 I will call the meeting to order then and we do not have any minutes tonight to go over. So be looking at anyone who has any public comment to make on any issue tonight. Eric, is there anyone who wishes to speak? I don't believe so, Terry. I'll just one moment. We just have the folks joining us for the interviews right now. Sure. Yep. I think that we don't have anyone for public comment. Okay. We'll move on to then interviews and appointments for the community justice center board. And we have three candidates and if they're ready to join the meeting where we're ready for them. Yep. Hi Lisa, Ed and Brett, I'm going to connect you right now as a panelist. So you'll be able to share your video and audio. It'll just be a moment. Can you hear me Eric? We can hear you. Okay. Good evening. So we have three candidates tonight for the CJC. We have Ed Townley, Brett Lindemuth, and Lisa Braden Harger. They're with us tonight. And they come. We have room on the CJC for all three candidates. They come highly recommended to us from the. Department and from the director of CJC, Crystal Lee. So what I'd like to do is to ask each of you to give us a little brief outline of your, your background and why you'd like to be on the CJC board. And I'm going to go from left to right as I see you on my screen. And we'll, we'll change that as we go along with questions. So Brett, you're first up. Okay. My background is law enforcement. I've been an officer in Richmond for seven years. And the last year I've been an officer in Heinsberg. So I have eight years on. And I have three years as an SRO in the. Mount Mansfield unified school district. As a middle school and elementary school serving all those communities. I find what most appeals to me. In policing is the. Community care taking function, which the CJC is like front and center for the future. Alternative justice and also with social services, bringing social services with police in a community. So those are the two things that most interest me. And I come to you as a resident of Huntington. Even though I'm employed as a. An officer and I routinely send cases to the CJC. In fact, both of the cases there tonight are from, are from me in Heinsberg. But I do also would like to represent Huntington. And help those folks become aware of the great thing that's going on in your CJC. Thank you. And you're next. You're muted and still muted. My background is very different. I'm actually. Finance accounting. And retired last spring. From the CEO position of Kaba Creamery. But my connection. With the criminal justice is actually through one of my sons. Who has been through the process three times. For three different things that he was turned in by his parents. For doing. And I couldn't have been more excited and love the outcome. That came out of those three sessions, which really started a relationship with crystal Lee. About what you do. And the importance of what you're doing. Because in each of those cases, he didn't really understand what he was doing wrong. Until he got into the middle of. Trying to make repairs. Real repairs. And it has kept him out of, I think, a lot of trouble. I have two adopted kids. They both have special needs. So they, in both cases, they don't connect every single dot. And sometimes it takes a little bit longer to, to get there. And so I see my, my ability to maybe be on there. Is as a parent with a special need child. Who may need a different kind of a direction. And, and help to get there and maybe it's more repetitive. The other thing that I'm doing is I'm on the board for Vermont Special Olympics as, as the other volunteer. Type of thing that I'm doing though, but I would be very excited to be part of this panel. Thanks. Lisa Europe. Hello, and thanks for letting me speak with you tonight. I'm an ex CEO as well. My background was in artificial intelligence. I was a researcher very early in my career and then started a company around big data and grew that all the way to an IPO in Australia about five years ago. And then I stepped away from that and spent a couple years studying social impact, took a couple of fellowships in Boston and learned all about social impact. And currently I do some mentoring with entrepreneurs primarily in Africa. And I'm also as a local volunteer thing, excited about this as well. As part of the training, I really seen some transformation in a couple of the people that I have observed and I think they leave, they've left with skills that help them to be better citizens. And I'm just, I'm just really convinced that it's a great way to, to approach this. Thank you all for your look up to the board for questions. Gordon. So I don't really have any particular question. I do have a comment on all three. Hey, Brett. I'm very thankful and impressed that you all want to be a part of this board. What I like from what I've heard is the diverseness that you each bring. So a different perspective because I think that's really what this is about because lots of folks come from a lot of different backgrounds. Every single person that spoke. I think you're frozen up garden. We had that problem here a little while ago. Other folks who have questions or comments before. Right. Just, just a comment. I guess it's obviously if you're in, in on a law enforcement situation and it's in front of the board, if you're in a law enforcement situation, you're not allowed to use your self. From determining the consequence of the people that you arrested. Would you agree with that? That's a question for, for me, correct, Brett. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I've, I previously have participated in panels. As the referring officer. But that's a very different role than, than what you're speaking of. Yes. Thank you for the question. Okay. And then being from Huntington, and then I think I'll go to the board for who owned Bowdree's very good friends of mine. Yes. Yeah. Have you had the chance to run into Michael Brian? He's a very close friend of mine. Yes. Mine too. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you, Ted. So we should extend the, what I call the conflict of interest question to the other two recognize a conflict of interest and what would you do? And Brett, you seem to already answer the question. So maybe this is really a question for Ed and Lisa. So Lisa, how about you going first this time around? Yeah, I certainly understand the concept of conflict of interest. I'm not sure where I would apply here. I mean, I'm just a citizen in town and then don't have any other interests that would play into this system. So maybe I aired and I should have led into it. It might be somebody you know. Well, that's a very good point, Mark. I'm sorry, I don't know enough about you right now, but for all I know is you started up a company in Vermont and it might be an employee who comes before you or a competitor's employee. Fair enough, Brett. Yes. Those would be good situations to avoid, I agree. Okay. So I would add on to that, that given my two boys and some of the kids that they know and the ones that I know, I would definitely be recusing myself from anything that would involve other young adults that I know from either a personal standpoint or ones that they know personally. Okay, good, thank you. Any further questions or comments? I'd be looking for a motion then. I would move to a point. Brett Lindemith, Ed Townley and Lisa Brayden-Harder to the Community Justice Board for an unexpired three-year term through June 30th, 2023. Second. Second, is there any discussion on the motion? If not, all those in favor of the motion raise your hand. One, two, three, four, five. So congratulations to all three of you. You are officially now part of the board and we'll really appreciate your interest in pursuing this and have a great time doing it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, Sarawa. We'll move on to mailing town meeting ballots is the question and Sarah Mason is going to be joining us to discuss this. Yep, I see Sarah just logged on. So Sarah, I'll connect you right now. Just be a moment. And while we're getting Sarah connected for the board, this is continuing discussion. We've had this month on town meeting logistics and update for earlier today, Governor Scott did sign H48, which among many other items allows a town to mail ballots to all active voters, active registered voters for town meeting. The site board can decide whether to mail ballots to our 7,600 active registered voters with this authority granted. If the town does not do that, we would still follow the usual process for folks to request absentee ballots. So I'll, Sarah's connected now. I'll turn it over to her for kind of more discussion points on this. Hi, Sarah. Hi. Can you everybody hear me? We can. Great. Well, happy to be here after, seems like a long month or two, trying to get to this point. We have heard from the governor that he's approved some legislation to make some changes if anyone chose to do that. Some of the smaller towns are the ones that are really leaning towards postponing because they wanna keep things on the floor and do it outside when they can. I haven't heard many other larger towns moving their date around. And of course, the other option is mailing ballots to everyone or sort of sticking to our usual protocol, which is to of course, always have a polling place open seven to seven on Tuesday. The armory is rented. They're completely on board. That would look a lot like August and November, which would be really controlled with the amount of people coming in at a time. We're really lucky that that building is huge. They've done a lot of remodeling in there. We had that whole floor August and November. It was very easy to stay pretty distant. And so I feel like the safety pieces and all of the equipment and PPE that I was able to procure for August and November, we were able to keep. So I have all the plexiglass, all of the sanitizer and anything you could ask for, we still are in possession of all of those things. So anyone that was there August or November, it will look very similar. Plus, the community was very receptive to voting by mail. I think it'll be on a lot of people's radars. I've already had emails and phone calls about getting their ballots for March and probably up to maybe 20 requests. And that's just people that know it's coming and they wanna be proactive and do it the way that's gonna keep them safe. So that's good news without any kind of outreach or communication or education. I haven't done anything yet as far as getting the word out until we sort of decided what we were going to do. But I think that the Williston community is pretty well-trained in the ways of voting early or by mail or in person. And the big issue that I think we all know about because I know Eric and Terry had some outreach over the week is coordinating with the other four towns that make up the Champlain Valley School District. So that's sort of what we were sort of all waiting for us to get to this point where we have approval from the governor and then seeing what all five towns plus the school can agree to do. So, whoopsie. Sorry about that, I swiped down my mouse a little too recently. So I know the school board is meeting this evening. Williston is on obviously this evening. I wanna say Hinesburg, there is another town. Hopefully, somebody will be the first and second to make a motion and decision so that we can all sort of get together and coordinate and move forward with our efforts. One way or the other. Well, questions for Sarah. I don't know, the state's gonna pay for this? Hostage is paid, yes. Out and back, Ted, that's a great point because normally we obviously always pay for them to go out, we got our little postage machine and we can crank out. I'd say the most we've ever done, I was looking at some of the data might have been five or 600 back when we thought that was a lot before dealing with August and November. And we always paid for it to go out and people had to pay to return it. You had to put on your 50 cents, maybe 65 if you wanted to make sure it got back. And that was also pre-drop box. So the public is, they never, it was not paid for before until August and November. And I think that the postage is there to be reimbursed that I would wholeheartedly, I can get it reimbursed if we wanna put return postage paid for on these like people were treated to in August and November. If we'd like them to do this and we can make it as easy as possible and I can get that paid for, then by all means I can put in for reimbursement for that. The drop box was wildly popular back in November that I think even with the postage on there, some people will do that anyway because they really liked being able to bring it to us and not rely on the post office. The post office is another factor. They won't be nearly as busy as they were during November which had a lot of people really cranked up. They still will be busy, especially if people choose to have them do a townwide mailing, but that's another topic. But Ted, thanks for reading some of my notes here. We can get postage paid, I think out and back, definitely back because that's above and beyond what we had budgeted for. We always budget for stuff going out but we don't budget for paying for it to come back. So we can put that also on the, excuse me, topic of which way do you feel like going on the postage question? The other question I had is what is so difficult if the other towns in our school districts don't do this too? I'm kind of confused how that interrelates. It's not that it's a difficult, it's not equal. I can't mail a ballot to all of Williston and then Charlotte and Hinesburg say, we're not. Only if you are asking for one are you going to get those ballots. So Williston would have a much greater say in the shared school ballot if we were to do that. So really it's a coordinated effort between the schools and the towns so that it's equal to all. That's kind of a prisoner's dilemma too because if we don't do this and they do then they have more say and it's not that I don't trust the judgment of people in those towns just that we might as well be equal. We have a CVU ballot too, is to go out as well, right? I'm sorry, Chair, we will have that to go out? The CVU ballot, that would go in the same envelope with the- Correct, and that's the way it's always been. It's sort of called town school. It is done together. The only way, the school district, if they had to, could mail their own. If the towns can't decide and we can't agree with them that would be cumbersome for everyone. It is written in the legislation, the intent is that we shall try to coordinate and be in it together, so to speak. We're going to be hearing from the Champlain Water District in a little while and they have a bond scheduled as well. Is that a separate piece of paper for us as well? They've asked that to be on our ballot, so much like last year when they also had a bond, it's sort of all of our articles and then the final article is for CWD. And I also see Joe Duncan is already in the waiting room right now from the Water District. If there was any questions for Joe, I'd be able to connect him regarding the ballot issue here. So Sarah, Jeff here, I just want to make sure I'm understanding correctly. So right now we're on hold waiting for the other towns to let us know what their thoughts are, how they would like to proceed and then you'll decide, you know, whether we're going to mail them out or not only if requested. They're waiting on us as well. You could really say it either way, we're all waiting on somebody to make a decision. So really, I think that whether it's, you know, Williston and the school district this evening, you know, takes the plunge and makes a decision that will topple toward whoever has ever said what hasn't met yet. So it's sort of like we're waiting on someone to sort of make the first move, so to speak. And then tomorrow, yeah, we'll regroup and see if anyone has any other. But, you know, back in the very beginning when we met, you know, the consensus at that time was to sort of stick to what we know and protocol as usual. And I didn't hear a lot of wavering from clerks in or towns since then. I also took a straw poll of the managers and administrators in our other communities in the district at the end of last week and the feedback I got was there was no strong desire from those communities to look for the universal mailing of ballots. So we're gonna discuss some, I believe, Shelburne, they're just like, what was I gonna discuss it? They're just gonna carry on. But nothing was official with a firm motion, but that's the sense I got from the other towns. So let me ask you a question. I don't exactly know how to phrase this. Isn't it, and correct me where I'm wrong, isn't it our, from like a better word, our job? Shouldn't a goal of ours be to maximize participation in the democratic process? And particularly since all indications are, the state will pay the cost of doing that, the big cost, the postage. Shouldn't we be advocating for not only Williston, but the other communities to maximize participation? Yeah, yes. I mean, I'm not sure that's directed towards me or to anybody. It was an open question. I'm sorry, Sarah, I didn't mean to. No, that's fine. It certainly is the argument. I mean, that's sort of the point. It's kind of August and November. It was the same theory there. And on the flip side, you still have people that are very staunch in the, if you would like to be a part of this, then you need to participate of your own volition. So that's sort of the other camp. So I hear what you're saying. No, okay. Jeff, I guess I would throw out there at you that very first comment that you made was don't you feel part of it is to be participation? My feeling is this mail-in just takes us one more step removed. I'm not a fan of this. I'm more a fan of let's be a group and do this together as opposed to defaulting to mail-in. I liked what you said. I just liked it from a different perspective. I mean, and maybe post COVID, we would want to reassess, but given it is COVID, for those people who, I don't know, not receiving it in the mail is going to be impediment for them to vote. They can still request it. Sure, but given COVID, maybe we should go the extra step and make sure everybody gets a ballot. And it sounds like the state is willing to pick up the tab or at least the majority of the costs, which will be the postage. Maybe I heard that wrong. No, that's correct. They will pick up, they will pay for the costs that are incurred to have someone facilitate that process with me. Sarah, I got confused when you were talking about what else gets mailed. I mean, would the ballot relative to the school budget be mailed as well? If we are in agreement that everybody wants to mail to everybody, then it would be... Who's everybody? All five towns that make up the school district. So if they don't agree, then we can't send the school ballot out either. Not to everyone, only who would request it. I can't send that unless everyone is sending the school ballot. Is that what the law says? Yeah, it wouldn't be equal. What? It would not be equal if one town were to do that and not the others. Yeah, but is that what the law says? Eric, can you help me out on that one? From what we saw, it didn't take a firm's stance, Ted. It said that it recommends that all the towns collaborate in its decision, but it didn't make a firm direction either way from what we read. I guess, and we don't need to spend a lot of time on this, or I don't mean to protract it, but I'm not a fan of this. We have to be equal in terms of how we get the ballots out there, one town, whatever mechanism it uses, maybe just people are just more apt to vote in one town versus the other. I just don't see that as being a factor here. I mean, again, it gets down to that concept of the concept behind democracy is participation. And if one town, whatever means, obtains more participation other than doing something like paying people to be there or providing free ice cream or something, maybe that starts to get. Why wouldn't we? I guess I just don't get it. I guess that's a way to put it. I guess we should clarify. We can, I guess we could do whatever we want with the Williston town ballot only. Yeah, it's... But we're not hearing you say, Sarah, and now I'm sitting listening to what Ted said. I'm not hearing you say that the governor's order said that it has to be, it's a recommendation. So that makes it even worse, in my opinion, because it's not a firm guideline. It's a fence post thing. And I can see why you're doing what you're doing. Everything says shall and intent and is recommended. And, you know, it's very loose. Right, it's very loose. We had a call with Will from SOS the other day and it's very vague. The school has never done their own mailing, but if that is what it comes down to, then they can, as you could read it that way as well. I guess I default to my favorite praise of what could possibly go wrong. I just, I'm sorry, with all due respect to you, I'm just like, if you don't have some definitive guidelines, I can see why you're taking the stance you are. And therefore, Jeff, I would sit there and go, I'm not in favor of this if you don't have some more definitive. Ted, Gordon, anybody got some thoughts? I'm trying to look at the, as I think I'm reading H48 as passed by the House and Senate and was signed, Section 13, I guess, I should say so. Intent for cooperation of municipalities. It is the intent of the General Assembly that municipal officers, including Board of Civil Authority and municipal clerks shall cooperate with and assist school districts and other incorporated districts within the administration, with the administration of annual district meetings and budget votes. So that's like, it is the intent, but that's not the same as a directive. That's not the same as we all do this. My concern is twofold. One is that if we don't send out all of these ballots and everybody else does, then they're gonna have a huge advantage with their votes over the citizens of the town of Williston on the flip side. If, well, no, it's the same issue, but the second part of it, if we send out the town ballot, but we don't send out any other ballots, including the school budget, then the participation in Williston is going to be very, very reduced because people are not gonna mail it in, mail in their municipal budget, municipal ballot, and then make the trip to vote in person for the school issues. So that's gonna drive voting for the school issues way down. I think. I hear you, but I don't like being backed into a corner this way. We're basically being forced into a vote that I don't wanna take because, and I agree with what you're saying. I just don't like the way it's being done. Hey, sir, can I ask a clarifying question? Go ahead. Do you have a beat on what the other towns, have you spoken to anybody? I know this is our decision tonight to talk about what's best for Williston and how we're gonna handle that, but I'm just curious in years past, is there any formal meeting among the five towns to decide something like this? You know, I haven't been on the board long enough to know. Yep, so we always meet usually a little bit before to discuss, usually it's taking the tabulators out to CVU. How many ballots are you gonna order? Do I need 2000, do I need 4,000? What are you expecting on your turnout? Elaine usually has some questions and pointers for us who's gonna go out and deliver the ballots and those sorts of questions. So seeing this being a big problem, I initiated that way back in early December to try to get in front of this before anybody was even really saying the school ballot part is going to be the sticky wicket. And everybody decided, you know, and at that point, postage being paid was not on the table. A lot of these things were not even out there as a choice. It's nothing that we've never done before. We don't know how to use a mailing house. 8,000 ballots, two sets of 8,000. 8,000 envelopes going out, only 8,000 return ones. Like I said, postage on all of them. It's a logistical situation that we had never faced. So in the beginning, when we met, everybody was sort of comfortable with staying with the usual protocol of what we know. All in place and ask for your ballot. I don't mean to put you on the spot, but I'm just, I'm wondering if there was a, you know, a vibe or a beat on what other towns were thinking. No, this is, Gordon, from what I heard from the managers and administrators, I didn't get the sense that other towns were going to be looking to mail the ballots out to all registered active voters. And at least from my conversations at that point in time last week. Okay. Well, this still comes back to us making a decision for our individual town on whether we do or we don't mail those ballots. I would be concerned if we're sending out two sets of ballots, one for the town and one for the school. And everybody's receiving two different sets of ballots. It's going to be a terribly confusing. I think they're thinking they're going to get duplicate mailings. And in fact, they may get duplicate mailings of the regular ballots anyway. Sarah, is that the way it would work if we decided to mail the town ballots and the school decides to mail the school ballots. Everybody would get two envelopes with ballots in it that they need to return. The school has never done their own mailing. It's a town school vote. Right. And they go together and you get both or you don't get either one. You can return only one if you feel like it, which a lot of you have been on the receiving end of when they come back. Sometimes it's only one out of the two. When you have a press primary, it's three things that are coming back all at once. So it is tricky on the, you wouldn't want to be doing two mailings. Yeah, okay. So if we were to include the school ballot in our mailings, it would still be just one envelope that goes to every voter. Yeah, okay. If we're going to do this, we would need, I presume, a motion to do it. I believe the law probably requires us to have a positive vote on it. If we're going to do it. So let me ask the question, a question a little bit differently. Is it possible to give, I mean, what I see is some hesitancy on the select board to say yes to mailing all ballots to all voters or mailing ballots to all voters. Is it possible to give Sarah the direction that she needs that say, if that's what the other towns decide, you have our approval to do that, I guess lack of better words. But if that's what the other towns decide, no, it's only on request only, you have our approval to do that also. Is that possible? I think what Terry was about to say is that at some point there does need to be a motion on the governing board, which would be you folks, if we don't wanna do it tonight and wait for some more feedback over the next few days after other towns meet. Eric, does that sound, are you hearing, am I hearing that correctly that we could postpone and wait for some more definitive feedback from those towns? Yeah, I guess at the board's direction, we can certainly call a special meeting with one agenda item for this later on. I know as you said Sarah, the school board was meeting tonight, so there may be some more, just there's clarity and a definitive motion made from that body. That will certainly help if we check in in the next few days after they've had their meeting, which like I said, I believe is this evening. And I just wanna check, I don't feel like there is concurrence on the select board that we should mail ballots to all voters, or at least not right now. Is that an accurate statement? I can't vote, Tessie, that's true. Okay. I would be in favor, well, I think the pandemic changes everything as it has for a year now. So I think I'd be in favor of it given the situation we're in, but not if the other towns are not sending their stuff in and out by mail. But unless it's stuff, I don't mean their town ballots, I mean their school and other municipal corporate ballots bond with, I'm sorry, Terry, you said there's a water. The Stamplin Water Districters are going to have a bond for just. So I mean, if those things are not agreed, if those things are not sent out by mail by the other towns that make up the municipal district that is relevant, I'd probably be opposed to us sending any ballots out by mail just because I'm afraid that people, as I've said, if they're gonna get a ballot and they're gonna mail it back in, but it's not gonna be the school ballot and it's not gonna be the water bond. And so our participation in those decisions is gonna be vastly reduced. I was trying to draft up a motion. I'm not gonna make it tonight, but just so people are aware of what I was thinking, I was thinking that we move that the town of Williston send an Australian ballot for the March 2, 2021 municipal town meeting to all active registered voters pursuant to H48 signed by the governor, January 19, 2021 and move that the town of Williston send all other Australian ballots for the March 2, 2021 election by US mail provided. The first one should have said US mail too. Provided that all other towns making up the relevant municipal corporation have voted to send their Australian ballots by US mail as well. I think that way, and again, I don't think we should do this as a special meeting, but my thought is that if we do that, that way we're protected that if they don't, if they don't send any ballots out, then we won't. If they send all their ballots out, then we will. I still don't like this. I apologize, Ted, I'm sorry. Okay, go ahead. I'm still not a fan of this and partly because you're going, well, it just wasn't COVID. We didn't have COVID. We probably wouldn't be having this discussion this way. But since we are having COVID, I certainly don't want to pass something that this is not for this year. This is going forward. Is it not Terry? No. We'd have to change it again, don't we? We want to do something different or it's only for this year? Only for this year. My motion only says March 2, 2021. I still don't like this because it's putting, it's just, it's a fence posting thing. Let's see what they have. Let's see who steps forward and makes a decision and then do that. But the way we're doing it's like, well, we'll do it if you'll do it. And then I don't know, I just, I don't feel like anyone's taking a concrete decision. Well, I would do all of it if I weren't so concerned that the other towns are gonna not do it and then we'll lose out on a voice in the school budget vote. I'm all out by mail. I don't like this Act 48. I don't like the way it's written at all. So I'm not, obviously I'm not a fan. So I guess I'm a little bit confused. No, easily done. Why is it that if we choose to mail out the town ballot to all voters, why is it that that could not also include in it any other ballots that need to go out? The school ballot or the Champlain Water District ballot? I believe it could, right, sir? I think so. So that would be my motion is that we mail all ballots to all residents and all voters in one envelope. So are you making that motion tonight? I guess so, yes. I would need a second then in order to consider it. Before that, just, you know what? So that we can have a discussion and I will second the motion. All right, we're open for discussion. My question is if we did that, and again, I'm not opposed to it, but my understanding was that if we sent everything out by US mail for the March 2, 2021 vote, and the other towns didn't send anything out, that that would somehow run afoul of the law. But I guess it actually doesn't, because just as a legislature, it's the legislative intent that will cooperate. And while we're trying to cooperate, cooperate doesn't mean agree necessarily, I think. Um, but I'm the only thing definitive out of our round table discussion last week with Will from Secretary of State's office is that you can't do one without everyone doing it. And where does he get that? Well, I guess it's an unfair question. I think it's just a general issue. Like you said, like if Williston, if we didn't do it and everybody else did, then we're not putting in the same participation into the CVSD ballot input from each town. And so I'm not arguing with you. That just doesn't make sense to me. It just doesn't make sense to me that it matters that Williston gets better participation than any other town in Champlain Water District territory. I mean, what if we get a tremendous thunder, microburst thunderstorm over Williston during election day and we get lousy turnout because of that? You know, I guess it just doesn't make sense to me. All towns should be trying to do what they can to maximize voter turnout, just period. And if Williston does it by mailing ballots to everyone with every ballot in the same envelope, great, if other towns have other ways they feel they should do that, you know, great also, that's their decision. I think the, and perhaps so you can correct me for a long, the legislation that passed gave the authority to the Secretary of State to set the parameters around the elections. That piece was giving them the authority to help, I believe, and approve things that we could do, drive-through voting and some of the other things that were in place for August and November. You know, they could help oversee and give us some more guidance in this election, which is really a local election, not so much federal and state when they tend to step in and give more guidance and offer more assistance. Actually, as I'm reading the statute, it's only authorized here, the Secretary of State is only authorized to order or permit supplemental election procedures related to the 2021 annual municipal meeting. It's not like forever. Oh, yeah, right. So, there was a discussion, go ahead. I'm trying to wrap my head on this too. So the major difference from November is because that was a national election, that's why that directive was given to have all voters receive mail ballots. Okay. Yes. I mean, I guess I'm not opposed to that just because I'm hearing Jeff's argument of everybody maximizing, getting the same opportunity with the ballots, but I also wanna make sure, I guess I want my cake and eat it too, what the other towns are doing, because I see that point where one town does one thing and one does another, that's a very different playing field. So... Yeah, I don't know if I'm ready to make that decision tonight for me, because I definitely, at least would wanna vibe on what other towns are doing. So, I mean, they're not obviously gonna... I can't hear you. No, Gordon. Right, Gordon, I think you put it well another way of stating it is that everyone needs to be allotted the same opportunity. And if Shelburne mails, I mean, you can't have one town getting something that the others aren't doing if we're all supposed to equally feed into the CVSD election. So like you said, the opportunity should be the same for all five towns participating in the Champlain Valley School Districts election. So I guess that's another way of phrasing it. The opportunity needs to be the same, equal. I don't know how else to sort of phrase them. So that was a good way to state that. So, and after this, maybe I'll just be quiet because it's going on for so long. To me, it really comes down to what town is it making it more convenient to vote? Williston may make it more convenient by mailing out ballots to every voter with all ballots in that other towns may not make it so convenient. I wouldn't equate convenience to opportunity to vote. What are in other towns deadlines on making this decision? I'm not sure that there's a hard and fast deadline except that if, like I said before, if everybody needs to vote, I mean mail to everyone, then it's a matter of getting the supplies in order. You know, the Secretary of State's office is the one that supplies us with all of our envelopes and so a lot of it is the logistical piece of that. You know, we're still waiting until Monday the 25th to even finalize a ballot because that's the consent deadline. So that is the deadline that really is holding up a lot of the town meeting sort of all the deadlines that sort of go right in a row. We're really hanging on next Monday since you can't really go forward with any sort of ballot making until you pass 5 p.m. next Monday. So certainly at that point, because then it really is bing, bing, bing and having to get the ballot proofed so they can get them back for February 10th. And in the meantime, I'll need 16,000 ballots from Montpelier and line up with a mailing house to do this for us. So it becomes just a timeline of logistics at that point. So I guess I would say no later than, I mean, one of the 25th we're waiting on so that we can finalize the ballot. So some time between now and Monday. I'm just thinking if we pass Jeff's motion that does give the other towns time to reconvene if they have not made the same decision. This is just rather unwieldy because there are other municipalities that are making the same decision and we're told to cooperate with them but it turns out that we're not them and they're not us and we're not in a team. I'm still against this. We'll do it if you do it kind of thing and I don't like it. And it would be a different story if we had been able to talk about this, October or sometime forward. This is a lot to put on people with 30 days to sort of figure this all out from a philosophical, let alone logistical standpoint. We were talking about going forward. Do we want town meeting to be universal like August and November were then? The timeline there just hasn't been a lot of preparation time for this. And I do recognize that and I recognize, Sarah you're the one who bears the brunt of this not a lot of time. And it can get done. I mean, I have, like I said at this whole time I've had two different paths sort of ready. So we will be able to react and make it work, but the coordinating of fives bodies is the difficult part. Sarah, I do want to thank you and admire your efforts because you always seem to have plans A, B and C always in place. And I very much appreciate that. Thank you for everything you do. Sure. Thanks. Sure. The motion before the board is that we're going to send all of the ballots out by mail in the same envelope. Correct. We don't get to decide what CVSD wants to do though. They decide what they want to do. But can I ask you this? How would they decide what to do if we said we're not going to mail anything and they said, we want ours mailed? Then we'll say you're going to have to do it. Here's a checklist and a tabulator and you're going to mail those out. That is a possibility. Will had said that is not, we shall try to coordinate. It is the intent to try to make this work for everybody. If one town, because like I said, we can't decide to mail a ballot for them. They need to decide, which hopefully they are meeting right now and we can get some feedback from them. So I guess that's the trouble with that motion is that we can't decide to mail their ballot to 7,600 people unless they want us to. So I'm confused by this. So if Williston went to the school district, no matter how they decide tonight and said we would like 7,600 ballots because we want to put a CBC, Champaign Valley High School district ballot in every envelope we're mailing out. They could say no to that. I believe they can. They can choose that people will go to the polls. They can choose you need to ask. And I think it's because, like I said, they're trying to coordinate and be equal all over the five towns. They're a separate legislative body. So probably that's true. This really hinges on them, I guess is what it comes down to. That would really apply to the water district too. It would have to wouldn't it? Well, let me, all right. So what happens? What happens if the school district says, yes, we want everything mailed? The town of Williston says, yes, we want everything mailed. But the town of Heinsberg says, we don't want anything mailed. Then is the school district going to mail their Heinsberg school district ballots to the Heinsberg voters themselves? I don't think so. So would this all fall apart? I think so. Let's. Chaos, not dancing with cats. Kind of, yeah. Do you remember Get Smart? Chaos versus control. Chaos is winning. I feel like we're under the cones of silence right now. It's sort of like a bad Venn diagram is what I've been saying all week because there are certain groups that overlap and there are certain groups that are not overlapping. And I'll leave it at that. So why are we adding to the chaos? I don't think we are. I think we're trying to at least make our position clear and which maybe in a sense is adding to the chaos because everybody's going to try to make their position clear and if we don't agree or I assume we won't. I can't see that happening, to be honest with you. The part that still bothers me is that CVU, and I'm not arguing against CVU but that they would have, or CV school district. Yes, thank you. I'll never get over that. I know, it's hard. In a sense, I'm going to use the word care. It's probably not the right word but would care that Williston chose to mail out their ballots to all residents. That just, that kind of boggles my mind. I get the level playing field but I think every community should be interested in maximizing, and by community I include the school district, maximizing voter participation. So I just don't get it why they would be able to or want to say, no Williston, you can't mail our ballots out to every voter. I just boggles my mind. Sorry. Other discussion on the motion? Terry, if the board is entrusted in having Joe Duncan discuss Champlain Water District's position, he's offered that if the board is entrusted in hearing from him on this topic. We should hear from Joe. After municipalities were, well, not really, but yeah. Yes, so yes, you plug them in, that would be great. All right, Joe, I'm going to connect you right now. Hi there, Joe. Good evening everybody. We're going to do this sort of piecemeal with CWD. We'll talk about the bond issue and the ballots right now. Yeah, it'd be great. Liz Royer will be joining me as your Wilson rep. So that'd be, and I was only going to speak on our position. So, you know, CWD serves eight communities, 12 municipal systems in those eight communities. So we're everything from Shelburne to Milton now to the village of Jericho. So our legal counsel, you know, historically we have always piggybacked on the town ballots. We continue to do that. Our plan is to continue to do that. Sarah did present this to us as a potential concern and we did talk it over with our attorney. And our attorney has indicated that voter turnout has varied throughout the years in different communities, you know, some communities showing up more than others. Obviously this is a potential difference in ballots being mailed, but ultimately his opinion was it came down to that we were not going to modify our approach as long as this bond vote opportunity did not deprive any registered voter from casting a ballot. So our position is each community, as far as CWD is concerned, can do whatever they feel is in their best interest to serve their communities. We'll piggyback on that. And as long as we don't see someone being deprived of the ability to vote, we're just gonna go along with it. So I figured I would just share that with you. And, you know, as far as we're concerned, that's how we're handling it. And that may or may not provide any influence on what your decision is. It's not meant to, it's just meant to be, this is what we're doing and just listening along. Thank you, Joe. Anybody have any questions for Joe? No, at this point we'll let us head. We'll be back to you after eight o'clock, so. Thank you very much. Thanks. So the question before us, is there any more discussion on the motion? If not, then all those in favor of the motion, raise your hand. One, two, three. And those opposed, raise your hand three to two so the motion passes. And we'll move on then to the next item of business and we'll be anxiously awaiting the results from the other talents. Yes. Sorry, Terry. I went to disconnect Joe and I just had to say right away. So what happened? What was that? What happened there? We had three in favor of the motion and two opposed and the two opposed were Joe and myself. So that was the motion to mail ballots to everyone from the town part and still waiting on the school part to see how that will play out. Yeah. Okay. Well, stay tuned for tomorrow and we'll see. I think that this is gonna take some further. Well, we'll talk with, see what CVSD happens at their meeting this evening. Okay. Thanks everybody. Sorry, it's more confusing. Thank you, Sarah. It's more confusing than one would think. Thanks. Let us know when you hear with the other districts as well. So. I will let you know tomorrow. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Sarah. Thank you, sir. Moving on to the Oak Hill Trail Dog Restriction. We have Melinda Scott that will be joining us. Mr. Chair, while we're waiting for that, are we allowed to censor the legislature for really uncoordinated and unwieldy? We can do it around. We're writing, calling, writing. Government Operations Committee. You weren't on that. Were you? I wasn't on that. Okay. I wanted to be, but never got appointed to it. Yeah. And Terri, just so I was, apologies I was trying to deal with some Zoom things. I said there's the voters voting there too. So just so I have it clear, the motion is to approve the town to mail out all the municipal town ballots, all residents of registered voters, but to wait and hear on the school district. Just so I have this. Yeah. No. No. I believe the motion was to mail all ballots to all voters in one envelope. Okay. Thank you for. Yeah. I will, I'll coordinate with Sarah to support the municipalities of that motion. Thank you. Yeah. And I'll get Melinda connected. Hi, Melinda. Welcome. Hi, everyone. So we're, thank you and your memo that to Eric and to us regarding the banning dogs on the Hill trails. So if you can give us a brief understanding of what you wrote and the people are listening to it as well. Sure. So the town maintains a trail network that's entirely on the private land of Mike Eisham and Helen Weston, owners of Eisham family farm. The town acquired a trail easement to build a trail on the property in 2001. And, you know, similar to other trails as the population's grown, the use has increased in the last few years. This trail has become very popular for dog walking and this has brought issues that have become increasingly problematic over the past couple of years and now are untenable for the farmers. So the problems are just, you know, people letting their dogs run through the fields, people and dogs straying off the trail, disturbing wildlife, disturbing farm animals, running over crops, a lot of different things, leaving their not picking up after their dogs or leaving their dog do bags behind for some of the issues. So our current leash, pet ordinance and our country park policies dictate that when you're on a trail that's in an on a town on property, your dog can be off leash but it has to be under voice control at all times. If a trail passes over private property the dog has to be leashed. And part of the reason for that policy is because a trail easement only allows public access in a narrow corridor, 10 foot corridor where the trail is and if dogs are off leash, they're not remaining in that corridor. So leashing a dog is really the only way to make sure that we're abiding by the conditions of our trail easements. And, you know, the reason why the trails restricted to a narrow corridor and public access isn't allowed everywhere on the private land is so that these landowners can have some privacy and carry out activities in a way that's manageable where dogs and people aren't interfering with their enjoyment of their private property and the activities that they wanna do on the property. And the Oakview Hill trail system is unique in that the trails are right up, like they're right next to the activities happening on the farm. They pass around the fields and around the meadows where Mike and Helena are, you know, doing things than growing crops pass through the sugar bush. So it's really imperative that, you know, that the people stay on the trail. And we've worked with the landowners over the last several months to try to do outreach related to these rules and to ask people nicely to follow the rules and keep their dogs leashed. We've put up lots of signage around the property. We have published articles in the Observer posted things on the town website. We have talked to people out there and still people are disregarding the rules and letting their dogs off leash and leaving their dog do bags behind. So at this point, it has really become untenable. And we, you know, we wanna get away in on this policy change that we're proposing. We would like to at this point not allow dogs on the Oakview Hill trails. And yeah, that's for all those reasons. Just people are just not following the rules and, you know. Thank you. Thanks, Melinda. Questions for Melinda on the issue? No, more just to comment if I'm so sorry to see it come to this. This is so abrupt, but I completely understand their position and it's actually interference with their use of their land and be able to use it in a productive manner for their livelihood. I mean, you can't do that. And it's really a shame that, you know, a small group of people are causing this kind of a thing, but I think that's the only message you can get. I know Mike and Helen Well, they're neighbors just down the road from me. And, you know, I think it was a incredible opportunity to have an easement like that. Yes. And you're, you know, that abuse of public and not only the abuse, but repetitive abuse of, you know, the outreach of signage, communications through the observer and or word of mouth. And it can be a small select group. I realize that, but whether, you know, you own a quarter acre or hundreds of acres, it's the private land that's a privilege to be crossed. And it's unfortunate that it's come to this because I'm a dog lover too. But there's also a responsibility that comes with that when you're participating in an easement across someone's private land. So I'm frustrated. I've talked to Mike and Helen about it as well. And it is unfortunate that this has to come to this, but maybe this message will be received aloud and clear. And, you know, who knows what the future holds, but right now I'm in agreement with that. I just would also add just for the record, along with Gordon, I mean, I'm a dog owner, you know, so to take the position that I do, it just tells you how upsetting all of this is. One question, Melinda. Hey, Jeff here. My question has to do with education and enforcement. So let's say we make a decision tonight that dogs are not allowed on Oak Hill trails, the Oak Hill trail. Folks are gonna show up because they've showed up in the past with their dog. I guess my question is, is what do you see in terms of enforcement, either or education? Does that make sense? Yeah. Because, you know, type thing, today dogs were allowed tomorrow as they aren't. People aren't gonna necessarily realize that things have changed. Yeah, so we would try to get the word out as much as possible through our website, front porch forum, and we would post signage right at the trailhead saying dogs are not allowed and explaining why. And you're right that our ability to enforce is extremely limited. So we really rely on people out there using the trails or Mike and Helen to be our eyes and ears. And I would say also putting the message out there that if people are not gonna obey that rule and are gonna continue to bring their dogs that we'll have to put a chain across the parking area and just close the trail, at least temporarily. But yeah, I think we would rely on Mike and Helen's observations and them letting us know either, yeah, people haven't been bringing dogs, people are still bringing dogs. But yeah, it is a difficult issue because we're not out there all the time. And, you know, yeah. Okay, all right, good. Thank you. So staff is looking for consensus tonight on the ban of dogs on the all of you hill trails. Is there any further discussion before I ask for a straw vote and then get a consensus? Yeah, Tara, I just wanna mention that Mike and Helen are on the line. They said that they may have wanted to make a comment to the board tonight as well, if you'd like me to see if they would like to. You'd be happy to hear from them right now, sure. Okay. Mike and Helen, I'm gonna hit the button to unmute you. We should be able to hear you in a moment, one second. Mike, you'll just need to hit unmute. Welcome, Mike and Helen, if you're ready to speak, go ahead. Oh, thank you and welcome to the farm. It's kinda dark. And thank you, Melinda. You're welcome. It must be nighttime there. Mike, we can't see you if your camera, your video button is on the lower left. If you just click. Oh, the camera. Oh, I didn't do the video piece. Oh, it's our fault. I'm just wearing my pajamas. I don't like to surprise people until I don't put my just the voice in the dark, go ahead. One of the thing, hi, I'm Helen Weston. Thank you for speaking with us tonight. One of the things that I wanted to say was, first of all, I appreciate this coming up. And I wanted to clarify that it is not a small group of people with the dogs. It is actually a overriding majority of the dog owners, not pointing fingers, but that's, I think that's important to point out. And also the importance of our work here is we have an overriding essential question that we have every time we walk out the door. And the question is, is how does our work today affect the environment? So we put the environment first and through speaking with many state departments like the Fish and Wildlife and the state environmental enforcement officers. People like that, there are the forest parts and recreation trail people from the state. This is not an isolated issue. It's becoming more and more prevalent throughout the state. And the enforcement officers are frustrated because they don't have enough people to enforce it. And therefore more and more people are not abiding by rules. I'm assuming because they can get away with it. And this would be a good lesson, you know, lesson to the dog owners that they have to be more respectful on other trails as well, not just, you know, the farm here. Good, thank you both. We appreciate your comments tonight. You're welcome. Do you guys have any questions for us? I think the memo from both Melinda and your letter to us over the weekend really explains things very well. Okay. Great. So I'll ask the board then if there's any more questions or comments to make before we have a show or hands on the consensus hearing none. All those in favor of supporting the ever to keep dogs off the trails and to ban them, raise your hand. One, two, three, four, five. So we have a unanimous consensus on this and so we'll move on but thank you both for coming to talk to us tonight. You're welcome and thank you very much also. Thank you Melinda. You're welcome. Thanks. Thank you Melinda and we'll move on to the next item that's the Champaign Warner District report so we can bring back Joe Duncan and also Liz Royer. Joe and Liz look at you connected right now. So welcome back Joe and I see Liz's blank there but there she is. So Joe is a general manager of CWD and they will listen resident and Liz Royer lives right next door to me. Yes and congratulations Terry on your great grandchild. Hi everyone. If you don't know, I'm the elected Williston commissioner to the Champlain Warner District. I was just trying to calculate in my head and the last year has been such a blur. This is the start of my sixth year, maybe my seventh year as the commissioner. So thanks for having us tonight and I would say there's kind of the same theme as usual which is good news in the water world that there's not a lot that's different this year than in past years in terms of the rate increase the proposal is approximately 7.9 cents per 1000 gallons and that's along the lines of what we've seen in the past several years and probably about the average for about the last 10 years in terms of the rate increase that's the Champlain Warner District portion of the town's water rates. So that is detailed on page six of your packet which the title of that is CWD uniform wholesale rate increase impact on served municipal systems. So in terms of what that comes out to be in terms of the average family monthly cost increase that's about 43 cents per month. If we look at the next page which is the comparative retail water rates these are from December, 2020. You'll see that Williston is in the middle of the list. I think that's right where we wanna be in terms of Chittenden County. This isn't just Champlain Water District serve systems but also includes the city of Burlington and Colchester Fire District too. So again, that's where we've been and I think that's where we want to continue to be. Thank you, Liz. Yep. Go ahead, we have more to present. I just wanted to bring your attention to one more page which is page 10. I'm not sure if this has been provided in past years but this is the graph that shows the town of Williston historical average daily water usage. I know there's been some questions about that in the past and this is actually really quite interesting to me and Joe and I were talking about this earlier today with the amount of development that we've seen in Williston. I mean, this goes back to 2001 which is right around when I moved to Vermont. So I definitely have seen a lot of development in Williston happening since then and the first kind of peak that you see and then kind of the big drop Joe was mentioning that's likely due to the Williston IBM campus and the water usage there that that dropped off but other than that, there's no real pattern. It's kind of right around that same 0.69 0.68, 0.69 million gallons per day for Williston. So I think in the industry we generally look at yes, there's fixtures that are using less water and that type of thing. People are becoming more conscious about water conservation but I just didn't know if the select board had any other thoughts on those numbers and why they've remained so constant over the last two decades basically. So. Thanks. Questions for Liz? Two quick ones, I hope Liz, how are you? Good, how are you doing, Jeff? Yeah, good. And this isn't, don't read anything negative in that. I'm on the, I'm not sure what page it is. It's the one that talks about the uniform, CWD uniform wholesale rate increase impact on served municipal systems. Yes. And it's just a curiosity question. How do you estimate what the Williston rate will be in the future? We don't know what it will be. For everything we know, Bruce is gonna come in when we set the rate and push for a big increase. Maybe not due to the wholesale water rate but due to other reasons. Yep, I'm gonna throw this one to Jeff. Yeah, so the answer is we don't know, Jeff. And so what you see there is, we basically just show if each of the communities takes our new revised wholesale rate, applies it with no other changes to their rate, that's what you get. So if the town of Williston does not choose to do anything with increases this year, you're looking at a $5 increase. So usually most communities have some sort of rate change in there. The city of South Burlington as an example and they went up and it's a $7 a year increase because they added $2 in their portion of their O&M budget. So each one's gonna vary. We don't try to predict that. Okay, all right. And pretty much what I figured, but I wasn't sure, so I thought I would ask. And then I'm gonna go to that chart you were just talking about. Yes. And my curiosity, and for some reason I seem to be the only one curious about this on the select board is we call it attachment A and it actually has to do with sewage allocation. And we do basically the same thing except we use a five year rolling average to look at what is history telling us in terms of how should that help us predict what we should do in the next year. And also to a degree in the next 20 years because our attachment A really is a 20 year forward looking a document. So my question is, and not that I have an answer with that, I'd be very curious how the water use tracks against sewage, whatever, generation and see if there's a correlation there. Yeah, that would be definitely something to talk with Bruce about to see, you know, generally there is, I mean, assuming based on my knowledge of the sewer served area versus the water served area you wanna make sure that those two areas are common that you don't have any large users outside of one or the other. But generally Wilson tends to be the sewer and the water corridors tend to be about the same. So I have to believe that they would track pretty well. And then obviously as you know, Jeff, one of the challenges for you might be, although Wilson's generally a tight system, all things considered from a sewer perspective, usually you expect a percentage lost in sewer usage versus water usage unless you have high inflow and infiltration. So, you know, so those are all things that you have to kind of look at, but generally they do tend to trend similarly. Yeah, yeah. All right, good. And I don't know the answer to that, but yeah. So while I have that, the one thing I did wanna point out is take the opportunity to let you know, we had the discussion on CWD having a bond vote and we will be on the town article, however it is you, which sounds like mailing it all out, we would be on that town article. And what we're doing is we had an opportunity, I don't know if you recall, last year we had bond articles for a project in what we call our Essex West Pump Station project and our Colchester South Tank Loop project, both regional projects. The Essex West project actually plays a really strong role in assisting Williston's low service area, which is essentially everything from route to a West towards Williston. It's all fed off of the tank that's at Maple Tree Place, we call that our Williston West tank. And so by relieving some of the stress of some of the pressures of trying to get water out of our Essex tanks, it will help with how we serve that Williston low area as we call it. But so with those two projects, we wound up applying for drinking water SRF funding. It was a total of 3.5 million, 2.6 million for Essex project and 900,000 for the Colchester South Tank Loop project. Both of them qualified for subsidy and the SRF program has a different way of handling grants. They don't give grants, they only give a loan subsidy. So essentially we got a 75% grant if you will for our $900,000 project in Colchester and we got a 45% grant loan forgiveness for our $2.6 million project in Essex. And so we were looking out at, I know we kind of talk about this every year, we are trying to stay ahead of our infrastructure by reinvesting as much as we can because what we can keep in good shape today, we don't have to make reactive fixes in the future. So doing it in today's dollars in a controlled manner. So because we've gotten almost 1.5 million dollars in subsidy off of that $2.6 million project, we looked and said, you know what, we can keep our debt service and our annual loan payments the same if we look at repurposing almost $1.1 million in projects that underran in the past. So it turns out to be 1.09, 067, a call 1.1. So we can take advantage of the historically low bond market right now where we're looking at a 1.5% loan for 15 years for this 1.09 million. And that fits actually slightly below what our debt service would be if we didn't get any of that loan forgiveness. So what we're trying to do is say, we had a great situation of beginning some loan forgiveness and we wanna take that and reinvest in some other capital projects from our raw water pumps that pump water from the lake up to our system to fixing our south water filter tank at the plant to putting in variable frequency drives for our pumps and some particle counting system replacement. So trying to do that proactively. So that's what our bond is about. It's a net neutral bond. So if that bond passes, we're not raising the rates. What Joe, what is the lake thermocline system? So the lake has stratification in it. So what we have is a thermocline system that monitors the temperature from the surface of the lake down to 80 feet below the water where our intake is. And we use that as a protective measure in trying to predict how we also have a stream gauge at the La Plata. So what we're doing is we're monitoring stream conditions, erosion conditions, sediment conditions combined with where we know the thermocline is based upon the monitoring of the temperature across that. And we use that to fine tune our filter system in order to anticipate what we think we're gonna get for increased turbidity coming into the plant. Interesting. So if I could repeat back, just see if I got it anywhere close. You're using this system to predict what the water coming into the plant's gonna look like so you know how to treat it best. Yes, correct. Yep, cool. It's one of the few in the world we're told. We put it in about 15 years ago and it's reaching the end of its life. So we're looking to replace it. Okay. And then my other question had to do with the bond amount down to 67 dollars. Yes. Usually people round around here, but. That is the exact amount of four bonds that we had recently that underran their budgets. Okay. So essentially what happens each year, our auditors come in and say, how much unused bond authorization are you carrying? And every year we give them $1,090 and 67 cents for the past couple of years. And this year we said, you know what? If that's just sitting out there and why not take advantage of it? So it's a very specific number for a reason. Yeah. And but you have to get bond authorization even though you already got, these are underspent bonds. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Because they were specifically identified, one of them was for, for a, called just a South tank. Another one was for a water line for our, for our cross-tie. So they all had specific purposes. Yeah. So we now need to, to generally repurpose them. Yeah. Okay. Understand. Good questions. Good luck with the boat. Thank you. Any further questions for Joe or Liz? Guess not. We thank you very much for coming tonight. Yeah. Even by zoom, we appreciate you being here. Well, thank you. It's good to see everyone. All right. Thank you everybody. Have a great evening. Thanks. So moving on. Capital budget and program. And Eric and Shirley will be tapped for this. Yep. Being Shirley connected right now and our presentation on the budget tonight for the board, just kind of wrapping things up and summarizing our changes and looking for, for the formal motions. And Shirley has a couple of small updates to make to the boardage. I tasked with giving everything a final check over the last week and has some good news of some additional expense reduction she identified. So I'll wait for Shirley to share that. Well, sorry. I can hear you, Shirley. Yeah. I just can't get my video to work for some reason. There we go. Sorry about that. Hello everyone. Oh, is this it? The last discussion about budgets until September? We don't know how sad it makes me. So I just wanted to go, Eric put in the materials, the possible budget changes. So I just wanted to review a couple from last week that we found, that I found actually I was working on the water, FY 22 water budget draft for our drinking water state revolving loan fund for live life acres. And I found that I had made a mistake and the allocation of some insurance benefits out to the proprietary funds. So on your expenditure changes, there's one new reduction. It says allocation of benefits to proprietary funds. That's the $10,000. And then on the revenue changes, there's, so this takes into account that the changes we talked about but hadn't reflected previously that fund balance, we were able to reduce that by $16,600. And then the revenue for property taxes that 107906 just represents the amount we needed to reduce it by from the original budget we presented. So that we are at a tax rate that's exactly the same as the prior year. So those are the summary of those changes. Do you have any questions? Okay. And other than that, so the budget that we have now proposed with all of those changes is $11,571,355. Which is, I said to Eric, we gotta find $145 and make that an even $100,000 decrease from last year. Pretty darn close. So it is $100,000 less than the prior year. And that was our goal from the beginning was knowing what's happening now in the economy as to bring in a budget that was lower than the previous year. So I think that's all I needed to cover to just summarize where we're at for you to ask questions or make a decision. It ends up being a 0.86% operating budget reduction on that side of things. Okay. Looks like you did exactly what we asked you to do last week. So I think we're in good shape. Any further questions? For Shirley. No, no questions, just that same comment. Thank you. Next job. Very nice job. Takes the team. Yes. So we'll be looking to adopt the capital budget and the general fund budget with two separate motions. Move to adopt the capital budget and program for fiscal year 2022 through 2027 as amended through the budget adjustment summary. Second. Motion made and seconded. Is there a discussion on the motion? Hearing none. All those in favor of the motion raise your hand. Two, three, four, five. Thank you. And we're on to the general fund budget. I'd move to adopt the general fund budget for fiscal year 2022 in the amount of 11,571,355. Just a second. There is a second. Is there a discussion on the motion? Hearing none again. All those in favor of adopting the motion raise your hand. One, two, three, four. Pardon. Frozen. Yeah. So we're on to the final meeting and warning then. Eric. Thanks everyone. So I have the draft warning as it stands now in your budget packet. And you'll see I've filled in the blanks an article three for the budget number and the amount of money the funds be raised by taxes as discussed here. One thing I will mention to the board due to the vote earlier this evening regarding the mailing of ballots. I'd advise we adjust the language at the bottom of the warning to reflect that information and may consult the territory just on the exact language there. But if the board is ready to make a motion tonight, I may suggest that the motion include with changes for that language as staffs need to do that or something thereof. Okay. The CWD question, does that come on our ballot? Does it need to be warned somewhere? They have a separate warning they've provided. The separate one. Okay. We don't have to worry about that then. Okay. Yeah. Not to my knowledge. Sarah's received a separate warning I believe so they should be also on that one. Questions for Eric regarding the warning? Yes sir. What are you saying that we need to add to the end of it? Because really your absentee ballots is the issue that if we're actually mentally in a mount then there's no need to request an absentee. We had language, actually it would have been in November we didn't. Something of that extent to let informed folks that the ballots would be mailed. I'd be looking for a motion to approve the warning with any changes that may be warranted regarding the ballots, the minimum ballots. I'd move to adopt the official warning for the public information hearing and town meeting vote by Australian ballot to be held on March one and March two 2022 with the provision that the town manager is authorized to make clerical revisions to the warning at the end to coordinate that language with the mailing, the mailed voting resolution or motion that we passed tonight. I think if we amend it to March two, 2021. Oh, yes. Yeah. Okay. Good idea. Sorry Ted, just to see you're out, you know. I think I have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion on the motion? Very none. All those in favor of the motion raise your hands. One, two, three, four, five. All right. Moving on then to the regional unified planning and work plan project list for Williston and Eric. It's quite the agenda item title, but last note on the warning, I think the board should probably sign us in person if able. So I'll let the board know what I have this set and it's not by the town hall to sign it and we'll get it posted in our 40 to 34 day window here. So the unified planning work plan project list, this is something the board receives every year. It's for the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. It's development of their annual work plan to appropriate funding they get from a variety of sources. Typically see project requests from both the public works and planning department. We just had public works this year. So could Matt and planning's pretty busy with the RPC's help with the form-based program projects. So they'll be really focusing on that. Public works has two projects and I confirm with Bruce today there's no local match for either of these projects if they're funded. One is a continued inventory of our asterisks with the ML dashboard ongoing issue. And one is looking at intersection scoping study at Cottonwood Crossing intersection to see if the attorney may warrant it at some point. So the staff presents this list for the board's consideration with your motion as we go to the CCRPC for its consideration as it's work plan in the coming year. Okay. And I just want to on the Cottonwood Crossing route to top cut road intersection. So there's no match. I guess my question was is we won't need to use impact fees, transportation impact fees to help pay for that. Yeah, that's my understanding, Jeff, that this would just be a request for that state federal money to a local contribution towards it according to Bruce. Okay. Okay. For the questions. That's just a scoping study, not the actual projects. Right, yet the actual project will be, I assume, a whole different story. Yeah, yeah. Probably. Any further questions for Eric and this? Looking for a motion. Move to approve the projects proposed for inclusion in the regional annual unified planning work program for fiscal year 2022. Second. Is there a discussion on motion? Very not. All those in favor of the motion raise your hand. One, two, three, four, five. Okay. Moving down to the 2020 Equalization Study Report and Eric again. Yep. Another item the board sees is about this time every year. Our annual Equalization Study for the CLA was complete back in December. Town Assessor Bill Hibbins reviewed that report which is included in your packet as well. Bill feels this study to be a fair measure for the town in 2020 for the CLA. His recommendation is that the town would not appeal that as we have done in a couple of years. And for the board's process, I would just ask the board pass a motion to accept the CLA report. Follow the recommendation of the town assessor. Questions for Eric? Sorry, Eric, I have two. I'm on the second paragraph of Bill's memo and the sentence reads one area of concern is the ratio of moderate priced homes compared to the higher priced homes impacting the COD. And I just didn't understand why the moderate priced homes compared to the higher priced homes. What that comparison was, I guess I still understand what that sentence is about. Yeah, Jeff, I can follow up with Bill directly on that. My impression, it's part of the full formula to come up with the COD, I wouldn't wanna misstate what Bill's intention was there. So I can... Yes, and Bill and I can have that conversation. I understand, I think in basic the theory behind COD and that's why this just doesn't make sense to me. And then my second question is, Bill makes the comment that 8.33% is considered statistically accurate for a town of Williston size and density. And I also thought COD was something you wanted to have as close to zero as possible. And I believe under state statute, if you exceed 10%, don't you have to go ahead and do your reappraisal? So that sentence just doesn't make sense to me again. I think I can follow up with Bill. Yeah, these aren't big deals, but I would like to try to understand, make sure I understand what Bill's telling us. Sure. I'll get an answer for the board this week on those two points. Sorry, thank you. I'll stop. No problem. Any other questions for Eric? If not, I'm looking for a motion on this as well. I'd move to accept the 2020 Equalization Study Report. Second. It's a discussion on motion. If not, well, those in favor of the motion, raise your hand. Two, three, four, five. Very good. We're up to managers report. There's a couple of quick things. I'll touch on my written report this evening. We've had a boiler go in the town hall annex in the winter here. It's about 23 years old. So we're gonna have to replace that for our building contingency fund. And it's actually two boilers in there. And both boilers were installed at the same time. And the boiler that has failed is behind the other boiler. Notwithstanding of this factored in decision, but I'm speaking with Bruce, our HVAC firm can replace both boilers. And Bruce feels the price we got was very good. He thought we were gonna pay for one boiler that we can replace both boilers at. So I've asked him to go ahead and replace them both, both being the same age and play resolve that issue in the annex and let them have some more heat over there. They've gotten by the last week, but it's one of those things we'll have to address here. And we've also hired another individual for a highway department to put the highway division back at full strength, which was here in the past week as well. Other than that, staff's continuing to work hard in our modified operations environments. And I just continue to recognize the hard work and creative energy of the staff to continue to provide high quality service for the community in these COVID operational times. That's all I have this evening for the board. Thank you. Under other business, we have a couple of things. The memo that you got from Emily Payman regarding the Better Places Grant from the state of Ron Eric, why don't you speak a little bit about that? Sure, yeah. Emily's taking the lead on this for us. That's a state grant program. We can do enhanced public spaces and our approach here is looking, we could get some additional equipment to aid in our meeting spaces outside and then we explore some different picnic tables, benches, a canopy. And these can be utilized during COVID, especially as meeting places for staff and members of the public. Where our tents also have these as portable so we could have them in areas outside the town hall. We could also put them on the green near the library, the library and the central school were supportive of this idea as well. And the conditions of the grants, it's tied to the designated village center. So there's also some additional things we could try with those if we're setting up some outreach or pause points around town. But this kind of sprung off a larger discussion and spoke with Rick McGuire on behalf of the Rotary Club and some other groups. Might be some real potential to look at the area between the town hall and the annex to add some additional improvements and then create kind of a different park meeting space. Some other groups might be interested in contributing to that. So this grant would just, it may help out with that kind of larger vision project. Just want to thank Emily for a lot of work into this. And one of the conditions of the grant is the select board as the owners of this property would need to just provide a staff with permission to apply for the grant. So that's the question you have before you for this evening. Questions for Eric? Just real quick, Eric, a $50 match, if I remember, if I read that correctly, $500 match. We're anticipating. Yeah, matches are required, but from reading the guidelines to help you, we're prepared to find a couple line items. Okay, and then the other is I noticed the existing bike racks in town on town owned property are referred to as wheelbender bike racks. And I was, I think I know what that means. I'm wondering if that was a matte description of what they are. Versus a technical description. Yeah, I don't believe it's a technical term. We'll find them any places, but I think it's relating to the size to fit the wheel and to have to really get it to fit. So I know those bike racks have been around for quite a while. Well, good, but thank you to Emily for doing this. Any other questions for Eric in this? There was a motion suggested at the end of the manager's document. I'd move to authorize staff to apply for a better places grant for the project outlined in the staff memo. Thank you. There's a second. Any discussion on the motion? All those in favor of the motion, raise your hand. One, two, three, four, five. Okay. Any other business we need to take up tonight? We're not planning on meeting next week because that was a meeting date that we put in place in case we needed it for budget purposes and it appears we don't need that. There is a possibility, I suppose, that we might come back for a special short meeting to discuss mailing a ballot. My guess is probably not, but we'll see. And on your website emails, you may have gotten an email from a company that's doing something for the planning department on forum-based zoning and the possibility of having them interview each of us as well as other folks in town. So if you haven't seen it, you may take a look for that. Okay. Any other business for tonight? If not, thank you so much for all of your hard work on the budget and everything else we've done in the last three months. So thanks and we won't see you until first week in February. We are adjourned. Thank you. Good night, everyone. Have a wonderful evening.