 I'll move to find premature public knowledge regarding confidential attorney client communications made for the purpose of providing professional legal services to the select board would clearly place the town at a substantial disadvantage and further move that we enter executive discussion to discuss confidential attorney client communications made for the purpose of providing professional legal services to the select board under title one sections three one three a one f of the Vermont statutes and invite town attorney David Rue public works director Bruce for and town manager Eric Wells to join presentation outside the sewer okay so the next bulletin says that 2025 both plans should be followed but we don't have 2025 both plans so I know what you're saying like you're saying we should wait for them? yes we should wait for the play in before we I call that grandfathers something in right thanks what I remember your point being is that before we start making changes that could affect the future in some situations we should wait for the 2025 growth plan or town plan to be put in place yeah I guess my my thought is that it also says at the beginning of the following was noted and or discussed wasn't these bullet points aren't articulating what was agreed to yeah no I agree with that it just can't really follow something hasn't been developed yet yeah okay so what would you consider how about that 2025 town plan should be considered that works for my recollection of your point okay with people yeah great thank you Gene two good points if nothing else then page three I think on your item number 10 town manager for the third bulletin they talked about the vermin buildings and grounds division there is no such thing the buildings and general services department I feel like that's one that we've seen a few times anything else on page three subject to those modifications all those in favor of approving the minutes say aye aye I will suppose nay the ayes have it next public comment this would be the time for anybody in the room or participating remotely to speak on any issue whether it's on the agenda or not if you want to wait for an agenda item that might be more appropriate but it's your right to speak now if you wish to so let me ask is there anybody in the room that wishes to make a public comment can you come up and state your name sure just to send everyone a talk about it here okay sure fine I'll mic the emperor I'm going to bring in the final name of the city Ron Belich Blaine so I wanted to talk just a couple minutes about the agenda item on the temporary event ordinance coming off tonight I guess the concern is that the way the temporary event ordinance is written right now it's a one size fits all and I think the residential district is different than not that deserves to have its own subsection of the ordinance you know for example the proposal is to increase the number of people attending from 25 to 40 to trigger it in a residential district even 25 an event of 25 people is a loss you know if you look at our streets there's no place to park offsite and get the houses so you're going to have people parking on one side of the street up and down other neighborhoods house or you're going to have people parking on both sides of the street and that becomes a public safety issue because of the fire truck and the ambulance those kinds of vehicles will never be able to pass and this is lamp light acres and we actually have a color of shoulder but it's people's lawn and people park on the street they typically park on people's lawn but the other developments have curves so they are really inflexible as to how far cars can be bought the use, the kinds of things that are qualified for the temporary event and they're talking about festivals, parties, carnivals, tent sales all of those things would generate a fair number of people that just never would work in a residential district we have, the one exception maybe is celebrations because that would tend to be more of a focus you know like the graduation party or something like that it's not where you're going to have people from outside coming in you're going to have a number of known people I mean parking is still going to be an issue because even if someone had, even if the limit is 25 even if half those people, even if those people come two cars per, or two people per car, it's 12 cars I mean you're not going to be able to park 12 cars comfortably in there or anything like that the other thing about it is the way it's written it allows monthly events temporary events can be from monthly events I can't see in a residential area how anything that fits the character of the area and it complies with the zoning ordinance for the residential area is going to be monthly you're not going to have carnivals, you're not going to do a tent sale tent sale is like commercial things, retail sales none of that stuff is allowed in a residential district if you look at what the ordinance, oh it's chapter 20 it says about yard sales, yard sales are residents yard sales, you're only allowed to have two a year in most of it and I think that's much more reasonable for residents you know, residential districts for temporary events than to have a monthly thing potentially impacting all the neighbors all the time the other area is I guess I'll call it the and I understand why it's there the whole idea of having some kind of flexibility and discretion rather than really firm deadlines I get all that but I think you need to be careful with the whole discretion thing because if there's too much discretion it becomes a really slippery slope and you can't do things like notify all the people within 500 feet in a timely manner you know, there was a temporary event from that issue in the fall on October 13th or an event that happened on October 15th there was no time for the town to mail letters the applicant was told we'll let your neighbors know, they'll never let the neighbors know so two days after the group was issued the neighbors were faced with cars and traffic throughout the day so I think it's like 45 days in the name of 10 days that was fine well, if you have 45 days to you have to apply to 45 days before the event if the application isn't complete, the town can ask questions the applicant has 10 days to ask a question well, if 45 days come and suddenly it's a week before the town can ask the questions and the person takes 10 weeks you're almost three weeks out or three weeks into that 45-day period so I think discretion is something I mean, you just have to be careful about it it can't be a blanket any exception is okay at the discretion of the town manager, whoever so the notification thing right now it says anybody within 500 feet of the event location has to be notified the applicant has to identify who the houses are give the names of the town and the town send the letters well, I think again, if we're going to mail the letters, all that to happen it has to be more timely and there's a suggestion in the ordinance to reduce it to have some flexibility on whether we're going to do 500 in the rural district or not in the rural district I think even if it's a lot 500 feet away depending on what the person in the ag world district is planning it could be noise, it could generate a ton of traffic on what is usually a smaller road and I think the people around it the butters and the people around it with 500 feet need to know you can't assume neighbors are going to talk to neighbors and all those people are going to be worked out on the side the last point I have is just you know, the whole, they talk about permit enforcement and permit verification and all the town doesn't have a mechanism for that you can put in the ordinance whatever you want about well, if you don't do this for a remote permit if you don't follow your permit, we're going to find you how's that happen? it can't fall on the neighbors and the butters to be the reporters to the town which basically is what happens now that puts the neighbors in a difficult spot that creates an emosity between the applicant and the neighbors and it gets ugly it gets ugly, it's not the neighbors responsibility to do the town's work if you don't have an enforcement mechanism why have any ordinances at all? there's a couple of other things I've put in the notes that are going around I mean, I just think you need to think about splitting the residential district out separately it can't be a one size fits all the residential district is way too different than any other district in town thank you I just wanted to add one more point about the parking in our neighborhood they came through and they put in stormwater swells well, that prevents you from not being able to in a good portion of the neighborhood to even pull off the road because if you pull in, you may not get out so that leads to the narrowing and some of them are across from each other it's not a perfect world where I could somebody can pull up on their front yard because they can't there's nothing there to do it thank you very much if you decide to go forward, when will the public hearing be? we're going to vote on setting the public hearing today I guess I'm not quite sure when is that like a 45-day time? something you have to do on a three-day, I think? yeah, it anticipates a July slide for me thank you those are very good, well thought comments they're really some really good things public comment looks like nobody else in the room unless does anybody in the room have a further public comment otherwise we'll ask if there's somebody on Zoom only staff okay next up, interviews Michael so Michael Vance interviewed for the position of representative for the Chittenden Communications Union District so welcome if I can just ask you to give a little blurb about yourself and then if board members have questions we'll go to that good evening everyone like I said, my name is Mike Vance I am a Wilson resident a little over in Southridge and for my entire professional career I have ended up building nothing but broadband access networks and when I am maybe unfortunately deeply intimate with the CUD process in my professional capacity and when I saw Wilson had decided to enter into the game well, I'm a reticent resident and I thought, oh, I know this I should volunteer so I am volunteering to be a representative if you'd like the details of this sort of business is incredibly boring and ad nauseam and I just want to make sure I'm brief and so if you have questions about the process or what I would add feel free to ask I just don't want to torture anyone with the details thank you, thank you for coming forward questions from the board yes, my question really relates to you work for Weitzfield and Champlain Valley telecom so are there any anticipated conflicts between your professional career and your role on this board I really hope not we've taken on enough of these so if there was I would have to step out our service territory does include a tiny bit of Williston so depending on the way these CUTs develop you could end up requesting services from my company anyways so I just would not be I would have to just let that go as how the board saw but otherwise no, my company is fully aware that I said I was doing this I do know the people that they're considering to be consultants we actually the hired on consultants I do have a working relationship with them I don't think that's a conflict just because I know them but the company doesn't have a problem with me doing this and anything that directly required I would just have to step aside any other questions I would assume that Weitzfield telecom essentially they receive most of their data from fiber optic today correct yes well yeah any provider is connected to the greater world with fiber optics at this point our company has for many years been deploying the fiber to our actual subscribers way ahead of this with the kind of windfall that's occurred with the CUTs but we also do benefit CUT models we're operating three of these the N.E.K. one Maple Broadband and C.P. Fiber so we're doing for them what we've already been doing for ourselves plus we're working with multiple towns like Bolton, Charlotte that in lieu of them joining CUDs they just went directly to us and asked us with grant money you know just deploy fiber just bypass the process so yep we're doing it we are I think in today's DNA it's impossible not to have some type of communication without using fiber yeah the greater network does not run on anything but the way of things any other questions it's nice to have somebody with the background that's interested in doing this well thank you I think we're lucky so Michael is the only applicant so I'm wondering if we could move for his appointment and also I do see that there's a proposed motion to appoint Eric Wells and Aaron Dickinson if the board is comfortable doing that without interviewing Eric and Aaron and I've served as your representative at CUD since its inception and chairing the body the last six months so I will after speaking with Michael on Friday I think the towns good shoes would have as your representative it's probably more appropriate to make the motion to appoint Mr. Vance and then have the motion to appoint the alternate so I'd move to appoint Michael Vance as well as his representative that should in communications union district for an unexpired term through April 30th, 2024 is there a second? all second all those in favor say aye all those opposing the ayes have it Michael thank you very much congratulations thank you for taking one to the team I'll connect with you tomorrow thank you so now I'll move to appoint Eric Wells and Aaron Dickinson as alternates to the Chitton communications union district for an unexpired term through April 30th, 2024 is there a second? second all those in favor say aye all those opposing the ayes have it okay next temporary event permit for Green Mountain cyclocross gotta follow that to say that Eric? brief overview for this for the board this is an event at catamount community forest planned for September 30th of this year the third year that this event is run it's a bicycle race there the last couple of years it's gone well hasn't heard any issues with the event they're anticipating about 300 folks to be there I'll just go through their application here it's similar to how they ran it last year with these they undergo a staff review public safety, public works planning a zoning of the manager's office so we've shared permit conditions for consideration for this with the board's prior materials as we do when we review these applications staff with the items listed for the conditions staff doesn't have any further hesitation recommending approval of this for the board they have mentioned that they are looking to have alcohol on site as they have in previous years we haven't received their catering permit yet I bring that forward to the board at a future date once received should you wish to grant this permit if the board has additional questions for the organizer we can certainly invite them in at a future meeting but similar to the last couple of years we haven't run into any issues with how they've managed their event in the past questions? Jeff had I believe a ton of questions for them last year if I recall and they he obviously knows much more than we all did about this particular table of events so I was satisfied and he was satisfied last year and if there was no problems I think that makes sense I would assume maybe parking is one of their biggest struggles with 300 people yeah we've looked at some and as part of the catamount license agreement with events there we'll have to the board later this summer working through some of those parking questions with the changes to the parking ordinance on Governor Chitton Road we restrict parking on the south side of the road now as well so they've got an understanding with their parking capacity there and limitations on the road certainly something we identified in public safety as well because we don't want to have any challenges getting to the site so if there are no other questions we'll be looking for a motion move to approve a temporary event permit for Green Mountain Cyclocross race to be held at the catamount community forest on September 30th 2023 is there a second? second all those in favor say aye aye aye okay next event next item water sewer connection fees report we have Bruce you're going to be presenting and Wayne okay excellent come on up okay and briefly if I could Ted I could brief over to the board so Wayne Elliott engineer we work with from Aldrich and Elliott updated water and sewer connection fee analysis for your discussion and consideration this evening this report was last updated in 2007 both our water and sewer connection fees are paid for all new connections in town we're going to staff seats direction based on the report you'll receive an overview of this evening where the board wishes to set the connection fees for fiscal year 2024 that will be considered at your next meeting in June the fees as identified in the report they've been built into the draft water and sewer budgets under consideration this evening possible option to accept the report at a future meeting as well and also note the towns reduce the connection fees for affordable housing by 50% as part of the fee schedule decision in the past in each year so that'll be part of your decision moving forward to continue that reduction with the fees as they are so we've included the draft report in your materials I have a memo just kind of walks through the citations within our ordinance that works to how we base these fees and our administrative procedures here so I think I'll probably pause there and I'm just kind of the procedural items and I'll turn them to Lane and Bruce just what the report says here and what you have to consider this evening should have been reviewed or updated and we did look at it in like 2017 quickly with Rick I'm not trying to pass the bug but we can really move on at that point so we've asked owners to know it and Wayne know it to take a look at that we have flipped the professionals in it I told him so anyway Wayne's here to let us know the updates and what he's done for us don't move that now you have to move it give me a move well it's good to be back here it's been a while since I've been in the board I think I should go back to 1988 in the town of Wallaston so I've got a lot of institutional knowledge here over the years so as Bruce said really the task here was to update the 2007 document that Mike Bunson prepared one thing we tried to do was not reinvent the wheel town's been using that process procedure for many many years so it didn't make any sense to really change it we did change the name of it it was called the hook up fee analysis we changed it to connection fee one of the things you need to be a little bit careful about is I do quite a few of these especially in Chittenden County and there's a lot of different terminology that's used and it's interchangeable so for example you know Wallaston on the sewer you have an allocation fee which is really the price or the cost to purchase the treatment capacity and you have a sewer connection fee and you have a water connection fee you know Seltbronken for example has a water allocation fee which is really similar to your connection fee and then they have a connection fee but the connection fee is kind of very nominal so the only reason I kind of point that out if you're trying to compare you obviously want to be competitive with adjacent similar communities but when you're looking at that you just got to make sure you're comparing apples and apples and almost have to look at a standard typical residential unit to see what they would pay with all the fees to see if you're kind of in the ballpark and range and also making sure the flows are similar for that definition of that kind of typical residential unit I'm just going to briefly go through a little bit with you about the process again we really tried to stay consistent we did change a couple other things in this I guess I'll just mention when Mike did this back in 2007 when he projected the future flows he did it on the build-out analysis we backed that off to 10 years so really what we're looking at we're recommending this be updated every five years but we looked out 10 years really for the projected increase in water demand and sewer flows a couple of reasons for that is if you start going out too far we're kind of at a different time right now we're projecting out construction costs for four or five, ten years very difficult to go out much farther than that right now at any kind of degree of certainty the other thing is we don't know what's going to happen necessarily with kind of those demands or those kind of growth projections if you're going out too far so we thought it would be a little bit better to keep that in a little bit tighter and really just go out to five go out to five in the ten years talk a little bit about the methodology for the sewer connection fees and then in the four step process we define the sewer service area one thing in Williston that's been very very well defined and that hasn't changed since 2007 for the purposes of what we've done here we really assume those service areas for both the sewer and the water are very very similar current sewer flows for 2022 about 680 2000 gallons per day projected sewer flows to work as Bruce mentioned back in 2017 we kind of built off that and updated that we're projecting over the next ten year period an increase of about 100,580 gallons per day so that puts you up to a little bit over 780 2000 gallons per day then the next step with the help of the town staff is what we did is we updated the value of the town built sewer infrastructure so we had the sewer fund reconciliation and that's important because we're really just factoring in the infrastructure that the town has paid for not the developer paid infrastructure so that is not included in this calculation for the depreciated value of the town built sewer infrastructure came up with about 8.2 million dollars then what we did is we projected out those projects that we think are going to be needed to be implemented by the town over the next ten years and the other thing we're doing that is trying to project when they're required so for example if it's three years we're coming up with the estimated construction costs we're including a contingency engineering other fees and we're projecting it out to that anticipated start date so we came up with about 2.4 million dollars for the projected sewer improvements that are needed those are the the good news is the sewer collection system is in good shape these are primarily at the existing pump stations and force mains so the first one is the north wilson road pump station upgrade that's actually underway right now the one after that is the river cove upgrade which includes adding a third pump south ridge is really age that's projected for 2025 the last one is the industrial lab and that actually codes upgrade of the size of the force main to get the flow from the pump station up to the gravity system so again those total costs we estimated a little bit over 2.4 million all we did is we took the total value of the town built infrastructure and the value of the new infrastructure that needs to be upgraded divided that by the projected sewer flows in 2033 of 780 1118 gallons per day and that's how we came up with this maximum fee charge per gallon of $13.70 so keep in mind from the board's position that's really what we're suggesting is the maximum the board would have a discretion to lower that if you choose to but again that we feel kind of with the methodology and consistency with the 2007 document we feel that's really the maximum that be charged for the situation and also keep in mind on the sewer side you know you charge $15 a gallon per day for the sewer allocation which is the treatment capacity that's being purchased over at the Tritown treatment facility these are both one time fees so I can go through the water very quickly I have a question so I understand the methodology I'm a little confused on what my own head to kind of clarify what this fee is trying to do because it seems like you're hooking on you are getting a piece of our depreciated value of what you're hooking into and they haven't paid for that so that's part of their buy-in of that at one time and then there's also a piece of future which they will pay for again a portion of it do we might be a question for Shirley do we have a separate fund to collect the money that's for future projects or is it just going to the sewer yeah I'll make sure to answer this but we have a capital fund where as we go through the budget some of these projects were allocating transfers from the enterprise fund into that capital savings account that's what we need okay so so some portion of this $13 is going for future projects say 25 20% of it based on these numbers so 25% of this $13 is going technically according to methodology is using to future projects so but we're not right up the bat putting it in a separate holding fund for capital projects we do that on an annual basis usually dictated by your sewer and that's how you can use those fees and where they go and what you can spend them on is that a $13 increase or that's a $13 $13 that's right so you're currently charges let's see for sewers 846 so you would be increasing it to that per gallon per day yeah what you're really trying to do with these projects is there's a responsibility with the new development that's coming in for them to bear a portion of the cost for these expansion and upgrades that are needed for additional capacity what you really don't want to do is put the burden of that cost back on the existing sewer customers I think it's where I was kind of going when I started reading this I was assuming it would all be for future but it's not generally is but it depends how quickly you're assuming that you're going to get a certain number of new development growth each year it may come in at a little bit different rates I mean we try to predict that as close as we can over the next 5 and then 10 years but it depends a little bit how that comes in there would be a lumpy right if you do a really major infrastructure it might get all put on a 4 20 to 20 house unit because that's the one that pushes us over so you don't want to get that lumpy it's a little bit slower too so what that would do in theory is that there was something we predicted needed to be done in 4 years and maybe what it would do is say that doesn't need to be done now for 6 years if the growth doesn't happen quite as quickly as anticipated and you're not collecting those allocation fees or connection fees quite as quickly and if the housing if we end up doing more housing than anticipated given the push we actually built more houses oh no because when we check them this is the number regardless of what we do for 10 years and if it happened quicker it could actually accelerate some of those improvements that could be needed too so it can go either way that's why it's kind of good to go through this a little bit more frequently and just it's a good check in to see where things are at somewhere there was a recommendation we do every 5 years right I'm up to speed on sewer connection fees brush we go over the water exact same process we're using the same kind of methodology here same growth projections kind of assuming the sewer and the water very very similar again we kind of assume that the service areas are very very similar on page 9 so the town bill the appreciated value of the water is about 7.4 million and we identified 3 projects that are really going to be needed from a capacity expansion standpoint the route 2 one was actually completed that one is the project the water line replacement that's being done about the still ongoing roadway improvements on route 2 and industrial lab the next one is Chamberlain there's about 600 feet of 8 inch in there that's been identified for upgrade to 12 inch and then there's a section on Governor Chittendon Road that was identified quite a few years ago so those projects come up to about 775,000 so the combined total of those with the town bill the appreciated value again we're just dividing that by the projected water demand of the 818,580 and that's where we come up with the unit cost of the 997 so on the water side you're going to be increasing from about $7.44 per gallon per day up to the maximum of 997 gallons per day I underlined ceiling price somewhere does that mean that it should be no less than what the report recommends no less than this the report is recommending this as a maximum we could choose something less if we wanted to is that one time every 10 years the board sets the fee schedule and I'll be at your next meeting so this is to inform that conversation and we've also used that maximum fee in building the budgets this evening as well having this first on the agenda to see if there's consensus from the board in proceeding with these amounts so the board has discretion how it would like to set the fees but through the engineering methodology and how this is costed out it illustrates that these fees could yield assisting with the future capital needs for both utilities in that manner but it's always the board's discretion where you want to set the fees I mean I don't know why I did all this hard work in reporting I wouldn't say like I think $13 in 25 cents is a better number but there would be some other reason why you would choose a different number but this is the ceiling number and the water connection fee for example if you're charging the $9.97 so that equates to a three bedroom home about $2,293 and then you've got the cost for the meter on top of that at $375 so you're looking at about $2,668 that's the maximum thank you are there other questions? looking for a decision tonight but the staff is looking for guidance so I told to understand how the calculations put together make sense to me what about the 50% for the affordable housing units is that something we're talking about right now or is that something that comes about? just to put it on your radar but that would be included in the fee schedule for your next meeting and granted that this fee is increasing the 50% of this fee would thus increase proportionally as well but keeping that same methodology for a 50% reduction for affordable housing so that would be part of the fee schedule that you would see next meeting do we stick with that 50% or is that something that's kind of negotiable given whatever the housing is being put in place? I believe it lives in the zoning it may live in the zoning ordinance but ultimately that could always be amended by the board's action as well looking at how to assess those fees through zoning and then ultimately what the fee is more mechanically at this point if your policy says 50% you want to keep with that or if it's a higher number then whatever the fee you have set would be whatever it is based on that reduction that the town sets in policy so if I had an interest in convincing my fellow board members to not change the rate from what it is today for affordable housing units I would have that opportunity tonight or at a different time probably the next meeting would sign the fee schedule and I just want to double check on just how the bylaw plays into that and just see what that inner play is rather than a fee change it might be a zoning thing so you're saying that to clarify you're possibly considering 50% of the rate right now but since the rate's going up so much maybe they get a 75% cut in the rate or something to even it out where it is currently something like that I will have a discussion before it turns out to be too late because I didn't bring that up I'll consult a planning director tomorrow and I can have an answer for the board on that and as I recall the fee could likely be amended during the year for something like that as well if you change the zoning that was attached to it as well I haven't got up to speed on zoning you haven't given me anything in error I'll send my weekend on if I figure out how I would adjust that fee through zoning thanks for putting it on the table anything else? thank you very much thank you stormwater fund budget fiscal year 2024 Christine is here Bruce I see you're not moving Eric can you give an introduction and then we'll go to the presentation the board's going to hear next the town's three utilities or enterprise fund budgets being proposed for stormwater sewer and water this evening a couple years ago we shifted the practice to review these budgets in the springtime to kind of break up the budget review for the board the last couple years we can certainly review the timing of this into the future as well but the select board serves another job you have are commissioners of these three funds so you set the budgets and you set the rates every year before the fiscal year these aren't voted on by the folks in town that was changed a number of years ago by the town so you'll hear this evening the proposals from staff along with the rates proposed and as I mentioned the rate schedule will come to you next week so as you review these budgets it's recommended by staff that you also have a consensus on what the rate is attached to that budget because if you approve the budget amount it's going to have a rate tied to it that then you would formally need to adopt the rate at your next meeting so I think as we have discussion tonight it's important to understand staff's perspective where the board wants the rates to fall within these budgets and I've put a policy memo together social and the water and sewer budget there's some room for discussion on the rate structure with some potential other revenue streams to explore or deferment of a project as well so we have staff our director and assistant director from Public Works to walk through these for the board this evening finance director Shirley is here as well and myself to answer your questions so I hope the board wants to take it we've got an order for each one and then suggested motions and we did catch just about a $7,000 addition in water and sewer just at the beginning of the week so I adjusted the draft motions should the board consider the bottom lines as drafted just to reflect that change that's kind of where we are right now to begin this budget journey tonight so I'll turn over to my colleagues in Public Works so I think everybody in here knows Christine is now our assistant public works director but her previous role was stormwater coordinator so she's still going to walk us through the stormwater budget well good evening thank you for the opportunity to be here with you tonight with the stormwater budget we're happy to say we're not proposing any changes to the utility rate we believe that we can keep it where it is currently there have been some changes so that I just kind of want to highlight as far as the we are seeing some changes and decreases in the overall number of user receipts that kind of has been trending downwards not because our population is going downwards or the housing is going away but because we are seeing some changes in the way the billing works so when we have a larger developments coming in those are billed at a commercial rate which is slightly higher than the residential rates are but as those developments do transfer over to residential occupancies those rates then get reflected accordingly so we did have a couple fairly large developments that have been getting built out over the last couple years so you will see that there's been a downward trend over the last couple years but we think that even still with the current utility that and the trend that we are seeing that is sustainable we don't believe that it's going to continue it's going to be significant, continue to be at this rate we do think that it's going to stabilize and likely come up again in the near future so we'll see that in the numbers there the largest you know some of the more significant changes that we did see in our budget is going to be in the administration side of the program those are just from cost of living adjustments material cost, labor cost which are being built across I think all industries at this time the other you know the other larger purchase, I want to say purchase but the other budget item that we have in here that you'll see is under capital improvements which includes some money for some what's called cure and place pipes that are being proposed for section employer circle we're able to get new piping placement well not new but cure and place pipe installed a majority of that community those pipes are very deep so putting something in using a cure and place pipe which doesn't require excavation I have to ask you a question, the engineer in me he inserted into the pipes is that what it is very much so like that it's a fabric material with an epoxy that's built into it and then it's that epoxy is actually activated and cured using a steam they don't have to dig it all up exactly so we do have one more section of a bio circle that we'd like to install the CIP for and then also on the harvest lane so some of these more highlighted points and happy to answer any questions you may have questions I was quite disappointed that the stormwater was just a car to get around in it's not really cool you know really high clearance or something that one's an allergy it's a little bad do you want to give me a storm tracking vehicle yeah probably not enough money for that I know this is a complicated question I don't mean this to go on and on but I've just posed under curious under stormwater maintenance repair in a placement of stormwater basins piping at outfalls like can you give me kind of a three sentence outline of which ones we're responsible for the town is responsible for versus so any of the infrastructure that's going to be within the town's right of way is essentially going to be town's responsibility to maintenance catch basins pipes outfalls all part of our right away we did one sentence thank you I like what you did on the mud pond entrance off the hill road it looks a lot better thank you welcome so for this stormwater vehicle it's being replaced this year is that right no it's a 2030 replacement so I thought seven years would be this year no it was just acquired okay then I want to inquire about whether or not it's electric because neither is or isn't we did make an effort to try to get an electric vehicle partially they weren't available I don't believe that there's not a great year to buy vehicles so yeah we we came to the board once with that already we did try very hard to get an electric there's a state they are on the state contract oh right I remember there wasn't any all the drive on the state contract there were electric vehicles there but they were like the lead for things like that very small so what we did was we went to the next best thing which was the hybrid okay we're really trying to stay on top of the electric vehicle what's going on we'll talk about that a little bit more but through water and sewer as well I appreciate hybrid that's good any other questions are you looking for a motion I'll move to approve the storm water fund operating budget for fiscal year 2024 in the amount of $716,485 and capital program for fiscal year 2024 to 2029 as presented is there a second before the vote I'm going to abstain because my neighborhood in terms of storm water is a mess so I don't want there to be any potential conflict of interest so all those in favor say aye all those opposed nay all those abstaining aye the ayes have it it is approved great sewer fund my favorite fund my favorite Christine are you staying for that he said he wasn't going to throw you under the bus but are you he's going to throw under the bus next year so he's the volunteer he's going to throw under the bus okay so sewer fund budget sewer budget quite honestly the biggest thing this year is the increase that we're seeing to the treatment rate which is 16.9% that's what's driving along it's the largest increase we've ever seen from the treatment plan to try it down at the part of so just going through the budget itself that basic user charge is only grown by the CPI like we do every year user receipts you can see there what we're suggesting that's a proposed rate and that's straight from connection fees we just did that upgrade on for us which leads to a 12.9% increase which is a fairly large increase but not the largest we've ever had in 2013 I was going to pull those numbers today and forgot to but they were larger than that one of the things that I've done differently in this to try to keep those fees down is something that we don't normally include in a budget is on a hook on fees we don't normally take a big project and put that number into the budget because we never know for sure when these projects are happening or not happening so truly being just a guess does obviously affect our rates in this case because the new zoning and I'm still wrapping my head around what it's called form based code there you go the fitting hotel is pretty much a 99.99% guarantee that it's going to happen around September we'll start working on it which means they will pay us their fees within that budget year and we know that so in an attempt to help keep the rate down I did put in their fees they're going to pay on the 11,085 gallons per day and that's why you see under hook on fees such a large increase to the 239.210 and just as an example if you look back to 2020 actual and 2021 actual the reason those numbers in the actuals were higher there is because another hotel came in at that time I remember a big project came in at that time but if you were to go back and work at the actual budget we did not include those numbers in the budget this time like I said in an attempt to help keep this rate down even though it may not seem like it that's a 12.5% that was the idea here we're making good money the interest arm is 30,000 that's pretty big so there's not any other real large increases in this budget to point out so unless I'm sure they will want to take questions and I could add as we look at this and in the memo I provided the board with the policy items on this is looking at the the net position otherwise known as fund balance with an enterprise fund due to the net position of this fund which is currently at the end of FY22 audited financials just over $4.6 million as we look to potentially keep the rate a little bit lower we propose using about over $180,000 of the net position to assist in smoothing the rate a little bit we do this carefully and cautiously knowing where the net position is now but if we didn't transfer this revenue model we were looking at a rate increase of more of the 25% mark with the proposed rate increase we ran some math on what that looks like for an average household the average number is 180 gallons per day and given it's going to depend on the household how long people are taking showers it's hard to quantify but that's a number used in the county 180 gallons per day with our current sewer use rate and use the water use because the water is going to go somewhere in the sewer area to measure that our current rate is 75 per thousand gallons of use for this average user 75 per thousand gallons that's about $48 per month so an increase of about $5 per month based on these estimates another way to think about it is the dollar standpoint but this proposal does utilize net position in that amount to help keep the rate increase a little bit lower it's at the board's discretion if the board would like to use more net position to then offset the rate further we could look at that as well but we started at this number we felt was a good a good starting point but for the board's discussion as part of the budget if you want or you want to end up with your rate next year I would just like to add to that a little bit I would be careful in using too much of that fund balance only because we're already using the Finney Hotel number in there that's not going to be in there again next year either so the more that we keep pulling down sooner or later it's going to come back to having a larger increase down the road somewhere yeah but at $200,000 a year I think you get at a $4.6 million I will be well off the board before that becomes a problem no actually so what is the what is the this balance you remarked for it's essentially in the enterprise fund it's on allocators it's on a sign so we think about things in these enterprise funds with what could go wrong to get a major pump station failure for example that would be very expensive to cure it's also there to use discretionary for capital projects and for strategic rate smoothing but I think to the board last year for new members we looked at the town currently doesn't have a net position policy for these enterprise funds with our general fund we have a 10 to 20% kind of window for the unassigned fund balance we've talked about exploring that further it's just it's we need to see what other towns might have in place but seeing that number to understand is that a good number what's your ceiling you want to keep and there's a lot of variables at play $4.6 million is more than the entire town unrestricted fund balance right so it's certainly a larger side but understanding when if there was a potential issue here especially on the sewer side the cost would be quite expensive as well one of those costs could end up being whatever the right now the treatment plant does biosolids and then they do land application of those biosolids and that's becoming less and less attractive and harder and harder to get rid of if they were sending some to Canada stop taking them where they send them now I forget the next there's no place in Vermont for these biosolids to go the PFAS and PFOs are really playing are really being hectic on the whole biosolids industry because those forever chemicals are staying in that stuff so we're getting more and more away from land application so what does that mean we've got to find another way to get rid of that or have the treatment plants modernized to a point that they can treat this stuff and pull it out of everything that happens we're going to look at some huge huge increases in cost in expansion or whatever we have to do to modernize that plant that we are a part owner of so we're million dollars sounds like a lot of money I get it but we're million dollars going really quick in this industry is that technology even on the horizon I don't know if it's there or not Tony but that's where we're getting to just because it isn't there doesn't mean EPA will come out and say you've got to do this you've got to figure something out whether that means consideration or whatever else it's not going to Canada anymore where's it going there are a couple places in the US that are still taking it but nowhere in Vermont we have been lucky in Essex and the product that comes out of there from the most part of the name is low enough that we're still able to do some land applications but it's getting less and less and less please identify a biosolid is that it please identify a biosolid what do you mean biosolid it's just a byproduct at the end of the treatment of the sewage stuff that does not go in the river it's the cake for my temperature the Whitcomb farm is one of our big places that will take biosolids and apply it to their fields but those fields are being tested all the time for BFA's and BMR's and all that stuff to make sure that nothing is getting used up there and it's been a couple years but I'd like to set up an opportunity for the board of the wastewater treatment plant over in Essex Junction that we're part owners of but you can see everything in action there too I think they used to that's something they used to spread along the interstate there in Richmond over by the monitor barn that wasn't necessary biosolids that was just like when it was P&P but P&P's lost their fields they can't do that anymore and that's because the products that are reaching out those fields are closed they're closing more and more of those fields the main presentation we had 2.4 million and upgrades and we have currently in the pump station upgrades, capital savings of 256,000 so we're building annually for what we need the last pump station if you all remember the Boston Road one was we went out to bid on that 3 times and the third time it came back in as high as the first time and we didn't have enough money so we came here and asked to be allowed to use some of that fund balance so that we could do that pump station that's another way that we use that fund balance and I think that's actually why I bumped on this is that when I was flipping through it I kind of expected a big project to be paid for out of 4.6 million dollars but they're not they're paid for out of the operating budget which may or may not have a negative or positive end result but we're not using if you were to tell me that the 4.6 is being held because we have a 2 million dollar project we need to do in five years that we're holding it then I'd be really comfortable with that but it's not we're raising the rates in order to fund projects while we're protecting the fund balance so just one reason that I kind of this is well first of all can you guys know I do numbers this is the idea for a living but between the water and the sewer increases it's over a hundred dollars for a house it's four dollars a month on one of them and sixty dollars a year on another one that's almost as much as the whole town budget municipal budget this was costing like a four hundred thousand dollar house so it's the way to think about it this is not it's not getting voted on so it's not getting quite the look but it's kind of doubling the impact of the municipal budget so I just want to be careful that we're not that we're doing this thoughtfully I do also know that if you don't increase it for the rate increases this year we're going to face it again next year it doesn't go away unless the rates drop which would be a surprise so I know I wouldn't think I'm pretty comfortable on sewer where it is because the rate increase is lower than the rate increase to homeowners is actually lower than the rate increase we're proposing for for people for houses right it's sixteen point three percent the wholesale treatment costs going up and the rate increase is twelve point nine so it's lower so I kind of feel like that's something we have to step up to eventually in that if you get behind that one different story on a lot of that I know we're having that discussion other questions or comments just a real quick one this is also a surely question this eight percent it looks like we're shifting eight percent of a lot of the cost of the town the it's not just Eric Seller what do you call it the budget of operating the town is going it's like twenty five percent of it's going to be three utilities is that a is that a is there is there any methodology that came up with that is it an audible number is that I would be interested and I'm not short term project but I'd be interested to before we do this again to we have some online to do this it's been historically that's what we do use but I have found nothing that okay time something some yeah and I might not be able to find it very quickly but the other of these two budgets that's either sewer or the water had all these percentages across multiple line items and then a line that was just sharing the cost of the town which I just wanted to make sure was not a double count it's probably smaller than the seven thousand dollars so don't have to chase it down now but because this is shifting it's kind of shifting cost of town governance to utility users and people don't really have a choice they need water in the house so which I'm okay with fair so just make sure it's not shifting non utility costs to the people though right it's not shifting like highway department costs or fire department costs to the utility budget yeah like I said given what I've experienced the last couple of months 25% maybe low but we should just have be sure that's right if we're gonna do sure any other questions or comments if not I would move to approve the sewer fund operating budget for fiscal year 2024 in the amount of 2,416,205 dollars in capital program for fiscal years 2024 through 2029 as presented is there a second you can have that one chair recognizes mr. all those in favor say aye all those opposed nay sorry sorry Terry was that the $7,000 okay just double checking waterfront budget okay waterfront budget we're looking at the same kind of things as we just did the increase from water district to the wholesale rate is 9.5% you know they're looking at the same kind of things that we're looking at as far as the cost of doing business we still have the capital sheets and I could have had this one oh I did my bottom bull on both of these is the use of ARPA funds to be for capital and food projects and I'm just gonna put a plug in for ARPA funds and I know you're all smart and know this you gotta make a decision on what's going to happen with ARPA money it's going to go toward public works projects we've got to get it because it's going to be permitting and other things if we really think we're going to use any of that money for any of our projects we've got to start working on to make the deadlines that they're imposing on this so that's all said so the water budget isn't a whole lot different I did the same kind of thing I had my own fees for the Phinney Hotel and this one the one thing I would like to I'd like to point or talk to just real quickly and Terry asked me downstairs about the industrial lab water break that happened last Wednesday it was supposed to be a short week real quick anyway about 5.20 in the morning of water line industrial lab by a worker on his way to work at ECI who happened to be the same guy that stood out there then for 18 hours fixing it but he called our water department the process got going what we found was an eight inch duct water line that went off our main line went to serve the six condos on Foxwood Circle about four or five holes in it from deterioration over time of rocks sitting on the pipe working their way through there we also then they found the valve that controlled that pipe the bolts on it had rotted and a valve up the street decided to go at the same time as well so we had literally three different locations although two in the one spot so we went after the the brake had with so much force it actually undermined the road and the pavement fell so it's a good thing you found when it did compare to the kind of traffic that we had on that road police department were very instrumental getting the road closed I know where I've already told my guys my whole crew including Christine who stood out there until midnight because Bruce is too old went home at ten o'clock to put that road back together to get this thing fixed and back together that's when you know you have a good thing going when that kind of thing happens and people make things happen without any complaints or worries and including CWD helped us because the one key that broke was it was a ten inch asbestos water line that runs up to the main line the valve that broke was on that tee nobody had that tee as far as being able to buy it luckily shan't plain water found one in their inventory we've got two on the way now we want to give them back and one for us but anyway and going after the holes we were going to fix just that section of plank which is what we normally do and when we were standing out there Christine and I looked across the road and saw that valve and I had to get dug up too we were going to replace the whole line across the road at this point so that's why we ended up having that whole road closed for that long time I could see it replacing this section and then this valve and in the middle it would go again so we said it wouldn't need that decision we have to close the road again which will happen next Wednesday it's going out the variable message board will be out there tomorrow it's on our social media if it's not already it will be it's going to be in the observer because they call me today and ask me about it so if you hear any complaints about it being rough or dusty or whatever they're actually right, it's rough and dusty we left it that way on purpose that road is like 4,000, 5,000 cars a day 5 or 7 trucks we want to make sure that that's compacted before we pave it when we pave it in head cells we're going to have banging going on and that's going to go on continually through the intersection of work which today I found out now it's 25.6 so anyway, I just wanted to put the plug in for that and let you guys know how impressed I was and not because of me but with the whole crew it was incredible to watch them step up and do their work like that and like I said I wasn't kids I was going in here at 6 o'clock stayed out there until 10 and that's when they were backfilling and everything and Christine stayed out till after we were all done and reopened so we had people out there for 18 hours on a 90 degree day so anyway I say that talking about our budget because we can't plan for those kind of breaks we put a $40,000 line in here for main service line breaks before those breaks happened we had five previous ones so that $40,000 was already spent to the tune of $30,000 I still have a $10,000 bill coming so I know that $40,000 is gone and then whatever is going to happen out there in the industrial labs I've been here as anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000 it's not our biggest one Terry and Ted have been around for a long time remember French Hill where we had what $90,000 so that's just one of those line items that we can't we can pick any number and put it in here it doesn't matter we just have to look back over the years so anyway there's not a whole lot of changes in here but I'm one of those who take questions can you answer questions? First of all actually I think can you express to everybody the board's absolute gratitude and appreciation for how hard everybody worked I mean that is incredible and tell them that we impressed and genuinely grateful so thank you please do spread the word on that I will Ted thank you Questions or comments? Do you foresee more of these problems? Is this an old water line? The thing is that Mike as our whole system is considered old and when we say that we're talking for even 60 years but in the world of utilities our system is not considered old I don't know when those foxwood condors went in I'm sure I can go back and look and see but that duct wine pipe is probably 30 years old maybe the issue is there was probably nothing ever done wrong when it was installed rocks just moved you're a farmer and they grow rocks right? I mean very well and then around that pipe and then when you have those trucks down that road all the time we're just sitting there wearing, wearing, wearing and we just pour almost right through the duct wine we've seen that before 9 times out of 10 on our brakes are bolts on that the soils are just using the bolts luckily the second one out there, the second one up the road was that's all it was, it was a bonnet bolt result and it dug down so VCI came in and one crew started working on it and I was like we're going to have to do the other one this is six o'clock at night well not probably three in the afternoon they got a second crew in and went after the other brake force and they were done in two hours, three hours because that wasn't even dig down and it was the bonnet bolts the bolts were all set in there but that's what most of our brakes are either bonnet bolts or service connections with the saddles on the service connection I just wanted to point out a couple items for the board I had in my memo here you know Bruce mentioned main drivers this the costs the wholesale costs of 9.5% increase from the Champlain Water District and then other railing costs we looked at for operations and wages and benefits one thing to highlight in the debt service line item the lamp light water line project replacement we had initially planned for our bond repayment it was a $2 million project so we had budgeted when the loan forgiveness hadn't come in yet for last year's budget so that has come in now and it forgave about half of the loan so our bond payment has decreased significantly in this budget so we're looking forward so looking at this way it was a $2 million project and the town is paying about currently with the interest that will go down over time just over $30,000 a year over 30 years for that project so I ended up being a really really good opportunity for the town jumped on there so I mentioned that with that kind of cancels out some of the other increases and we've left in the proposal here a capital project for the lane water line looking at these numbers essentially that's where you can look at the majority increases from that project so if the board wants to look at potentially you have a proposal before you if you want to defer that project or fund it partially that's staff's thoughts if you want to look to reduce the rate that might be a place to look at here it's a $300,000 project it could be funded you could split it over a couple years you could defer it you could think about using some ARPA funds for it to show that for the board's discretion as you're discussing this project here it also just have a negative balance so anything in these will be picked up by the fund balance staff hasn't proposed the use of fund balance or net position based on where the water fund is especially the recent history of some of these breaks we haven't put down the proposal at this point I respect that but just 1.7 million in the biggest project I just heard about was 9 UK so unless you're planning on having 17 of these in one year you're not really any serious charging by the way with no FEMA recovery which I think there was a lot of water erosion kind of things that would cause big problems I would suspect would there be it would be a bigger problem than just our fund balance I guess I appreciate actually that staff gave some options because I would like to not see user fees go up more than the 9.5% that were being handed see a captain I just get back to the envelope without taking any other chance of any other changes into account that was only like $50,000 so I think that would be reasonable to say hey water district is giving us a 9.5% here's all the reasons why they needed 9.5% it's the same reason your grocery bills are going up and your costs are going up and we need to pass the 9.5% on to so in terms of the Chamberlain Lane project if we partially funded it this year and it brings that rate down by half of the the project would then be effectively deferred for a year obviously because we wouldn't be able to fund it until next year fully what is your anticipated like are we seeing the trend is going to continue for cost of services I mean the project is estimated $300,000 now next year could it be $350,000 so it's a good question I don't think we're going to keep seeing those kind of large increases but it's certainly never cheaper to do something than to do it now that $300,000 number I grew by $30,000 just based on the estimate we had for that project was $270,000 but that was $220,000 or $219,000 something like that so I just choose $30,000 more on to be totally honest that it's not the end of the world if that one does get pushed it's just one of those it's going to have to happen eventually what happened there was any ridge was built ground woods was built several times and ground woods had a larger waterline so there's a small section of waterline between two larger sections and that's what needs to be changed there are we really going to get it done this calendar year? were you really planning on getting it done? well I'm just wondering is it really going to push it off the year or was it going to get done next summer anyway and just straddle it over 2024? that's the beginning of the next summer I mean it's not a hard design to come up with it's not a lot of headwind it's not a lot of permitting and stuff involved that could happen during fiscal year 2024 so by June 30th of next year whoever this budget covers that it would certainly be done we'd have August now they've already basically done a design it would just be a matter of cleaning that up and then funding the project if you wanted to move any money from anywhere at the end of the world it doesn't happen right away but it's just another one of those the more we keep moving it out well pay it now or pay more later and we've been kicking this can since you said 2021 and needs to get done in my mind might as well do it now it's a great art project I don't disagree I just think it could come out of the unrestricted fund balance piece that we can afford to get the number down people who live in Williston are facing a lot of rabies creases this year I'm going to refuse my self-execution because it is my neighborhood so are there other questions or comments before we start talking about motions so there is a proposed motion the proposed motion would not take into account I think I'll leave it at that and ask if people want to make a motion and if so what motion would be I'll make the motion if somebody wishes to amend it that's fine but I'll move to approve the waterfront operating budget for fiscal year 2024 in the amount of $1,739,465 in capital program for fiscal years 2024 through 2029 that's presented is there a second is there discussion or amendment of the motion I would like to amend the motion and I'm not sure exactly how to do this for staff benefit but I would like to it's a fixed number so I have to take a number off of it I think we should talk about that to make sure we get it right but my understanding would make a motion with the reduced number and then I think everybody in the room knows where that reduction would come from but I suppose there could be a follow up directive to staff as to where how the budget would be amended if your amendment is passed because just talking about what I would like to see is I would like to see the user rate capped at 9.5 and then leave it to staff to figure out how to get it down I'm not criticizing because we do that personally I think it should come out I don't know that we should hang the Chamberlain project on this $1.7 million on balance but I don't really have enough to stand firm on that direction we're talking $50,000 it's not the end of the world but so what kind of amendment would help staff so let's see it's approving the expense side of the budget for the bottom line of this so that if we include the capital project in there the expense side of the budget is the same number but it sounds like it might be amending the revenue side of the budget so you're approving a bottom line but you also need to approve encompassing how that budget is put together you may pass a budget for the bottom line but offer an amendment to the revenue portion of that budget is put together okay and I changed the proposed user receipt to $8.50 that gave us an increase of 9.68% and that raised the bottom line to a deficit of $237,645 leaving the $300,000 in there for this Chamberlain lane so now I can play with Chamberlain lane if you want to say just so you have an idea of what we're talking about Shirley what was the first part of how you did that so I went to the user receipts and just based on Jean's comments she wanted to see to be about 9.5% the same increase we were getting from the water district so the FY24 proposed a rate by a change to $8.50 and that made an anticipated increase of 9.68% so we reduced revenue so hold on we are $6.00 and that was a change to the wrong bank cost center $42190 so I'm not appropriate $8.75 you're in the wrong fund Shirley I'm looking at so where you're writing the story about that I had $5.30 going to $5.80 I'm never brave enough to do this kind of stuff on the fly what did you say $5.80 about 10% $9.4 $5.80 times estimated billable gallons for FY24 $1,372,000 which is $50,000 less than $14.19 so the bottom line is a deficit of $50,000 so leaving chamber of the lane as it is right okay good my reputation on the line here well my amendment is that Terry's number to be $50,000 lower than whatever number Terry just said the net and that I would and that the user fees do not go up more than the water district rate goes up and within those two parameters figure out how to do it okay is the amendment clear in people's minds Terry's number is not going to change because that's totally expenses but we're not going to change expenses we're just changing revenue and increasing the deficit so the motion wouldn't change then we don't have to vote it at all we don't you're approving a budget bottom line so you could approve the budget bottom line but I think yeah an expense bottom line so you're also approving the budget so maybe a second motion would be in order to amend the budget proposal on the revenue side of the budget for those parameters okay that might be cleaner okay so I would draw my amendment so the amendment is withdrawn with the understanding that there's going to be a follow up motion is there any further discussion on the motion if not all those in favor say aye opposed nay in one abstention I apologize and then okay so that passes and there would now be another motion okay I move that am I moving the the user fee number or the bottom line revenue number what were the words you just used something to the extent of amending the water fund budget the revenue basis of the water fund budget to reflect a rate of x number and an increase of net position for the balance to make the budget balance that's not a very clear motion that's the I am moving that we uh we're not amending the we're amending the revenue that's in the basis of the budget that we just approved for us the budget to set the user fee at $5.80 for clarity that would leave us in a $50,000 deficit position the water which is the same increase on the water passing on does well I'm sorry this is probably wrong and I apologize but are you moving with the water budget revenue basis will be amended to reflect a rate of $5.80 and do we have to say more we have to say more about the you may want to reflect what the use of net position is going to be and then again next week the board or next week the board will also approve the rate schedule but you're you're essentially billing it in your budget you've adopted here how specific do we have to be reflecting the corresponding net position to balance the expense budget that was just approved or something like that we've come we've come to this board before with a budget with a rate in it and that rate has changed when you've adopted the fees later on and and the budget here but then something's changed between now and when we send you the fees structure and that fee structure has had a different number sometimes than what's been in the approved budget and when does that come two weeks two weeks okay yeah because we gotta have them set by July 1 so is it a cheap way out to say that it can be implemented in two weeks yeah we we can put that if it sounds like if it's the consensus of the board we can we can build that rate into the fee schedule and then maybe so we have the exact number of staff to come back with just amending the revenue side of the budget to reflect the net position use that balance is that out so we make sure all the numbers line up here the way it does what do people think about that I'd love to have this extended discussion again in two weeks that works for me do I get to pull back my amendment again yeah I think so if we have consensus that's all we're gonna deal with do we do we have consensus on that there's a number so yes we do please do our work and come back and tell us what our answer is we'll make it out thank you everybody for listening no thank you discussion so that actually does take care of the water fund budget item so thanks everybody next on the agenda is the ordinance amendment for the temporary thank you thank you for everything thank you Bruce and Christine I'll pull this up here actually Erin Dickinson is on the line so she might defer to her for some questions most of the staff work on this so I can provide an overview Erin I'm just gonna give you talk permission if you wanna share anything as we go through this one so you might recall the board passed this ordinance last April that came in effect last June it replaced the town's much overgated festivals ordinance that was put in place after Woodstock in 1970 or so so it was time to take another look at this one we had one earlier this evening and share kind of our staff review process for these and as we worked with it at the staff level we proposed some edits to consider and the question for the board this evening is whether you want to warn a public hearing on these proposals for further discussion if you have direction for staff to amend these proposals to then have that considered a warrant for your public hearing so Erin Dickinson is the manager she's been the lead on this working with the town attorney on language to consider would the board like me to kind of walk through the items in the memo or just take any specific questions at this point so starting in article 3 definition of temporary events adding celebration to that we didn't have that before for the permit requirement increasing the threshold from 25 to 40 people we had some feedback here requiring we're looking at these thresholds and research some additional best practices and trying to find a number that might make sense here we've added a paragraph to the end to address specific provisions when a temporary event permit is required for events on town-owned property that has leases or licenses this is kind of alluding to the catamount property we're kind of looking at this in tandem with the license agreement coming up as pre with the board at the end of last year trying to work out the license agreement trying to work through the temporary events in the project so this proposed language is to say the ordinance will reference a license agreement on property and then you'll likely see in the license agreement for that group reflected the point back to the ordinance as well so we're kind of sequencing those two here we bring this ordinance to you first and that's what prompted that proposed amendment here we had some changes to the application requirements allocating some more administrative time for review we currently set the select board review threshold at 100 attendees or more and we're finding proposing to increase that to go to the select board a bit and leave lower than that to the manager as a proposal here also to include other approximate number of attendees in the application then the issue with the 500 feet for addresses I do add some discretion in here was for large property like cat amount if something's located in a certain part of the property but you know in 400 acre property if there is some folks who are adjacent far away from where the event is and staff can help look at where those potential impacts might be do we want to still mail everything out that's some question for the board here but we've seen that come up where the actual event is taking place on part of the property where you have a butters who are far away away from it as well just cleaning up some designee language for fire safety requirements for review clarifying edits as well some language regarding tents and just some references back adding some language from fire and we also have this for manager and police department if events going on events found to not be in compliance with what the permit was for giving authority to revoke the permit at that point currently the ordinance is written at the select board level and pragmatically if there's an issue with the event going on we can convene the board to make that decision so trying to delegate that to other agencies in town here and just overall having this ordinance in place and with any piece of public policy especially a new one growing with it and learning with it over the first few months and year taught us some things to consider further and then also helping to I think we're getting the word out more with this being in place but trying to make people aware of this ordinance in town it's ultimately this came about with looking for notifying folks of especially larger events going on giving them an opportunity to share the comments about what's proposed for staff of the select board considering the application and also to make sure we allow for time for public safety review of these events we want to make sure the events going on that police, fire public works have reviewed it the conditions for the permit are in place it's for access or just the personnel to make sure those are addressed as well so that's kind of the general walkthrough and open for questions from the board and I might ask Erin as well if there's something I can't answer that she came across as she worked through this I wish to put the two gentlemen earlier spoke about taking into effect you mentioned Catamount 400 acres on the 500 foot what about somebody who has a 0.25 acre in the residential area yeah I think with this the way we drafted the language was to for those larger areas to leave some discretion to the manager if there was seeing where the event was notifying everyone didn't make complete sense for that event if it's someone that a small residential area and there's many butters right there I wouldn't see wavering from that 500 foot rule allocation of the event and the terrain and this was just billing and some potential discretion so it wasn't if it made sense to not need to do that to that extent based on the property that there was some discretion so the discretion is really it's not, it's 500 feet from the property line as opposed from the event so maybe ask the discretion if there's a significant difference there oh do we want to say 500 feet from where the event is taking place administratively didn't make sense so we have this large parcel still 500 feet from this part of Catamount but it's really far away from the event and is that something we want to still notify or not and billing and some discretion for the manager to say well based on this and the events and the size of this parcel these folks would be most affected by it to notify them maybe just find a way to make the wording clear that the discretion is because the people you're not notifying are really going to be more than 500 feet away from the impact or something as opposed to it being interpreted to be a quarter acre loss Eric can I chime in? Yeah go ahead, I heard a voice somewhere that made me jump so it's so funny because this was something we went back and forth on multiple times trying to find a sweet spot and as we're listening I'm wondering if we can change the language to say for parcels over five acres the manager can have discretion so really it was interesting to hear the gentleman earlier because they were seeing it from the complete opposite end of why we had added it it was really for the large large properties so I don't know if maybe we can consider that angle so many days for this and so we should add as well as I should have even though there was no numbers I think the point the gentleman were making is that the neighbors need to be notified in a reasonable amount of time not Friday before a Sunday event or something like that and so I don't know where that could fit in that you're at a time if we don't have everything closed by the neighbors five business days ahead or something but just some concepts like that Eric can I chime in on that too? yeah go ahead so that also was interesting to hear them comment on because you'll see that the we extended the requirements by which applications have to come in with that in mind that we also needed more time to be able to notify the neighbors so originally people had to submit applications within 30 days prior to the commencement of the event and we changed that to 45 for the smaller events and 60 for the larger with that in mind we just need more time administratively as well and I think as we were starting to have this ordinance in place last summer and people weren't necessarily familiar with it and I had something planned about how to approach it people on aware of the new ordinance and educate them and say okay you know we can do it this time make sure you notify people of it in the future this is in place we need to have a communication on this around necessarily telling you couldn't hold your event just with new regulation in place just try to use a little just something new and trying to bring people along so they knew about it more in the future certainly we found in Arizona a great job of this as I kind of delegated the keeper of the process here so she's been very thorough moving these applications along and certainly see some of these challenges from both the applicant angle and the administrative angle to review these I appreciate that this is a trial tested process here I think that's important that you all have responded to this kind of trial period and you've seen where improvements need to be made in terms of administration in terms of ease for the folks applying for the permits and the folks affected by these events and things like that so thank you very much for your work in amending this I have one more question for Aaron I'm listening and Greta thank you it was an interesting exercise so I appreciate that he mentioned that you could have one a month or something I'm not really sure if I lived in a neighborhood I'd be happy if someone had 50 people over once a month we've put in part for requiring a permit is to have a series one of the things was like the Trucking Tuesdays at Adams Farm actually a resident had commented to me who lived near there just asking about originally what regulates that and before this ordinance we just had some zoning provisions but we didn't really have a lot of teeth to them so to that point with someone saying okay this series is going to happen it's going to be adjacent to me it gave them an opportunity to be notified about it and to come to the select board and say you know this is challenging for me in my neighborhood and please consider that when you're reviewing this application one of the requirements is for anything that's a series it would need to go to the select board and I believe we kept that language in there right Aaron we didn't amend that yeah that's correct with the exception of the threshold change that's where it would be impacted but the series is we did not change it's like I certainly see putting up with an annoyance for an evening but if it's going to be every Tuesday night for the entire summer probably just because patients I wanted to create some type of feedback loop for the policy makers hearing from folks to make those decisions I do want to address the gentleman brought up the concern about 25 being too low and that was something again we went back and forth on and I looked at pure ordinances to kind of get an idea of what the threshold was you know I saw 50, 40, 100 that was definitely on the low end and he cited parking concerns which there's other ordinances too that are really complementary to trying to mitigate you know situations for neighborhoods and the noise ordinance is one you know the motor vehicle ordinance is another one and also just a reminder that one of the requirements not just the threshold of you know the public property is not a general or maximum people but the event cannot impact general public property or public rights or right of ways so you know when he mentioned about emergency vehicles not being able to get through that regardless if it's two people or 150 you know that any event cannot cause any type of concerns the 25 actually I mean obviously I was here when we passed this in rich respect it seems it seems very low to me to begin with I mean you know thinking about like families that's you know families of four that's you know whatever oh my gosh terrible math six families essentially you know and that could be a bomb fire in your backyard or whatever you know and you know that would trigger you're like oh it's Friday night and I have a fire like you know that you know that that does seem low so I think I think the 40 makes complete sense yeah we had some feedback basically that's every Christmas party my family has ever had so yeah and I think that was like some like campers point was like I don't know how you write an audience like it's a family celebration yes but it's selling something or I don't know whatever else people do you know have a festival in your backyard that's different but I don't know how you write an ordinance is that specific about what's the celebration and what's some of the kind of events I don't have it open right now but I believe there's a bullet saying if it's open to the public that's also one of the triggers right well and I think that that also you know this is this is part of the process of the importance of having this process that was because then when they you know the neighbors could come and say okay well somebody applied for you know a monthly event in their backyard like you know they can come to us and and say here's my concerns with this and we can consider those concerns effectively and have a process for doing that and saying no you can't do that or yes you can I wonder about you know a temporary event maybe only being one event somebody wants to have repeated events they have to go through you know possibly the zoning department and get you know at least an administrative permit so that there is more questions being asked and more is that what you call the series a few minutes ago? Yeah the series would fall under this but I know you might be familiar with that process Mike from your facility where if the administrative permit for kind of a host facility for a number of events and those aren't subject to this ordinance because it's been approved through zoning for example Right but temporary I think it's just one event it's not a repeated event every weekend or every month you know maybe that should be triggering you know a zoning department a little bit more stringent I think we do have language in there that caps the number I think it might be 8 or 10 I just have to look at it that's a lot of events perhaps for someone having for temporary in their backyard I think that was mostly intended for the purposes of like businesses like again like trekking Tuesday or if like Home Depot is planning to have workshops in their parking lot or something to that effect then this could fall under that but don't those come to us yeah under this yes exactly yeah but why would someone in a residential neighborhood have an event 10 weeks or 10 months well and again that's why they would come to us and we could say why why do you need to do that or their neighbors could also say why do you need to do that so even if it's 30 people if it's a series of them it has to come here if it's open to the public it's open to the public it should be going through the zoning department well what the if it's more than one why wouldn't it come through us the process now is that that would come to the slot board why would we have to set it through zoning first I guess I don't follow that I'm sorry the proposed ordinance says that if this if the conditions you're talking about are part of the permit that the permit would have to be approved by us so we get to ask the questions and well technically the ordinance would say if it's 200 or more people it would go to you right now it's 100 or by a manager the manager could choose to forward it to you as well that's how it was structured previously as well with the exception of the people threshold we are recommending increase so if there's a series of events that's open to the public we'll probably come to the select board unless other criteria are met let me double check amplified sound I've looked at this enough times you would think I'd have it memorized but I am not sounds like we're getting into commercial applications here can I ask while people are looking for that just procedurally if we did put this on the agenda and ask and warn a public hearing if we have the public hearing the input from the hearing makes us want to revise the proposed ordinance then we'd kick it back to staff and warn another hearing so there'd be a delay but we're not really voting on passing this tonight talking about whether we're going to have a hearing on it you're deciding what you want to warn for public feedback then the board can take that feedback and decide if it wants to change what the proposal is and repeat that process that's why I have a good process because I didn't think of the concerns that came up so I think it's important for you to know that Mike Cantor is a former member of the select board he's been involved with a temporary event in his own neighborhood over the you may have seen this elsewhere with the bulldog situation in Lamplight and it's created a huge controversy within the Lamplight development and he's brought forth his concerns and it seems to me that we could take this up and refer it back to staff and take it up at our next meeting with comments regarding his comments and answers to his questions that may not satisfy him but I think it would give us a way to go forward with this I know everything in town government is time sensitive, but how time sensitive is this I think that would work just fine we're kind of we're coupling this with the catamount license agreement review we'd like to, the board considers amending the ordinance first especially pertaining the language of referencing a license agreement that the board considers action on that before you consider a license agreement so we would just kind of push that timeline back so it's not critical that we hold the hearing on July 11th we could move it to another meeting in July to ping on your next discussion and just put the license discussion another meeting after that or so that might make sense given the concerns that were if you just had a different lens on it that's worth considering would it make sense to ask the staff to look this over again in light of the comments and for that matter our comments I'm back by the way oh thanks maybe jump there for a second I think it would be valuable to have language in there or to change the language in there in terms of specifying when it gets sent to us so if it sounds like everybody feels like it's going to be a series of events we trigger that the only reference I saw to the series is in the definition of a temporary event and so that was the only time I noticed it specifically but if we under the part we outlined to get more than 200 people that would push it if we could put some language in there around this as well article 10 section B added anything that occurs more than once also triggers select word review that would be an easy edit to that section do have one hard fast veto on this though it's my monthly somebody spelled my name wrong that was the attorney it is a third time in three months I think it's three different spelling cells in that it's got to be spell check I am so sorry I think we would laugh Aaron yet another reason to postpone it oh my goodness we're out there so I think it's consensus that we're going to ask staff to take another look at this and we'll take it up in our next meeting or whatever work we'll look at the comments thanks for the comments tonight from the board we've got the comments from the residents as well so we can respond to those concerns and address them great so with that being set let's move on to the next item volunteer reappointments so every year the board in June gets a list of reappointments to town boards and commissions we included that list in the agenda the town's practice has historically been to confer with incumbents who have been appointed to see if they're interested in continuing to serve staff reviews their service with our volunteer we'll see if there's any concerns there we generate this list of folks who wish to be reappointed for the board's consideration and then through this process we find people who are not interested in being reappointed and then we re-advertise those now open positions for the board to re-interview to fill those slots so this is the first step in that process each year we have for your consideration the listing included with the agenda I will note that we just found out yesterday that Alex Daley on the planning commission needed to step down in July due to other commitments so should you consider approving the list this evening it may make sense to amend the list to remove Alex Daley's name from it Questions or discussion? Tell me again who is stopping now Dave is resignation from the planning commission yesterday so we had his name to be reappointed for July 1st if you don't need that anymore Is it usual to have members of staff on this to be reappointed for the board's? Yeah those are the regional planning ones I think and typically staff has served in those roles That's what I was thinking but we do a point that we pointed there to something today so I guess it doesn't make sense We want to reappoint for another term the individuals currently serving on town and regional boards and commissions who have expressed an interest in continuing with their service as indicated in the report dated June 6th 2023 with the exception of Alex Daley who will be resigning Is there a second? So I go for the discussion on the motion All those in favor say aye Aye All those opposed nay the ayes have it That brings us up to manager's report Eric So we handed out this evening Erin's prepared this So for the new board members we'd like to do a quarterly report that looks at different indicators for town services after every three months So you've got the January to March report distributed this evening So that's a report each department puts together for you to review We did look at this maybe the end of last year on formatting and what's most helpful for the board for these indicators It's certainly a living and working document that we can change from time to time as well We'd like to try to be consistent with the indicators over a period of time so we have some benchmarks for the board to look at But as you review this if you have any suggestions for changes to staff please let me know continue to look at this and make it most effective for the board and how you review these benchmarks throughout our fiscal year here And then Shirley I've done the financial report through February and I know I just distributed that this evening to the board Shirley was there anything you wanted to highlight from that report? The variance is I'm going to review where the one highlighted the abatements for the legal properties which really are property were processed in February after formal action of the board of abatement so that was 11,000 and property tax was 11,000 and interest sales and Nails and brooms Local option payments are currently running 225,000 for the first two payments about what we predicted for each of those quarters Looking at the report, revenue the recording fees are presently running less than budget and we expect that to continue there's just not as much activity so right now my best estimate is that revenue will fall 60,000 in our budget Looking I'm going to the second page and the last bullet to the highlighting the host house fees I've estimated will fall as well and based on the current projections that my item will be 10,000 shy and that that is following the last couple of years of history that it's declining slowly it's more I should say less is going to because that's the majority of it is for the summer as less is going to the summer and more is being recycled so that's a good thing but the fact is that financially the total cost for the removal of the Petro trailer that were un-vegeted were $28,500 so I just added a new little paragraph at the bottom so the sum of all these variances to date are 105,000 favorable and that's coming from the local option stats so as we look to year end we had approved ARPA money for the police retention and so if things hold true we will be able to reallocate or unallocate that ARPA money for police retention and put it back in the pool and hopefully just be able to use favorable budget variances at the end of the year so that is something that we will of course review after all is written. Nothing is significant in water, sewer, storm water enterprise funds to point out and I know you just got me so may I have questions? Thank you for adding the kind of out-of-the-peakings. I appreciate that. Questions for Sheryl. Is the ambulance revenue lulled because of Medicare reimbursement? No. So the city of Barrie who used to do our ambulance billing for us with less than the notice and our agreement told us that they would no longer provide the billing service. It was a non-person operation and that person left. So left us high and dry and going through an RFP process to find a new billing service so we've done that for a while. There's a lot of paperwork to do, a lot of applications for all of the different insurance providers that we have to give operations that ECT is our new billing service and just trying to catch up on those balances that we're outstanding and have them move those over, provide the payment information to them so they know the current balance. So with all of that our last billing was November 30th so they're catching up on that billing and getting billing out so at the end of April we started getting payments back in. Maine has been more active so my goal is or my dream is that with the ambulance revenue and the accounting rules we can look at what comes in in July and August for FY23 and bring that revenue back into FY23 so that I believe that we'll be at budget by the time at least at budget if not a little bit more by the time we're in Europe is actually close but it's really doing to the due to the fact that our billing service dropped just because they didn't have a provider anymore it was a one-first operation so awful it had happened it got us to a better place, something new with us and now we have an entity with multiple people and we've got a better place at the end of the day thank you you're welcome stormwater fund maintenance operations at 282% that is the line of drive that was due, that's a stormwater event issue so it is in our expenses it will be capitalized at the end of the year but we also have a buy for FEMA funds, that's been approved at a higher 90% reimbursement rate a higher state and federal rate so we should be able to get most of that, I haven't booked anything because I'm waiting to see if it comes in before you're in so if it's not in I will book a receivable so we'll have revenue that offsets the majority of that that was my inside baseball question do you take this spending out to a FEMA grant or does it do add the revenue I'll add the revenue yep you two talk the same way we do I don't understand any other questions thank you so also share our phase two of our community spaces outreach survey we'll be launching later this week steering committee's done a lot of good work designing the second wave of survey so we'll have that out later this week and open for about three and a half weeks Aaron's been taking the lead on that the observer might be running something on it this week, they asked me just for an update so I'm going to get the word out to people and get them to be engaged in our data gathering for that big project and then a logistical item so there's a little bit of delay in finishing our grant list and that's the set of tax rate for FY24 some delays with some new state software we'll have our own assessor build him in this week and he'll be completed June 23rd which originally had the tax rate to be set up the June 20th meeting so looks like we'll need a special meeting unfortunately the week of June 26th to set the tax rate and it's important to set it before July because we have to get the bills out by July 15th and the holiday and everything because they're due August 15th so I want to see the board's availability that week for a quick special meeting Tuesday the 27th the DRB does have a warned meeting in this room we might be able to work around that if that's the best night but just see what would work for the board that week if we need to call if it works I mean Tuesday or Wednesday work better for me then I can't do it on Thursday it's too it's the timing is wrong to do it on the 20th yeah we'll need to be able to set the rate we need the grand list finished and the grand list won't be done until the 23rd it's not to be sometime after the 23rd to set the rate and then your first meeting in July July 11th that would be too close to what we need to send the bills out to get them printed the meeting doesn't have to be here we could meet in the fire department we've done that in the back yeah we could meet if it's Tuesday we could meet there we could meet in the planning office too next door I'm rolling off for a table at the farmers market ah kicking it old school so whatever works okay we want to say Wednesday the 28th and we could start earlier potentially too how would work better for me six o'clock work that night Wednesday you said yeah Wednesday the 28th of June probably just like that one agenda item so it could be a okay and then finally we'll have more of an update here chatting with Ted sure folks are monitoring the hotel voucher program in the state and the impact on the folks experiencing homelessness in our county and statewide so Aaron and I have been engaged in regional discussions concerning this with fellow municipalities the homeless alliance in the state of Vermont it's furthering and already challenged the strange system the situation we have regional organizations are looking to expand outreach capacity also we can see how Wilson can assist with that outreach with those partners and I've been looking to see what potential role the town could have to explore a temporary shelter being stood up in Wilson as a government entity we don't have the capacity to run or oversee such a facility but the state of Vermont is currently working to procure services from a third party vendor to run existing at any future facility shelter spaces in the state so I was on a call with this this morning I ran a scenario and asked the state this the state could be potentially involved in overseeing a shelter or contract for a space so for to run by the board this evening I could see the town potentially playing a role to work to identify if there's a possible location to stand up a temporary shelter approaching building owners to gauge interest I received some criteria from the state that they look for in such a space I worked to connect the building owner with the parties from the state to discuss further and what a temporary use arrangement would look like and help to determine the need and appropriate service scope in the town should something be established the town would then be a stakeholder to assist in the ongoing evaluation of those services but to look for the day-to-day management and operational management would need to be the state of Vermont and its subcontractor for such a facility we don't have the capacity with our staff to do that sort of the city of Berry is approaching this similar they have a municipal facility that they've approached the state about the Berry Outdoor Ring or BOR next to the auditorium for a temporary shelter looking to see if the state could provide assistance from a third party to staff that and oversee that we're trying to think of a potential role the town could have as kind of a connective tissue here to help address this on a temporary basis certainly the for people experiencing homelessness the larger issue is the availability of housing and the BORs had discussions about that recently about how to look at that further in town where that's certainly a longer term approach hearing on the call this morning you know some folks are no longer residents in hotels with this program graduating when that will end for folks more over the next month or two trying to bring to the board this evening after talking with Ted see if there's consensus from the board to want me to explore this as kind of a facilitator to help these conversations occur I don't know if there's a place in town that would work but we could endeavor to see if we could connect some people to see if that might be able to happen it's late in the meeting now we got to be interested in the other is a larger large topic but just to give some context to this as well I and Angela Arseneau were able to meet with some folks from the planning Matt and Melinda from the planning office a couple weeks ago to kind of get an idea of what was going on I can report that the planning office has had some people walk in which has never happened to them before and say you know I'm about to become unhoused you know do you have support for your resources what do you have and unfortunately again the housing is very limited I did attend an online meeting with the Chinden Homeless Alliance as well and this is really a regional problem there are most of the residents of the motels that are about to become unhoused we're primarily in Colchester and I want to say Winooski but that is not necessarily where they will you know and it's not some folks have said well we're probably going to go to Burlington but Williston also plays a role in this and we do have a plethora of resources and the men in these here in town so there's no sure way to gather how many folks will come here what we do know is that a lot of these folks have disabilities there are also a significant amount of folks with children and families who are about to become unhoused as well and there are the regional folks that we would typically go to cops and things like that they are at capacity and they're working to make some available here and there but it's all stopgap and they are handing out tents and sleeping bags but again that is not a viable solution by any means and so I feel very passionately that Williston needs to step up and be a leader in this and do whatever we can to support this and to be a partner yes I personally would very much like to see Williston to do what we can to see if there's a way that we can provide him for a shelter timing wise this is kind of a crisis now but kind of the process seemed like you were laying out Eric it's going to be a while before we get anything online yeah and I was you might see the Burlington is looking to repurpose a state office building temporarily through December and the state has some funding available to grant out to assist with these efforts in the short term but exactly for us it would take me probably working with staff here to see are there some locations in town that may be considered and then reaching out to the folks who own those facilities and having a conversation with them about how the state may be able to assist in coming in to be a tenant to run something on a temporary basis but I don't have a good sense on what the timeline would be exactly it hinges on also the state procuring a third party to assist any potential space in Williston and regionally and statewide to staff these locations and I think if we can find something that works if all these pieces line up and then I would think the state funding would need to tie into this to provide the landlord with some compensation for leasing the space and there's a lot of boxes to check here but I guess the first step is seeing is there a potential option in town but not knowing exactly what that trajectory is going to be for a timeline I know Burlington on the call this morning they're trying to assess if that funding is approved from do a temporary at the state-owned office building there that they may look to sunset in the winter months when the cold weather program kicks in for folks as well but it's certainly these are kind of temporary stop gaps and the larger solution is more affordable housing regionally trying to see what the town can do right now this is not a temporary problem, this is a permanent problem, this is not a temporary solution this is a permanent solution realistically looking at this I may not be popular but kind of WCAX calls this a shoplifting cattle over mall this is bigger than a Williston problem but we're trying to think the greatest point it's a statewide problem obviously and again the amount of families and children and individuals that would be impacted by this is very large and so yeah I think I think it's imperative that we find temporary housing while we are exploring long-term resources and I think we have taken some steps as a select board to address some of these things I think this speaks to the import of standing up a housing committee as soon as we can facilitate getting more affordable housing in town and things like that and working with partnerships there may be opportunities to get agencies in to build more affordable housing units in hotels that maybe are looking for new owners or something like that in town as we've already done once and we've seen that that model works but this is a need that needs to be addressed now the other solutions we're working on through our long-term solutions this is a very immediate need that needs to be addressed I agree and actually Greta thank you for taking steps on this I never responded to your email I got caught up and I apologize to you for that but thank you for your leadership and passion on it yeah I agree with the consensus here I think that if we you know whatever we can do we should and one of the difficult things that we have here is that we are a town and this is a regional problem it's actually more than even a state problem it's a national problem and it's a confluence of events it's a confluence of not building housing that should have been built statewide it's a question of affordable wages it's a question of a whole bunch of different things that are all happening at the same time I do want to caution that you know we are you know town can only do so much and that we but serving as connective tissue and trying to figure out if there is a way that we can do this I think is we got to do what we can I mean if you're fighting a fire and all you have is a couple of glasses of water on your cell throw them don't just sit there now well so I think it's a good idea that the houses are remote that this is going to go anywhere so be it but as has been explained to me any number of times in sports you don't make any of the shots you don't take so it sounds like we have consensus to try to go along trying to be the connective tissue and explore the issue and see if there is something that we can't facilitate setting up and start working with staff tomorrow to try to see if where a potential location could be and then personally reach out to the owners of those and try to facilitate a conversation at least get a dialogue going get the right people at the table great okay anything else that's all I have for manager other business there is one thing after other business but is there any other business June 22nd at isham family farm wildheart distillery staff has no objections to this at the event it's I don't say a lot on here Mike but you remember what that is on my wife has the williston community theater the initial night it's a gala that's why the location name is called isham horrors I'm not going to I don't know what that means but it's a little shop of horrors they set up some micro distillery sets up a bar so this permit would be for that event from the vendor wildheart distillery yes I'll move to approve second further discussion further discussion all those in favor say aye all those opposed nay do we have an abstention I heard no sound from Mr. Aisham therefore thank you Eric anything else nope I'm sorry were we going to have a charge from the housing I've got that I've got a draft from staff and a plan to have it on your agenda at the June 20th meeting and then the last item is the brainstorm of Jean and wanted to talk about it and see what people think about it and I thought it was a good idea Jean pointed out a couple of weeks ago that it might be good to have a kind of catch net meetings so that if there are issues that came up and that board members think about for a while as the meeting goes on that at the end of the meeting it might be an opportunity to briefly and succinctly have a final thought and perhaps a request for follow up from staff so that issues do come up in a meeting don't get lost in the shop so that's what the agenda item is agenda item 15 Jean did I get that fundamentally right perfect is strong I always think of weird things so anyway theoretically it would be related to what we talked about I'm going to say I think that's something that would have to be pretty generally enforced not it's not a brainstorming session it's something that if there's an item that came up in the meeting that we want to bring up again briefly to basically and as I'm envisioning it to instruct staff to give us a follow up make sure that it doesn't get lost and that any questions can be covered so anyway that being said are there any final thoughts on agenda items from this meeting and it's okay if there aren't doesn't mean I know next time take the community school survey when it comes out wait even if I already answered the other one this is the the first part was the qualitative piece this is going to be the more quantitative data that we're looking for we've narrowed it down and we're trying to really analyze what we're going to give to the architects in the design company so that they can then present us with options I thought that the I'm not very well good at saying things very sometimes so I'm a little blunt I thought that the agenda of questions they weren't really open ended questions that they asked you know in the interviews they didn't ask for your opinion they kind of gave you an answer and just expected you to nod up or down what are you referring to Mike well Greta was talking about on the the community center scoping and library assessment is that what you're talking about they were it was all interview style that that was so I don't know who you spoke with but it was all injuries by a style meant to be open ended and so I can't speak to the next part will not be open I didn't feel like they were open I didn't feel like they were open questions okay any other final thoughts okay if there are none then we are adjourned