 Okay, I'll call the special meeting for the Essex Select Board for May 14 2022 to order. Are there any agenda additions or changes from staff. Any from board members. Okay, then let's move on to public to be heard public to be heard as a time on the agenda. Any other participants can speak to the board on topics that are not on the agenda. If you'd like to speak during public to be heard, you can either raise your hand in the chat feature on zoom, or if you're in the room, you can raise your hand there. If you want to speak, please be brief. And so I guess with that, let's go ahead and get started. I see Penny Davis, your hand is up. Yeah, hi everyone. I wanted to come to the meeting but I need to be by air condition because after running sleepy hollow and old pump, it's hot out. So I just wanted to mention that. I'm very excited about what Williston is doing and a little town called Danville. The reason I'm bringing these two towns up is I know we have a very big important discussion and I know that this isn't about that discussion. It's just about having Greg, please take a look at what Danville is doing in regards to their public forest and public land where they used to be hunting and there used to be a lot of snowmobile use. Well, now that particular manager is saying that everybody, there's people there seven days a week in Danville in their forest town forest area and recreation area. There's seven seven days a week all year round and that they're going to bring money in for tax abatement for recreation, passive recreation. And I said, wow, why can it tell the select board about Danville? It's so exciting. So I'm only bringing this up because I didn't go to the last select board meeting, but I watched it on YouTube and I noticed Peter that lives at, not Peter, which is named Michael Peterson that lives at the end of Saxon. I don't run Saxon anymore. I'm so turned off with all the trees gone with climate change and everything. It's just going to pot and apparently he complained about four years ago. I guess. Hunting, there are hunting and it's not even hunting season. And I got tired of six years of coming to the select board saying we pay high enough taxes. We damn well better have a safe town. We demand it. Thank you. Thanks, Patty. Mary Post, I see your hand up. Mary's Mary's. I'm sorry. I was trying to help Bruce out and then he's trying to help me, but I don't have anything to say right now. Thanks, Andy. Okay. All right. Any comments in the room? Yes. Yeah, please come up and join us. And introduce yourself. My name is Paula Sergeant and I would like to talk to you today about the Essex area senior center. My husband and I have lived here 20 years and I've been going down to the senior centers three days a week this year. And it's been in its transition. Back from the COVID virus shutdown. The plan. And I've been going there mostly because of my concern. That the seniors are being well served. And that the program is going well. I have three concerns that I'd like you to know about when you're doing your planning for this year. I'm going to talk to you about that. I'm going to talk to you about the model that the parks and rep department are using right now is three days a week. There's a coordinator there. Very part time. Probably about 20 hours a week. And then Mondays and Fridays, there's no one there. The doors are open. We have to open them ourselves. And lots of times there's people coming in. There's no one there. There's issues that go on. There's no one there. And I have three points to make. One is we need a full-time coordinator at the senior center. We need someone there nine to five, five days a week focusing on the senior center and the needs. It is a full-time job. And we can see that this year because our programs, although they've been really, really exciting and the seniors have put a lot of energy into it. They are not up to hosting. They're not up to the responsibility. They're not up to the responsibility. They're not up to the responsibility. They're not up to the responsibility like opening the doors of the library and saying, okay, the volunteers are in charge. Things are happening all the time at the senior center. That need a staff person there present. Who's trained. Who's knowledgeable. Who can get to know the people at the senior center. Have a contact with them so that they can interact with them in a very positive way. When you have a coordinator that's got two other jobs that are working in the department of hiring and design. And our staff is going to be, we're going to be able to help them out and be on the phone with people. The seniors are not getting the attention that they need at the senior center. Also our partnerships are not being. Developed the agency on aging. We're doing this big meal program with the agency. I think we can't do it anymore. Because we do not have the volunteers. Who have been developed during this year to run the programs. We have like a handful of volunteers left because people have The second point I want to make is that the partnership needs to be reviewed. It needs to be reviewed because the seniors are partners and it's really, I think, important to understand what do the seniors need and not just what do the parks and rec department need, which is really the focus of what the program is right now. And the third thing I want to talk about is the coming renovation of the building. We have no idea what's going to happen. That is going to take a big collaboration between Essex, Parks and Rec, the seniors, and the city, Parks and Rec. And we're very worried about that, how that collaboration is going to happen. We have not had a meeting of the seniors at the senior center since last August to hear how the seniors are feeling, what they think is important. We haven't had any of those meetings. There's hardly any committees meeting. So I just want to be positive that we've made it through this transition. We had an antiques road show. We've had teas. The volunteers have really stepped up. But we also now need the Parks and Rec department to step in up, evaluate. Maybe you get agency and agent to come in and do an analysis of what's going on and see how we can meet the needs of the seniors. I could see something, an event taking place there that we've already had one person last year fainted. These are seniors. They need to have professional coordination. So I'm hoping that, I know this is an important time in your strategic planning, I'm hoping that you will understand the challenges that the senior center is facing and take some positive action. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. Any other comments about items that are not on the agenda? I don't see any other hands up. So let's move on to the first business item. And I think, Jen, are we going to turn this over to you at this point? Yes. So the first business item is introductions. My name is Jennifer Nower and I'm a facilitator. I don't hail from Essex. I live nearby in Jericho. So a little bit, facilitators have lots of different roles. So maybe I'll cover my role and then just we'll warm up here in the room. So my job today is to provide an impartial structure for you to do some strategic planning, which can mean so many things. But as I understand it today, and I can only recognize you're online, maybe it'd be helpful if you could see my face instead of the back of my head. Let me go ahead and turn on my video. How's that? Better to see you. So what I'll be doing is managing time, tracking issues, asking clarifying questions, ensuring that your voice is in the mix. What I'm not doing is giving advice or content info in any way. So the overall goal is to walk out of here at noon with a roughly prioritized list of strategic goals. And the eye is towards keeping that list manageable, feasible, and collectively relevant. This is such an interesting year to be here with you because it's a much smaller group than when I've seen you last this time. That doesn't always make this goal of strategic planning much easier though. So I have a couple of visuals that I hope will help organize that work. If they don't work for you, my invitation is that you candidly let me know because I can switch gears if it's not in service of what you're trying to do. Any questions for me about who I am or the role I'm playing today? So warm up questions. These are a chance to settle in with each other before you start the business of strategic planning. And it's in three rounds. And so the first question, you can take it wherever you need to. Just what are you paying attention to this year? And I think Kendall will start with you since you're online instead of in the room. Let's make sure we've got that next interview. So what are you paying attention to this year? The budget. Pretty much the budget. Excuse me, can Jennifer speak up just a little? Thanks. I can certainly try. We can also bring in another microphone if that's helpful. Let's see. Tracy, go ahead and we'll see how the microphone is and then we'll come back to you, Andy, since you're further away. How do you have the, how do you can hear me? Yeah. Yes, I can now. Yes. Thank you. All right. Go back to me. What are you paying attention to this year? So I guess the, one of the big things for me is relationship with other communities. We need to, we need to understand how to move forward without causing conflict or I think stability is a big, big thing we need. And you know, Kendall already mentioned the budget that we get from being a nested community, being a separate community. So that's the thing I'm thinking about. Tracy. Budget. All is budget. But also unintended consequences, especially as we're sort of forging a new path and just wanting to keep an eye on what impact the best of intentions may have. And also interconnections where, like things overlap, where the gaps are, what we can combine to leverage efficiencies, cost savings, things of that sort. And also community input and making sure that we're increasing our level of communication and the quality of that communication. Steven. Thanks. So yeah, the budget is huge. I think savings is, is, is something I've been focused on and been working into. And I think we have a lot of work to do to figure out, you know, a manageable tax increase for our community for the next few years. On the flip side of that, I've also been thinking and, and, you know, doing some, some research on how the town can buy a piece of land and maybe not buy a piece of land, but create a plan to have a piece of land and, you know, start a town center and have a community building and a new municipal building and a fire department, you know, not all at once, but the town needs to take action now to find a area where they can have this, this, you know, trying to think the right word for it here, but we're all buildings to be together. Yeah, a center, Plaza is what I was thinking, Plaza, but, you know, it doesn't need to all happen at once, but we need to have a plan and make the first step to go towards that direction, because one of the biggest things that comes to my mind is, is right here in front of us, this capital plan and there's, there's items on this capital plan that we're dumping more money into and we may be abording them in a year or two. So how much money are we going to continue to spend before we find a path forward? And what I'm going to say is one of my biggest things that I'm paying attention to this year and I have for years and I want to know why Essex doesn't need bonds. And that's my goal is to get us moving in the direction where we can easily convince the community. I mean, my parents are in Milkenstone, they're getting a brand new municipal building and it was a home run right down the motor line. So that's what I'm going to do. I didn't know it's anything, you're welcome. So I'm also looking at the budget, the lowest tax increase that, you know, the impact of it. I'm looking at a community center because that's what we've heard from a lot of people that we do need a community center and a municipal center, improved ways of communicating with the public because a lot of times false information gets out there and rumors start and then we don't know if that's what we're trying to. I'm looking at rebooting some of the board that's commissioned itself. So no small feat to figure all those things out in four hours on Saturday morning. So those questions are, I think what it will require of you today is both the telescope view, like where you look when you get to take a soft gaze at the big picture so you can see the relationships and the possibilities and the unintended consequences but then also being able to focus in on specific questions and goals and so I'll do my best to try to track where you are in any given time so you can figure out how much detail has to happen today versus how much you want to spend your time just figuring out when you go into the detail if that makes sense. Round two, what are you enthusiastic about, enthusiastic about any single sentence? Kendall? I am enthusiastic about the town of Essex's new independence and future. Yeah, I'm enthusiastic about the fact that we can stop talking about merger and separation. We can focus on things that we've been either pushing aside or we're deferring because someone knows that I think are not resolved. Yeah, I'm excited about the independence of Essex and also the new decision making of the small group that we have. I'm excited to see what we've got for the adventure. We have some audio trouble so some folks who are online actually having a hard time hearing. Kendall, can you hear us okay or is it dim for you as well? It's middle, yeah, it's middling. So I think we should try to set up two speakers. Yep, we're trying to do both. No, because it's going to be so much audio. So let's just take a little intermission because I do want to make sure that everybody can hear. We had the same issue as the planning and zoning meeting where they had to move the mic. It was really echoey. Yeah, how's that? Is that better? That's much better. Can you hear me? Kendall? Kendall, can you hear you? Yes, I can hear that. That's good. Awesome. Okie doke. So now let's do the last round and this is going to be an excellent chance to try out the audio and see if it actually works well. Well, Kendall, we'll start with you again. So this time it's just in two words. You're actually really brief with your first one, Kendall. You just said budget. So I feel like you have more words to spend but how would you describe your feeling or experience with meetings like this one? A Saturday morning, select words, kickoff, strategic planning meeting. Two words. Exciting and stressful. Yeah, I guess I'd say challenging and worrisome. Yeah, Tracy. Overwhelmingly necessary. Wow, there you go. Ethan. Running out of words here. I'm going to say it's exciting. I'll use the challenging as well and you know farm exciting. Yeah, done. Too early but exciting. I know. How straight were you, sorry. You know, I've been at the 8.30 start. Yep. Well, I don't know if this is affirming or if it's just normalizing but I also got a little worried about thinking about this morning because it occurs to me how much you're trying to do and how tricky it is to try to put that into a plan. And it can seem like there's an awful lot of things to be looking at all at once but it also doesn't have to be done all at once. So the goal for today is can you get as a select board on a collective page about when these kinds of bits of work are going to fall into the calendar and what parts of work you're going to prioritize. So that's the goal that I have and that's where I'm leading you towards. And if at some point that doesn't serve you well, I'm going to trust the camera. You let me know so you can course correct. All right, we've got the audio working out. Let's start with our business then. I think Greg and Marguerite, do you have anything you want to add before we start with reviews? No, did you want to do the guidelines for decision making? Oh yes, I skipped right over it. I think we should do that. So I know that this might be a review in April just recently you went through and either review or maybe redrafted the rules and regulations in the communications policy which went into quite a bit of detail about how you were going to share information online, what expectations you had for each other. The reason I have this on the agenda today is because I want to make sure that I'm on the same page of you about how you're going to make decisions and priorities. My understanding is that in general you try to do it by consensus and when you get as close as you can and then you take a vote, it's majority vote. Is there anything else that you want to add or that's coming up for you around your decision making process? Anything extra you might need to think about today? I don't know if you want to talk about specific logistics. If you have logistical questions, especially if you think they're fuzzy and any of the documents would come up. In our orderly kind of business there's a requirement that people raise their hand to make some other indication that they want to speak and I'm going to defer to you to decide how to handle that for this meeting since you're facilitating but generally it's raise your hand before you speak. There's also a prohibition against interrupting anybody else and it's this like board chairs discussion whether to recognize the interruption or so forth. Again I'll cede that to you so how you want to run this meeting in this format. Other than that I think and maybe that we sometimes get into a conversational mode where we're not raising those but I don't know how you want to handle that. It might be helpful to have that clear. That's a great question. Looking through all those documents and all that and like you said we just reviewed them at an organizational meeting in April. It's the only question I had for today. I love that question because I read through the it's like a page about interruptions and I thought how do they want me to handle that? So I'll tell you what my default is and let me know if it works for you. In general the public will have a slightly more structured format when the public is to be heard and in this particular business meeting I always assume it's somewhat conversational and will sort of juggle room for comments to be made so you don't necessarily have to wait for raising your hand but I appreciate the sort of grace behind not interrupting unless it gets to the point where someone is talking so long you actually can't take in more information anymore and it stops being useful because then that utterance isn't getting used in which case you could signal by raising your hand I'm just getting a little fullistic pause and see if I've got that. So it's like a compromise between what you have and how I might operate. Does that work for you? Can we head now? Yeah that goes to the next question. You're not supposed to make faces or anybody. Oh we are communicating all the time aren't we? So here's to that next question though Ethan. I do have those cards better in front of you. They're consensus cards so that if at the point you get to the point where we are trying to vote a number of items figure out if you're on the same page or not. It's like a straw hole. Red means I'm still have a lot of reservations. Yellow is I can stand with it but it's not great. There's still work to do. Green is a full go. Sort of like nodding might be. But it's so that we can differentiate where somebody's actually connecting versus making us stand. That's a position of some kind. So Kendall you're online and I didn't get any cards to you. You can either we can switch just like a liquor sale on your hand. Five is absolutely four at one is I have great reservations. Or if you have one. That one. Well the other thing you can do is find something that is red, something that is yellow, something that is green and we'll have that visual. And when it comes to folks trying to see what's going to go. When it comes to folks trying to follow what's happening in the room we are such a small far away. That's why that color is actually a little more helpful than like a liquor scale. So we'll add lib. Does that disappear on itself? It does. So when you raise your hand that will stay until you either put your hand down or we call on you. Kendall, because you're online, we are not recognizing that your hand is raised. I'm going to encourage you to make a verbal cue for us. What would you like? Hey, it's something to say. To me, you may have different decorum with your colleagues, but for me if you say Jen, however you get my attention it works for me. Okay. All right. Does that raise any concerns if we proceed in that way? Anything else we need to figure out? So now I think we're on to management presentations. So Greg and Marguerite, you're up. We'll keep it pretty short because this is really your day and your chance to set up. So thank you for giving up a Saturday morning and coming bright and early. All of you, but really done. And so I just wanted to thank you for that. And also there's some information in your packet. Really just from a management point of view to tell you a little bit about what we're coming from, what we're thinking about as an administrative team. Marguerite, Tanny Gatchel, Travis Advertaso, Courtney Bushy and I have done a little bit of thinking and planning as well, just in terms of what we can do organizationally to set ourselves up to support you, support the sweatboards. We're all in terms of setting policy, giving directions that we can then run with that and make sure we have the right team in place and the right structures of people in place to support you with your goals. In the packet, there's a little bit about the budget for the coming year and some of the goals that were set in the budget that's been approved. There's a little bit of information about just the management, our kind of goals and values that we want to pursue organizationally and some of the work plan that we have played out for ourselves to get to that point and support that point. I'm happy to answer any questions about that. Like I said, it's your day so I won't spend too much time on it unless you want me to delve into it. Marguerite has a memo that she's put together recapping where you've come from last year and hopefully you've had a chance to read that. I think it's pretty impressive that we've accomplished quite a bit in the past year, so just a little chance to demonstrate how successful these can be and how they can give us direction and help us support your work and accomplish things for the time of the year. Yeah, so I won't go over everything in detail here but essentially June 5th last year we had Jen then and we also had the trustees so that was a bigger group but out of that group came a bunch of priorities and a list of items and from there we were able to figure out what would actually be able to be done and where would go in a calendar just like Jen has said and so in this memo here you'll see just kind of where we're at with all of these and as you know some of these are still ongoing like for example the tree farm that's still an ongoing situation that we'll continue to be working on but at least making steps in that process same with you know justice equity diversity inclusion work also an ongoing situation but at least to give you some just background of where we're at and what was discussed at that meeting and where we you know how we were able to move forward on those things and yeah a lot of there's ARPA dollars as well so there's been a lot done on that but yet there's as you all know much more to come on that too so I think just realizing that yeah how much how far we've come and yet still you know there's often these things are not quick quick boxes to be checked they take you know kind of conversation more conversation and then maybe a readdressing as we get some stuff done then just quickly highlight cannabis as well we've done a lot there there'll be a little bit more on that and I think and just yes and then there'll be some more coming forward about the joint housing commission as well and then if you look further down so what happened last year just to remind us that so we had you know part of how we prioritize was to get it done you know this is a very high priority this is you know six months out or something like that at least and so we were able to even get to some of those less immediate sort of items that the select board and trustees at that point had sort of put forward as priorities and it's just it's very helpful for us on you know staff to have that so that like Greg said we can make sure you know when new things are added or new things come up we can make sure to adjust the list or get back you know to you all and and see how we should adjust the list given what's happening you know whether that's outside our control from the seat down or or any you know or natural disaster or a pandemic whatever any of those things that might shift to these items it's really helpful for us to have it so that we can say like okay we need to move this down now we need to move this up and then we can actually sort of get some of this stuff still accomplished or at least keep working on it even if it's not getting totally completed yeah that's sort of just good to keep in mind I think for this year as you plan into the next and just um a few more comments from me and then I'll turn it back over to all of you and Jen there are some comments in there from notes from our department meeting last month a few of you have asked how what staff's thinking about what the department has you're thinking about why do we clean that in there just very high level part of what we're planning to do and then in the coming year is as you all mentioned budget start the budget process pretty early to go back to the department heads after today's meeting and start to tell them about what you're thinking of um help give them some direction some direction so as you get into the budget process and starting to have starting to have those conversations we have um a pretty good good sense of where to go and how to build the budget for the coming year. Questions or comments? That's a lot. Um I might speak up and just comment that when I read the department head comments and stuff it seems to me that there is a fair amount of concern about job security and positions and things like that and I would just throw out that my approach my personal feeling not to represent the board is that the positions are not the priority it's the budget savings that you could realize and change in operations and such that I would like to see people really focus on versus trying to eliminate staff. And I imagine part of what is happening here is as people try to figure out that planning bigger picture planning everyone is looking to cues for probably in part from us like worried about where those priorities go but then also from management and departments and figuring out what will get prioritized and what are the the where do you need to trade versus you know with staff with buildings with programs I mean that's those are big questions. So I do I see that there's at least one hand raised I'm not going to pause for public comment yet until we get to there on the agenda for now probably until about um just FYI for those of you who are tuning in from the public we're probably not going to get to a public comment again until just before 11 30 and I think they just got left out there it might have yeah and I that very well could be okay other comments like to Kendall's point or anything that you've heard yeah Tracy it's just a clarification a lot of times the phrases efficiency streamlining those can be interpreted as where can we cut positions um but just to clarify that when I use those phrases I mean I'm talking about processes and procedures I'm not talking about people or positions I just wanted to state that very clearly can you think I just want to throw in because this is how this strategic planning works we got ideas of each other but after hearing from Kendall and Tracy um and I've been I've been on on record saying it so I just want to clarify when I say that I want to look at staffing levels and open positions and whether or not we need those open positions um I think it's really good that we we bring this up for for clarity especially for myself looking at the departments and saying you know our our highway department let's go with for an example for me this is where it comes to mind and especially with previous experience and seeing living in a different town where they did the same thing if we have two um positions open on the on the highway department right now and we still have guys um mowing lawns at the library and the town office and all these other things we could take those two guys that are that are mowing lawns and and weed lacking and all those things and we could we could move them up into a bigger position in the highway department to eliminate those positions and then this is experience that I have from from with Milton they sub out every single one of their um um cemeteries their the Grange Hall um many many buildings that were mowed by municipal staff because simply they couldn't find the help and they had those they had those positions on the budget year after year after year so they cut the positions moved up the two guys that were doing it to facility managers so now they do a little bit of mowing but they do all the piling of those parking lots down they they do more that it's more beneficial for the town the town cut the the two positions and then pays somebody to mow the lawn and they saved like almost a hundred thousand dollars over the over the course of the moving around so what I'm saying about looking at positions that are open and and eliminating them I do mean to eliminate them but I don't mean to go into a department and say well I think you know you got 10 guys here I think you can follow the roads of eight guys let's get rid of them it's if we have openings and positions that aren't being filled you know what are the needs for those positions and can we get by without them using other resources so I just wanted to throw it out because it had I have said that before and I just wanted to be clear that I had no intentions of of sending anybody home or or you know anybody worrying about their position I just think that the town who is going to be just over 11,000 people may not need the staff that we had beforehand as far as position-wise especially when we've had problems filling positions so part of what you're trying to emphasize and it sounds like this is a common thread actually but try and emphasize that these this level of detail you're talking about now that's an example of details that department heads are going to be managing and trying to figure out and so leaving that to them but to emphasize as a select board as as an entity you're trying to take care of the team that is here and then those questions are going to the systems the procedures to the options for how work gets done and again some of that detail works I'm assuming at the department level and then comes back but that's the reflection that you're encouraging and the connection from department to budget yes yes yes because without a budget we can't run properly to our service levels so Kendall yes I just wanted to add to what Ethan says is that that's a very good point in that towns can tend to get locked into a way of doing business and this is a way to encourage the department to look at things that they may not have thought about before something like contracting out mowing or taking care of a facility or something like that it's it's not a critique it's just we all have our boxes and sometimes it takes an encouragement from the top like the board to say hey I know you've always mowed that but get some bids get some prices maybe you can move that guy into the highway position and save some money on the contacting out to work at the same time so that's a good point Ethan are there other questions regarding the department head updates or the updates from the strategic plan last year Kendall should I lower your hand or do you have another comment I'll just lower it there you go I lowered it and then you raised it again I do have one quick comment I'll keep this one a little shorter but as I'm reading through the report from last year and the comment from the department heads I just want to emphasize that one thing that I continue to read is the need for facilities and one of the things on the bottom is awareness about coming expenses it says the facilities need repairs and if you delay it'll only increase future costs but a lot of these facilities have had these repairs for the past five years every year right have had need or had them done any had them budget it budget okay every year for the past so many years so I just want to bring it up to our to our goal of creating a town center a town plaza how many years are we going to spend money on something and what's the dollar of that extending compared to making a step forward to creating a new building if we look at the cost of how much we're putting in every year and we look at a bond I want to know what the dollar weight is long term first short term I mean I don't need to know we don't need to know it right now but let's let's keep that in mind because you can you can repair something year and year and year again but in 10 years you're still going to need a new building you're trying to figure out what's the process or the where's the opening to think about to think about or explore a bigger picture for facilities any other questions for Greg and Marguerite clarifications needed or is there anything else you would want to emphasize from what you learned when you were checking in with department heads and preparing for this meeting because I just um I think you you saw it and touched on a couple things and it's kind of similar to what all of you've said it and just to really distill it down there's a lot of excitement about where we're going and what assets can be and how to get there and and being part of the team that's all committed to doing that work um and then that's balanced against there's still a fair bit of uncertainty and wondering what the future brings and what it means for people's departments and jobs and and operations um so I you know I'd love to emphasize and focus on the excitement and give it a go forward and really do great things to set us up for the future are you ready for a budget review that where you're going next that's a surprise I see a surprise here I see a fiscal year 23 budget review including building capital needs oh it's I mean it's part of the package um happy to hit the bullet points if people are interested I guess for for anyone at home not um having the packet in front of them just is you know highlighting some of the budget goals that that uh Andy put together his presentation um it'd be right before a town meeting um so of course goals were to continue funding for equity initiatives mental health support um considering how to address climate change in our programs and initiatives minimizing the financial impact of separation through tightening spending deferring anything possible for diversifying revenue uh addressing the impact of separation to continue to work towards tax equity between the town and the village um some of the staffing changes that were included in the budget uh were repurposing with a vacant police patrol position to become a community affairs liaison uh there was the elimination of one management position and the addition of staffing so from this administrative support um as part of the administrative team and for the manager's office um there were a couple of 40 hour weeks daytime per day and firefighter positions added so there's not full-time positions that just on call um as needed positions uh to be the first year that we have a economic development coordinator um she's part-time it'll be the first year of having a person in that position 40 full year um there was also the addition of a parks and maintenance tech position um that's going to be shared between public works and parks rec mostly doing parks rec maintenance work in the summer shifting to public works in the winter um is the general breakdown uh and then we're we're going through the process of pulling apart um starting to dissolve the shared services consolidated services should take consolidated more than shared um uh departments that have been have been shared and consolidated with the village um looking at the clerk's office finance highway it public works administration stormwater tax filling and collecting so from a flash cherry standpoint and goal standpoint that's what we're looking for in the coming year based on what was grouped in the budget and to try to tackle those things i'm just letting thoughts settle you are ready to move we can move into more of that strategic planning piece and if you have questions or comments yeah with regard to the fy 23 budget the fy 23 budget year starts july 1st of this year um i just want to comment that that budget has been approved by the voters and i don't think our intent today is to talk about changing that budget um our intent for today is to talk about where we go between now and the next budget and how we get to that you know what we'll you know i think given given that voters have approved the uh the budget it should be to some degree set in stone and i realized that yes there's always circumstances that cause things to shift but just want to kind of the voters approved it we shouldn't muck with it yeah well i think you're emphasizing there's some guardrails in terms of strategic planning some priorities that are set by virtue of of that budget yeah for the short term pools okay is there a point that i'm our finer detail that i'm missing there no no are you ready to start looking at the categories of work and figuring out how they sit in the calendar zero to three months three to six months and then beyond can i make a comment sure are we going to go down the road of this coming budget planning are we going to go down the road of um this capital plan that we're going to be approving so do you mean by down the road like which conversation are we going to dive into because oh i see yes one is is in the beginning stages and one is going to be up for vote um very soon well and one's got a lot of things on there that you know this would be a good conversation to have with a 45 minute so we're sorry go ahead great great and on there's the capital right the 23 27 capital plan that's been approved that's been approved so really i mean just um taking a step back i would have spending spent approved on that yes yeah um so just as margaret and jenn and i were we're putting this together it's not there to memo okay i just was in the summary from what was this was last year that this year's capital plan there was a memo introducing it before it was approved um but just to help maybe provide some context for what jenn and margaret and i were thinking of when we were organizing this and putting this together is to really you're up here really high level what you focused on we're not expecting any decisions today we're not expecting any action we're not really expecting any problems all that's more what do you want to do in coming year and the budget that's been approved is provide some of the guardrails or jenn dispensations for that part of what we're going to be doing is planning the budget for next year and so it's time that's up together time together a work plan um and what are your what are your goals what do you want us to focus on in the coming year if you think for budget already so that's that's definitely going to be there it was and definitely to go remain high on our our list um i've heard you know communication engagement with the public that's something that we're trying to work on too um but just staying at that what what do you want to accomplish what you focused on what do you want us to work on um in the coming year hopefully that helps well the truth is that today's work is going to be a little less exciting than what might be expected or what you might even want because all these items have a lot of energy and deliberation behind them and today's work is not about getting into that energy it's more about uh how you how are you going to engage that content and the reason that's helpful as a board is it gives you some sort of thing to fall back on shared expectations with each other but it's also helpful on the staffing side of things so as new priorities come flying in there's just a chance to say hey if we take this up some of these other priorities are going to have to move so today's about making that foundation Ethan i hope that's helpful yeah that is i just i guess i'm yeah okay yeah go ahead so like if i said to Greg and margarita i'm interested in excuse me kind of problem establishing a charter review commission because that's what we told the public that we would do that and we've had those two other people have come before us what they want charter changes you know and i'd like to see a cannabis board established or a development review board stuff like that is that what you're looking for or is that not where we're going with this it might be where you're going it's possible that you as a board are figuring out what are those priorities that you're going to ask of staff and so that conversation is among you as board members here and and so let's we can go there in a moment yeah unless i'm missing something i think that is exactly what this means i i wasn't sure if that's what we're going or if i miss i don't think you're making it up but i also think it's a matter of degree that there are sort of big categories that you're trying to make sure you make space for and then there's probably a lot of other things that there's like a whole index of issues and items that are part of your day to day work over the course of the year that you won't be tailed out today yeah i think you're ready to like actually to start the work so i'm going to pull up the visual i have set to try to contain some of that chaos it's pre-populated with the list that i got from margarine and greg in the packet so um you'll see it just doesn't look like an excel spreadsheet anymore and jim just to clarify this is really you know i mentioned earlier that management has done its own planning and thinking about what we can do organizationally to to get ready to support your goals this is kind of what we come up with um so maybe there's something here that'll no bounce off of you i mean i think our preference is going to be probably on your minds um don't want to speak for you but educated yes well i think one of the ways we can do that greg is for example this if this is a select board kind of item let's just highlight it as that yep and take some of these other items that our staff and they don't have to be on this chart if you want to see how they dance together so you can check the bottleneck then but i can also believe these so it's just starting from that packet yeah go ahead is this send on a visualization of the short medium and long term lists that were yes and packet okay yep so these items don't have to stick it was just a starting space my working assumption here is because i think this might work some of these items are going to come off the list either because they've already been done or because they don't need to be noted then i'd like you to start adding some of the things down to your point that you might want to see happen and i'm going to note them here on various stickies until you actually bet them and see where you'd want to put them into the calendar these can move around so as you have your conversation and you figure it out we put them we move a bit by the end of this meeting and a couple of hours i actually am gonna ask go through and say of all these possibilities you come up with now you can see what each other are thinking where the ones you have the most consensus around so i can make the print a little bigger yeah sorry here's what's so nuts so i can make this really big i can also go like you know if you want to just look at it line by line you can make it well i just know it was i couldn't yeah so you also have it in your packet if you want to get that bigger picture out of glance you can see that it's an excel spreadsheet that margaret gave you all right and if you want to see the bigger picture of the universe that we're looking at i know you can't read this but the overall concept is here's your first your next six months these items can get moved around as they need to or they can extend some of these projects are longer than others it's a timeline and then you have your next six months down here leading you into 2023 this going to be helpful so i think so but um i it's it's uh my wife laughed at me this month i told her that i didn't think i had much to say today i'm trying to figure out what what are we going to talk about i decided i better start writing down the items i got this that's a lot of items long list right so i was interested i thought i didn't know much to say this list and i did not cross check to see whether or not it it was already contained in this list so this may be a little bit of a daunting task of figuring out what's there what's not for the things that i wrote down how normalizing though because every single one of you has done that same kind of exercise whether you wrote it down or it's in your head and that is exactly what this time is all about okay so you're trying to figure out now how do you unpack that list and cross check it yeah okay well one thing here's a suggestion we might start with what's here and then you can cross things off either your mental list or the list you're making and then we'll start taking on the new stuff that you have that you don't see here so higher requisitions process underway i'm just starting at the top if that's already taking like that sounds like can i just delete it from here knows i have new positions there the current position there we are current position there ones that have kind of proved in the budget yeah about this one higher is this like uh no we only have one so delete it yep yeah it's kind of nice to see progress you're making up space okay it's like we're welcome packet tree farm so this discussion is going to begin very soon in a couple of days how long does this topic stretch this is a very long loaded question it is that's a big one yeah but i am asking with some amount of intent behind it i do imagine it looks that it's at least this and what we have a deadline right now of the last day of december so you can maybe just direct it to that with that in mind that there are some expiration dates on that date so we will at least be working on that to figure out no it's okay don't worry the frustrating thing is going to be watching me try to orient this in while you're talking but we'll just do the best we can the tree farms are biggie admin meeting with departments that's not as likely do you want to see it there you you don't need to get there and gathering it and management meeting regarding functionality does it dance with any select board activities not so much where do we draw the line because even though it's not a select board activity it still takes up staff time that we want to be aware of and conscious yep no that's when we put that on there that's that was us trying to you know understand our systems and our capabilities that we can be a little more efficient in terms of the day-to-day operations and taking advantage of the technology that we have right but i just want to be conscious of if we don't have at least awareness of what's on your plate and the other work you're doing if we don't have if we don't keep that in the back of our lines and you don't have awareness of it my fear is that we're going to file too much on but that work definitely affects the overall time so i think from you won't be able to get the universe of everything on this visual right but if there's a task to your point like where you draw the line if there's a task that you know is taking up staff bandwidth then it's probably worth noting here even if it's not highlighted it's a select work task also knowing with a lot of humility that staff is carrying a ton of stuff all the time anyway so just because there's not something there you don't know about what the complexity is you can't possibly so it's always with a dose of it's always a request in the negotiation of sorts right so the it so is that going to take a bunch of staff bandwidth that you do you want to have have represented here i was just thinking that there are it is true we have a bunch of systems that we are looking at right now um a big one right now is our website and interacting with our agenda center that's new and all of that and that does seem to be taking off and probably will until yeah i don't know until when but until we get it all fixed um and um and it had you know yeah we're all kind of been swept into that and i don't think that's the only program and that's why we set these meetings is to help figure out yeah where processes procedures work with them to know better what our systems are where can we you know where we can be more efficient etc how long do you anticipate that work happening i think it's going to be ongoing we've got a monthly meeting set up now with the it department um we're starting we're starting with uh it's called SharePoint it's one of our kind of document management systems and seeing that with Outlook and Microsoft games so we can work better but as we go we want to be able to learn that to that dialed in and make sure other departments are taking advantage of it or identify other needs that i see can help us get training on so that's and that's just going to be part of our weekly monthly workload in our expectation the other part is communication and that plays a big part the it even a website like we're trying to work on our communication you get that improved in those things and so it often that goes back to it too but just because you need to make sure that's the solution and my my thought on is that it's quickly helpful for for all of you to see what we're doing on a day-to-day basis um but i don't think it really affects your your work and what you know your policy-setting agenda well the fact is that it and management meeting so i think it's important for management to keep communicating with the select board is the what's happening so i think it needs to stay there so what was the original is it and management systems or it's an it and management meeting reason functional functionality etc yeah functionality systems right yeah yeah but i just think that's an important part of communication is that we know what's yeah and i guess i it's not done i mean we meet with every department right now i know on a daily basis weekly basis every basis and it kind of that stuff rises up to the select board a little whereas to apply for grant or to pursue a building project there are two set of policies for creative mission or a board to support their work and that's kind of i guess there's some some judgment there and on our part in terms of when something rises to the select board level and when it gets to the decision making authority that you have but it's something we're constantly doing this what if you just left that as management meeting because that would include it and the rest of the department i just think it's it's important for us to keep this line of communication open to that as a select board we know what's you know happening and we don't just get broadsided so i'm like oh we got a problem you know we're being kept informed and for me the the difference is that a lot of your meetings you don't need a micromanage that i mean you know right you're both capable of doing the jobs but if you're talking about improvements to the method in which we communicate as a town that hasn't impact to awareness by residents and that can we get emails out of the blue though oh my god this changed what happened not having awareness up front of where those changes came from and what the overall plan is it makes us so disorganized and we're not giving a cohesive message so for me that's where that's where it matters to me if a big change to the website happens and it affects people's ability to know what's going on or communicate i want to be able to speak in an informed manner to folks who may be calling me i'm just going to write helpful for the select board to anticipate upcoming changes they get us in on this yeah rather than you know wanting to direct work i mean that's not so is it a kind of we know there's going to be some sort of operational change whether it's to our follow-ups or our website i would rather have too much information than not enough but for me we have heard a lot of feedback lately on the website and how things are presented and the consistency of those so that's just why i'm kind of focusing on this one i guess i'm just trying to help cut it figure out what what that directional there's i guess too much information rather than not enough it's helpful i'm just trying to didn't like taking a couple pages or whatever but um process like what when you want to hear about something it's your maybe asking um you know how are those updates going to be helpful so you know what you can populate them with and i think that's what you're asking yeah did you jump in real quick well yeah sure that's something that might help um what i'm thinking for just from being in the conversation on the side if we had a way where you could say you know you could you could mentally process these things and say okay this is important so like here's an example for something that doesn't need that needs to be relayed but we wouldn't know about it doesn't need any select word action to to happen you have a staffing level issue in middle winter and you decide to you're not yet you're in the highway department head decide that we're going to cut you know these three neighborhoods doing the sidewalks we just don't have time right now we don't know about it nothing nobody knows right and then we get a bunch of emails complaints people show up public comment you know whatever what i was thinking was you have that you know obviously if it's like we need to buy a new weed lacquer at town garage you know a new weed lacquer you know but if you had like a monthly or even every two weeks you had like a list going you just said you know or even every week whatever worked if you had a list going and you've said you know here's 10 important things that changed whether it's you know we promoted a guy within to be the assistant in charge at the town garage or you know we were changing this route or we found this to save for you know just important things that are productive as our for our community or maybe not productive but will have ramifications on the flip side that we don't know about i'm gonna see if i can simplify yeah i'm a talker well it's for everybody though because we all use those words like productive and important and we think different we sign different things to them i think maybe underline and it's also i'm aware of just how much work like what you're trying to produce on a day-to-day basis so i think your request is about helping the select board and just be upcoming changes so that you can be consistent with the people that you're representing so something if someone's going to ask you a question you just want to be prepared to be able to answer it with some sort of sturdy footing is that what's underlying this request in my job i get PSR's progress data reports from all of the projects that are going on but i'm thinking more of you know you're saying of the forwarded list sort of one roll-up of you know these are the highlights this is what's coming up you know instead of getting down into that level of granularity specifically around the website but just upcoming changes uh hey you might want to know and then if we feel it's important to us to ask for more information i've opened the door for us to do that and a couple of things i guess i'm going to comment on one is to remind folks that we're a council manager form of government statue gets dragged the authority to manage the town the way the seats fit and then so we're not so one one thing i don't want to end up with if you go you know people this something like this in place is that the select board isn't you know when that information both comes out if that's what it is that we're not second guessing or trying to micromanage change how decisions have been made unless it's you know it's uh and um and i i you know i i recognize both sides of this for sure because yeah i get i get plenty of emails and phone calls and i can stop the grocery store all kind of stuff but um and often is i'll ask the town manager and get back to you which i think is a totally appropriate response to something that i don't understand like you know i'm a little concerned about adding a workload and an expectation for some uh vague determination of the judgment what's qualified to get under this list that we didn't know about so i'm a little hesitant to know that in order um the and we're talking about you're getting the the degree of a specific item right here and so yeah and so uh so maybe the item needs to be distilled down the communication with the board of current priorities and we have had a manager that managed to be sent out a periodic internal newsletter that we were copying out that talked about what was going on um that's adequate or that's still done but this like was copied on that for a while but um they're including the solution of the same should be going to so i i you know there's there's interference that i want to avoid so there's also yes actually yeah you're trying to avoid just by virtue of asking the question doesn't mean it should to be a question that's investigated thoroughly. So you're just trying to make sure that in some ways it's about streamlining your time too in the limited meetings you have to make sure that you're spending them on the priorities that you wanna spend. I'm gonna leave this as a post-it for now and you can come back to it when you see all the different things that you're hoping to accomplish and try to figure out what's the actual request that's gonna come out of this. Go ahead, Greg. Yeah, I don't wanna spend too much time on this, I think thank you all for your comments and I definitely think the message of talking to the communication and improve that. A couple of things we are looking to start off the internal employee newsletter again, we're also looking to start a community that's probably on a monthly basis. So those are two things that might be going in that direction, might be helpful and it's just gonna be an evolving conversation about how to get you what you're interested in knowing. So I have that down here as an employee that are one of the efforts that you're trying to roll out. And then you have down like six months from now or maybe it's two months from now the communities that are here to us. Yeah, Mary, I can't hear this like board members at all. Just Jen. Interesting. Can you hear me, Patty? Make sure it's still turned on. Hello? That one's still working and this one should be still working. Patty, can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. We can't hear Tracy, we can't hear Andy, we can't hear, we just hear you and you're loud and clear. And Jen. Patty, can you hear me now? A little better. I need to speak up a little bit louder. That's better. It's tricky. Yeah. Well, I had to raise my hand though was I think this is really important to the employee newsletter and the community newsletter because the whole birth of this idea was there is no communication with the public or the board unless you're at a select board meeting, right? You're not gonna know what's going on in the town unless you go to a select board meeting and you're not gonna know what's going on unless you read the packet because there is no, hey, this is, I mean, right now we're doing our first meeting, right? But beside that, there's no what's going on or, you know, so I just think that's really important. And if it was a community or employee newsletter, if we're gonna implement something like that strive for it to be minimum every couple of months, I'd say monthly, but I don't know what the workload would entail to do that. I think I'm gonna leave that up for, to see how this unfolds under these two items in terms of the duration and you can check out and see how it works. So because I know you have lots of other stuff you wanna cover, I'm gonna encourage moving on to the rest of this list and with those small adjustments. Sounds like community newsletter and employee newsletter are two really important things you're looking forward to. So I'll leave them here in part because maybe it helps tie together some of your other, you know, Don, I'm thinking about some of the things you were mentioning before around communication too. So it comes up enough. Arpa presentation, where's this land in your calendar? We've kicked it off and done the first two presentations. It's gonna be, Arpa in general is gonna be months ongoing discussion of community and the board. Okay, so this takes up a bunch of your time for the next six months, isn't that the full year? This is part of the budgeting process for FY20. Oh, I see. So yeah, it's meaning to work through this. Work through originally. I don't know if we wanna sort of categorize things, but it also contains, at least from my interpretation of what we've spoken about in my personal feeling, it contains a lot of community outreach as well. So it's bigger than just presenting information. So your work will be, you can dial down into more of a work plan. That's not what you're gonna do today, but it's enough to say it's taking up a big chunk of time and bandwidth for the next six months, but it sounds like you're telling me the first of the year, like through next year at this time. I don't really think it's gonna get smart, chocolate-y, yeah, or maybe February, but. But we either want to try to do something. Right, and it depends on what's decided about it, I guess, could go on till 2026, but it's likely, so. Perfect. Civic clerk rollout. I'm guessing that might be similar to what Tracy was talking about. Yeah, I think that's sort of the IT management, I don't know, similar in that sense. It's staying worked on, absolutely the same. Is our website internal? Is that all it knows? Civic clerk, what is the provider? Provider, okay. We work with that model. Yeah, we update it internally, but then they go to platform, I wouldn't be sure. So this is an example of something that kind of ends up in this category, like what you're talking about before. So what extent does it think of the select four bandwidth? None, now that we all have Google Drive. So do you want to see it represented on your list, or? I think it really belongs within the bucket of the IT and management unit and the net. That makes sense to everybody else. Please negotiations on hold until late June. That's correct. That's a work item that the staff has that select board gets involved with toward the end of the, should be that for a long, I think it's not a, it's something that has to happen. Yep. It's one of the most difficult. Is it likely to come to select board in June? Probably not. Hopefully in the summer, maybe in the summer. Inclusion week, training event, equity summit? Tomorrow. Tomorrow, yeah. Is that the equity summit, or is that another event that's yet to be scheduled? Some of the details step in, I mean, John. Yeah. Yeah, sort of that you think. So this might be, I see that it's over. There's a declaration of inclusion to make recommendations to select board, but this piece doesn't, you don't need to see it represented on your map right now. Reappointment to boards and committees. This is a select board item, I assume. Yeah, it's something that we've chosen to do is to interview every board member when their term comes up. That would just be a point. So it's a must-do. Given our own decision to do it that way. I don't know what it means to be honest with this. Just as they come up, it turns around all and June 30th kind of thing, mostly so it's a specific time of year that we're generally reviewing all of them, but whenever there's a resignation during the middle of the year, point something in the middle of the year then they're happy to stand. But it's also a matter of people that live in the city now won't serve on outboards. They can. But I'm saying we haven't made, we haven't, that's another part of the discussion, I think. Yeah, maybe I should defer to Tracy and work out on the discussion about. Yeah. I think with the reappointment to boards and committees, that's sort of a matter of course, it has its own schedule. I don't think it takes up a whole lot of time. It's kind of like just creating a meeting agenda. We know what's gonna happen. We know what it comes up. I think the point that we're trying to get at is the ongoing discussion around the structure of committees and what committees we have. So it's sort of like a board and committee revamp or something like that. Does that ring true to others of you? But it goes hand in hand. I mean, the charter committee getting ahead of us, but the charter committee is definitely a part of that work. It's included in the same. So you have three like items and I don't have the nuance to know how they are separate or equal or need to be separated out. So to the extent, how do you need to, if you are looking at this map as, where's our bandwidth going in the next three or six months? How would you simplify this or would you? Interview and appointments is kind of redundant because it's a part of reappointment to the board because we're now interviewing. There's no like, I'm not saying there's no reappointment, but there's technically no reappointment now as far as every position is going to be put out there, have more applicants, hopefully, and then they'll all be interviewed the same and then the position will be appointed. The case will be maybe reappointment in parts, but I think it's just the whole of boards and committees. So my understanding is that this is a thing that you do regularly and it might be a little bit of a change this year because you're trying to restructure some things and you might have this push of as you separate and people figure out where to allocate their time. You might have more of your volume than usual. Am I interpreting that? We're gonna have more volume than usual because in the past, if committee members expressed interest in extending and continuing in their position, we did not. It's automatic. I think this should just say appointment, not reappointment, if we're gonna change and combine those two. The other thing I wanna do is recognize the workload associated with doing that, staff workload associated with doing that is to communicate or reaching out to those members and scheduling them to come to the meeting. So it's not just simply a get them on the agenda. There's a lot of that going on there, but that's... Yep. Apologies, that was my work. I just wanted to make sure nothing was on fire. What happened to the charter committee? Is that the same item or is it separate? That's separate, but it might be intertwined through that. Okay. Is this a June, July short-term kind of goal, this revamping the boards? I actually think it's too separate. I mean, the appointments is regularly occurring June-ish timeframe, but the work to really look at our committee structure and how we can really advertise what that does, rework the charters, rework the work that we're assigning to those committees, where the gaps are, do we need more, do we need less? Is the community interested in X, Y, or Z? Should we have a committee for that specifically, where the gaps in work are? And I'm getting very much down into the... Yeah, so I mean, I heard you just back up. But I think they're two distinctly different. One is a regular, the annual thing, the appointments. Yep. The other is work that we just need to do to sort of lay the foundation of what we have, how their structure, how they work together. Does that go under charter committee? I think charter committee is just part of the board committee. Okay, so it's even separate. So I'll just put this in the three boxes again. The charter committee could go that way, right? Yeah, I would remove charter committee because that's included in the committee really. Perfect. Andy? I think you should at least mention it in there then. Because it is a, sorry, it is a big thing because there are people out there who are asking us to change our formal government. And that's it, that is not just a committee discussion about you. But I guess that's a, I don't know. We don't have a charter committee right now. We do not. Okay, so it has to be a board and committee revamp because we have to take action to fill the committee. So there is no committee. But there's specific workhands that go under the charter committee thing. One is formwork, one is recall, number one is can we switch to a DRP or? Right, but we don't have that yet. We don't, but there are big workhands that go under that charter committee one that I don't want to use by people. Let me try, the work items will include, and I'll try not to go too into detail so will you listen out to me and I'll go ahead and try them? Yeah, so it's a form of government. We want to go to, there's a suggestion that we go to the good assemblies cabinet. Our recall provision, the other is a DRP, DRP is employee design review boards instead of applying. So that's actually in our charter. So it's, again, that's its own workhands deciding how to change our plan, whether or not to change your plan. I would just say that's a pretty big piece of work. Yeah. Yeah, and then if you remove board and committee revamp from the other. It makes sense to you because that. No, no, no, that's a completely separate work there. You're going to revamp the appointments of board and committees. Just to tell you what, what we were thinking when we put it on here for our workload is to start off as the reappointment process. We've already kind of tackled that. It's like board's main incision that you want to interview everybody. So that reappointment was, that's been done. The appointment to board and committees and board and committee process was kind of what Tracy was just talking about. But how do you want to do the outreach? How do you want to interview people to tackle that a little bit? But do you want to have people just come in and that you've done in the past? Say they're interested, ask them a few questions. Do you want to get more depth? Do you want to have a more vetting process? What's the whole process for those boards and committees reporting to the select board, select board giving direction to those boards and committees? The whole process of what was the role of those committees how you get people on them what's their relationship with the select board? That was kind of the appointment process to the boards and committees. And then separately is the charter committee and some of these other committees that you might want to form. It's a decline, but it doesn't necessarily affect the group of process, the publicity, the appointments, all those things. So that was what we were thinking when we put that on the list, those things underneath. I'm here, I'm here in it, but I'm stuck on the fact that when we started this conversation, we created a second box because we discussed that the item was a regular business item and now we've left it as more. It was no longer, we're not going to revamp the appointment to boards and committees every year. It's a regular business item to make those appointments. Oh, I see. The appointment to board and committees is something you do every year but revamping is sort of special for this year. Right. So if it's two things, then that's two separate items, it's not one item. I see what you're saying. Because we'd have to revamp it before we could make the appointments. The logic is, if you're not mapping out all of your regular business, why is that one kept out? To me, you know what I mean? Maybe not. I don't know. I'm just saying it because if it's a year, it won't take long. But yeah, it's two separate things. We have to revamp it and then we have to actually install and do it because we're coming on June, right? Does it get you out of a bind if the appointments to boards and committees is just taken off as a time of normal business? And the revamping is noted as something that's going to take some extra bandwidth for a period of time. Well, the revamping kind of has to be done now to June and then we have to make our appointments in June, right? No, we're making a review and doing interviews Monday. On Monday. So no, this is something for next year. For next year. Yeah. And in this question, I'm right, this may not fit in right there. So they may say, you can't do this to fall. So that's part of what we need to talk about here too. Okay, although I think there's, I think maybe that's the discussion we have to have. If we can't make this decision now that we want to do, we need to do it before July 1st. First, I don't think so, but. Okay. I think I'm going to do two things. I am going to separate them out again because I think I don't want to constrain you. Just by the way, this visual happens to be drawn. But if these are two different tasks, you can lay them in the calendar or wherever they have to go. And it sounds like there's the appointment that's happening now, it's ongoing anyway. And then there's a board committee revamp that you may have, may or may not have more flexibility over where that goes and when you spend time on it. Is that accurate? Yep. I think it's worth a discussion when we get to that point though, because if we're making action on potentially on Monday, and we haven't done anything to change anything, we haven't put any public outreach out there or advertisement, then why are we rushing to make appointments right now? Do we have until June? Because they expire and then at the end of June. At the end of June, right? Yeah. We're in May. Rather than trying to do them, all committees in the same meeting, we're trying to spread them out over a couple of weeks. And it's people's availability to whether they can come in the week. Okay. Couple of answers. We'll go Tracy, then Marguerite, then Don. You know, I kind of think that appointments to boards and committees, it does have, it's not our course, it happens every year. Well, so does voting on the capital plan or water and sewer rates and all of this other work. So, but they're not specifically called out. So I don't, I don't think that the actual appointment needs to be on there. The important work and the larger work is looking at the committee structure. And where the overlaps are, how we're structured and really focusing on that. But I do feel like, you know, if we're not going to call out other committees that we're looking at, I don't think that charter committees should be called out. We know what that body of work is. We know what the scope is. We know what's been requested. I just, I think it monies the water if we're calling out one specifically. So you're talking about this box now. The only thing you might want to consider with that is that the other boards and committees are already established. The charter committee is something that you talked about is creating a new thing. Right, but part of that rebound is where the gaps do we need other committees. So identifying, you know, where we may need to add a committee. I mean, the charter committee, yeah, it's known. It's come to us. We've talked about it, but there may be other committees that should be formed that we just haven't really stoked out yet. Another reason for leaving it on there, sorry. And we're having this discussion. This discussion is our part. Is that this explicitly lists out things that people, that the public have asked for. And so it keeps it in the, you know, that the visual is that it's there, that something that somebody has asked for is actually on our list. Those three, those three things that I kind of highlighted in there are things that have been asked for by individuals in the public that have been talked about in this before. And I'm just trying to say it with the tree level rather than the leaf level. So one thing I don't want to do is spend too much time negotiating what the visual looks like as long as it serves you well because I do think your book points are absolutely correct. Yeah, I love it. I'm going to jump in and rest it up again because I'm more concerned about why we're not taking any action before we appoint these boards again. So here's, I'm going to step back and just try out the logic I've heard so far. Correct me if I'm wrong on this one. That there's the ongoing work of boards and committees is absolutely happening. And so it depends. It's just a maintenance kind of task until these other things get decided. So they're due now. They're not yet, so. And we made it well a couple of weeks ago to change it before the appointment process. No, we only changed it next year. All we changed was, I'm sorry, I interrupted you. Go for it. You know what, all we changed was that we're now interviewing for reappointments. That's the only thing we changed. And actually, we never had a policy about it. It was more a practice of how we were doing things. When meetings got very, very long as we were working through merger and separation discussions, we just said, let's put in consent for now to, because it's, we used to do this before. We used to always interview and we're kind of going back to all their practice. But I don't believe that when we had that discussion, it was any attempt to change anything other than that before the coming terms that are due. Yeah, I was just wondering. We're getting into a lot of detail. Well, I know, but it's important to me because one of the biggest things that we had talked about was community outreach and advertising and maybe I'm wrong, but did all these positions get posted on the website? They are on the website. Yeah, and they were all emailed. And I will, that's part of what Sunday's event is about tomorrow, tomorrow is to help, yeah. And that's an ongoing, I think that our idea at least when this was successful for was to do more and better, right? Like this was the beginning, yeah. So that part happened for this year. And then, I think there are some other ways to continue to make it more clear and more straight, just more out there. And that's our, I think, at least with our exceptional Tracy already, it's just that's the part that's gonna take longer and all of that. But the other thing I'll just say is that you're interviewing all of these people and not all, whoever is available, whatever, so many of the ones that have said they're gonna come back and whatever we wanna still do it. And of course, the action is still yet to be taken. So that will still, you could say like, I don't wanna take action, that's up to you. So that hasn't happened yet. You still have to do that part of it. But yes, they were all emailed, that's been put out there. I can move on. I was just largely concerned about advertisement. And I didn't know because prior to this, I'd say recently, just going around and reappointment, there was no large advertisement or outreach when there was a reappointment. Right, it was just, hey, you reappointed, there was no, it wasn't that this position was available. So I didn't know that that had happened, but I'm glad and I feel better now. You can go to the next thing. I feel better now. I'm excited. The interest is important, which is, do people know about it? I just don't wanna miss something. It's the word getting out. So I'm gonna suggest we leave this here for now, but I don't know if I actually am giving this established charter committee or the Board and Committee revamps the space that they actually need. Are these, like right now, this is going through the end of July, Board and Committee revamps. Is it gonna take longer than that? Yeah, so it goes to when? You anticipate like through the fall. So now it's going through October. And your established charter committee, when do you expect that you're picking up that work? Soon. I mean, it's sort of like prioritization within the revamp. Like, I know when all of that has to be a big bang, it can be a staged, you know, hey, we know that we have this need, so let's front load that. Okay. And the charter committee definitely would be because that, you know, in order to, yeah, we would want to have that in place due to getting into the weeds, but due to a potential, you know, someone could petition to make those charter changes as opposed to us taking the action to form the committee to do that work. So it would be front loaded within the revamp, but. I'll just put them side by side. Yeah, sorry, that was a long-ended. No, it's okay. And you expect that that will take through early fall? Further? I would say late summer, just to, I mean, it's just the forming and the appointment, so both people. I'm going to come back to these. And actually, I know it seems like some of these are details, but you actually are on pretty good time even so far. So part of what you're doing now is just setting the stuff that's non-negotiable that you've already put in place, and then you add some of the other things you haven't thought of yet, or maybe you're thinking you haven't shared yet. Fixed accessibility issues for management? Don, I remember Don had a comment, I don't know if she did. No, I'm just, excuse me, I got one. Communication. Andy, I didn't know Tracy was working on this already. You didn't share that with the rest of the board, and I'm a little concerned, because I thought we were going to have an open discussion as to what we were looking for on these commissions. Are we changing now? We're going to reappoint or interview people. Do they have to live in the town? Because not in the city, stuff like that, before we interview people, they truly feel, excuse it, as the board needs to decide. So, there was a meeting recently, I'm sorry I'm just responding to some specific questions. There was a meeting recently where the committees and things came up, and I forget what the agenda, specific agenda it was. I did defer to Tracy to lead that, and I guess I should have introduced it by saying that I'm deferring to Tracy because she's been starting to work with staff on a process to do that. Again, I don't think the intent was to do it before, did you do it immediately before we reappoint the folks that are due now, or in the next six weeks or eight weeks, however many of there are left to be returned, but. And prior to working with Greg and Marguerite, I did ask the board whether it would be okay to take some staff time to really look at more of the structure. No, I don't have a problem with that. The fact is that I didn't understand what was happening. But I also assume that we are going to now as the time before we appoint new people, or interview new people, decide where these boards and commissions, what the makeup is gonna be of them. That was my understanding. I don't hear that, especially for interviewing Monday night. There are a couple of our committees or commissions that specifically stayed in their charters that they can have on. As members, we're not changing that. And I'm changing that. The housing commission. Posing commission specifically says that planning commission does not say it in our charter, but the state law is that if, as long as the forum is from the municipality, you can have outside members to kind of apply that conservation and trails committee it's happened before. EDC. EDC I think might have happened before. And it's a lot of times if somebody's on a committee and then they move out of town, they're still interested in continuing to let them stay on. It hasn't been a formal policy decision. It's more of a practice thing. My concern there, Greg, is that the village said we don't want to share this review. Correct. And if we're just gonna continue to, I guess I don't know if I'll make my point. Are we gonna break or not? I mean, they've already separated. So are you talking about a specific committee? So are we gonna let these committees continue in the way they are? Or are we gonna change the charter? I don't know. Whatever. Go ahead. I'm with you, because I was hung up on this real bad. Just a couple of minutes. It's not practical. No, it's not practical. There's no way to change the process of the whole structure of things. People are doomed to do it. Unless you want to have meetings every day for next. No, I get it. Could you make a, could you pull the boat to make a, I don't know if this is even, I'm just spitballing here, but could you make a boat to say moving forward and we're only gonna appoint people of the town? And we have that power to make action? Is that not a specific question? And then I'm gonna pull it back and try to reframe it a little bit. So I'm sorry, I answered that specific question. Yeah. So if you wanted to formally break that as the law for Essex, you could be part of the charter update that only members, only residents of Essex can serve on Essex sports and committees. If you wanted in the meantime to take a vote or discussion or figure out how you want to appoint people in the next month and a half, you could as a board just say as a practice, we only want to appoint people for Essex or we want to appoint people from outside of Essex and again, the current practice has been as long as there's a quorum of Essex residents on a board committee, you have allowed there and then there have been non-residents on board the committees because they've already been on there. They're breaking certain level of expertise that residents may not have or may not be available to step up. I guess the simple way would probably be to just continue with current practice and have this discussion going forward. If you really, if any of you want to put something on agenda for June at this point to have that discussion before you make appointments, that's another option. But also just because we can appoint someone who doesn't live within the town doesn't mean we have to. So we can make that decision as applicants come in and interview with us. Considered looking at it from a different way, there's people on boards and committees right now who are not up to reappointment. I don't know where the whole residency, my is for a single person, but there might be people who are gonna become non-residents or are we are non-residents that are sitting on your boards and committees right now who are not up to reappointment. So it's, sorry. We could have a quorum issue. Potentially. So that's something to think about. As you reappoint, as you interview these folks, you don't have to reappoint, you know, like you all have to vote on that. So that could be something to say, okay, I wanna go look and see who's on the committee and then I'll decide my decision, whether or not, you know, and none of them have to happen on Monday, not either, you know, there's, you can interview them all and be like, right, I'm gonna interview, you know, that's as a board, you can decide all of that as you go. Do we know, has anybody, I'm just taking on this now, but we're in this conversation, do it, has anybody looked into it? Are we gonna have a quorum problem on July 1st? You mean if there'll be, oh, I think it depends on who you appoint. Do you mean if you didn't appoint anyone new or all the reappointments were the same? They're not all up this year, not every position, right? So three to five members. So we can have a quorum issue on July 1st, potentially just asking. Potentially, it also would depend on who you appoint. Right, like, yeah, so anyway. I'm gonna do a little bit of, I think what you're gonna emphasize two things. One is you're in a year of transition. So there's gonna be a little bit of messiness in this year of transition. Sounds like you have some short-term tools and long-term tools to employ. Short-term, by appointment, you can be looking at each committee to check for quorum and the impacts of each particular assignment that you approve. Long-term tool is more to what you were talking about Don, which is the overall, if there was a charter change or something you might wanna make effective for various committees, that's something to deliberate deliberately. And that might not be able to happen in a short timeframe. So we can, we can make a vote to change. You absolutely can, if you think there's time to get. If you think it's important enough, we can vote on Monday to change it. Just echo you. Is it? And I think this is a point for the five of you. I'm on board. Think through. I just tried to reframe in terms of short-term tools and long-term tools, which was an inevitable push in a direction of, don't rush yourselves. We didn't warn a change, a potential change in that. Oh, that's really good. You can vote on anything. That's a little detail. Well, there's some logistics there of wanting to let people know here's an issue that's coming before us. If you care about it, come and share those thoughts. I know we need to move on, but I would like to get public input on it to see what the public's thinking about. So when does that conversation take place? Is it part of the establishing the charter committee or like the revamping of the board, board and committee revamp? Cause I can add, you know, we'd like to seek public comment, for example, as part of that board and committee revamp process. That's capturing the concern. What are you thinking? I think it's part of the board and committee revamp. And the plan all along was just to do the legwork, but then everything comes back to the board in open meeting. It goes through a public comment period. So yeah, personally, I think it's part of the revamp. And, you know, how do we tweak what we're doing to meet the goals going forward? So is it about considering the membership requirements for committees? It's part of it. Is that what you're talking about, Dawn? Yeah, it's part of it. I don't know what the state says. I don't know if that's going to stand up. Is it your comments still relevant, Kendall? No, Dawn summed it up well. Based on previous events and stuff, this is a huge issue that's very important because I've heard from a number of folks on the village and the town about, never the two shall meet, and I don't agree with that. But this is a big one. Your board should be made up of your residents, in my opinion, in most cases, if you can. Just my two cents, thank you. We do need to consider that the city is still paying taxes for coming here to the town. So that would be the question of whether. Exactly. And I would say that this isn't something that has to happen. I think we should be looking at this next appointment on Monday, was that maybe we should let whoever we appoint know that there is a revamping going on and there may be some changes in the future? Then. Are these only one year seats? We can throw people off whenever we want, right? That's what we want to do. Is that what we want to do though? If we have an issue after one year, just because they're paying taxes, they're not residents after going first. I am actually. It's good. In the same discussion, we have these discussions that we're going to say, are these people residents of the town? I think, like the day on the committee after a year, we thought we'd have, we'll have those discussions. So let's have the, so I'm going to encourage just tabling that discussion for when you're actually joined to make this a termination. In the meantime though, Don, does this capture what you were bringing up? You can't read it, right? I have no idea. I see it like that. So under board and committee revamp, and I know that it's not a complete work plan, but it's just to sort of put some pin in some things you've mentioned. Look at committee structure, house design, look for duplication, consider membership requirements for committees regarding residential component, and you're looking for public comments. It's not seek, public comment, but seek. OK. How are you doing for your energy at the moment? Because I'm prepared to go back to the board and kind of keep cleaning it up if you can spend another. Let's say, if you can scroll down and just thinking about something else, we're going to get something done. If you're thinking about something else. We'll keep going on there as we look at that. Out of the ones. Right. Well, here's the thing. I remember last year, there was a lot of post-its. But out of those post-its that moved around, it came in an awful lot of work and progress. And so even though it seems even if it seemed like these details, you're actually starting to set some pretty clear priorities. Well, the next one says, fix any accessibility barriers for management. Make sure we have permission. We need to respect the security and include IT. Yeah. And how does that vary from? That's more of the IT, I think. Let's do the one. You don't need that. I feel like above that, it says IT and management. Yeah, that's all of that. Exactly. OK. So there you go, dead with the elimination of the job. That worked. OK, so you have a bunch of things queued up for August. So this was in your three to six month time frame. Community newsletter is already talked about, and it's up there bi-weekly AP. I don't know what AP stands for. It counts playable. So each one checks every single Friday, every single week, doing it every other week, save staff time. I don't like that piece. It says obviously. And the community newsletter is hopefully not going to be before August, but it's trying to be realistic about when you're setting your goals. Hiring process, I don't quite know what that refers to, but there's probably stuff I thought out. That's not really a select one thing is just how to recruit, how we interview, how we bring people on board, all that stuff. Bi-weekly tech. Can we back up this minute? Yeah, under that bi-weekly AP, we get the warrants to look over. Is there a way sometimes to get it when the oddball stuff pops up to find out? No. I guess a similar question to what I had before about communication of finding what an oddball said. $300 of wooden heads. For what? Wooden heads, it says. I had $1,800 for a windshield wiper, and I had just found it in the middle. But I asked about amounts or specific things. So it's bi-check only, and that's the way that they do it. I think when you have a question like that, just reach out to me. See you. OK, that's what I know. I've never heard of where I go with this question that we have on safety. We used to have an account decoder ring that would tell us, based on your number, where actually it fell, so you should not wish to permanently get it from. Are you serious? We had to go into the select book to get to help interpret some of that stuff. But it doesn't answer the question right, why would you? No, but I'm just saying, because stuff like that, it was like, wooden pens, why would somebody? What are they actually? I mean, it's like the thermal sand. I'm sorry, it sounds petty $300, but we have to start watching everything. No, I also wonder if that's a typo, because there's a pattern in the place you're referring animals. I don't know, I said wooden pens. It could be a giant. They didn't tell you that, since I got on the select board, we're going to start housing cows in the back yard. And I can tell you that if you purchase from, what did it say, Dennis Russo? It was $300 or something, and it was like, I don't know what this is, and I don't want to know that. I'll find out. It could be one of those public works things, wooden stakes and the kind of mark different things. It could be a giant monodone. Yes, I didn't know where to go with that weekly, but when we get the warrants. So another ambiguous piece of iPad here, biweekly pay. What is that substantiating? And do you need it on this list? No, that's for our process again. Again, it's similar to the biweekly constable, right how it pays people weekly to save a lot of administrative time and to get to every other week and free people off to do other things. I don't think it needs to be on there. It speaks more to the efficiencies of procedures, processes, those types of things. OK. I would just chime in on that one, that you're still going to offer a physical check if some of the employees want one. I would check with the finance HR on that. I don't know what fans. OK, I would definitely check with your employees because that was a huge problem here. The switch into biweekly was fine. People were generally OK with that. But when you did away with the paper check, some people don't. Some people like the paper check. Yeah, identify building needs. Yeah, very important. The whole year is this part of the whole budget. Part of the budget. That's already happening now. Is it easier if I put budget and planning in process and just note it here that this includes a pretty big piece of work regarding capital. Yeah. And potential future planning. We can say short and short. Does that make sense to just combine sorry, identify building needs with budget plan process? Or is that a slightly different building needed to be built into the budget? Yeah, well, there's sort of the difference with that, Kendall. Yeah. I was just going to ask on this item, if we could include something with the public, because the budget is changing hugely and there is quite a bit out there about we want to be involved, we want this, we want that. There's a lot. I mean, there's a lot involved. And there should be a big public component involved with the residents to see. I mean, I know we're planning on that process and we're going to have public hearings and stuff, but you might want to consider maybe going to a committee or something just to get some input. When I was asking the question around identifying building needs, there's a budgetary component for sure. I didn't know if there's another body of work here that was around planning or assessing. And as part goes to Ethan's question earlier around ideas you may have about municipal center, those kinds of things. Is that why that identify building needs represents or is that representing something different? It's all of our needs. And yep, we're in the room. I think there is something else that needs to be done. I mean, in some ways there's like a prioritization, but with that then comes, you might prioritize something, but then when you see how much it costs you, it might, whoop, somebody's priority might not, might not, or it might say, right, good. Like I do want to still have them as that. But it is like, yeah. So I'm trying to think of a different body of work. It kind of is, but also we want them to influence each other. I think it starts with identifying building needs and then the next piece of that is, and then how to plan and pay for and prioritize those needs. Expansion services. And I'm assuming that that would include the Stoke-in project, the fire department. Is this a select board item? Identify building needs or is it that stuff? I would say it's staff would be doing the work. Ties and the select board gets involved of who do you want us to do this work and it ties into the budget, which is kind of a select board. Same thing with how much time you want to spend on it and what level of importance do you think it lands on for the next staff would be doing the work and bringing that back to the select board and the public for input feedback of how to go forward to what to pursue the answers. I'm dragging these boxes around because in my mind I'm thinking, wow, this is a pretty big bit of work. Where does it actually fall on the calendar? What's the timing? The budget's started and yeah, I said it will go into October, November for sure. Close to the budget. Yeah, because they go hand in hand sort of. So we'll probably both be switching or whatever, working together through that whole time. Budget's already started as well. And that's it. Oh, I'm not very curious about this today. Annual town meeting plan, yep. I can provide some context to that one. That's basically assuming we're maybe out of COVID or have close restrictions next year. Now that the town is voting on its budget by Australian ballot, it's trying to figure out just what the time meeting process looks like. Where is it? What's the informational meeting versus the actual vote? We can get one up time to ask questions about the budget but consider the thing as well. So yeah, just rendered as that process has evolved to be ready for the new calendar and schedule all those things. So that's something that gets added here. We'll dance with the select board a bit, but it's not a piece of work that the select board is bringing forward. Is that right? I think so. You're not driving it. There's a question of how decision or how votes are done. We only approve voting the budget by ballot. So for example, if we were to have a vote, local option tax would have to be from the floor at town meeting. Question is whether we want to continue having those kind of questions there or have a question under their next town meeting or have a future town meeting that says all this is moving by ballot. So there is a piece there. And also the question of if we're going to continue to mail ballots to everybody, how much sense does it make to have an information meeting to date before the final date of vote? So I think those are, and maybe that's what you're getting into there, I guess, but they're going to come back with a recommendation for that. Decisions or any changes, I guess, that come from the slide for us to warn those people or whatever. Well, after July, it's like we're going to have to decide if you're going to mail ballots anyway, because that ends when it's done. I want to make a comment too, that there was, I don't see the previous discussion, but the fact of it's in the where, where and why, but having the, I like to call it the budget there because going into the high school and having everybody there presenting the boards, and that's important, I'd love to see that from that. I know it's not for this list, just for us to all think about that. I miss that. That was how I got involved in all of this as I walked down there to yell my name in the auditorium. So as things go back to normal, there'll be something to think about. And moving forward, we do change everything to ballot items to make that go. I think it'd be awesome to have a month in advance to have that budget fair or have an area where we can maybe have this select, we're meeting at the Essex cafeteria, but also have everybody in the hallways with their, just an informational meeting to present the budget rather than having it at night. We already do that, but there's no reason to do that. I go. So I'm going to pull it back again because you'll have that conversation in context. Is this a August item or is this land somewhere else? When do you pick this up? Sometime in the fall throughout the fall? You don't have to know that level of detail, but I do want to be as accurate as I could be. I think, yeah, I think August, September, to the launch point, it's going to be early question of where are you going to continue to mail the ballots? And then it's going to flow from that. And the question is, comment about do you want to, this board want to put on a question about definitely all business by Australian ballot, which wouldn't affect as much this year but definitely in the future years, but having the budget by Australian ballot gets me that question. I'm going to hold the informational meeting. That's kind of the plan for that. Okay, public works transition. That's basically tied to Dennis Lutz's retirement and getting that process in place from a staffing organizational standpoint. Let's say it's with manager and staff, but it's probably one of those ones where you need to make sure communication is good and putting everybody know what's coming and what it's coming and why it's coming. Is that happening in August? July. July, wow. And soon even the prep board. Declaration of inclusion, make recommendation to select board. That's a discussion that we started to have, I think the select board has touched on it a little bit at some of your meetings. Some meetings are harder to reach than I've been having about potentially bringing a declaration of inclusion to the select board. It's the equity work, the inclusion work. It's probably staff doing some more background work but then bringing it to the select board ultimately. It's been in the select board this year. And I don't think it's right, but I think it's best to have a left one first. Do you, as a select board, see that taking up a large footprint to initiate the answer if it's not necessary? It may be a difficult meeting to have, but I haven't showed up and I want you to say, but I don't think it's a big deal. I don't think I'll point it to that. You did your point. Workman's comp process, not a select board. Social media policy. Staff's doing the legwork on that. Our policies go to the select board for approval. Is that an August thing? I'll leave it there for now. We've been done. Tanny's workload primarily. So interesting. Boxes I think I've deleted show up in other places. Well, it's creating work for you then, huh? I'd like to click up a button. It's easy to cross something up the list though. I'm going to zoom out for a minute. I know you won't be able to read the words, but you've simplified some things here. That's like three or six weeks. There is another smaller, that smaller list to look at. I know it looks long. I do want to get to give you a chance pretty soon to open the floor to the new kinds of initiatives that you wanted to put on this map. I think that's really important. So with that in mind, I was going to invite you to look at that second list and then take a quick break with the assumption that that list of the longer term priorities would be quick. Do you want to try that? Or do you want to take a break now and then come back? If you want to take a break, I would take a break because it's not going to be quick. Well, here's the trade-off. So this is pre-populated stuff you've already seen in your packet, right? And what you're trying to do is just sort of bet to see what's in here or not. But if you really want some time to explore the stuff you want to make sure gets on here, then that's going to have to be a quicker conversation. So if you're likely to come back refreshed and can do that quicker conversation then, sometimes breaks are helpful because it interrupts whatever dynamic you're in and then you come back for a new task. That's why I was asking. I would prefer a biobrake if possible. Okay. Quick little biobrake. It's five minutes, enough time? Yeah. So that means anybody who's online and Kendall, we're going to take a five-minute break and that means coming back at 10, 41, 42. Do you want to be that specific? Do you want to just come back at 10, 45? Take a break. Come back in five. Do you want a bit? Take a break. Come back in five. Do you want a bit? Okay. So welcome back from the break. I will share the screen so you can see what you've got for your three to six month priorities and the next place to go would be looking at the full year. My interest is in making sure you save enough time to really look at the stuff you want to bring up that might be fresh and unrepresented if it's not represented here yet. So my experience in pushing you or interrupting a little bit more by raising my hand and just trying to make sure that you're not getting too meaty, just we didn't have to understand the element that you're trying to put into that. So this is interesting, I'm looking at my screen but realize I'm not sharing it with you. I think that, you know, these hybrid meetings are actually making us think in very different ways, but that's an aside. I know you can't see the text here, but you probably know a lot of what's sort of there. It's front loaded on the top where the thing staff is paying attention to. Of note, are those employee newsletter and community newsletter, which is some of the glue, right? That will bring the communication pieces wider. Oh, that's right. Sorry to go by. There are a couple of other transitions noted there, the police negotiations, public works transition, declaration of inclusion. Then you get to some of the select board items and there's some biggies. So crashing the next 36 months tree farm, ARPA presentation, which contains community outreach as well. So it's a pretty big piece of work. Identifying building and facility needs starting in August are set for roundabout with budget planning, town meeting plan. You had a long conversation about the appointments of boards and committees, short term and long term. So appointments begin, restart, assessing sort of on a committee committee basis around quorum, but then at some point mid-summer, really picking up the bigger picture about what needs to change with those committee structures. Go ahead. Just a minor thing, Jim, but going forward, I think it'll be easier. The ARPA, I didn't just say ARPA, not ARPA presentation. Oh, sure. We're on the same page now, but just for ease of visualization going forward. Use of visualization as we all squint it. We're looking at that. Okay. It's like that I welcome if it occurs to any of you, because I think you're gonna wanna look at this and not, there's ambiguity everywhere. You already have plenty to go around, so if there's things I can do to clarify it. And then you have social media policy down here, which is a staff piece, but of course it'll be interacting with to some extent. Items on this longer-term plan are in a Excel spreadsheet in your packet. If you'd like to see it on paper or on your screen. Same process. So tree farm, this is gonna be something that extends beyond November. Yes, no, but you don't know yet. Yeah. It depends to December, you can flip them out if you want it. Cause there's a deadline in December. Cause there's a deadline in December, okay. Our presentation is all throughout. Yep. Let me get. No, please. Excellent, thanks. Evaluation process. That's just that. Do you all have any questions about that item? Can I go ahead and do it? Electronic time sheets for all employees and staff. Time sheet integration. Repair deputy town clerk to be town clerk. Health and wellness committee. So unless someone of you says, no, wait, I'm gonna keep moving. What is health and wellness committee? It's an internal committee informed years ago. I can't even remember because before my time, we had a pot of money that would give us, that we could give to staff, it was from the federal estate to incentivize healthy lifestyles and stuff like that. It also takes a look at OSHA regulations involved. Now it's also OSHA regulations, stuff like that, I can share with policies, procedures, practices, same plan. Thank you. But in the memo that talked about select board priorities for the current, for the FY23, we did include a line of the notice and there was no action against it. So I think health and wellness from the select board standpoint is still a valid question and I understand this is specific to offering opportunities to staff and I don't know what those action items would be and from a select board standpoint, we can add it by the team box. But again, one of our budget priorities. Well, it wouldn't be freaking out. Health and wellness, like what Paula was saying earlier, if age well, I've said people aren't getting their food. I mean, that's a wellness issue here. It's overall the health issue for our seniors, so. Yeah, we have our, that 1% fund that goes to non-profits that we support, I don't know if there's more that we want to do, but again, we have to put that on there. I don't remember who asked to have that on as a priority and what the background was around it, I don't know if we want to keep it in there. You mean the human service, the 1% human service? No, there was a line out again, if you go back. Right, okay. That was included in the packet that talks about select board budget objectives. Right, okay. There is a line out and this is health and wellness, but you do not put anything. And I think that had to do with COVID is our health and keeping track of what was happening in the town at that time. And it's, I don't know, I guess it's one of those things that could be a discussion that we want to do more in this realm or not, is it really a municipal responsibility to be involved in that? I guess I just don't want to lose that again, if we had it as one of our priorities, again, we didn't do anything with it, but I don't want to lose it. I think it's important to keep that in mind. This may be a detour, but is that all internal or do you contract with another organization that provides programming for combating obesity, smoking cessation, handling stress, things of that sort? To the board. To the board. Okay. Let's just keep it short. Okay. I say it's a question that goes here to tackle with, what is the select board and municipal role? Does that capture what you're trying, what the conversation you're having right now? I mean, he's not saying that. All right. Overall communications plan and matrix. I'd say that's staff and select board. We certainly have stuff we want to do. We talked about internally, but I think because we actually get into the external communications and the select board might want to accomplish stuff that we're going to select board and plan it to. So it's in like the six to 12 month range? Just to clarify why it's in the six to 12 month range, which you saw earlier around the employee newsletter, community newsletter, those are the types of things that we're starting now. The communications matrix, and then the idea behind that is sort of creating this whole big tool of is it a boil water notice for a certain neighborhood? How do you get the word out there? Is it a select board meeting that applies to everybody? How do you get the word out there? Is it a planning commission event? How do you get the word out there? And so it's based on the type of event. Here are the tools we have to make it happen. So that's maybe the whole matrix and part of it is we need to figure out what the tools we have are, whether it's civic, colored, civic plus, making sure we understand those things as well. We're getting some of our staffing up to speed. So it's a big project and it's, we're going to kind of chip them away at it as we go as we learn to prepare for it, but then in terms of actually creating that matrix and tool box, it's going to take some time. Is that a staff taking time or is that a select board? Where the select board's going to be putting a lot of energy as well. I see it as more of a staff thing, but I don't want to be on the select board heads. I don't want to pitch them out. There'll be an open communication as it goes along. Or maybe it will just keep in mind that it may not be action needed, but we're going to have it something that we're working together to bounce ideas. Yeah, and I was thinking if there's action that we take in like entering into a contract in order to, you know, or a vacation service or something like that. So it's sort of yet to be determined. Yeah, we decided to make it as part of a agenda at one point. This has discussion for public comment or an update or whatever, then kind of have whatever it is for. This is an award. I think reaching out to the community and finding, you know, there are themes around what communication would be most meaningful to you is an important thing to do. You know, we have some of that, right? Like getting more, be mixing it, whatever, right? And like as it's a new entity, it's going to change for what we do now. So yeah, I agree with that. Okay, so I'm going to keep it as a staff item for the most part. Select board will stay tuned to contribute as needed because that could mean lots of different things. Branding logo, swag for employees. That's a bit of both. Certainly branding logo, select board should be involved with that. You know, the idea behind swag for employees is sort of that team building, morale building, you know, having employees take pride in being employees. I think there's a lot of other, how about most of them have that anyways, but just to build that camaraderie and team mentality. But as far as actual branding and logo, I mean, that's by no means just a staff decision. That's a community-based select board thing. My mother. Is there an idea to the idea? Is there any envision of creating a new logo or are we happy with what we have? Or is it an idea that comes up every now and then? No, it's an idea on that. Yeah, just an idea. To be determined starting in November, is that what you think you're going to pick this up? Depending on rest of the work. Correct. Yeah. I mean, the select board thinks that this is a high priority. We can, I think, bump it up. We can move it forward. Just did something that's on our list and it's probably going to stuff that staff had going on. We didn't rise high on our list, but you might have thought we're different about that. Just to clarify, I think recognition of employees and you know, I think that's important, but it's also ongoing. I don't see that as right, but I just wanted to make that clarification. I mean, I don't think we need to leave that on there. I mean, if there's action that's going to be requested, it'll come to the board, but right now there's no, that's why I'd asked if there was envisionment for it because right now there's no new logo that they're waiting to be approved to print shirts for the guys for the summer. It's just an idea. So I would remove it. Does anyone oppose? If it's not going to have to work so much, then are you opposed? I mean, we both still have it on our list internally and I think it's Trace's point. Yeah, the recognition of employees will be ongoing. This is just like for this for freedom. So I'm finding a way. I always feel bad deleting things when there's like real weight never behind them. So I- There's just my thinking behind it was- We try to find our action. You are. So if there's no, if there is action, then we could leave it and- It sounds like it's not something that the select board is developing actively. Go ahead. I will say for the sake of consideration, the next couple of things on there, economic development, for health promotion, recreation economy, expansion, stuff like that, those potentially could tie into branding and logo depending on- Who is the select board watch developer? We're working in economic development. We have mentioned the coordinator that we need to have on staff now earlier. The EEC is meeting again. So there is work ongoing there. I guess it's a question of how much, how much focus is the select board want to dedicate to those things and depending on how much of a change or re-focusing you want, like the time into branding logo, what is essence? What is essence going to be on the phone? I think that's kind of where I was going is it's more of an overarching branding, logo identity and tying that into separation and really identifying us as we will be. So, yeah. It's a little bit why it was later too in our discussions just because we wanted time to have some discussions of what will the identity be before you start forming more concrete things about that, but hearing from public, what do people want? What does it look like? So it's also a little bit why it's later down, but- I see that sort of as the execution of those earlier vision conversations. So do we have a title for this besides branding logo and identity? Is there something that, is there a better word for to describe what the plan is? Is this an identity? Yeah, it's sort of like the execution of the implementation of our new identity. I think of branding logo, I think of a logo and branding our buildings or clothing or I mean, per definition. As I was thinking, if we have an overall vision of the identity or a better word, you're the best of the words. I'm terrible, but I'm just thinking of a better way to structure this. No, we can structure that, I don't believe that. Yes, we can stretch up. Is it realizing? Is it recalibrating or establishing? I would say, I would say, accountability and promotion. There you go, is that work? It stretches out. No, not for, yeah. So other things that might go into that list that I got around my list was there's been a lot of discussion about zip code. We want to try to do anything about that. So my only concern with putting it into this one is waiting for more time to do anything about it. That's the thing that could happen to someone potentially. So if I just put zip code, do you know what that refers to or how to? Yep, because we all are legal mailing addresses, that's extension 05452. And that's the question that this identity thing. You're saying it might be sooner. It may be more perfect to try to address that sooner. You do have a physical address though. A lot of people just go by a mailing address because I'm not saying that. Yeah, I know that. I'm not saying that. Yeah, the post-opposition is supposed to use that. I still don't know. Great. I mean, when we put this on our staff list, there's probably time and more around the branding logo and swag. I mean, I would say it sounds like from what I'm hearing that the town identity into motion as I could start right now. Yeah. So from a select board standpoint, they did us two of them. Who's in the timeline? It was a... Another thing that has come up from input that I've gotten from a number of the public was trying to do something in the rural part of Essex into the motion. And I know who has mentioned that maybe time and to talk about it like that, trying to do something not just at the town center, but to try to do. So, I don't know if that's appropriate to fit into here or if I'm not, it's a... What would the basis of the idea? The suggestion was to have a county fair or a town fair. However, you know, I find somebody who's willing to do that. They're the biggest fair in the state. But there's an identity standpoint. But at any standpoint, there are a lot of people who don't have something to do with it. In the town. And a visual that suggests is that it was fine some farmer who only donated his property and had a fair on there. But I have no idea whether that is anything that we would want to consider anything. But the other thing that was suggested talking to these folks about it was, if we do the out and about thing, is there some place in a rural part of the town where you could have an activity there as well rather than a population center? Well, that may be just a very specific, little tiny plan inside of other things. I don't know if we're really going to be moving on. I'm mostly saying it because a member of the public asked me to talk about it, so I'll make sure that it comes up. I like the idea. That's all I was just asking. What's the envision of? Well, there was a suggestion of bringing a thermal rise above all that, but yeah, liability, who knows. Yeah, so I'm going to pull out from the details of that. Yeah, I'm going to pull out from the, if you think about just town fair as an idea that's up there and you can sort of better figure out where it belongs. But zip code is one of those things. I just put it in a salmon colored plastic because I has to note that it's something that's a code that's left where we'll need to reckon with it sounds like sooner rather than later. I think there have been questions about how are we going to deal with our identity situation where there's this as exemption from the city and all of our email, all of our legal, physical or legal mailing address still say it's exemption. Even though the zip code that's attached to that exemption is in the town, it's not. Yeah. So it's an odd situation, but it asks if you so. Can we change the note count fair and add into our county identity town events? Like, I think something that we're going to be shown with soon is parades, Fourth of July. All those things are no longer going to be one big party. Or they could be. Or they could be, but, you know, maybe they won't be. So I think that's just a big, and now after his recommendation or not recommendation would bring up the town fair just stuff. And I was like, you know, town events as far as parades and, you know, whatever it could be. It's a great category. So a town identity and promotion includes branding logo town identity, town events, all that makes work. I'm going to come back down to this list and see what else belongs there. Economic development and trails, promotion and expansion. What do they signify for you? I think the trail is going to be a big one because there's been a lot of discussion about utilizing tax and how, for many different reasons, many different things hunting and no hunting. And I think this is going to be something that if we don't start working on it, it's not going to stop in the public comment for every meeting. So we can do, whether we put it on our radar right now or we just plan on the long-term, I think there's action to be taken on the trails part. I know that's not, there's a committee for that. That's supposed to be working on that, right? But I think it's whether we need to meet with them and figure out the scope of where things are headed or if there's action that needs to be taken to provide them with the tools that they need to move forward. I mean, I don't know how to talk about it. No, I'm just saying, it's not just sex and pillage, but it's all of our recreation. Right. We need to work on all that and have to re-register it. Well, not only related to sort of acceptable use, but also wayfinding. Knowing where the trail goes and where the intersections are and can we prevent people from ending up in Colchester when they're on the web site? Right, right. Right. But even just identifying, there is a trail here. There are so many times that like, I didn't even know where some of the trails were because there was no signage. So just more of an awareness and really wanting to expand the use and increase community awareness that it's even there. So you have a committee that works on these kinds of questions. And the reason I'm asking is, where does this land in your map of suffered priorities as the first step then checking in that committee and figuring out do you have a time of the year where it seems natural to be thinking about it and then take that step? Just some background context. I mean, we have in these discussions as staff a bit that with a planner who staffs the trails committee, the Economic Development Commission is somewhat interested in it from the recreation economy. It's a lifestyle thing. It's a identity thing. It all ties in together. So it's definitely something that's been on my radar and others for a while. It's frankly one of those things that has taken a backseat to merger and separation. And so it's on the list because there's an excitement among staff myself about seeing this and extending this. I think it's a select board because it's a high priority for all of you. You can get greater attention if the other stuff that takes higher priority. I think one of those things that due to the workload capacity, like taking backseat or we took away at it and you need to start with the map or we'll start with some signage or we'll start with something and go from there. So let's go from there. Well, given that we hear about trails or almost every meeting or something about one of our recreation areas, I think we need to move that priority. I agree. And I think we could charge the conservation trails committee with brands of proposal for increased wave line and publicizing the things that would be committee and staff time, but it would come back. I would think it would come back to us for action or awareness, but... That's what it is. I mean, if it's in the budget and putting money in the budget that's dedicated towards wave finding times next year. That's just to go do it. And that's a change of something or requires a policy decision to, I don't know, fire new land or to change the firearms policy or we're happy that becomes a select board. So it's working with the trails. Is it the trails committee? Conservation and trails. Conservation and trails committee and staff. Sort of the same with bridging the gap between staff and economic development and trails. There are some cross-pollination, I think that can happen there and working together in order to meet each other for. I'd rather see the rec department involved in economic development, maybe personally. Well, so you have a lot of questions in any of these work like who needs to be at the table, how to define the goals, et cetera. So I'm going to keep this at the sort of title, but I think what you're talking about is trails motion and expansion. And what I'm trying to articulate here is that you work with conservation trails committee and staff, maybe other parties as well to identify potential goals, policy implications. That sound right? Not in surprises. Yes, yes, okay. This is item include Indian book rate structure. I would originally say separate, but I can see where it potentially falls into there. There's rates that are working on trails of Indian book. Will that happen? That's all involved in the project as well. But I don't think it was, yeah. It seems, yeah, I think it's a part of it. If you're going to charge for one, like Indian brook, you probably should charge for them all. Thought. It's challenges. Well, that's a good part of the discussion, Kendall, because I had a conversation with somebody the other day and if we're going to be charging a fee for anything, there needs to be some sort of facility that they're contributing to. Because all the trail maintenance and everything else is largely done by volunteers. So there's no real burden on the town per se. And having these discussions with the community about if we had a rate structure for everything, but we had amenities, we had a seasonal bathroom like at our pools and we only have one pool. But at the pool or the building, what can we do? What do you want? If you want an old trail, you just pull up on a side of the road and walk or do you want to have a nice little landing with a little bathroom and a map based on the trail and, you know, kind of, so. Yeah, it's funny, the words stuck in my head were nice little landing. Because I think these are all the questions that you might want to then explore and sort of put into a plan of sorts. And I'm wondering, I'm going to go back to that really very question of where does this land in your calendar? Because there might be other priorities that are as of yet unarticulated. And you mentioned that this ties in with a bunch of other things too, but I don't necessarily want to give you a list of 50 things that all start in August. I don't really know how does this represent what you're hoping for and map out accurately when you can pick it up. It's something we definitely need to look into. Not maybe not take action on, but maybe we need to have it on an agenda to open the discussion of where you want to see the trails and assets. I mean, it's never been on an agenda. It's just been a public comment of, you know, due complaints of issues that are out there. So, anyone else's feelings on that? I agree. I mean, you hear a lot about Indian Brook that you have to pay for it or not. I would just, I think probably this will come up with a budgeting question and stuff because it all costs money depending on which way you go. So I know at some point in the mid-summer, you're going to be picking up budgeting as a pretty big topic. I'm going back again. If this is a priority, where is it? Just generally, is it a three to six month priority or is it a six to 12 month priority? I think it needs to be three to six because of the issues that's shooting on sex in real. I think it's this one. Yeah, acceptable use, right? And I'm thinking it's going to come up before November because it's your season. Right, I'm thinking it's three to six month. You're going to have a large, large, large meeting for that also. So there may be more than one meeting before any action is taken. The only, you know, it's just uniquely from the first time I met you in Essex was with an ordinance change. And that took a really long time. So if you're actually looking at this piece of work as changing acceptable use, that is a pretty big, that's a big initiative. So it's more than three to six months probably because of the lead time you need on it in order to make any sort of changes. So I wonder then given that this year you are actually taking on a bunch of transitional activities, does this then, does it make the case to push it out later? I think we should at least initiate the beginning of it. If we don't, yes, it may take more than a year, but I'm just saying that that's all we're hearing. So many people now that I think we need to maybe show them that we are concerned we're going to have to do something. We need to move it out. Great. Yeah, I guess it's worth having a more in-depth discussion about this, about what exactly it means to you and what you want to focus on. For weight-finding, for expansion, for use, firearms, beads, Indian brook, Saxon Hill. There's a whole bunch more beyond that that hasn't even been mentioned yet. And so it's a large, broad topic. But you just highlighted all the reasons it needs to be brought up. Oh, that's what I said, but in that it's, which of those topics do you want to focus on? We've never had a public hearing Well, that's why if we ask the trails commission to come back to us or a record, where are we going to do this? So it may require a multi-year work plan to do some of the things that you might want to do to address it, right? So I'm going to just note this item could take many different directions and may require a multi-year plan or work plan. The question now is back, when do you want to pick up this question and put it before people? When do you have the bandwidth and when do you think everyone else has the bandwidth for it? And that's not about saying it's unimportant. It's really about saying it's, you're at that stage right now in this conversation where you're shuffling priorities and trying to figure out all these things are going to have a lot of importance to people, including the budget conversation, which I think will be more complicated for you this year in terms of public comment and take some time. Where is this fit in? I keep going to move it into that sort of three to six month range. And then I realized, oh, there's a whole bunch of stuff that's already at three to six month range. I mean, I just, I, my personal recommendation on that is we're kind of in a good time right now before we really pick up on everything. And if we're not going to take immediate action on this, I would suggest that we throw it on, I don't know, Monday, but our next meeting and just open it to the public and say, public comment, we never had public comment on it. We've had public comment every meeting about it. We had a couple of years of discussion about the firearm. Firearm ordinances, that's the big one of the big issues. I'm going to be a process voice in a moment. So if you're going to do something like this, it could go in so many different directions. You probably have a couple of other parties that need to be prepared to manage whatever comes. Otherwise you'll ask for public comment that you can't, you don't have no container for yet. So you have some containers that are built in before inviting, maybe just want to ready people and just check out your capacity or people poised to then put this up. Otherwise the conversation has to happen many times. It may have ended anyway, but in order for someone to take that information and actually be poised to move with it, they have to be ready. And if this body is the body, taking it forward to move, you could make that decision. But if there are other bodies connected to it, who wouldn't want to be caught, so by surprise, you'd want to place it here in this plan and then queue up people accordingly or committees, whoever's going to be there to. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes perfect sense. I'm just thinking outside the picture here because we're going to keep saying that we don't want to take this up because of the firearm ordinance, but realistically that is the problem and it's going to come up. So my only thought is either we have a discussion now or you just keep pushing it off like we've been pushing it off and it's not going to happen in the next six months. So it's going to be after hunting season, it'll be next year's board, it'll get pushed off again. So I'm going to do a little reframing now that that's the strategic question you're on right now. Knowing that I think the negotiation you're having right now is where does it sit into the priority list? I think it depends on which aspects. Right, exactly. It's very diverse. So it's going to take a little finessing in terms of maybe this priority as it's as its own. The work as it's currently framed, work with the conservation and trails committee and staff possibly other parties as well to develop potential goals and issues or policy implications. You just listed off a whole bunch, acceptable use, wayfinding, trail signage, it doesn't have to be all of them, but work with the committee to figure out where are we poised to take some action in this timeframe? And it might be that, you know, trying to figure out the use of a particular park or the firearms ordinance or whatever it happens to be gets in that list, but it's probably more than you can prioritize even right now. And just to add on to what Chen's saying, I think it could start fairly soon in conversation, but then it can also, part of that conversation can be what's the low-hanging fruit? What's the better signage? We had some seasonal help in recreation last year that went around and did a lot of wayfinding, you know, mapping it. This shouldn't speak for recreation or conservation and trails or planning, but there are some things that are relatively straightforward, relatively simple, not a kind of money to get this conversation moving. At least it's on the radar, it's happening, and then it can evolve and grow from there. There's more complicated topics come up. Right. If she commits a Boy Scout scene as an Eagle product, they do it out mostly in the suburbs. Yeah, I just want to throw it out there that I think we should get the public involved because it's going to be a huge deal. And it's not going to be pretty. So, I mean, a recommendation to somebody the other day, I said, you know, the best thing to happen is somebody going there and buy it privately and post it and create a bike club and solve all the problems right there. Because as a municipality- Yeah, I'm going to interrupt again for a bit, and that's because your minutes are starting to run low. But so I'm going to bring it back to that question about I think your vote here is to prioritize that sooner in the calendar. Don't know where the rest of you are sitting though in terms of your readiness to make it a priority say in July versus the fall versus next over the winter months. I think our focus is at the end of the budget and some things that we already have in the near term. Again, there are maybe there are things in here that can be chipped away at earlier, but to take on a big work piece in parallel with establishing ourselves as a premier cells up and generating stability of where we are with being a town and these priorities. And I realized there's a lot of emotion around some of these things and a lot of concern. Well, it's so, this is so interesting. Yeah, go ahead, John. I was saying, what if Andy, you just assigned the conservation trails and the rec to start looking at it back to us for the six months, what a plan. Yeah, and then go from there whatever their recommendations and plans are. And that way you still have that time for budget, but the process has started as far as fixing the problems in the parks. So we can differentiate between where the select board really puts its time versus when you get the ball rolling is what you're saying. And so a step that could come out of this meeting is to say, we anticipate having some bandwidth for this over the winter between now and then the people who are most responsible for carrying it forward who aren't in this room get to do some thinking about how they want to frame up the ask and engage people in the conversation. And every request we make of the committee at all staff time as well. I understand that, but I'm Okay, keep pushing people off. No, this conversation is not about pushing people off or on it's about trying to figure out what we signed up for this. We have so many things to do or we gotta do them. I mean, we don't have to solve the whole entire thing in one go, but we have to start something. Or even one year. So part of this is to put the, I think you're to do is to say, can we get somebody's mind thinking on this and priming it? Part of their work is figuring out what's the capacity? What's realistic for a three month, six month year? And that includes checking in with all parties who are responsible for carrying it forward. It then comes back to the report at some point because there probably are policy implications that then the select board has to figure out when to pick up. So it's kind of interesting when you come to, this is oversimplifying it, right? You might want to put a placeholder somewhere in the, about six months from now. And then you have a next step that someone can, you know, it's committing to taking forward. And is it clear to you who that person would be and what the next step is? Maybe in this action item, take out the promotion and expansion and just leave it trails. Yes. I mean, I can certainly, I'll put it in parentheses here. But I'm going to go back to my original question because it's a matter of time. Is your next step clear on this item? And is there, I feel like I must lean you into a decision. I absolutely am actually. Where does this sit in your calendar? Far out is my vote. Okay. So right now, Kendall, it's sitting in November through January. You can start it in January. So we're not even going to make a recommendation to introduce it to the committee until November. These are different things. So you're, I think what I'm proposing is that this would be a spot to have a meeting about it. It's a spot to say there's some bandwidth to pick up work for the select board to pick up work, but you might have an idea, next step that you can act now. Doesn't require select board. Someone's saying. The select board can't pick up any work other than emailing with one other member of the select board or having an other meeting. So I'm going to go right back to that question then. I don't know if it's, I might not be using the right nuance, but I might be oversimplifying as a ton. Is it clear what the next step is and who does it? And I think the next step you're talking about is reaching out to the trails committee. The conservation committee. Yeah, that can be done by any of us. Who could do it? Who will do it? If that's what you're wanting. They're a preference. And I can certainly reach out to them. I'll take the initiative. If that's all we need is somebody to start looking at it because I've heard this complaint so many times that my ears are ringing. Whether it's a good conclusion or a bad conclusion, there needs to be a decision made and the town needs to hold a position. What decision are you talking about? About Saxon Hill individually and then about the rate structure, whether or not we're going to charge for all of our townland or just Indian Brook and what amenities we're going to offer and the fee structure in Indian Brook. I mean, there's a lot of work that somebody else is going to have oversight on. We're just going to make the decision. So I'm going to add because there's acceptable use in here already, I'm adding rate and fee structure, but I think your decision you're articulating is much narrower than what I thought was going to the Trails Committee, Conservation Trust Committee. We have an immediate problem basically that's been going on since last year. Rain fees. It's been going on for a long time, but there's action that is wanted to be. And are you talking about the rain fees? No, about Saxon Hill. Okay. My brain keeps pumping that into. What about it? What's the problem? About whether the town is going to create an area for recreation or have it continue to be hunting. Oh, I see. And then on the flip side of it, with the rate and fee structure. We haven't made that decision. Right, but are you going to have it be a park, like an actual park and have it be like Indian Brook and have it be a rate or have amenities like a trash can or a trash bag at the end of the trail? Or is it just going to be an end of the road pull off? Right? Yeah, so Ethan. I actually, I imagine that for everybody who's sitting in the room, but also everybody's sitting outside the room listening. Each person that's in a line engage in that conversation pretty neatly and everyone's going to come from different places, which means that it is a huge piece of work. That doesn't mean it doesn't belong here. It's just the next, the first next step might be Greg going to the conservation and trails committee and trying to figure out the capacity of who's poised. You're going to be up for certain conversations. How are you going to frame them and who's going to be starting to take that work forward? I don't know that that work is a select board work until it involves policy issues, but the first issue that you're trying to sort of put support behind is, let's make sure that there's some, let's amplify this issue as something that keeps coming up to us by the next step. Getting a party can actually look at it with some of these notes, but they may have other things they're thinking at too. It leaves you a little dissatisfied, I think, based on the- I just, I can't see- There's a problem. So I- There's a ton of problems, but my only understanding, we can totally move on from this. I just want to make my point here is, I won't even bring it up, because it's not worth it. But are we going to not talk about the way we want to use the ARPA money for the municipal building, because the Ethan Allen Tower is less important, or is the budget more important? It's all important. So whether or not we talk about it or not, we still have to make a decision on how we're going to move forward with it. With ARPA? No, with everything, with trails. Yes. With anything that was on this list, right? We decided to keep this item on this list. So if we don't want to do anything with it, delete it off the list and we won't do anything. But if we're going to do something with it, then we need to make a decision what we're going to do with it and how we're going to do it. So you can decide, you could, you could as a group determine, I'm aware you don't have all the people at the table to help finesse it because there's going to be, you've got committee members and other folks who've been dedicating a lot of time. Also, I haven't heard that question. But if we don't want to do anything, then just remove it, right? So you're asking, what are people's energy or what's your investment in doing something about this particular topic? I think you're trying to, I think what I'm hearing is that it's... If it's not going to be until March of next year, then there's no reason it needs to be on here. That's my point. If we're going to do something with it, let's do something with it. If it's not going to be until March of 23, you're going to have a new board. It's not worthy to be on this calendar. This is so interesting. Yeah, we've run into... Because we're already into November and we're not even talking about starting it. Yeah. So that's where I'm having a little bit of frustration is either we want to do something with it or we don't want to do anything with it. Okay. You and I having a bit of a paradigm, shift, but I'm going to see how I think this fits in. The select board, when it meets annually, it is a little frustrating because it's an entity that moves through time, but it's not always the same people. So some of the priorities you set today are setting directions for future select board members, even though some of the members have changed by the time that time comes down on the calendar. So you've been working and focusing so far this morning on the zero to three months and the three to six months. And now you are looking at that longer term piece, some work which you might start and put into motion, but not actually be present to finish. So I think even what you're asking is, there's a parallel for you. If it's that far out, then maybe it's not worth having on the other point, the way you could see it is that it's as an entity as a select board, whether or not, even though the membership keeps changing, the select board is trying to define, it's like something to stand on. Here's the stuff we're picking up for the next three to 12 months, six or 12 months. So I don't know if that lists the burden at all. Yeah, that's good. But it might mean that instead of having to get rid of it entirely, you have a next step identified that amplifies the issue to some extent, and then you know, oh, look at that, we set this priority for ourselves, coming up after November elections to look at this more intensely again. And at that point, you get to say, Conservation Trails Committee, what have you come up with? Help us frame this out. I think that's what this chart says right now. What's your level of investment in that structure? And Kendall, you can chime in too. Thank you. I agree. I mean, you only have so much bandwidth if you can work on, and this is a roadmap, so to speak, of where the board is going to go. And I mean, some of these things may pop up next month and we have to address it and change it. But this gives you a big picture, more or less, but I'm looking at it. John? I've already said it, I'd like to see other scientific trails in July and have them bring us back to plan November and December. So Greg, if you were to talk to Conservation Trails Committee, I'm trying to write what the immediate next step is. I don't know what the verb is. Is it check-in? Is it, what are you actually, what are you walking out if you're thinking of too? I'm thinking I'm going to talk to the Condemn Department, the Recreation Department, Conservation Trails Committee, you'd be a staff for those departments, the Economic Relief Commission, you'd be a staff for those departments, and now you get a better, more comprehensive picture of what is happening with their trails, what can happen with their trails, and what's needed in the coming months or years. To see what further, I'm going to relay all the stuff we talked about today from weight-binding to firearms, to bees, to all that stuff, and here's the long list of things that people are interested in conversing around with this topic. You said trails, do you make it parks and trails? Because then that covers other concerns. Yep. Sorry, go ahead, Kendall. I would just say that I would agree with Greg's approach, and I get Ethan's push, but my personal feeling, again, doesn't represent the board, is that Essex doesn't need another big controversy that we get all embroiled in right now. Mike? Kendall, we lost your sound. Kendall, are you still talking? No. It's been moving in a layer right there. Uh-oh. Kendall, wait. Kendall, we can't hear you. Kendall, we can't hear you. He can't hear himself now, so. Oh no, do we? Oh no, this ends. Kendall, we can't hear you. This looks like this ended. You stopped halfway through your speech there. But I'm still going here. Can you hear us? No, I think I got voodooed. Yeah, I got a notice that said Essex, or what was it, Essex, whatever, host, is the host now. Me. So I think somebody got voodooed. Okay, so let me try to log back in. Okay, so part of what happened is that we lost the audio in the room because the computer that was connected to Zoom, and I clicked out. So you're hearing me through my personal computer right now, and it's just gonna take us a minute to get the microphones back online. Margaret is gonna sign back in again. Sounds like we got it. Can you hear us, Kendall? Oh, I wasn't even able to. That means we're gonna need to get the job of speech set up again, too. Yeah, yeah. We're going to computer audio and Essex hosts, and stuff hosts. Do you wanna test my computer on the microphone? Yeah, so we're just gonna take two minutes to make sure that we've got the audio going up again in our room. We're just watching a little bit of a twirling circle, as it thinks. And I don't really wanna do business with that. I don't wanna do it that soon. Kendall should just hold on. You're going so well with technology. One thing I can do is shift to my computer because I can become a host this meeting, and then it just means that we're not using the board. I can keep, I'll keep working on this. Maybe to keep us moving if you wanna do that, and I'll keep working on this. So let me change my speakers so that we can hear. Where's our backup speaker? That one? Yeah. I'm gonna put it at my computer. Before technology. What did you do before technology? Okay, so just so everyone's aware, the meeting is still recording. My microphone is still on my computer. Bring it up, morning, in progress. I'm gonna take that terrible noise because it's a good sign. It is a good sign. Kendall, can you hear me okay? You can still hear me. You can. Yes, I can hear you now. That's awesome, we're back online. Good job. So Kendall, you cut off halfway through your comments, and I don't know if you can... That's okay. It's a good thing that it doesn't have a recall provision right now. It's a good thing that it doesn't have a recall provision right now. It's a good thing that it doesn't have a recall provision. Yeah, I still have a trouble. I can, can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you. We can hear you fine. There's someone who wants to know, is the recording on and the recording turned off just now. It has stopped. Yeah, like when I was in the middle of like... Oh, we lost you again, Kendall. We're gonna get stopped. We're gonna get stopped. We did. Look at the spinning circle again. Kendall, can you still hear us okay? Yes, I can. Marguerite, are you able to start the recording from your computer? Yeah. It doesn't look like it's recording on our end. There we go. Just said, recording in progress. All systems are starting to boot up again. Oh my gosh. Maybe we'll... But now I can't hear you. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna leave this again, and maybe we can just continue without it. Because it's not, it's frozen on me. Okay, so the recording is coming from our great computer. Once you leave that meeting, we are gonna lose the audio for the room as well, unless I switch it to our computer or Marguerite's computer, I think. Kendall, can you hear me right now? I'll do it. I'm gonna restart the whole computer and try to have it in the meantime. I don't know. Yeah, just switch to audio. Well, so we're gonna hear hopefully in a moment another sound where the big system cues in again. I'm looking for my adapter so I can get our room microphones up again. In the meantime, here's an exercise for all select board members. If you can think about the priorities that we haven't talked about yet, that you wanted to make some time for, and you can jot a note for yourself what those items are, that's a helpful use at this time, probably. What do you have on your laptop? I have a... Do you can just use your, and then unmute your microphone once you get that clicked in? Oh, yeah, I got a join, I got a join. Smartphone connected. So, if you go through your... Recording in progress. Great, you did it. Good. Kendall, can you hear me now? Looks like you can, that's great. So, I might be sounding a little further away because we've turned the microphone to Marguerite's desktop or laptop. Oh, that's good to do. Okay. You're a little dimmer, so I'm gonna go ahead and try to turn up your volume. Say something again, Kendall. I can hear that. That's a hot guy. Okay, and we can sort of hear you as talk, as it can. So, we'll just really concentrate when you have something to say and we'll listen very, very carefully. If you can hear us, then that's good. Do we all sign in, or? You don't need to sign in. There'll still be this mic. We'll still, we just won't have the visual, so we'll have each other in conversation. We'll get it. We have the microphone, so everybody who's joining the meeting, including Kendall, can hear you. And see you, actually. So, this camera is still viewing the room. After that, sort of, I don't know, what's the word for it? The buck. The buck? The buck. The buck. The buck. The buck. The buck. It's still nice to have your company. So, I just wanna, like, the technology can get a little bit confusing. I do wonder how many items you have on your sheet of paper that you haven't been able to voice yet or don't see represented in that list. I know the list isn't in front of you right now. How many things are top of mind? You still wanted to try to get room for it on that priority list. Could you just give me, like, a show for? So, I'm hoping there's some overlap since many of you are holding up, like, four or five fingers. That would be a lot. That would be a lot. But, we'll do it just manually. Can I get a sense of what's on top of mind? We'll start, go, start with Andy and then Casey, Don and Ethan, you didn't have any? Yeah, a couple. A couple. So, let's just go around and see how, let's do this. One at a time and then we'll just keep going until you're exhausted. No repeats. Oh, oh, oh, oh. One at a time for, oh, okay, each. Okay, so, I just wanted to add two words to the trail thing and that's river access. So, I just had an overall climate change item, but I think that's, it has tentacles and a lot of things that we do, kind of like the inclusion and diversity. So, one specific item was impacts of development on the environment, community and services, such as public safety services, rescue services, stormwater, wastewater, noise, light pollution, quality of life, how that impacts buffers. So, I know that's kind of a lot, but also ties into overall funding mechanisms, including impact fees going along that sort of development line. One of those words, I've just been, catch significance of them. I have climate change impacts of development on environment safety services and you said ties into funding mechanisms. Right, so around developing, maybe that's the wrong word since we're talking about development, implementing impact fees to sort of counterbalance the municipal cost of development. So, on transportation, public safety services, things of that sort. Okay, that is much clearer to me. Implementing impact fees to counterbalance municipal expense. Yep. I don't know if this has a spot where it would already fit, but my, one of my things, I'm just gonna stick with one because I have a lot of things, but they fall under other categories there, but the one thing that I really wanna see done in my first term in my only year here until the next election is all around the lines of our equity policy, and it's to do with the way that we structure our elections in Essex. I don't know if there's a spot for that, or if that's even a select board decision making process or if it's a management thing, but I'd like to see some work done on our election process for the select board as far as, you know, maybe part of the website to have, you know, I don't wanna get into the discussion of it, but I can't do anything. Well, so, when you talk about, yeah, so it started out with equity policy and then there's also a specific bill around elections and election process. Right, it's, I just figured the, I don't know like where this would tie in, but it's equity driven work. Where does equity driven work is currently the one? I don't know, do we have anything for equity on our graph? We have an asset on there, yeah. Well, is it, do you mean this falls under our, like an equity, you mean, cause you wanna in your mind make it more equitable. Right, yes, that's what you're feeling about. I just know, cause, yeah. Yeah, I don't make them be like, yes. So it's not so much an equity policy, but you're saying this ties into equity work for you in that you wanna talk about this to make it more equitable is sort of what you're thinking. It should be a policy that we would be working on. The election part, you mean? Right, yes, but not like an equities. We don't have, I don't know that we have an official equity policy as a standalone. We have it in like other parts of our policies and such. And I think what you're saying is you wanna work on elections and part of that for you, it comes up as an equity issue. Right, correct, perfect. Wait, Essex elections, it's not that these are quite in categories yet, but that's okay. Don, and I don't see you. We just missed the charter one. How about, how about developing a police commission? And here's the way of the game that we're playing right now is just get a sense of what is on the people's minds. So you go through, we're gonna do one at a time. You don't have to invent ones, but you can absolutely get your priorities and no repeats. I'm kind of hoping that some of these things are the same on your list. Kendall, what's yours, just one for now? Just one? Just one for right now. We'll do a couple of rounds so we get them exhausted. I'll follow up with Ethan's on equity. I think that there are some things in Essex that are subsidizing other parts. And I'd like to take a look at that and get rid of some of the subsidizing that's going on. I think that that's where we ended up with some issues with the village. So that's kind of the thing I'm gonna look at. So do you mean, is this about equity and services or just it's broader than that? Yeah, it's services to the folks, for the people. I think that there are, well, I'm one of them I mentioned in one of the meetings that we are being subsidized out here in a rural section for fire protection by the water through or through. Issues like that. I mean, it starts out small and I'm sure it started out small in the village when the village just a little small spot, but over time obviously it can become a problem. So I'm gonna write for now, I don't know if I have to capacity the screen share so that you all can see it, but assess equity of services for residents. So some parts of Essex subsidizing other parts. So again, no repeats, Andy? I would like to see a five-year capital plan. Typically our capital plans cover current year maybe one or two years, but five years would be, I mean, we're actually required to do that by charter. And also the, oh, sorry, I'm adding a second, you don't want to do that. Okay. Capital is spelled Z-P-I-T-A-L, or O-L? A-L. A-L. Got it. Thank you. Sorry, I didn't realize we were doing one at a time and I gave all of mine last time. You did? I did. I have climate change impacts on development on environment safety and services, ties into funding mechanisms around implementing impact fees to counterbalance in the school expense. And overall funding mechanisms, climate change and the development piece are related, but two separate items. It's not specific to development. Ethan. What would I go with Essex Rescue? Ethan, is it clear, evident to everyone what the work behind underneath that, or is there? Well, it ties into our buildings and our new town center and whether or not we want to continue to pay the bill or see if they want to become part of us or if we want to become our own or it's just a part of that fire department, town center, community building, town garage, is it part of that plan? So it's a facilities plan, specifically for Essex Rescue, is it about? Would it be tied directly to the fire department? Because they want to build a new fire department for it. Or is it 5.4 million dollars about a rescue garage attached to it? It's really hard not to respond to it. It's my summit. Yeah, so I have thoughts. So here's what I need help with, Ethan. I got it. You can go to the peanut gallery if you want or you can help me out. I am looking for figuring out, so Essex Rescue has its own, probably means a lot of different things. I don't really know, what's the, how do you call the priority item? Is it assessing like the service? It's just the assessing the need for a rescue department attached to our new fire department. Or is it emergency services? Is that a broader topic? And what would the topic be if you brought it to the emergency services? It falls under capital because it's part of the fire department in the capital plan. But it's more than that. But it's not. So for simpleness, keep it in the capital with the fire department. Okay. But it's so much more than that. Oh, I might be wrong because these very, it's so important. It's just something that needs to be in the conversation going forward with this capital plan. It really goes. Can I take a stab at what I think you're getting at? Yeah. I think it's around planning for what the future of emergency services looks like, relating to whether it comes internal, having more oversight and incentivizing more transparency with our budgeting process. You know, just sort of what it looks like, what we want it to be and how to make those conversations meaningful going forward. Okay. So planning for a future of emergency services. Right. Yeah, that's perfect. Because the reason why it's so hot on my mind is that we have this capital plan for the fire station. And we have a rescue department that we pay money towards and their building has stalled on their new building. So this is something that's not happening. It's in front of us right now. So before they find another option. So I've got planning for future of emergency services. What does it look like to have support it? Gonna go Don and then Kendall and then I just need to recalibrate our time. So with your building, are you gonna include the community center and senior center in your? Most definitely. Okay. I'm ready to sign the bond. Before I said something, okay. So, Well, hold on, Don. So community center and senior center, is that your item? Because, you know, I don't know, like. That was part of the municipal complex that we had discussed. So I didn't know what it was. So I had not actually written down municipal complex anywhere. Oh, okay. Then let's do that. Should we include? Here's why. I think it's probably under like sort of figuring out the building. So include emergency services, community center, senior center, and public works. Recreation. Recreation. I do not have someone. Yeah, but the recreation and the community building could be the one. So rather. I wanna own the same complex. I wanna be really careful about not going too far down a visioning trail. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, I'm just saying. But for municipal office, and then you listed a bunch of areas, which I was still in a cognitive angle of my own. So I didn't catch them all. Public works. Emergency services. Community center, senior center. Recreation. Can I call it? Is that everybody? I'm not gonna take a comment at the moment. If that's, if you can bear with me. And it's because- It's just a timeline thing for it. Go back to the timeline and get a visual. Kendall. Okay, I'm gonna wrap on the three C's coattails and go to climate change and say that I would just like to concentrate on doable, impactful actions. A new Tesla to the police department is great, but I think you can almost get as much of a bang for the buck if you upgrade things. So variable frequency drives, climate efficiencies, building efficiencies, heating and schooling, electrical, some stations, such like that. So. To our climate change, and I'm adding doable, impactful actions, like heating and cooling efficiencies, et cetera. I need to ask you how you want to make some time, everyone. There's, at some point, we've said approximately 1130 or thereafter, we'll take some time to public comment again. You still have a little, so I want to make some time to do that to respect the time frame. That's all gone now. It is gone up there. The meeting is still in place, being recorded, and petitions are still there too. So anyone online, you still have access to the meeting through these little laptops. It's just that our visibility on the meeting is like we're members of their disabilities totally gone because the monitor is down. Well, I was just like, can I, you were taking suggestions of them. I just had one more that we keep our, we know we're going to have a tax increase, but to keep it to the lowest increase possible with the least impact on our petitions. So I'm going to assume that that's part of your budgeting deliberations. Is that, Are you asking for concerns? And that will say it, so yeah. Yeah, so what I was, yeah. And I'm, so here's the play after making my mind. I can actually play it as a separate item, but what I'm really looking for right now are those priority items that you didn't see in the handout yet. And I think that's a question that's going to come up like deep into the budgeting process. That's fine. So in terms of every time, do you want to pause for some public comment so that you can hear what people are thinking? Yep. We're going to take a show. There's one person in the room here and there are several people online so we'll take a show of hands in just a moment. And then you're scheduled to go until 12.30, which means a pretty rigorous vetting of some of these priorities. Or you're extending your meeting and you're staying longer. So I just, you'll have to let me know how it'd be of service and how hard to push that. All right. So I'd love to see a show of hands. Anybody who's online then who's sitting on a comment and raise your virtual hand? And is there anybody in the room? So I see two comments and my guidelines so you can be relatively loose because I don't see a long volume but our time is really tight. So I'm going to ask if you can keep it as to say this again. We'll start with Bruce and then go to Mary. Hi, can you hear me? I don't know if you can. We can hear you just fine. Actually, the room is great. You can't see me. I can see you, but... About the only person I can hear well is Kendall. My name's Bruce Post. I live at one Cindy Lane here in Essex. If this were an airliner, this meeting were an airliner, I would have had to keep my seat belt fastening all my seats. Sorry. Sorry. I'm not sure where the video is coming from. Bruce, can you hear me? Can not hear me. So now we have two... Let me get a good job here. Yes. And then this one will come back on even. You want to turn those on first? Do you see a little key on the bottom of that? It's not bad. It's the connection on there. Is it missing? Yep. Okay, so that one's going to have to be on in order to speak to that computer. Could you hear me? I can turn it back on, but it was... It's going to be... They were all doing... It might be mindful for a minute. It speaks. Sounds good, actually. I have a mute. I'm just going to say for the people in the room, on Zoom, are we all muted? We're all muted right now. And these are connected now. So unmute you, Greg. Okay. Can you hear us now, Bruce? Or anybody? No. I mean, I can hear something. Okay. Can you hear me now? Can you hear Bruce? I heard what I think is Jen. Yeah, nice job. Okay, yes, you heard me, and I think we can hear you loud and clear. Sorry about that, Bruce. Let me start again, and I'll try to be brief. My name is Bruce Post. I live at one Cindy Lane. I'm saying if this were an airliner, I would have had to keep my seat belt on the whole time, because we went from 35,000 feet, which is a very strategic view, to about 1,000 on nuts and bolts and things like that. Having been involved in strategic planning processes in my prior careers, I don't think this is necessarily a strategic planning meeting. It's become a calendar planning, project planning thing. And one of the elements that I've seen of strategic plans is that you have an environmental scan, which includes looking at a number of things, your resources, your budget, but also how the people, particularly in a government, feel about things. And I think that's what's missing going forward. I've given the board some ideas for going forward. I'm glad to hear about a charter planning committee meeting, but this is a major inflection point for our town. On the 1st of July, we will lose 48% of our population and then about 25% of our land area taken from us by the village and the legislature with not having any say. So I would like to see some sampling of public opinion going forward about how we envision a new Essex in terms of challenges, in terms of hopes, in terms of plans. And that we'll have to, we'll take some investment, but we've done it in the past. We did it with the Essex governance group. We did it with the merger stuff. In many cases, some of the information was just rejected, important information. So that's what I think we need to do going forward is if we get embroiled on what's the trails committee gonna do or whether we're gonna have a variable transition, mission police cards not, that's not something that we should be sampled, but how do we feel about going forward? And that would lead into some of the things like gone raised a charter committee. The communications, which hasn't been the best today and certainly advertising this meeting also hasn't been the best. And then elections and things like that. So all I can do is state my opinion now, there's very little time left to discuss these issues, which is actually rather disappointing. And I don't know if we can have opportunities on the agenda to talk about this in the near future. Thank you very much. Thanks Bruce. Go ahead Mary. Bruce has said a lot of the things that I'm feeling and I feel it's just really important though that we plan to have some kind of meeting where the public is invited because you truly wanna hear what they're thinking. This has not been happening. And I was a little disappointed, I have to say, when we were talking about whether outside members, whether people on a committee could live outside of town. And then I believe that it was Andy who said, well, we have to think about the junction, they're still paying taxes. But through this whole thing, I was paying taxes, I'm still paying taxes. I had no say if the junction left and left, we had no vote on it. And I don't see where there's been a lot of concern about what's happening to the rest of us in the town. It's all been about the junction, junction, junction. And I think it's like water under the bridge, we're all thrilled that they got what they wanted. But I think there needs to be a meeting where people are able to say what they're feeling because there's so much anger out here. And you're not hearing it, you're avoiding it, in my opinion. That being said, I wanna say that I am really encouraged by the last few select board meetings. I love the fact that all of you are speaking up when that never used to happen before in a meeting. And that goes for everybody, Don, Kendall, Ethan, Tracy, I think I couldn't understand her during the whole meeting, but based on past meetings, I think that she is also saying something. But it's got to change. And if we keep doing things the same old way that we've always done, nothing is gonna change. And Greg, you've been under the apprenticeship or training of two previous, whatever you are, town administrator, managers. And you can do something different. This is your town now. You don't have to follow in the same old, same old way. You're young, you're creative. Let's have something different. I would really love that. But anyway, I'm feeling better about things even though I'm complaining. And then Margaret was in the meeting and she can't be there any longer. So she asked me to speak for her. And that's Margaret Smith who just had to leave now. She's very, very concerned that we have not talked about the climate impact of some of the things that we are allowing, like the huge warehouses, the big trucks that go through there, and not only are, well, the big trucks that go through the noise and that they're allowed to idle, just, you know, we're not talking about any of the effects of climate change. And then she also hopes that maybe, just as the village evidently does, that maybe the town could put out some kind of a newsletter for citizens. But anyway, that's all that I have to say. And I hope that there will be a meeting, strategic planning, that the whole community can be heard and please let's have it structured in such a way that it's a conversation. And not just we've got one minute to be heard and you say thank you because that's never worked. And if we need something different, thank you. Thanks, Mary. Go ahead, Lorraine. Where we are with staffing. It's on Monday's agenda for a meeting. Okay, well, I assume in terms of strategic planning that's up for an increased revenue. You can get grants to assets to rescue can't necessarily as easily as fire departments because at the federal level, they're not designated what the terminology is. But there are things like that in terms of opening up opportunities for granting. Are we looking at, so I think that was called like a neighborhood or something like that. There was a couple of designations that would also help us in terms of bringing grants. So I don't know if you guys are looking at that in terms of strategic planning as well. I'm sorry, I'm sure there's many other things but those are some things on the top of my head. If anyone has a pen in their hand if you wanna just write, jot down accd.vermont.gov I've been studying Danville, Vermont. How they really encompassed public outreach and public surveys before they had a meeting like this and they assessed community needs. Two of which are physical connections and marketing and wayfinding I'm just throwing out to and that there are speaking of grants like Lorraine is the Governor Scott said they're given $5 million in grants for outdoor recreation. The reason people in Essex town moved here including Sam and I are who are big runners is the parks and recreation which is why for six years I've pushed Saxon Hill to become a park. So I encourage everybody on the select board to please look at that accd.vermont.gov look under Danville, Vermont and you will see not only like Wilson who cares about pedestrians and wayfinding but this is a small town like us and you need to if you want economic development and economic vitality at the Essex experience you will encourage recreation director who will deal with alternative transportation passive recreation because they go to Essex experience and spend lots of money. And if we miss that boat and we don't talk about it and we keep pushing that can down the road you lost one member of Saxon Hill. I no longer go because I stopped fighting after six years of trying to get it to become like Mills River Park in Jericho which I don't think is asking for much. Thank you. My hand's raised and I know that time is tight so I'm planning to bring the meeting back to select board members. Do you want to say or respond to select board members? I just want to comment about the Essex rescue and the grants there because I don't have a lot of looking into that and there is, I don't know, I can't tell you the immediate numbers or the promised numbers but for the amount of money that we're spending it's a no brainer to, even if we had to create our own rescue system that the long-term savings and asset to the town is unlawable. So, let's start Tracy, go ahead. It doesn't relate. It doesn't relate. To Ethan's comment. That's okay. Okay. Understanding that there have been audio and technological issues. A lot of the comments were around items that we have brought up and we have discussed. I'm just wondering if our audio wasn't coming through clearly. So, I just want to make sure that will there be a work product from this meeting that we can share publicly? So, just like last time, you will have a PDF of the time. The sort of an approximate, I wouldn't call it a promise but like a drafting timeline document. Yes, it's a short answer. I think to, people use strategic planning in all kinds of different ways. And a lot of what is really reflected in a lot of these public comments and I think reflected in your comments too is the complexity of all those different negotiations that happen as part of strategic planning which will happen, it's iterative. You are a strategic planning body for the town. And so, high level, yeah, a lot of these items have been put on in terms of decision making and there's budgeting questions that are coming up. Those all have their place and part of what you're trying to do is the roadmap of when those conversations are gonna get picked up. And flag for yourself if there are conversations that when you look at the whole mix, realistically speaking, you won't have time to pick up. So that's what today was all about. And that's where I'd like to focus your time for the next 15 minutes or so that you're here is at that very, very high level. So as tempting as it is to dig into some of the details, each time that you do that, we won't actually have a container to resolve it here unless it contributes to the prioritizing. Is that where you want us to end your time? I wanted to add one more comment about the public comment. Can I do that? Oh, yes. One thing that we didn't talk about is downtown designations. It never, it didn't come up and I don't want to have a discussion about it. I just want to make sure that we do mention it and that I imagine staff has fingers into that as to what we can take advantage of but I don't want to acknowledge that that was one thing that I heard that we had mentioned at all. And I guess it comes in, I don't know if that comes in economic development whether it comes under where it could fall, but. Come Dev and community development including economic development are looking into it. Oh, right. Yeah, okay. No, under the economic development item just that this includes downtown designations or is it? Wouldn't hurt. Because I think the only way that that can work is if you think that that's the whole picture I can't put in a little box. Yeah. Okay. We've tried a couple times. We've tried many times, but I think knowing the great humility that there's so much to explore in all of these pieces. Kendall, did you have anything you wanted to say around here? Looks like you're going to go ahead. I was just going to add I think the public comment is very good and to quote somebody that I respect highly, you can't know. So when you have somebody like a relay speak up and make all of those, we need that information. The conduit where it goes through the board, the manager, sometimes what you know is what everybody else does helpful but realize to think about that. The public comment is this, it's a whole medley of different ideas and resources and a whole bunch in there. And I think one of the things that's a little loose in this process is each of those more involved conversations like around the budget for EMS planning are all embedded in larger conversations that you'll pick up and those ideas will need to find a way back into the mix. But this process doesn't really provide a great container for taking those details and bringing them in. And that's the tricky part of this conversation is to keep it really is about the roadmap of when those topics get picked up. So. I might also comment that the airliner may be flying low over the end of crash. It really appreciated that comment. It does feel like it's been seatbelt on for a little while and then the technical piece through us all for a little bit of a loop. It probably drained a little bit of fuel, cognitive fuel too, trying to figure out how to get us back online. But we're here now and have 10 more minutes to go or so. Do you wanna try to wrap this up by 12.30? Do you wanna take 20 minutes? What do you want to, do you just leave here with the best that you can do or is there end goal? I think we kind of need to see the overall plan as to where we go from here. I mean, it's been a lot of discussion and a lot of moving pieces around, but. Yeah. So I have two visuals I can show you. There's the visual you've been probably kind of bored at looking at that timeline. But then when technology was a little off, you also raised some questions of things that weren't on that list yet. And so, did you wanna see that list first, maybe? I'm just saying, we need, the whole purpose of strategizing is at the end, you need to figure where your team's going. Yep, that's true. Are we gonna gift these? Yes. So downtown designation's just got put onto a little tab under the economic development. So I'm not striking up cause it's not important only because it's already represented. Municipal office to include public works, et cetera. That's under, I think, building assessment. It's under building time. Planning for future of emergency services. What does it look like, how to support it? Which is a slightly different thing than assessing building needs. And isn't on your map yet, I don't think. By your capital plan, is that already existing somewhere? No? Oh, we had capital on the map, but I could be wrong. I thought there was a box for capital. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna see, but you might be right. It was a capital plan, I don't know. It's a little strange, but I don't see it here, actually. Could have been, I don't know if it was assumed as part of the budgeting or... Is it assumed as part of the budgeting? Because if not, I'm gonna add a note. Well, I think it's fine probably to put it in with the budgeting, but I think it's very specifically a five-year plan, because that's what we need to look at to see if we're on track to meet our needs in the future. So, it's also required by our charter. Does that every year have a new five-year plan? Yep. Hopefully. Just kind of roll it, though. You just look at the next year, or if anything slipped out or... All of your asses. But I was just curious, because I didn't know. I knew it was five-year, but I didn't know if it was like, you set up for five years and then you forget. Right. Hopefully you're like, update, right, like. We're gonna come back to planning for future emergency services. Access, equity of services, access. Assess equity of services for residents. Kendall, this I think was some, came out of one of your comments. Is that how we're represented in the map somewhere, or is this part of other work or is something new? No, that's representative. It's represented in the map already. It's represented here. Is it made it to the timeline somewhere? Not really, but part of budgeting? How do you, when do you think about this activity? Yeah, part of budgeting, I would say. Not we spell. Subsidization. D-I-Z-I-N-G. Detach it to budgeting for now. You also have develop policy. I think it was police commission. I was supposed to be a police commission. I don't know what you got. I was just gonna say that. I don't either, but I think that there is a lot of things going on and there are some, this is the absolutist. So develop police commission is what you have. And I don't know, crew, I'm gonna leave. There's so many things we have to come back to. Evaluate Essex election structures, development on environmental, on environment safety and services, climate change, river access to trails. I think that goes in trails. That's the easiest one, right? Take one off the list. I mean, it's an option of putting it in the trails to see where it fits in. Yeah, cause the trails has the, God, I can't think of what the word word is, but it says on it, promotion and. Expansion. Expansion, so it's perfect right there. Right behind there we can do parentheses, river access. I'm adding it as a post-it to that that says to consider river access to trails under the trails item. So you have a couple other items here. I'm wondering how you want to see them represented. When do you pick them up? And are you at one mind about them? But one mind, I mean, do you have them the same priority? Cool. For me, like with the police commission, I mean, we not only know that, but we know that we have a couple of commissioners who sort of need to reboot to get them moving along. But we also know that cannabis is coming. We need to decide what kind of a commission or program we're gonna have with that. So it's sort of a combination of all of them that need to be either started because we need them for our new town or some old ones that just need to be rebooted. Are you sure you have handy? I'm just saying, I thought we had kind of have that, that's the item we talked about about revamping. Re-revamping committees, but it also includes. I need to make sure all these others are on that. Yeah, yeah, and that's why I wanted to, that's why I requested that we have the charter one in there. There's others like, yeah, the police commission is one that absolutely people have asked for. Yeah, so it becomes part of, well, it's not part of the charter review. It's just another example of a committee that the public has asked for. No, would it be a commission or? And that's a discussion we'd have to have. There's statutory implications too, and I know that's part of what, as expressed as working on them. So there is some movement, but to keep it going. But it should go in the revamp, like maybe just put that in the revamping. I'll just use the word committee for now. Is it board and committee revamp? Yeah, that's fine, because it is. And part of what you're asking me to add is investigate. Well, they already are. So you could just put police commission committee, that's fine. And then I think there is investigation on going into that, hopefully to be finished, probably a long process with this. I'm looking at four items, as or if you are not represented on your map. And I'm just wondering how you think about them. This is a really, it's a messy question, but it's as honest as I can be. You've got climate change, development on environments, safety and services, evaluate Essex election structures, and planning for future of emergency services. The elections can go right in with town meeting plan. Right. Can it? That's where it'll be decided. Will it? I am asking a question. No? Can I go to your state monitor here at Lexington? Well, I'm not sure that, I'm not sure the context of what he's asking for though, because it seemed like Marguerite and you have had some discussions on that, so you understand what the context is. Well, I brought it up to Greg and Marguerite when I first got elected, but one of my main goals this year when I first got elected was the fact that I bought $12,000 with 800. And I think that our election process is inequitable and not everybody has $12,000 running an election. We set a capital for $3,000. I don't want to get into a deep discussion about what the possibilities are, but yeah. That was my thinking. We typically don't allow people to talk at town meeting about their campaign. Other municipalities do. That's I think the question he's getting at, is how do you try to, is there a way to level the playing field when you've got that kind of situation? And he's talking about equity, access to, you know. I was just thinking about like putting it in in that conversation, just because you're gonna be thinking of town meeting and then elections held on town meeting, not that it's part of town meeting, but we had other stuff on there, like the ballot items and mailing ballots and stuff like that. So that election process is part of our town meeting plan. But the idea wasn't about specifically having people speak at town meeting. I didn't even think that I might want my answer. I just said, sorry, I forgot as an example. Yeah, I was just saying, let's have a monies cap and give us all a spot on the Essex website to say here. If anything is state, we don't, I don't think it's like what we can say, we can always spend $3,000 on a campaign. I don't think, yeah, that's it. That can't be a charter, that can't be a charter. I'm gonna, I don't know. Very good. I don't know. I don't know the charter. Get any details. Let it go. You can just sort of put it attached to something that's already up here, but I think what you're really trying to figure out. Just throw it on a stick, you know, that's fine. I won't let it go until March, so that's fine. Do we have equity? No, it'll be up there eventually. It'll be up there already. You do have some equity work and I, but I don't know how specific it was really into that. You can tell me. I think it was just the equity board that downs on us, but I don't think that it's directly connected to, I think that's more racial equity than financial. You know, I don't think we have equity on this piece. I mean, it's showing up in different places. Oh, we have the declaration of inclusion. Inclusion, inclusion. That's a specific, right? I mean, it's kind of like, I don't wanna get in the weeds here, but it's, you know, I mean, relating to inclusion week, it's how do we level that playing field so that someone who doesn't have for $500 to start up a campaign to the point where they can get contributions, how do we enable them to be included in municipal governance? Getting on my soapbox, this isn't, you shouldn't be represented only by the people who can afford to front the money to fund their own campaigns to get started. So it's sort of wrapped into that inclusion work as a starting point to move forward. And you don't have to convince me of it as long as when you look at this note right here it says declaration of inclusion. Is that enough to, you probably can't see that? Yeah, nope, that's good. The questions that you just asked, I think it's, I think even this represents it well, how the level of playing field for candidates from municipal elections. And I think addresses Don, you're concerned that you're trying to say which is not necessarily about voting and decision making procedures. We probably need a bunch pretty soon. So I just normalize a bit that, and diminishing returns sometimes and longer you try to get this out. You have three more things that just aren't represented and I'm just trying to figure out to what extent you want to see them here and try to pick them up. It amplifies the issue of climate change, development on environmental, environment, safety and services and planning for future remuneration services. That's a budget planning process for the emergency services, whether it's the current ones we currently have or additional is going to be brought up in that discussion. Can I get a second? Can you second that? Emergency services and budgeting and planning? Yeah. Sure, why not? Right, it's going to be brought up in there for our current services or for new services if it rises. So that's a great conversation. So you have tied together here, identified building facilities and budget planning and process. They're sort of side by side. I can always add another line if what you're looking at is just a bigger project of planning for the future of emergency services, what they look like, how to support it. To what extent you can show me on, if you want like five, three or one, do you advocate putting as a separate priority piece that you really tend attention to outside of just your budget conversations and facility review? I lost you on the numbers yet. So far. Five green, three middle, one low. For no extra thing. One is we don't need to add it. We're just going to wrap it up into these other pieces. Five is it needs its own thing. It's really important it's going to be a big bunch of work. Greg. I think it's a separate thing that needs a whole bunch of work that ties into everything else. Whether or not you want to put that on the work list now or not is up to you. I do think there's a lot of questions and I've heard a lot of conversation about it, but I think it's a separate item that has a lot of overlap. And from a planning perspective, if we wait until budgeting conversations, it's too late. We're already tied to status quo. So it really needs to be front-loaded so that we can develop that vision so when we get to the budgeting conversations, there are options. Can I make a recommendation? Do you try to front-load it for this year or do you try to front-load it for the next year? I think the process has to be started not to make action, but where I was going to go was the fire station, right? So that's all in our capital plan, but it's not like we're planning on building it this spring or this summer now or coming in the summer. So if we just lump this together, I think it'd be best that the two things that we're discussing here, future Ministry of Emergency Services, the police station's contract would be 10 years. So we could say fire and rescue because it covers fire in the capital plan that covers the idea of rescue of the question mark of where do we go with our rescue? That's really the two services that are needed right now unless there's something else that's a little bit less. So I think Ethan is making a plectin' to wrap it up into these other things. Greg, you were trying to make cases, a separate piece of work because it's a pretty big piece of work? Well, I'd add another box in between fire and rescue. Whether I add it, yeah. Or not, I mean make it its own thing or not its own thing. That is exactly what I'm asking. And then I'm asking, do you make it your own thing and actually make it, it means taking on a bunch of work and focus. Is it for this year or is it in the six to 12 months that you get ahead of it before your next budgeting process? I think we've talked about that, yeah. I'm asking you again. We're building a fire station this year, Greg. So I say make it a separate item but push it out because it's huge. And we've got plenty of stuff we're doing. We need to understand our entire capital plan. That old five year plan I was talking about. Can we afford it? Can we bond it and have a community center? But maybe not this year. I like your thinking. But it's good to have it up there also, I agree. And somebody mentioned at some point that these priorities may shift. I think that is one that may shift. It seems to be a topic. I'll just be up front. I've already started having conversations about emergency services and we'll continue them. And if something that jumps to the head of the line I'll make you aware. But it is something that's on my radar and that I'm probably gonna continue having conversations. Some of them might come up at the budget process. Some of them might be able to wait until next year. Some of them may come up sooner. I don't know. It's because there's just so much wrapped into it. But yeah, it is on my radar and it's up there. Climate change one is, right, that's part of community development or zoning or how's that word that? I think that can be any, again, such a broad topic. It's are you talking about upgrading energy efficiency in our buildings and it falls under public works in our buildings? Are you talking about policy and development patterns for the town that's Comdev? Is it vehicles and upgrades and replacement schedules in which case it's every department? I think it just, it's, again, it says another thing that's on our radar. Other departments are thinking about it as they make purchasing plans, as they look at their budgets. I think it's, we're working on it steadily. If there's something specific you wanna draw out or focus on. I was gonna say, I think we don't have a standalone item for equity inclusion because it sort of reaches down into everything. I see climate change as one of those items. I don't think it needs to be specifically on there, but just as long as I wanna do at least make mention of it as one of those sort of all-encompassing, we need to look through, look at everything through the lens of equity inclusion, through the lens of how does this impact or try to mitigate climate change. So I'm fine with not having a standing item for that one. It becomes a set of competencies or a rubric by which you filter through all your work. Right. Development on environment, safety and services. I guess without, Teresa, I think you mentioned impact fees beyond something specific, I think such as impact fees, which is on our radar too, I think that this type of thing falls under community development and the work they do as far as looking at if the town plan is gonna be coming up, that's gonna be a major work project for community development in the next year and a half. The zoning rigs they have, I do, we've talked a bit. We've had some staffing shortages, but I think impact fees around covering development to get back to public safety and emergency services, tying impact fees into that area. It's also in there under the charter committee. We put the RV in there too, so we follow in there. Yeah, so I think it's. Well, it does what it doesn't. It's just calling out the fact that the select board is ultimately the body who approves the town plan and the zoning rigs and understanding that, speaking for myself, I really want the planning commission to ramp up that process to in place regulations that have teeth as far as sound buffers and really mitigating the impacts of development that it has throughout our entire community. Does that, so it's kind of, you know, it's ultimately it's owned by the select board, but understanding that the planning commission will be doing, should be doing a lot of that heavy lifting and informing the select board. It's ultimately those changes come to us. I was just reminded of one of the things you were saying when you first walked into the room today, which was around unintended consequences. And it's part of that work, the way a brain is working on, with these decision that comes in for the select board, have you rigorously thought through the impacts on unintended consequences? You were about to say something, Greg? Yeah, couple, I guess a couple of thoughts is one, Jen, for you, I don't know if there's a way to just have the representation of, you know, justice equity inclusion across everything, climate change across everything, to sort of document that the select board is focused on these things and there's maybe not a specific task, but it should be overarching goals. As far as the planning commission and the select board interaction and what they're working on, maybe it's worth having a meeting with some of the planning commissioners in the near future, because that's one of those things where they have a full work plan as it is, and so to ask them to reshift their focus or point them a different direction, having an understanding between both bodies of what that means, what doesn't get done. Again, maybe it's just as you work on the town plan and everything else from planning, stems from the town plan to start to incorporate those things in. I do think it's a two-body conversation. And it all ties back to the boards and commissions and revamping and how we communicate and work together and yeah, so maybe you could just move that post-it to the boards and commissions, because I think that communication and identification of where we all want to go, really, that gets at it. Does that sound? Sorry, that's very verbose. I get it. Marin's being first. Trails conversation, it's something that we want, that's on our mind, but it's not something that we need to immediately, you know, it's just, but we're gonna lose all those good thoughts if we don't throw them on this page. Not that it's something we have to take action on tomorrow, but it's something for us to think about. I mean, that's why we're here to bounce ideas and make a plan. So Greg, you suggested that I, I mean, there is always a way to do anything individual, but I might not be quick enough to do it right now. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you want me to capture some of those things that you were passing, as you make decisions that you're always aware of, or do you have a document like that arranged, like equity? It's something we've been working on, but there's not a... Is there anything you want me to capture here so you've got it? Because you could give me words now and I can write them down. I mean, my thought is something like making sure that staff and select boards and committees are mindful of climate change and justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, and this decision-making and actions. It's so funny, that's actually a statement that takes a lot of time to actually write, doesn't it? Yep. Yeah. Oh, there are cats. So I said, there's a visual of just like a... Over the top. Yeah. There's one thing I'm going to resist from doing that, because it's another piece of work that does require your careful consideration and sort of flixmithing about what you choose and what you don't. So before I go to set you up for that, let's just... I'm going to stop the share for a minute. It is definitely time to go, but I do want you to take a chance to close this meeting because I'm upset, and just check in with each other about where it's left you. So what gets produced from the written notes is a visual. We did not rigorously double-check to see if it reflects your collective wishes about where you set priorities. What's your sense that it generally captures collective priorities? Could you actually show me on cards? Or Kendall, you can use your hand five being green, three being yellow, one being red. What's your sense that that page represents a similar page that you're on? So Kendall, you put up a hand. Does that mean there's three green in the room, one yellow in the room? Let's say green. Green, okay. So that's actually what that tells you. There's no major reservations against that particular timeline. It makes some expectations explicit. As a facility, I always wonder, did people learn anything in that particular experience or was it rehashing what you already knew? Hopefully there's some utility to that document. I recall a similar feeling walking out of last year's meeting and seeing just a jumble of post-its, but then now seeing how much progress you made and awful lot of progress in the past year, so much has happened. The living document, it's a work in progress as always and you continue to refine it, your work is iterative and you continue to amplify the things you care about throughout every meeting, not just this one. And again, strategic planning is a long process of which this is just one little piece. It was like creating some of the table of contents. So to everyone, I'm gonna turn this meeting, I think back over to you, Andy, for any closing comments you might want to make. I don't know if you want to invite closing comments to more select board members, but very briefly. All right, thank you, Jen. Anybody want to add any comments, Tracy? I just want to thank Jen, Greg, Marguerite and the members of the public who have stuck with us throughout the morning, who have been on the airplane ride. Oh, second, her first, her thank you and I'm just glad you didn't compare us to Frontier, so. Better chance. Don, any comments? Kendall, you got anything to add? Thanks to everybody. It's always eye-opening and learning experience. That's what it's about. All right, thanks, Kendall. I guess a couple of things I want to say. One is when we get the work product from Jen, please review it and if there's anything that stands out that seems wrong. As Jen said, it's a living document. We can modify it if it's appropriate. I'd also ask staff to look at it too and make sure that we're not overloading you Our expectations aren't too high for what is on there. We did not go through and rigorously that where everything's placed and I understand that we may have just asked for an awful lot. I really do, I have said this before, I think you have the right to say no to some things that you can't do it and then it would be up to us then to decide which, you know, where to juggle things and you can certainly have input to convince us one way or the other. And there was another thing but I lost it but so I guess I'm going to end it there. I think so. I make the motion, close the strategic hearing. Thank you, Don, do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Ethan. Just, is it different than a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn is not debatable? No, I think it is. All right, all those in favor? Please say aye. Aye. Thank you. Opposed? Okay, thank you, we're adjourned. Thank you everyone.