay. There's not that much work here. Okay. Some of the work will be prepared offsite, but there will be a period of time where that's why we included in a draft plan for handling pedestrians going through there. You know, when we're actually constructing onsite, there's going to be a timeframe we're going to have to use that. So the plan would be to do it in the springtime and go out in such a way that we don't really affect the school. That's the other issue. So we have a lot of school kids walking through that area. And the other thing I forgot to mention, Ricky's here too. We did go over this kind of every step of the way with Ricky. So he's comfortable with, you know, can it handle the snow plow and how wide is it and all the other things. Is there going to be a period of time when the bridge is going to be completely closed or is there always going to have at least one lane open? How are you going to? The bridge, the vehicular bridge? Yeah. No. I think that was the point of the final attachment on the back of Dennis's memo. Okay. The pedestrian travel. No, I meant to vehicular travel. Vehicular traffic. There will be two-way vehicular traffic and pedestrian traffic passing through. Okay. Okay. Other questions? You're going good? I think we've, we've, we, this has been a long evolution and we really appreciate you bringing it to this point. So thank you. I think Rick had something. Oh, I'm sorry. Rick, yep. I was pushing him a little bit to do the covered bridge. You know, make it look nice. Beautiful. Like this one. Something similar. Yeah, he just kind of smiled like he's doing now. Okay. Well, we could take it out of the public works budget. Yeah, some slippery roads this year then. Okay. Then we won't do it. Yeah. So, do I hear a word? I make a motion that we accept the Vermont 15 Main Street pedestrian bridge, preliminary engineering report and approve proceeding with design alternative number one, a pre-pressed concrete deck with vertical railings. So are you here a second? I'll second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. So we are now on to the question of abatement, potential abatement of the water sewer bill for 39 Park Street. And again, this is something that we, if I, actually Lauren, I'll let you, I'll let you lead us into this if you want to take it away. Well, last fall, the 39 Park had a very high reading on their water reader. And Mr. Harvey came in and told us that he thought it was not accurate. And we agreed to only have him pay for 14,000 cubic feet at that time of water. And to see what happened over the summer. Over this past summer, the property is 16,000 cubic feet, which is more in line with what he had been using. Rick and I have discussed it. And because our equipment tested well and the reader readings went up, we just could not recommend that we abate it. But because of the August 7th. Okay. Well, guys, I don't want to put anyone on the spot, but I'd really like to hear some different thoughts about this. I have a question. Did we look at any, I'm trying to think what other businesses are down there. Any other businesses in the area? Did anyone else complain? The high water readings? And I don't know if you remember, but. Oh, so, yeah. The period between the two readings, there was a meter swap out. So I don't know if that had anything to do with it or not. But we did switch from an older meter to a newer meter. And the newer meter is still reading. Yeah. And it read the 16,000. Which meter read the old one? The old one. Yeah, so. The 86,000. Oh, the new one. The new one read the 86,000. It read from the time it went in until. But it was installed in, so the period between the readings that correct me if I'm wrong, is April 1st, October 1st, or is it March 3rd, October 1st? April 1st, October 1st. The meters were swapped in June. So there was basically a period of time where the old meter, there was a part of that reading that I feel is incorrect. Half of it was with the old meter, and half of it was with the new meter. And can we see more in the difference between the two, or is it just one reading? Do we get a reading by day or anything? We did, but we didn't get that until we couldn't go back to the far enough period. So what we got showed that the meter was reading just a normal amount of water. But when did that? That was after the high spike. So at that point we couldn't go back far enough to look at what was happening. What's the split between the water sewer charge and the actual water? So the water, there's a couple of things. We've been paid for 14,400 cubic feet. At this point there is 1,124 left on the water and 10 1,025 on the sewer and sanitation combined. So there's an even split between those. 14,400 was sort of a cumulative average. It was an average of the last three years. I'm just curious. If just by chance say a water line in there broke, something broke, maybe Rick could help us come back there. Is it plausible that you'd see a number that high if there was a water break, some kind of a break in the water line or something running water down there? I don't know the pressure of water, the amount of water, how much you take, how long? What we've seen in the past is typically, it's like a toilet or something that's running constantly. So you don't see water on the ground or anything, it's all going down the septic. So you don't see it and that's a lot of water. Yeah, plus one running continuously 24-7. We've seen that in other places. I'm not saying that's what it was here, but that would be my best guess because of what we had. How many gallons of water in that cycle? I have to do the math, but we've had a lot of homeowners. I did a little. I'm pretty shocked. And you don't get the big math, man. I think part of the confusion here or whatever is trying to visualize how much water we're talking about. The difference between what my average water usage was and what I got billed of 643,000 gallons of water is roughly 525,000 gallons of water. So I sort of did an experiment the other day. I took a 5-gallon bucket and I went outside and put my garden hose in it and it takes about a minute to fill that 5-gallon bucket. If you do the math on that, you'd have to run the garden hose continuously 24-7 for 73 days, the equal 525,000 gallons of water. You guys know I'm in that business every day and I have 30 employees that are there every day. If we had a garden hose running, I would like to think for two days straight, we would know. But 73 days, we would have to be close. I mean, I don't know how we would miss something like that. Personally, my opinion, I don't have a problem with being there. Based on that, the logic just doesn't make sense that that much water would go without, you know, especially in a business where there's people coming and going. I can't imagine. In my opinion, I would agree. I was going to say split it. My concern is we don't have the data from the odometer. So if we had that and we could see that as soon as the new meter went in, there was a problem with it or something happened. I feel we don't have all the information. That's why I feel that we should split the difference. That's what I was saying. We should split the difference. Oh, okay. No, you just said the opposite. No, I said I agree to either abated or split the difference of what still is because we don't have all the data. Yeah, I mean, I kind of like... The problem is we're also the board of civil authority. We abate taxes and there are rules when we can abate taxes. And unfortunately, a lot of the time, a story like this, we've got certain rules that say, yeah, you can't abate the taxes. If the money is owed, then we... and the staff can't come up with a good reason for why the money's not... why you shouldn't pay the money, then we have to go with the staff. But in this case, yeah, it seems like we should... Can I make maybe one... maybe to ease all of our minds a little bit? If we just did the... if we absorbed the cost of the water sewer and we just looked at the water, and then how about if we split that bill in half? We just look at the water component of what's left of the bill and then we split that... and then we share the cost of that with... Just the water and abate the water. Abate the sewer and water, look only at the water and then abate half... well, I'm guessing say abate half the water. So that would be about $700, $800? I think it would be about $500. I think if I understand each. Yeah, well, we just... The problem is that the village has to buy that... the village has to buy that water. We have to buy that water from Champlain Water District. So we paid for that water. We purchased $1,100 worth of water and so half the bill would be paid by us and half would be paid by Delta. No sewer sanitation and half the water. Yeah, abated. That works for me. Yeah. Good? Yeah. I will make a motion that we... What the total amount is? It's $11.24 divided by 2. $5.62. $5.62? It would be the amount that he has to pay. $5.62? Yeah. Okay. So I guess we... And we're going to get rid of the penalty too. There was a penalty on that. So I will move that we abate the water sewer component and the penalty and split the cost of the water bill to... and charge $5.62. I'll second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Thank you, guys. So we are now onto a bid for the sidewalk plan. So we got three bids. One met all the criteria of the bids and that's when we recommend to go with... We also go with a three-year kind of bumper-to-bumper warranty on this. And that keeps it under, I think, about $1,000 under the budget price. Total budget. So that we can hopefully make the sidewalk safe here in beautiful downtown Ettings, Vermont. So all the kids can get to school on time. So only the one that you were recommending was the one that met the criteria? Met all criteria, yes. Desperate me. And we probably don't want to be thinking about this for a couple of weeks. No, I'd like to hopefully make a decision tonight so we can maybe get this on order. So if we ever do get cold weather, it's no problem. And maybe we'd possibly be able to use this. If we hold off, we may never get cold weather. That's true. Well, then we're going to put all the complaints towards the trustees. So I say don't put the trustees on that. Yeah, go ahead, Pat. So are you able to plow sidewalks throughout the entire community? Yes. Just dimensions? Yeah. That was one of the things with the criteria. Right. Good question, Pat. Good question. Do I hear a motion? I'll move that the trustees award the bid for the sidewalk plow in extended warranty to the lowest qualified bidder, Chadwick Babros, for the not to exceed amount of $142,602. One second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? All right. Okay, so once we get this in, if you guys want, we'll welcome to come over to the shop and try it. Take a ride on it. If you do good in the shop area, then maybe we'll like put you on a roof. But that's going to be my call. No offense. That's my call. That sounds like fun. Is this a volunteer gig or what? Pardon me? Is this a volunteer gig on that part? Well, you get all this awesome paid for. Maybe a t-shirt like yours. I could do a t-shirt. I just want a swag. I just want a swag. To get a hat or shirt. I got that stuff on the inside. All right. We'll have to see what you guys do first. I'm not guaranteeing you can do it. Thanks, Ray. Thank you. I'm glad to cut the loss. Okay, so we are on to a bid award for the wheel motor and Jim is going to present this. Appreciate you coming here. The wheel motor that we put off for bid is a dual purpose machine. Mainly it will help the facility, the wastewater facility, with moving heavy equipment without having to pull public works away from their ongoing operations. Deliveries tend to show up even though you say call in advance, they never say call in advance. And the equipment we had available to us couldn't handle loads for the materials we get. An important aspect of this wheel motor is it allows us to do the snow removal and these other activities, but it also can act as a backup. Rick has been renting a piece of equipment identical to this every winter for the past several years and has had to use it because of Murphy's law and multiple breakdowns of equipment on first and second snow storms. So it'll be an active backup. There'll be some shared costs. We still need to break down some of the costs that came in with the bid to know which ones are strictly street related and which ones would be shared. And that's why we haven't worked out the exact formula yet, but what we're hoping to do is get the bid approved. The bid was put out to multiple parties. Only one bid was received. It was $65,405.70. And it did meet the criteria. Questions? Any questions, anyone? I will make a motion that we, the village, purchase a four by four wheel loader with attachments and if the bid be the, if awarded to Milton, rental and sales for the bid amount would be $65,405.70. Second. Any further questions? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Jim. So the added agenda item tonight, I have just quickly, I just want to quickly discuss the disposition of the Mark Street School and I'll describe what's in the memo. The memo, right now the Planning Commission is an active application for one property that abuts the Park Street School and just approved a conceptual plan for another property that abuts the Park Street School. And there's potential, I guess, for both of these projects to have some impact on the school property, either just in terms of the aesthetic sight lines, but there's also a possibility of needing to have an expanded boundary in an easement or something like that. And listening to the Planning Commission, there was a little bit of hesitancy in terms of there not being sure what the village trustees, what does the village want to do with the school, how much latitude do we have with the school and to negotiate with applicants for what happens around the school. And my assumption is, I didn't want to go and say this on your behalf to the Planning Commission, but my assumption is that one of the reasons we got the school property was in anticipation of this very issue, so that the Planning Commission would pretty much have a free hand in deciding what they want to do. So I would, rather than trying to just transmit that information with a phone call, I thought it might be a nice opportunity for, I don't know if all of us want to go or two of us want to go, one of us wants to go to the next Planning Commission meeting and say, basically, we want you to advise us. We want you to look at the development that's happening there with the one active application and the secondary, the conceptual plan and to sort of look at this as a whole integrated piece in accordance with the village plan and design five corners. So you're our planner, you're our appointed planner. You tell us what you want to do. We don't tell you. We would defer to their judgment. I'm recommended that we do that. Oh, sorry. No, go ahead, I'm done. Well, my only question is, since it's written very clearly here, do we need to go and publicly say to them, we want you to do this, or can they read this memo? I mean, I don't want to be heavy-handed, but whatever works. I don't think it's, it doesn't, I think it could be, I don't think it's heavy-handed. I think it's just an opportunity for us to communicate with them. And in case they have, they may have you two, as our former Planning Commission members, you know, I don't want to assign you with the task of doing it, but they may have some questions about it that they want to bounce off of us. When is the next PC meeting? I think it's in about a week or two. I think it's November 2nd. It's the same night as Julie Campoli is presenting at the Town Plank. Oh, is that, I'm sorry. Is she doing a presentation to the village as well at some point? I don't believe so. I don't see this as a long conversation. I think it's a, this is like a five or ten minute conversation. I mean, I think I can go. But I think it's a good idea to, you know, just do them, but then go, in case they have any questions. No, I just think it's a courtesy. It's just to say, in case, so that we give them face-to-face assurance that this is there, this is there. Dan, I don't know if you think. I'm fine. Dan, would you be willing? Yeah, I apologize. I can't go. I'll be there. Well, I said Dan will go and then if either one of you can or can't. I can go for about the first half an hour. So if we could do it first. Appreciate it. Good. Thank you. So we are on to trustee comments, concerns and reading files. So we received, but as I was thinking about discussing this today, I don't think Pat was on it. An email from Kelly Adams discussing the issues of people running lights, people speeding. And Brad the Rose was fabulous and got back to her right away. I'm going to point out that I think and I'll send it to you if you weren't on it. I think it should be on an agenda item for us more of a discussion potential brainstorming of what we can do. As you know, I walk a lot in the community and it's bad. It is. I am starting to be hesitant to let my son walk in the community and I don't want to be that mom. Just put it on an upcoming agenda. Have a discussion of what things we think we might be able to do. That would be great. When you say we, when you say we, including someone from the police department. I was hoping someone from the police department could come. I'd be curious to hear from them what their practices on when they took it and when they don't. I've seen them stop people on my street, which is School Street, which is at the end of a one way and people have come the wrong way and they're letting them go which is fine, but I'm just curious what their practices on not ticketing and what they're seeing in the community and if they have any feedback on what we can do. Be happy to do it. I can tell you from percent experience with this problem which occurs over and over again. It usually happens when you pave the roads. I know. The cheery reading road acts as a slowing device. It also looks faster if you're standing still. If you're walking you get a better chance to see what the speed is. They have a creature that they roll out to plant so that you can see exactly how you're going for self-monitoring and then they do selective enforcement on the street or streets, which you're suggesting happen. Beyond that I don't know what officer of discretion does or not, but I'm sure that maybe the first round of contacts is a written warning to say, hey and then after that you get tickets. That's all great and I'm going to try and do some research before it's on our agenda to see what maybe other communities are doing in regards to signage or I don't know what. The five corners people are running late and these kids are crossing the street. Besides police I'm wondering if we would like Rick to come That would be great. Or Rick Amlin. Maybe there's some signage and some other stuff. And it's not I don't think we're going to necessarily, well I know we're not going to solve it at this meeting, but we can brainstorm and come up with ideas. Are there other people we need to talk to? Are there little gadgety things we can do? I don't know. I just, we're growing both with people and with the kids and if we don't somehow convince people that this is a walking, this is a community it is not a pass through. I think we're just going to one day have a serious situation on our hands. Agreed. I'll see what I can do about setting it up It's a unique situation. It's unlike some communities, small towns even Burlington Burlington's traffic, they're not getting so much pass through traffic. We're dealing with something that goes beyond the scope of our community, the town it goes to outside of the town, outside of the county coming from from LaMoyal County going down through here. So to really have an impact on those people it's going to be difficult it's I mean if we had a surcarway it certainly would help we don't have that so we're going to have this traffic the other issue that she brought up you didn't mention but was the backup of traffic so we've got businesses here and we have tractor-trailer trucks going through here we have big vehicles so one car stops to turn into one of these driveways, one tractor-trailer unit can extend from the intersection right through the intersection it's that and that's just the way it is I've seen it throughout my career in law enforcement it's just what happens during heavy traffic hours, commuter hours in the morning and the afternoon probably during the day it's not as bad in the evening. And I agree a big part of it is the communities that are around us passing through but it is also people in this community it is the high school students when they get out at three o'clock who I got in a fight with one of them last week I know but I was so irritated and it's people just trying to get their kids to school or get to work so I do think even if we can't convince the other communities that we are a community maybe we can convince this community and you know in Montpelier and St. Albans people stop, they stop before you are in the crosswalk and we don't have that mentality here so I've been preaching this for a while but I do think it's getting worse and I'm hoping we can come up with something and Pat I just thought of something I don't know the police might know if there's some type of safety coordinator in the school that we could invite to the meeting Well we deliver the police officer there do you mean non sworn police officers as an employee of the school? Right there's an employee of the school I know they have a safety route there and I if the police don't know I can try and maybe the good person to rank is I think it's shared but whoever the officer is who's normally here for school that would be probably a better person if you really want to get I think it's it's a woman at least in the afternoon I don't know about the morning the morning might be a male but that would be great thank you any other trustee comments? you want snow? for once? no you want snow because we're getting a new plow I thought you said it okay so we are on to the consent agenda I move to approve the consent agenda I have a second any further questions discussion? all in favor? I opposed? okay so we will take a now at the point where we're going to have a little joint meeting with the select board welcome select board members and we'll take a little 5 minute break so we can rearrange chairs thank you 7 o'clock Bill Nowhere Bill Nowhere he is the guy on scene at the school who's a safety guy he was left but he wasn't brought with police officer he's not the safety guy he's not the XRL good guy and I don't know who's there now I hear what you're saying we can definitely have an impact on our residents it looks like you've fallen out of a cliff it's tough but I think it'll be hard I think it'll be well worth it sorry we just need one more signature oh sure had I just had 8-2 emails one was from the resident and one was from the resident thank you sure go no problem okay make sure everybody's got anywhere I can okay thanks for coming thank you thank you good thank you come here how are you good thanks hi miss good to see you again thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks I know you were helping it's like you could probably put it on the preference so it'll probably like you thank you there is no one next to me come there yeah I'm going to switch so you can be in your seat I'm kind of looking at you nice 80's no brownies and if you want to thank you thank you there's this root 45 tenors and tenors tenors yeah hey Mike what oh yeah it could be more of a film so next year this year I was in Paris I was in France or I was going to Germany I was living my retirement curiously through you good for you good for you we have an updated agenda what you is it I don't know will we see Andy tonight? no Andy is not going to be with us tonight personally she's got an anniversary edition yeah it is it's on your agenda it's on your agenda okay we were already in session so you just open it did you pass yours down here? no but I tried putting yours in for you okay we're already in session so you just open it oh no a little bit I don't do it I think the game is going to be water this is just come on I won't spill that it's wet hi Greg how are you? I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine hi Greg I'm Marianne I'm the background there she is you're doing oh that's what I thought yeah are we all ready? channel 17? okay are you all ready? welcome back and we want to say welcome to the Essex Town Select Board hello George thank you for hosting I'll call the October 24th 2017 Select Board meeting to order so if we go down the agenda do we have any additions and changes? can I find the agenda the answer to the question is yes we do have one change and that's the memo regarding passive recommendation two words in the recommendation that said minutes and that should have said motions other than that okay so a motion to approve the amended agenda to include the updated memo regarding the passive so thank you Sue and Irene for the discussion on that all those in favor say aye aye public to be heard public to be heard next up on the agenda is public to be heard that's a time for members of the public or select board or trustees whoever to speak to us on a topic not on the agenda is there anyone here tonight wishing to speak during public to be heard okay hearing none we'll move on to our first business item okay yeah and our first business item is approval of employee resolution and pat you're going to lead us through this well yes as we've been seeing a lot of senior employees are hiring moving on to major pastures other occupations etc one of which is George wordy George has been with us for 33 years he is now a captain of the police department so he's ascended through the ranks and he's decided that he wants to pursue his passion which is music George was leader of a band when he was in high school in the area was very good at it and has kept it kept up you know froming his guitar and writing music and now he wants to pursue that on a regular basis for those of you that are on facebook I can see his is searching for an audience to critique his work so we are very happy for George his last day of work is November 3rd and so as our usual custom of recognizing our departing employees with a resolution of appreciation this is submitted for your consideration and recommendation as a practice we usually ask the clerk to read resolutions into the record you sure Sue take it away all right resolution and appreciation of George Murdy whereas George Murdy was hired is that how you say his last name was hired as a police officer for the town of Essex on August 27th 1984 and whereas George will be retiring on November 3rd 2017 and whereas George has concluded over 33 years of dedicated service to the Essex community and whereas George has served the Essex police department and the Vermont law enforcement community exceptionally well for decades as an officer supervisor and commander and whereas George supervised and mentored many subordinates fairly and with good humor as a first line supervisor and commander and whereas George is recognized for his contributions to the wider Vermont law enforcement community as many years of service and law enforcement now therefore be it resolved that the slack board board of trustees and municipal manager on behalf of the citizens of the town of Essex hereby extend our gratitude to George for as many years of service to the people of Essex thank you sir do we have a motion? I'll move we approve the resolution and appreciation of George Murdy second oh can we do that sorry I think I think each board has to do my apologies hold that for our turn I move that the slack board approve and adopt the resolution in appreciation of George Murdy thank you Michael do I have a second? second it looks like I'm going to move you to me but both boards signing off and that doesn't remind me of how we've done these in the past for town of place usually for town of place the slack board is signing off on behalf of all the residents because all the residents of the town are part of if I'm not mistaken I think it's similar to like the little league resolution it was actually a village and we haven't had a joint meeting and we were invited to participate and that thank you I think that made one of the differences the other difference is let's not forget that the police department started in the village and then it became part of the community as a whole George wasn't here at that time but it's still somewhat sympathetic to that concept and as you heard the trustees certainly have access to police services and knowledge and all those kinds of things police officers do come here before the trustees so I think it's appropriate to recognize George for both the slack board and the trustees and let's recognize where we are or a joint meeting with the trustees I would add that we appreciate the opportunity to specifically express our gratitude on behalf of the village to Mr. Moroney perhaps going forward we could on a future agenda on the slack board perhaps talk about what our policy should be for reservations going forward if that's something the board might talk about it's never been an issue before I've been here a long time and haven't missed a meeting 11 and a half years it's the first time I've seen a second board signing off on a town employee so it just raised a question for me but it's a nice gesture I mean it's wonderful gesture it's also consistent with what we've been doing since July of 13 which is coming together does having the trustees participate in this resolution does it cheapen the resolution to George Moroney at all by having them involved that's not my point my point is it's inconsistent with everything else we've done Doug Fisher was helping the village with their finances but I don't recall but maybe you can correct me that the trustees signed off on his resolution I'm just trying to be persistent I'm not debating that but he was not working for the village it's a departure from usual procedures but I don't see any of us getting upset about it I'm not upset about it I know the consistency is important in local government and I'm raising the issue because it's inconsistent with what we've done in the past and I just want to know going forward recognizing where we are we have not merged our two boards we don't make decisions except on them we're using things as 10 people and we're not doing 10 people now there are two boards that are making two separate so to move forward that we consider putting this on a future agenda and we can have a discussion and see what the policy let me add that we could have had a separate resolution from the S6 Junction trustees because it's sort of like a thank you card it's not really an official village or town document that must be done it's sort of just an expression of appreciation so we could have we could have had a separate one we've thought it would be nice to combine them in a way any further discussion all those in favor of the resolution for George Murdie of 33 years of dedicated service signify by saying aye aye, opposed most passes 5-0 do you want to hear a motion on behalf of the trustee okay Lori sorry you're right that was 4-0 thank you for the discussion on the trustee all it says I've worked with George in my career throughout my whole 26 years I've been in the state and outstanding officer and we're looking forward to his first album he's very good the man can play so all in favor aye, opposed 4-0 thank you both thank you two andes are not here coincidental okay next item next item so we are on to the two works consolidation committee final report and recommendations I had put Elaine and Sue on Elaine you were chair of this committee so do you want to take it away thank you that's what I was looking for I'm not sure if that's going to all fit do you want to control this I can sure we all have copies yeah it's more for the audience as we're going through it as you hear us move forward I think that'd be sufficient arm but thank you so there is an existing memorandum of understanding between the village and the town regarding combining the public works departments of the village of the town and in year 3 of that MOU which we are in right now we were tasked with assessing the progress and the members of that committee were myself and Andrew Brown from the trustees and Mike Plagueman and Sue Cook from the select board and Justin Rabadou who is an S-Extremion resident who is also the public works director for the city of South Burlington who was serving as our outside technical agent as stipulated by the MOU and Justin provided an outstanding resource to us so we met six times over the course of the summer and we utilized as many resources as we could and I would be remiss if I did not demonstrate the effort that Dennis Lutz put into this binder of the information that each one of us received and it was supplemented multiple times over the course of our six meetings I mean Dennis we couldn't thank you enough for the level of detail that you provided really it was outstanding and essential to our work and we also consulted at length with Rick Jones, thank you very much Rick and Lauren Morseau and Pat Scheidel and we basically reviewed all of the documents in here we reviewed minutes from multiple select board meetings and trustee meetings on the topic we talked about multiple aspects of what we needed to assess and we determined that our job was to determine whether we had been successful, partially successful or unsuccessful in seven different criteria which I think Lauren would be on the next for this Integrating village highway budget into the town's general fund providing component and elements of an integration study reducing costs where reductions are quantifiable providing management and engineering assistance, coordinating activities for mutual support, developing procedures and implementing tools for infrastructure management and providing timely and quality public work services to residents and businesses in the town and village our conclusion as a committee was that all of these criteria were met with success that the two departments brought together were still doing their jobs very well and there were no significant issues that we uncovered try to follow along so some additional resources that we use the public works integration study minutes from meetings annual reports from the town and the village examples of joint project work provided by Dennis and Rick the results of the survey that went to village and town employees regarding the unified manager position because some of their responses had to do with the ability to do their jobs in the public works departments public works budgets for 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 and town and village rolling stock and capital funds we made many recommendations and I'll just very briefly I'm going to assume that everyone's read these but very briefly go over what our recommendations are we maintain we recommend that we maintain the existing MOU without change until it expires in June of 2018 at that time or over the course between now and that time we conduct or at least initiate a series of studies as outlined further in the report and extend the MOU from July 1st, 2018 until the studies are well underway or completed and the goal is to fully consolidate both public works departments eventually but we recommend going through these studies that we suggest and we don't recommend a particular timeline because there's just a lot of work that still needs to be done to accomplish our final goal of having a single public works department the recommendations are broken down oh and one important thing the timeline that is eventually developed should the boards decide to pursue this path should be based on benchmarks that are established as a result of the studies that we undertake so it's all a process of informing more and more and more so that we are very clear on what we're doing over time the specific recommendations affect personnel finance resource management we recommend under the personnel umbrella cross training staff between the village and the town identifying and institutionalizing common best practices and procedures aligning rules and regulations analyzing and aligning job descriptions and establishing at some point in the future to form a contract for both the village and the town or some document or contract thereof under finance we recommend implementing or studying and implementing a combination of the rolling stock fund of the village and the vehicle and equipment line items of the budget of the town establishing a common purchasing policy and study and establish a consolidated capital project planning, funding and implementation process and finally studying and establishing guidelines for assuming future debt for equipment and projects and for joint bonding so these are some pretty heavy-duty topics that we're going to have to explore at great length and finally resource management research and implement common asset management software which that particular recommendation we have since learned that staff has reviewed our report and made some corrections in terms of what software is being used and what's been implemented across both communities but regardless we should have a fair assessment of all of the software that's being used between the communities and make sure that it applies evenly to both and it's the best software packages they are the best software packages for our needs establishing common service call management and communications processes and establishing a single location for public works administration considering to do the same for all staff this could be a ten-year timeline it could be a five-year timeline the boards could decide to do some or all of these recommendations there are some that could be done simultaneously some that are going to have to be done one at a time so we worked very hard on trying to understand the complexity of both departments and I think with the help of Dennis and Rick and Lauren and Pat we were able to accomplish that and this is the report that we submit we are interested in hearing both boards questions and comments and I think the step that we are looking to take is to accept the report on behalf of both boards accept the report but then conversations will have to happen about how to implement the recommendations and those have happened during the budget well I think we are going to keep the MOU in effect as it is we are recommending that and so I don't see any of this being implemented during the budget cycle that we are getting ready to go into I think that is a little too early would you agree with that Mike? I would and I would also add that with us looking for a new municipal manager between that task and passing budgets for both municipalities that would be a pretty that will be a pretty good accomplishment if we can do those three things it may be another spring and summer cycle you know once the town meeting and village meeting are complete and we have a new manager that we can turn our attention to this again and start initiating some of the studies that are recommending I would say first of all thank you and Elaine and Mike and Dennis and everybody else on the committee these technical committees are tough and they are I know what they are like at the end of it we have won ourselves to a lot of committees so I really appreciate the effort that went into this my question is my question is very global as I'm reading through this I'm thinking a lot of the questions that need to be resolved how we like what we did tonight the trustees approved the purchase of a new sidewalk block how would that happen in a consolidated public works who would make that decision where would that money come from I know that these are things to be figured out just globally because we have something like this on the agenda later on what is the overall difference in the items to be worked out if we maintain status quo in terms of governance two separate boards versus a consolidated government does it make things easier harder the conversation change what should we be doing do you see an overlap there is there a lot of overlap there is that a necessary conversation to be having or can we be having two separate conversations about consolidation of public works has nothing to do with consolidation or any further changes in governments do you have any thoughts about that I think because some of the more challenging aspects of what needs to be studied going forward in particular the rolling stock and the capital projects budgets I think they would go more smoothly and would result in better business practices for both communities and would result in more predictable tax equity for both communities if those conversations happen as a single board I'm not saying that they shouldn't otherwise but I think our work would be easier significantly easier if there were one board I know you're just asking the question now but I would add that as a committee and the work that we did we looked at it we didn't look at the governance we looked at it as its own unique thing and what made sense from a public works perspective outside of it I understand and you don't want to tail wagging the dog necessarily we're going to restructure everything around public but it's a pretty substantial tail for both governments it's a big chunk of the budgets for both general funds one of the things we did talk about was how things were proceeding have anything to do with the actual people that were involved and if the people were different would it be different but not the governance I think we did talk about that a little and I think we also talked about we have to plan for the future and consider the public works roles as opposed to the individuals in the roles because people retire people quit so we were very lucky to have the institutional memory of a lot of people in this study but we're not going to have that from the comments I don't really have anything to add other than what Elaine and Sue have said I totally agree with Elaine I think it would be easier if both boards were discussing this at the same time rather than having separate discussions and then trying to get together from there how do you see let's just say let's back away from the governance and just in terms of going forward with this what sort of discussions would we have we would have to have the two boards sitting together it's a sign another committee how would you go about doing that if you the recommendation we're going to stay with the model you're recommending we continue so we're probably going to continue you didn't find any horrible things going on but we said let's start moving and start to implement some of these recommendations what would be the body and the circumstance for having the discussion for how to go forward with that another committee or the two boards or what do you have any thoughts about that there's a couple things first of all if you look at the recommendations we they're sort of ranked by the most pressing at the top of each list so I don't think the I don't think the select board or the trustees need to do that we can rely entirely on staff expertise to do that cross training staff is another thing that we should not be touching something that staff can handle and they can report to us how it's going but studying and implementing a single rolling stock fund I think we should talk about that because it touches taxation and we can rely upon the expertise of our financial staff and our public work staff to guide us in that conversation so I would want to I suspect for the rolling stock fund the capital budget process the purchasing policy anything that touches policy or finance we should be talking about and perhaps create either keeping this community active or reconstituting it in a different way but everything else I think our staff is very qualified to make recommendations to us on how they feel they could best do their jobs Dennis? I just want to throw my two cents and I don't disagree with you on that but I think there's an important person that has to be included in the process and when you go to hire a new manager you're going to essentially hand this document to them and I think at some point you have to trust that new manager to determine what goes in what pot and I think policy issues belong with elected boards, it's not an issue but I think let that person and it's going to take time to get that person to feed on the ground quite honestly I think Mike's comment was appropriate but I think a lot of these can be directed by the manager as to where it goes and in some cases I know the committee recommended like in the capital capital program perhaps looking at an outside third party to look at that that's best done my view not necessarily by committee but under direction of the manager to assemble those players which might include board members as well as a third party so I'm not saying hand the whole thing over to the new manager but I think at some point that's almost a proper role and have him come back to you with or she, whoever come back to you with recommendations to step because if that person isn't on board you're going to be going in one direction as boards and that manager is going to be wondering what are you doing and where are you going for what it's worth I think when I refer to staff was lumping in whoever the manager was but yes, he's an essential portion of the conversation so in the recommendation of come the time extending the MOU recommendation of time frame to extend it for we left that open because we felt that some of the studies that need to be conducted will take you know a couple months some of them will take a lot longer we could do a standard three here and you just repeat what we have and then go back at year three of the second extension and revisit we didn't want to be prescriptive to do it by this because in the original MOU it said that we were going to do this assessment committee and then we were going to combine departments on July 1 so I think it would be better to leave it open-ended with the renewal and did the committee look did you look at the MOU and say things would have to change or does the document work as is to move forward extension we didn't talk about the language of the MOU that would be happening starting next July what we did talk about was identifying as William mentioned like some key measurable benchmarks and setting targets and having that kind of guide the MOU we could choose to do two or three studies and if these five benchmarks have been reached it's time to write up a new MOU but we just don't know what those are so maybe the MOU wouldn't need to be modified for this but going forward we could have somebody from the trustees when the highway amount from the villages being worked on to just at least walk us through it we haven't had that in the past oh absolutely we talked about that on our board we sort of said that's so obvious why didn't we do that when we decide and put our budget together one of us will go ahead and select one I was trying to find that that wasn't one of our recommendations thank you because we talked about that at length and Dennis recommended it it was one of the first things we discussed including having I think that was the only procedure from the whole MOU process that we found fault with that there wasn't enough detail provided to the select board and I thought the other thing was that we had agreed to extend the MOU for three years I thought we had I'm looking for it in here and I can't find it and I can't remember if it was part of an earlier draft and I missed it but I thought we had talked about extending it another three years come July 1st of 2018 so that leads me to a question as we're talking about these do you is your preference that we make some edits to this document and then bring it back to you or are you comfortable agreeing on those clarifications in this meeting I can only speak for myself I would say we just accept your notwithstanding we understand what Mike just said we would probably do that anyway but I would say we just accept your report as it is understanding that there's a lot to it that has to be fleshed out and continued and thought about it but that's just my you talked about the MOU specifically no this yeah I think it's by the accepted firstly thank you for pointing that out we have several hands while we were still talking about the extension time frame we just extended the manager's arrangement for three years and in recognition of the fact we're going through the recruitment and selection process the three year number would be consistent just as a thought sure I just wanted to jump in one of the things that we kind of kept having to do in the committee was rein ourselves into what really we were tasked with you know that we weren't we weren't tasked to solve things we were tasked to look at where things were make some judgment on where they were and based on what the MOU that's in place had said there was basically four choices that we then needed to determine which of those four choices we would recommend we actually struggled with that it was very tempting how do we solve this and that wasn't dead that's a suggestion but heading over after the original MOU I'm kind of wondering what's in it quite honestly at this point most of what's in it is dead because the committee decided we met what we were going to do I think what's in the report forms the basis for continuation of the MOU that it would help public works greatly if we knew where we were headed to be quite honest and the way to know where we're headed is to redraft the MOU as amendment number one that basically starts out that the general concept of the original agreement was met with whatever other words we want to throw in and then we're going to extend this for a period of time during which time we will pick out the items and include that in and maybe even establish some schedules so people are comfortable with when items might be done and then that becomes a clear footprint for where we want to go as opposed to a dead MOU and only port okay that's a good point so that has to be done before by July by June 30 sooner than that so the boards can review it plus we have to identify the person with the most knowledge in the room who would be willing to draft this document for us I am not doing it because I think I could put together the pieces and then obviously both would look at it and basically follow the recommendations but put it in the context that then you can again for everybody not just the public work departments but the boards as to what's expected, what's the time frame what's the next stage to this and again you may reach a point in three years where you don't get everything done but at least you can identify we've made these progress steps and it's important to the public where are the boards going with this it's important for them to have a blueprint of where we're headed got me finessed didn't we yeah we should be okay to any further discussion about this let's get I think what we can do is probably just put the idea I would recommend that the idea of revising the three year commitment as you just said we'll put that on an upcoming joint meeting agenda and go forward with it but I think I'd like to get if we want to just get back to should we, the issue of just accepting the report from the committees you recommended to do that okay so do I, I will make a motion for the trustees that we accept the public work consolidation committee final report and recommendations as written second any further discussion for the trustees all in favor opposed what's the select board's pleasure I was waiting for someone other than a committee member jump in I move that the select board accept the final report of the public works assessment committee as written thank you Michael I second thank you Irene any further discussion Irene I just was curious if the committee had any particular issues that you didn't immediately agree on was there somebody playing devil's advocate along the way was there one or two bullets here that you would do there was definitely plenty of devil's advocacy over the course of the summer I would definitely say and Dennis and Rick and Justin in particular were very adept at pointing out what we might be missing and did you consider this definitely had a lot of objectivity in the room I think I don't feel like we had any really heated disagreements over the contents of the report I mean we edited it you know as a group I think I would say I think there were things that we didn't all feel as committed to but we could support it if that makes sense right I mean we weren't all 100% on the same exact point but we could support the opposition and the only thing I would add to those two comments which are well made the only thing I would add is I think we felt early on and discussed early on the fact that the committee was made up of both trustees and select board members we wanted to have a vigorous debate about the points I think Susan's point is really well made that there were some people that felt strongly about things than others but at the end of the day we agreed that the recommendation by the committee should be a unanimous unanimous recommendation and so there were several iterations of this with language changes to reflect different members points of view before we got to this point which is the sign of a healthy committee I think so the opposite would have been I'm happy you're hearing that that there was debate and contention and people were challenged and everyone was yeah it's too bad Justin isn't here because I think Justin also we all were coming with our own points of view obviously but he would kind of come in with a different experience base that he could offer things and I think sometimes his things were things that we wouldn't have gotten to I think his participation was essential what was his do you have a sense of his enthusiasm level if we were to have another sort of iteration of this committee at some point would he be favorable I think he'd be favorable but I certainly can't speak for him he was very engaged the entire process and I think I think it's very safe to say that he was very excited to be a part of the committee because I think he felt like he had experiences he could share I remember when we were doing the interview process we were a couple of other people and after they had spoken and that type of thing two of them came up and said this is the guy you want even though they apply it was like Justin's the guy you want to have here he's the guy that should be here and I just thought that that was classy so we have most on the table too Sab, any further discussion on that? I got to share under personnel we spoke to Mr. Litz and Mr. Jones and not with staff in the field Mr. Litz talking to staff in the field I always question whether staff in the field were not consulted about this do you have a good sense of how staff in the field the people who are actually plowing the streets feel about this because I think that's a critical voice to hear and maybe the committee heard it through you but it specifically says that you didn't talk to staff in the field so that raises a flag for me to just ask the question representing that to a large degree the impact of what we've done so far is at Ricky's level, my level Superintendent's level and other things it's not this really gets into the media but I don't want to take it all night but we do things differently and there's reasons why we do things differently we have 23 miles of gravel roads the village does not have 23 miles of gravel roads we've heard that 100 times but it's true it's very much different and a lot of our people are put on those roads during the summertime the village doesn't have that responsibility so theirs is more of working with water sewer facilities and things like that and sharing responsibility between highway and water sewer the village operates the wastewater treatment plant operates the pump stations we have a separate department that operates pump stations so they're not cats and dogs I mean not that we're at each other it's not the point to work well together but we function differently and so we've tried to maintain that through this process where there's been a certain amount of independence on both the town and the village we're getting together Monday for a winter operations plan we're going to go over some things for three or four hours have lunch together and I'll do all those good things so we do that and we've helped each other out where we needed to help each other out but it's not until you have really one department totally you're not going to have that total integration of skills because quite honestly an operator in the village doesn't need to run a grader in the town and quite honestly I can't afford to waste the time training a grader when he's never going to run the grader so you need to look at it from that perspective so we've operated for most employees and I'm going to get to the immediate question there's been almost no difference other than the fact that we may send a crew down to help out or a crew up to help out and they're learning the difference between how one group does it versus another but it's not like I'm taking three people so if you ask the average employee up there and we talked a lot to the committee about that because they really wanted to think to pursue that you can talk to any of my employees and you can ask Ricky they're going to say what change and maybe that's good because we're able to make those changes without impacting their jobs, their daily lives and yet service has not gone down in the community I think it's just as good as it's ever been so you've got to look down the horizon to that point where there is a full integration before you get that kind of so from the employee's point of view and I'm going to speak for Ricky, he can speak for himself they haven't noticed much of a change No, our guy's right we've been getting all the fun stuff for all this and we've got one, maybe one or two people like we go up to clean catch basins in the town we bring the super-circuit 5,000 up there and we get those clean it's basically the same kind of stuff but it's just a different road so the guys really haven't been impacted at all and that's the reason why there was going to be some time spent but again, the team did a great job there it's worth someone to do this most of our guys are excellent people and good guys but they're not articulate in terms of writing out a form we're doing a check off the best way would be to sit down with them and I'll guarantee you, I think Ricky can they're going to basically say yeah, we know what's going on but it has an impact impacted us from a work perspective just also to answer we actually had on our agenda I think it was at least two meetings where we were going to build a survey that was going to be distributed to the staff at both the village and the town and started to form the questions for that survey and that's where basically the input that we were getting was that would be a waste of time and it would be a waste of valuable time so we abandoned that idea because it was not our time but it was the staff's time to take out and we also I personally was a little reluctant to let go of somehow getting some input so we called for the results of the unified manager survey because I think we asked Dennis to provide them to us because then that would have been a collection of some kind of input from staff and when we went through them, sure enough there were comments definitely related to efficiency of the public works department that we have done so we actually did get it wasn't the same set of questions but we had a sampling of what staff felt about the changes that were happening in the village and the town and Rick and Dennis at length explained like all the public work, consolidation work that these boards have tasked them with has fallen to Dennis and Rick not to anyone else so we gave that question a lot of consideration any other discussion ok all those in favor of accepting the public works assessment committees for boards even if I was saying aye aye, opposed before we step off of that I do again want to reiterate what George said thank you Lane, Andrew, Sue, Mike Dennis Rick, Pat, Rick Justin, Boris and Laura Laura for coordinating all those hours during the summer it was actually really interesting that's why you I know it's a lot of work so thank you ok do we need to do it or do we have to do it we already need to do it ok how we go before we take up the next item I think you can I'm precariously close to you can push that we're not going to use the screen anymore afraid you're going to we put the tallest person right under the board that was good planning ok so we we are now on to we weren't really Max and I talked about what language should we use and we just said approach to governance discussion and I think it's come up a couple of times that we we have that discussion we've had this discussion but to have the discussion but how should we approach it what kind of documents do we need what kind of setting do we want to be in what just sort of globally what's the approach how do we want to move after this because I think we're in the process of hiring a municipal manager we're in the process of consolidating working out some kind of a continued consolidation of the public works departments clearly the momentum is moving us towards changing things the way they are that's for sure and so we I think there's a desire among some of us, most of us, that we want to kind of feel that the two boards have some kind of a global understanding of where all this is going and how we want to approach it and what kind of conversations we want to have what kind of information do we need and are ready to be set for that conversation right and so you know I just as an example and maybe this is maybe this is completely separate from how other people would interpret this but I had an email exchange with Andy Watts because he, Don had raised the point that wow this weird village situation where villages get to do pretty much what they want I've never seen this before and I said well I don't know not sure if it's pretty common in Vermont but one thing that we might want to do at some point if we began a discussion would be to have someone who could really speak to us about the history and the significance and the legality and so forth of the village town relationship just as a sort of a background information that we would have going forward so that would be something that I might recommend as a piece of background information we would have for how do we approach the discussion about governance but I want to I'm going to stop talking and throw the discussion over to the rest of you we just itemized a few things to consider but it's not an exhausted list so we wanted to hear your thoughts about what you'd like to see be gathered in order to have a fruitful discussion I'm always eager to throw my two cents in so I'll start I think one of the essential components of this conversation at the outset should be what we think the town and village of Essex and Essex should look like 10 years from now where do we want to be what does it look like? a vision but not a vision in the vision statement let's write a really vague sentence that we'll get there eventually what does it look like for each one of us and I think we could actually be kind of particular as we describe it because I bet it's different for all 10 of us and I'll bet it's different for the staff and so I think it's worth having some kind of visioning exercise but what do we want to see our community become in 5 years, 10 years 20 years and 50 years because we really do need to think that far out sometimes we do but not very often some good headlights if you can I'd like to see some information gathered it's kind of a daunting task maybe but how other legislative bodies are created so whether it's a ward system or a 9 member board or a 5 member board so what do other communities of our size geographical region look like what are some benefits and some obstacles to those setups because as we move forward if we do become one you know I don't I know some things have been thrown around in conversations but we've never actually studied an actual structure others Sue? I mean kind of along the same lines I mean options and learn about those options so on this where you're saying bring somebody and that has the history and expert on the history I think also someone or some ones that have experience with different models and options and learning from them what works, what doesn't work and what the different options are rather than a preconceived notion of what the solution is I was like to look at all the options or I think it's important that we do this with a new manager so that we have that person's buy-in but it's not before they show up oh god what this or I don't I think I totally agree I think I'd want to have a running list of all the low hanging fruit the mergers that we've done the tax bill of finance departments and then have sort of the to-do list and be totally honest with ourselves that if this is indeed a bottom-up merger the boards are last the departments have to happen first so if we can't find a way to get TGIA off the shelf then I guess we're stalled out and just be realistic with each other that a bottom-up merger starts with the low fruit, goes to the high hanging fruit and then results with finally after everything's merged a board that can merge a board and then have outlying recreation departments for one example that don't have anyone to manage them we have a the public to be heard sex session is over but we have an audience member who came in late and so with the board's permission both at least the trustees would it be okay if we took a question or a comment from the audience everyone good? Yes ma'am it's on topic I just came from the I don't know what it's called the gentleman you hired whose name is oh Don Yes I just literally came from 81 Main Street from that meeting and someone said to him oh aren't you coming over to this which is when I discovered that you were all sitting here so I came in and I came in a little hot as I want to do and I have to tell you that I could hug each and every one of you sitting here right now because what I'm looking at and watching and listening to is marginally different from what our friend is perceiving these boards to be so I hear you ready to really step forward in a way that I don't think he's aware of I think it's too bad he didn't come over here and I'm thrilled right now by what I'm hearing and what your vision is for moving forward by everyone sitting here and I know I sound a little goofy right now but I'm just really excited and I didn't expect to be I came over kind of confused by my interaction there but this feels really good to me and this feels very much like a community that's collaboratively collaboratively moving forward and is really ready to hire this exciting new manager and it sounds to me like you're taking all the right steps every statement I just heard made was great so I would maybe ask that I try to watch this on Channel 17 but I'm really excited and thank you for letting us be in here on this meeting thank you Lynn, thank you for the comment thanks I appreciate it so other discussion other it's took me near the end because there's been some great ideas here I think I would just echo trying to talk to people that have been through this before and I know there are at least two municipalities that have done this and to date I don't know that we've ever invited anybody from either one of those two and the process hasn't gone that far yet but I'm thinking that maybe the next step would be to get people from either one or both of those municipalities that wound up merging and just have them come in and talk to us. Which two Mike? I think Waterbury was one of them if I'm not mistaken and I think St. Albans the other or am I mistaken well both Waterbury finished but St. Albans Northfield tried and didn't there's a southern Vermont community that just managed it we did talk to Rebecca Ellis way back we did she came in before my time I think it's a great idea the interesting thing is that looking at when Andy and I had this little discussion I looked at villages the one thing that they all haven't had in common is that they're all different they're all some of them are the town much larger than the village some of them in the village is huge and the town is a peripheral thing they all have these very different arrangements of what they've done but I think it's if I could expand on it a little bit I looked at Rockingham and Bellows Falls Bellows Falls is the village and Rockingham is the town one of the things that are interesting they have a lot of mutual development boards and they have this piece written into their charter that requires them to meet five times a year the select board and the trustees on the board and whether they like it or not they have to sit down and meet and talk about stuff there's a lot of interesting situations where we could probably learn a lot from going out and looking at some of the other communities I agree I would only add to that that I'm not sure that we need laser focus to just Vermont Vermont's unique we all know that but there are still lessons to be learned from neighboring states so you know I'm just going to pick a name I don't believe they've done this but Greenfield Mass for example if they had that type of situation is there anything to say that we could not reach out to them and just invite them up here but Don would know and pick their brain the other thing I would add there's a possibility that the manager that we hire may have been through this themselves and might be able to offer a wealth of information so other points I agree with all the whole thing when we started everyone's comments that I like to come and have a bunch of options everybody come up with their vision for what they'd like to see then it's one thing for us to have a vision nothing to bring that to fruition and the legality involved in it we don't have that expertise we're not you know adept in that field so we'd have to go to the Vermont League of Cities and Towns our attorneys, whoever what have you, legislative bodies like Mike saying outside of Vermont possibly or wherever in Vermont that we can get for information and see how we can proceed forward to set it and say we're going to do it in 10 years I don't think I agree with you have a vision maybe 10 years down the road but I don't have a really an end date to say this is when it's going to be done I just want to see continue the process and move forward and come up with a plan I mean I brought up something from the bottom up and merging all these boards or departments and then governance I'm not so sure that I'm not disagreeing I'm just saying that's one way to do it but governance is a huge issue and it's it's kind of difficult to do it that direction it's to liken it to what we're doing with our public works departments that would be like merging, doing things down at the bottom Dennis and Rick and the ministry of staff don't really do anything together we do it from the bottom and work up it doesn't work as well as we want it from the top down in that respect and I just was thinking about that and thought as Dennis was saying we're doing it administratively and people down below don't really notice it so much so just something to think about good point, very good point and for time I think it makes sense to see who comes on board and then it might even make sense to wait until after the upcoming budget process we should just keep it on our radar and make sure that we put a date out there sometime in the near future I think to say this is where we're going to have the information one of the things that we do, I don't you the select board doesn't do this but we the trustees have a tradition of our retreat in May or June where we just have a session where we just sit around and we talk about stuff, we talk about things that we'd like to do it's the list is like this and we wind up doing one of these but you know it's a good time, it's a good opportunity for us to talk to really flesh out some of the ideas that we had and have our ideas challenged and so forth would there be any interest in trying to do that with both boards to have some kind of a retreat and not to say we would when we do our retreat the public is welcome and anyone who can sit through several hours of listening to us just chatter, God love them that's fine if they want to do it, they're perfectly welcome to come but I was just thinking if we did had a work session like this a retreat scenario it might be a little more conducive to really getting into more of the background discussion and the dialogue and I don't know if that's a good idea something that people at least we don't have to commit to it now but I was even thinking that we could do it with lunch and we might even be able to do it by taking a room up, getting a lunch room up at the Essex and we could feed whoever comes from members of the public and ourselves and have lunch and maybe have some of these questions on the agenda and start a lunchtime discussion and talk about where it comes at the last lecture meeting we were talking about items to consider for the future budget, one of the topics that came up was such a retreat I don't think we called it a retreat I think we called it a joint meeting to talk about priorities or goal setting I think it's what we talked about so it's sort of the same kind of idea a team building yeah a team building and I agree with this I think the idea of a joint retreat between the select board and the trustees would be great I propose that it be on a weekend because the public to be in I'm sorry but public to attend something like that when people are working during the day it's one thing for us maybe but for everybody I think on a Saturday or a Sunday afternoon if we could do it sometime during the weekend you'd get a lot more involvement I'm just telling you I think we didn't go for many board members thank you video conference well no I mean I think I wouldn't be able to but a Saturday Saturday Irene do you have any thoughts about that it's first I've heard of it so I'd like to think about it because it sounds fine sure as long as the public invited and I think the idea would be that it would also be presumably I would imagine with the new manager coming on but there's going to be interaction with the two boards and the new manager prior to that but that would be a casual setting for the new manager to listen to this discussion too it's not so much going to be actionable of items it's going to be more just coming together with ideas and bouncing things around I would like to see that I think it's like a cloud slowly condensing together can I add two more um Max I understood what you were saying about how we don't really have to put a timeline on Dan you said the same thing but I would love to start gathering this information and maybe every joint meeting we have a standing agenda item how are we doing with the information gathering or does anyone have any more information that they want to consider or here's a possible speaker that we could have come talk I don't want to put off the actual collection after budget after manager because it's going to take time to do that no reason to do it except for steps and we can do some of that gathering too and the other thing I wanted to say was it's great to look at what existing communities are doing and to see what existing models are out there but let's remember that we are just as special as Rockingham we can do whatever whatever it is that works for us so I don't want us to do an existing model because it exists it's good to get ideas about I just wanted everyone to be willing to take risks willing to consider unusual ideas timelines this is a very clean slate and we're probably one of the only communities in the country having this conversation so we're in the vanguard let's act like it let's consider all sorts of ideas can I recommend since each of us had although each of us had recommendations about what we'd like how about instead of assigning someone the task of researching all this how about if each of us takes this home and does our own homework and figures a little bit of this out on their own does some searching online or whatever or just some thought process or something like that we gotta avoid how do we know I don't want everyone working on the same thing I think that's a good idea I agree with you we gotta parse out what this person's doing this looking what everyone's read it'd be kinda hard to say this is a specific task that someone's gonna do I don't know I think everyone could pursue what interests them most and bring it to the table and if everyone sent it we sent it to Travis and Patty they could just compile it so Max and I can look at it and then we can slowly try to put it together and put it into some kind of a document plus we could window that would tell us the areas that we still need to do research in right it would become a document it would become a tool right, exactly, yeah foundational tool that we can just keep at we can just keep moving forward we'll just look at the summation of the 10 of us and sure there's gonna be a bunch of items that are doubled and tripled up on we got those and then you start to think about what all 10 of us didn't think of and then the next step is maybe we do assign those particular ones to people who knows that's good we'll send out reminders to everybody as one of the vocal people who did this topic, thank you very much for putting it out there I think it's something we all kind of are thinking about yeah, thank you for questioning okay should we move on any more discussion about that okay, take it away please okay, next item is 5D and that's the manager of recruitment process update is sort of two parts Don actually isn't feeling real well as we call it but we have a George and I have an update and we wanted to share some of the highlights because it's a different status now than what we heard from him last time in a positive way he said after today's input sessions he would have talked to about 43 individuals regarding the challenges and issues facing the next manager and he's got about 10 more scheduled phone calls over the next couple of weeks to get more information but the meet is that he's got now 37 applicants and of those 37 20 have MPAs or equivalent to have jurisprudence degrees long degrees 7 have BA or BSs and 8 have associates or no degree as far as experience out of those 37 13 have municipal management experience 3 have assistant management experience 2 with county management experience 4 with municipal department head experience and 15 have no related experience so he said that there's some that any application goes out they put names on they put their resume in and as far as location there are 13 from Vermont which is a big change from last time there's 4 from New Hampshire a few from Connecticut and a couple from Massachusetts New York, Ohio and Illinois and then there's some from the rest of the world country but there are 13 from Vermont I think we had 0 or 1 last time so what is on our plate to do and it's something I think we're going to want to talk about in the executive session but our task will be we were given 10 suggested essays and we're being tasked to prioritize those to the top so that he can they'll send those out probably to the top 15 candidates that have applied and he wants to do that by the end of this month and the candidates we response time and if I can just jump in the reason we want to pick them out an executive session is that if we looked at the questions in open session and we debated the questions in open session and said I like this question because I want to hear the person say this this is what I'm expecting to hear someone, a candidate out there who is savvy enough to tune into channel 17 or get our minutes could all of a sudden have a leg up on the application process so we kind of thought to sort of keep it, try to keep it a little bit confidential to say what exactly it is we're looking for in specific candidates we probably because this is an employment situation, a personnel situation we probably wanted to do that in executive session okay and that's the only reason a couple of months from now when this is all done we'll be very happy to release the questions to the public there's no big secret going on here sorry Max thanks for that clarification let's see, during the three weeks when the essays are being worked on Don and his team will be doing public info searches during that three week period he plans on doing some telephone interviews with the top 8 to 10 candidates immediately after reviewing the essay responses and then from that he'll identify the top 6 candidates for onsite interviews and that will be towards the end of November that's anything else George? nope, that's good you had a question? yes, go ahead Colin after this executive session are you planning on releasing more questions no, because we don't want we don't want to I mean again if someone gets the questions and someone doesn't ahead of time it could disadvantage some people as opposed to others so we just would kind of like to keep as much of this we're trying to do as much as we can in open session but there's a certain point where information we want to try to keep it here so that we're not giving one person in it or some people an advantage over others this is going to be sent out by the end of the month in all three weeks the board stands that two days or three days might advance to award by the time they're getting it sent will that information be released? because just from what it sounded like you were saying is a few months from now well I meant a few months from now I think that maybe what we could say is once the questions are sent then we could release the questions how about that? Would that be okay with everybody? I don't see any reason not to do it we just just a little hesitant to give someone an advantage over other people so why don't we say as soon as the questions are sent out then we'll send you a copy but to make the decision on which ones we can do that in open session if we do it by the number of that was in our confidential packet of questions if we need because you're not supposed to make decisions in an executive session you make them in public so we could do it actually ranking the questions by number without listening to the questions and then when the questions are released to the candidates then it's really no I don't think it's any issue to release if we do a ranking we're not going to want to discuss you do that discussion in an executive session about why but when you come out to make the decision we can just point to the different question numbers and write them that's just an idea wouldn't we just be coming out saying we decided we had a we narrowed it down to six questions and that's enough rather than say number one number two I'm just I mean I think that we'd come out I guess we can't make a decision I don't know we kind of wrestled with this I mean this is not a board policy decision we're in a hiring process so it's tricky I'm going to have a conflict review point on this go ahead Mark wouldn't we want those individuals who are savvy enough to study our minutes and watch Channel 17 you've got it because it's setting up there will be some people who don't watch it and some people who do and then we could be setting ourselves up for contention if an applicant said they're denied because they didn't have advanced you've got 13 people from Vermont who have access to Channel 17 everyone has had someone from Utah who probably isn't going to be able to get them Channel 17 is online my dad watches it in South Carolina don't worry I don't know I'm just following it out there because I mean I I'd rather see them come in without advanced I mean I'd rather see it we're setting ourselves up for contention from an applicant I think we they all get it at the same time there's no it's just I will go with the majority but I I see it differently I think we're trying to keep a fairer process as we can and as open as we can and also some of these people may be in positions where doing something like that I mean they can put themselves we're worried about potentially somebody that's coming from another municipality somewhere outside maybe they don't want to go online and have that be tracked oh they're looking at this what are they looking at these things for you know I just that's part of a record on a computer is where you've been searching oh I've been searching or I've been this full manager searching this why are you doing all these things and there's questions about it just I think it lends itself to problems stone it out there select board you guys you play for a job I'm all for keeping it under wraps there's all kinds of unfair advantages some people are better writers they're going to write better answers I know and I don't think any of those questions were all that incredibly unique I know I don't feel like we're denying the public some critical piece of information to their lives but I think that just for the sake of fairness I mean we're trying to strike the right balance here in terms of openness and understanding that this is ultimately a personnel decision let me take the extreme we wouldn't be releasing anyone's name if we knew the name we don't know the names but even if we did we certainly wouldn't be announcing to the public that's at one end and other things input sessions so somewhere in the middle we're trying to strike the right balance okay any other questions about the update we had one piece that I think we need some clarification which is preliminary interviews and Don needs to know if we intend to do preliminary interviews with the citizen panel employee panel, professional panel if so how do we decide these panels will be we have to make that decision and I would add one important piece of information which is in the input sessions for example the input session that we offered that Don offered on a week ago on Saturday he had three people apply to that session and so Don wasn't feeling well so he asked us if it would be okay if he just called those people which means they got an hour of his time which was better for their input but my point in saying this is that I'm not sure if we did another broadcast out into the community do you want to get involved in another input session that that I think it might be worth our while to say we have to actively recruit some people and we're going to have to pick out some people and send on those maybe send on a group of resumes and or not resumes but bios and interest letters or something like that very brief and then let Don pick them out based on what he's that's just a suggestion and I'm sorry what is this for? this is for part of the process that he outlaid for us and that's part of the contract is that there will be a preliminary interview panel that they're going to not us but of another group of people and what that group of people who's in that group it could be anyone he's open to suggestion it could be employees it could be people that you know that are professional business people it could be just members of the public and so they will form a group that will do a preliminary interview of these of the 15 candidates to help narrow it to help part of his information gathering to help narrow the thing down so you're saying that those people reaching out whoever is the selection process for that is going to be done by us we're going to present those selections to Don that's what I'm recommending because what I'm saying is that the when we've advertised this there hasn't been a big overwhelming response and then you'd want to get into the question of saying well people have had like Annie was at an input session tonight so we Don would have the names of all the people who are in input sessions we want all those people to go beyond yet another panel or do we want to get fresh faces now that we have this on channel 17 and I assume the Essex reporter will have it in their report that maybe we'll see more names and I agree I think it's a great idea to get that input from people outside of our board and to weigh in on it because what we could do is maybe broadcast it say but I would just caution us that we may have to step in and recruit some people because you may not get enough response and how many people is Don looking for? Yeah good question I think he as I recall it was something like it doesn't I would think you don't want a huge amount of people here No It's businesses, staff and citizens A citizen panel, employee panel professional panel what's the mix that we want I thought we were going to mix the whole thing I thought it wasn't just going to be professionals I thought it was going to be a mix of professionals, citizens staff so you get a diverse mix so bouncing a lot of things off which I think would be ideal If that's what we want that's what we could do We have the option to step in and say well no we really feel strongly about this I think he was talking about three different panels One was the citizen panel, one was the employee panel I got the impression of the panel That's what I thought it was three Okay I'm just thinking about the fortitude of the average applicant who's going to go through three committees of residents an essay process, an interview process at MRI and then our interview process and probably community visits That's very intense We'll really want the gentleman That's one way of looking at it But again, the way this is worded in my understanding is that it doesn't have to be three panels If we want to just We just want to pick out ten professional people business people or professional working people out in the community, in the village, in the town and near the panel, boom, that's it That would be okay, we could do that I kind of like that idea that ten or twelve, I mean you got two business, two whatever number you come up with I think of a mix of professionals, you know staff you know you know people from here I think we'll have a higher success of getting interested in qualified people if we do one committee but I don't want the mix one committee and the mix four of each could get twelve where do we begin I think if you're going to ask someone to listen to fifteen interviews if I heard that correctly I wouldn't want to just assign someone to that and assume that they have time in their life and a desire to do that so I think I'd want people to apply to us and then maybe we send a smaller list to Don and then let Don figure it out or something I just wouldn't want to be setting people up for a huge commitment. The word from the earlier session today was that there were some number of people fourteen or so who were signed up maybe we know they've been writing and eight showed but I also don't want to short the panel by assigning people or even expecting people to show up who said they would show up and then oh we don't have twelve people and we have six that's just really not enough we need alternatives, we need some things so that we get the robust decision making that we expect out of this How many candidates are going to be seen by these committees? Do we know? I thought he was going to go ahead Greg, do you know six? Okay, I'm sorry I'm on a sequence so it's not all the fifteen he's going to win the fifteen on his own with eight to ten candidates immediately getting the essays and then identify the top six candidates for on-site reviews I'm sorry, I'm misleading everybody sorry and I apologize to everybody Greg? My memory of the professional interviews was that it was going to be Don and a couple of his team and some other managers in the area not the business professional maybe just the way this is worded and are these interviews going to be part of a site visit by, these are not the finalists these are the semi-finalists then we're going to have like two, maybe three that will come here and get the tour and more Well, it's quite possible that the six semi-finalists will be put through the process which would also include a tour because that helps give them a sense and a feel for the community so they would probably start with the panel that they were running through in the process perhaps where you as the candidate would meet with the panel while somebody else is being given a tour and then the interview with the ten, lots of officials would follow so that it would be kept moving the people would be moving that to the given tape that you will have with the questions and answers you might learn something about how quick they picked up on certain things because it's an outside perspective theoretically and you could enhance your interview process that way so I think he might be thinking along those lines with the quote unquote citizen panel plus when he interviewed with you for the job one of the things he heard you say was that there had to be some citizen input on the interview process also leading up to it but at the interview process itself and this might be his answer to that question that you had raised I apologize for getting mired down in the process but so you're saying that these six candidates would see this citizen committee alternate like one gets a tour and then they come see us so we're going to interview each candidate twice no you're only going to have one interview with one candidate the candidates are going to be bopped around from pillar to post great so I see that happening on different days I mean how are we going to have six people come in and be interviewed by a committee of citizens and that committee of citizens is going to they need to provide their input and then MRI needs to narrow down the field to two or three and that's all going to happen you're going to narrow down the field you're going to narrow down the process and then there's another set of interviews after that or no I'm confused as to when the final decision is going to be made I feel like we've just condensed the timeline into like one set of meetings I really think that what we're discussing now I think I know Don's not feeling well but it would be so much helpful to have him here and the other thing is that I'm just curious do you feel up to ask him or maybe some of you know this in this process is it common for people often times you put in for something maybe they get to this point you get down to the sweet 16 or whatever you want to call it you get down to the narrow you meet this community instead of going they back out are we going back to the list do we get back to the list and say now we're down we don't have six we're going to reach somebody somebody or we go with the five so let's keep that in mind some of these decisions are ours correct go ahead let me try again because I've been through this process several times as the candidate and so that we're not confusing what I'm talking about with a tour and a meeting with a group of people and then an interview a formal interview with ten of you is step one semi finalists out to the finalists so after those six candidates go through their full day you decide who you like then the second interview and Don is going to work with you on this I mean he's going to help you along then the second and final interview is with the finalists so we're not compressing it into one whole day you're but some of them will have two interviews with us so that we went the best and then after that first day I mean there may be some self-selection yes and normally if it is you stay with the number you got so if you start with six you like three one voluntarily took another job because they may be applying for something else we don't reach into the pool we go over again we just go with the number that you have and you may maybe you don't like the final two and maybe you want to restart that's a whole different question and I do really like the idea of the tours and I think we need to give that as much consideration as we are these questions who's putting them on the tour where are they going because that could be a self-selection right there and maybe if you don't like it for all six do it for the three finalists are we allowed to attend the community interview no you get their feedback as part of your collection of data okay yeah great answer that might also be important to think about when the tour is right can't do July can we the thing is we're going to meet when again when's our next joint meeting the 8th we've obviously got a lot of questions and a lot of questions about the process right now and the thing is is that Max and I could go and talk to Dawn and say oh okay Dawn will explain it all to us and which panel is doing what and when the interviews and tours and everything but then if we communicated that all out to you we can't have a big online discussion about answering questions and wait a second so it I think what we're going to have to do at our next joint meeting about this I don't think I'm not sure November 8th if we need to have some of this besides the essay questions if we have to have all this other stuff done before then I think there's time there's time to do it and just to go back to Irene's point the citizen panel it looks like what you're talking about they're going to be locked in a room doing they're going to be doing a lot of intent it's going to be a big time commitment it's going to be a big commitment of so we may not want to just throw this out to the public we may want to know make sure we have we have people who are willing to commit and understand what they're getting themselves into so we may have to intervene it's a full name for each of them and then they're going to get a lesson on what their responsibilities are because they're going to know six people who are applying for a job and there's only one job so explain that to them what their responsibilities are and the confidentiality is associated with the recruitment process what's expected of them and what's the appropriate questions to ask and not ask because you can really get bogged down if someone is a wild card asking all inappropriate questions there goes the process for that day the other thing is are we going to just have them give us their subjective feedback or will there be some type of ranking criteria system that we create which I think I think that's really important to have that ranking criteria I think there will be some criteria there so if we meet on the 8th and we get some answers from Donna the on-site interviews according to the schedule that I sent out is the 30th of November so that could this time I guess what I'm trying to get to is that by the 8th by the 8th we want to I think we're going to want to have to intervene we're going to need to try to recruit people beyond this panel I don't think we can just throw it open to the public and see who applies and say great you're the panel I think we're going to have to actively recruit people and so maybe the way to do it since I'm not sure what the numbers are maybe if each one of us it would be good to have a job description basically for that person too they say they're going to do it and it's a whole day of expecting it so could I make a record does this sound reasonable that we each be thinking so that by our next meeting on the 8th we each have at least one or two people in mind of who we would recommend to be on this panel and then we need to open up our calendars for the end of that day so there's the three groups, the citizen, the employee and the professional yes okay well we can try to hit the high notes we can try to hit all three right I think the the employee panel though great what if each board recommended two citizens two staff members and two professionals from the community to sit and then you guys did six, we did six and there it is and some backups so it's a different interpretation of the professional board right what did you say Craig? Don's got a professional board defined he has a professional board defined that Don will have himself and a couple of people on his team and then other managers he's got his own idea of what he wants so we just have to worry about citizens we just need to worry about citizens and staff but I think that Don would do staff too I mean Don if Don has questions about it we could say staff I think we just want to worry about the citizens okay and we know what to make, I think if we have that that decision made by November 8th that'll be fine so I think that's it any other questions about the recruitment process, yes what's the status of those 10 people you're sending for phone calls I know the select board made a decision I haven't seen anything from the trustees I think Don has that we just created a list we created a list I created a list and each trustee looked at it and okayed it, approved it we did not have an open discussion about that so if I move on to 5B so 5B is I think this is the select board only one is that right? well it's a select board only one for a vote but it impacts the trustees because they have an agreement with the trustees and in that agreement it says that it will be active and it will be active so it's about to amend a previously adopted motion something that happened back in 1993 for the passive appointment for the passive board but there were some issues with the motion that was made that didn't quite make it yes this is excuse me it was hard in 1990 in 1991 the board appointed me to the passive board because I had a previous experience in two other places starting up the insurance pools when I came to Rwanda they were already started but I got invited to participate anyhow when it came time to go to the board meeting to be appointed to the board the person who I was going to appoint replaced did not leave he left three years later he did not leave in 1991 but they kept me and two other folks working on a committee for the passive board so I stayed working on committees until 1994 when the vacancy did occur but I was told by the then executive director you better go back and get a vote because so much time had passed and excuse me for just a second so I did June Carmichael was on the the league board at the time put it on the agenda for the select board and they approved me you know continuing on staying active in the league but they didn't for some reason understand that I was on passive and they appointed me to something called the unemployment trust I don't know why I can only guess that because I was appointed to the passive board in 1991 they probably figured well why does it need to be appointed to the same board twice I was pretty new there so I wasn't anywhere near as aggressive as I am now so I said it should be passive and I guess hopped over and so there was a vote so between the meetings I mentioned to June that the meeting should be passive she said yeah okay so I came back to Mending of the Minutes the next meeting to correct it and that didn't work either I know I mentioned it and there must have been a breakdown between June and the person taking the minutes because June was our minute maven she was very detail oriented just like Irene is on the minutes and you know so I didn't bother re-reading those minutes again so under around 22 years later I'm leaving passive I'm going to be writing my letter of resignation so I started going back over you know I want to talk to them about it I want to thank them I want to express my historic full floor my involvement there and lo and behold I come across there so my next passive meeting by the way is Friday hence the purpose of having it tonight I would like to have this discussion with them my letter is going to call for me to be formally done December 31st or January 1st so I will serve on my second of a three year term Steve Jeffery asked me when I first resigned or tried to resign I said Steve I'd like to resign we just hired a new executive director why don't you stay a year or two and help out so keeping my consistent pattern of wanting to resign or resign and then do it on the date this is just another example of my past practice of lack of credibility and when I'm actually leaving someplace so I would ask that you would hearing all that I would ask that you make a motion to amend the motions of September 13th 1993 a select board meeting by replacing the words unemployment trust with property and casualty into municipal fund which is passive we refer to it as passive because we don't want to keep saying it over and over online 216 and then on the October 4th 1993 minutes by replacing the words unemployment insurance with property and casualty into municipal fund online 59 it's not my business but you realize if you don't pass this motion they'll never be able to resign yeah the board's known ever since I've been on it already passive and not this unemployment insurance trust it's a private nonprofit corporation affiliated with the league and the league is an instrumentality of the local government and that's why we all who are members it's a member owned outfit which is quite good and we are each 1326 of that I know it doesn't sound like a lot but we have we both the town and the village have generated quite a bit of savings over the years and it's been again it's just kind of a passion of mine an avocational passion and you're being modest Pat you played a major role in this and I don't think the municipality of Vermont appreciate the commitment you've had to it many many years of good leadership there thank you president are there any legal implications of correcting a motion that's 24 years old actually the language before you came from Bill Ellis I saw that I don't know why wouldn't we just make a new motion why would we correct a 24 year old motion because that's the appropriate thing to do according to Robert's words you get to amend the motion that was wrong by making the motion now you are in effect making the motion this year yeah we asked Bill what's the right language for that and that's what he provided for us here but yeah it seems like we could do some other way with this he says recommendations and so my question is what stops a select board from correcting anything that the predecessors decided decades earlier because you need the majority of the board to do it and it's assumed that they would be making only good decisions together as a board that's the only thing I heard Pat say that you really were appointed two years earlier but the argument and the reason why Steve Jeffries sent me back is that I was appointed but that I never actually served I was on a committee working with the board which is a little different than actually being on the board but you had that appointment from your select board earlier but I had that appointment so you were never unappointed I was never unappointed but I never served for what I was appointed for in 1991 I was on a committee not the board so I could make the argument that yep I really don't have to be here but erring on the site of caution and trying to treat the league as well as they have treated me to make sure I'm on a high road with everything and not have any questions coming to them five years after I retire well did you realize that this vote was taken and there's two different votes and an appointment for us so what's that all about this is doting the I across the team that's what it is what's the board's pleasure on this one I think that's an interesting precedent it's not a precedent going back to correct minutes I think it is I've never corrected twenty four minutes we're not correcting the minutes, we're correcting emotion that's why I changed the word we're correcting emotion and that's the legal that's recording in these minutes and it says hey back in 93 this happened you can say yep and it was corrected or cured or and we have done that before it's not a precedent we have cured yes we did last year multiple times which is a precedent I don't like either but we won't go there so what's the board's pleasure on this one about emotion make a motion that the select board amend the motion of September 13th 1993 as a select board meeting by replacing the words unemployment insurance with property and casualty inter-municipal fund online 216 and the motion of October 4th 1993 by replacing the words unemployment insurance with property and casualty inter-municipal fund online 59 second any further discussion on this one all those in favor so you have a say aye aye passes 4-0 thank you all for taking this up and if there's any questions you can put in your letter thank you now I can appropriately leave now you've got 24 more years to go say Michael students thank you for showing up welcome to local government it's the right thing to do next time you should be more aggressive fun to tell not passive that brings passive passive aggressive that brings us sadly to the end there's five yes the track we have sorry so Pat do you want to just go over five F's we need to do an executive session yes the municipal manager well this is one of those long standing items that have been on the agenda what I was expected to do was to come up with a format the document by which we were going to evaluate the new manager but that we were going to evaluate me against this document and as a consequence I'll share things about you that I've got to tell myself and also pick the brain of a couple of other folks too give it some perspective walk it through with you and obtain your comments and suggestions and comments about everything including the forum and see how you feel about that and sort of pretend that I would be the new manager and this would be the first time we're going through this thing so at any rate because it is an evaluation of public official and I do believe there will be an opportunity for a two-way discussion as well on some points that probably to have a complete and thorough discussion of this like you would at any other evaluation in the offered up in the executive session okay so we actually need two motions then one to discuss the employment process of the municipal manager and one to evaluate public personnel yes and I think you've spent some memos to that effect providing for you with the motions okay there's no memo not too emotional I move that the select board and trustees enter into executive session to discuss the employment process of a municipal manager pursuant to one VSA 313A3 to include the municipal manager I want to add Greg deputy manager sorry I don't think for that one no this is this is the MRI this is the MRI please oh no you can't do that I don't want to be no sorry thank you so municipal manager period period thank you I don't know that we can we're just doing we're just doing okay do I second on that any further discussion to discuss the employment process of the municipal manager very none although it's a favor signify to say hi motion passes 4-0 we need to do one more for the select board to do the evaluation of the public personnel yes okay I would move that the select board enter into executive session to evaluate public personnel in accordance with one VSA section 313A3 and to include the manager and deputy manager deputy assistant second thank you Mike any further discussion to evaluate public personnel very none although it's a favor signify to say hi 4-0 to you yeah I will I will read I'll make the same motion that Sue made I won't bother I don't think it's necessary to read the whole thing but I will substitute the board of trustees for select board is that okay is that appropriate to do that can't imagine why it's going to appear in minutes for so so Lori seconded all in favor are I okay and then I will make the motion would go into executive session for the same reason stated by Sue but substitute the word board of trustees for select board so there was Irene sorry Irene second any further discussion all in favor and I will suggest that we take a little short break so channel 17 can thank you thank you Mike