 Okay, then I will call the May 21st, 2018 Select Board meeting to order and invite you to rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I'd like to welcome everyone to tonight's Select Board meeting and just remind you if you have a cell phone, if you could put it at least to silent or buzz, that would be greatly appreciated. And if you haven't done so already, please be sure to sign in so that we have that for the record. Okay, so we're going to go to agenda additions and changes. Great. Three sets of minutes correction from Ms. Renner, March 13th, May 7th, and May 14th. Okay, that's for business item 5C. Okay, is there anything else? That's it. Okay. I would entertain a motion on the board to approve the agenda additions. So moved, Mr. Chairman. Mike, do I have a second? Second. Can I read? Second. About adding Irene's minute additions for business item 5C. Hearing none, all those in favor, signifier saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, I'm going to move on to item 4, which is public to be heard. This is a time for the public to speak to the Select Board on items that are not on the agenda tonight. So is there anyone here tonight wishing to speak to the public to be heard? I'll recognize Barbara, if you could just say full name for the record. I'd like to speak to you about consolidation or merger, whichever you choose to consider it. I've been thinking about this for some time now, having attended the March joint meeting on Saturday meeting and the April 23rd meeting and trying to keep up with your meetings even though I wasn't here. Sometimes I do well and other times I don't. My concern is it appears to me that the row that you are heading down is going to take another 7 to 10 years to even decide whether we're going to be merged or not. And I think you are losing the population. You are losing the enthusiasm of the population. I think the discussions are becoming much more divisive because we're getting hung up on things that are important but are difficult. I think that this body and the trustees need to decide very soon whether merger is what we want to do or not, if it is, if the two boards believe that's the case, you need to pull through an advisory vote, your communities, to find out if the communities are on board. If they're on board, I think the major issue is a tax stabilization plan for the people who live outside the village because that's the hang up. There are other hang ups but that's the big hang up. That's, I believe, it's my opinion that that's really why the vote the last time did not stand. I think that if there was a tax stabilization plan, it would have gone through. Yes, there are people who wouldn't have liked it no matter what. There would have been people that weren't happy with a name but overall I think it was the budget question. I think government by MOUs is a terrible way to govern. It's an awful way to govern. It's not a good thing to do. I believe we are wasting the resources of this community, the human resources, our citizenry in terms of its participation or lack of participation on boards or willingness to serve on boards in this divided community. We're also wasting the time of staff. We are trying to move towards integration after the fact instead of before the fact instead of after the fact. When companies merge, they make the decision to merge and then they integrate their services to have common policies and procedures. I think if we continue on this track of just picking slowly this department, that department, this policy, that policy, it's very opaque. People don't know what's going on. All we're doing so far pretty much is integrating budgets. We have staff here that are paid on one side but they really work on both sides. It's not a good way to go. So I ask you to make the hard decision and get this done and it probably can be done in 18 months or less. Get this community to decide this is where we want to go. You can pick up the last charter. Once that decision is made, make some changes to that through a subcommittee or whatever. Make us one community, now. Not in seven years, not in ten years. Thank you. Thank you for your comments, Robert. Anyone else wishing to speak? Great. I'm Roger. I'm the same topic. When I was at last week's meeting, and I just want to reiterate that I am behind creating, okay, speak louder. I am behind creating one municipality and I'm glad that you're down that road. And I'm really pleased that a lot of departments have been merged together so far, but it's become clear to me that those are kind of the easy bits and the hard bits are left. And I was part of a group of people that brought the last merger up to a revote because it wasn't fair for the town. And that's what has to happen this time. And as I mentioned last week and what we were also discussed at that meeting was to create five people from the village and five people from outside the village on a board to create this final consolidation stuff so that there's equal representation because it really wasn't however long ago that it was. And there was a lot of talk about charter changing. So my experience with the legislature is that they don't really want to get involved with local stuff. Whatever we bring to them, they'll probably anoint and say, this is the way we should go. So we have a chance to change the charter to move forward to create the consolidation. That's fair for everybody, whether it's a tax basis or who's in charge of what. It's long overdue. We're one of the, if only, community that's structured, the way we're structured. And that's divisive. And I'd really like to see it end. And you have that option to do it. Thank you. Thank you, Rich. Thanks for your comments. Anyone else wishing to speak here in public to be heard on items not on the agenda? Yes. Hi, Mark with Smith. I actually have three things very quick. The first is that I want to compliment Max because every time I hear him give his speech about when a liquor license comes up for review and he says we take this very seriously and you look them right, you look them right in the eye. And I'm just always impressed with that speech. So thank you for that. The second thing is I just want to remind people and there should be more noise about this that it is lime season, it is tick season. And, you know, I would love to see a big banner somewhere tick awareness. I just got my second tick bite of the year in my yard. So they're out there. And the third thing is that on the same topic as previously I would really like to see a board with five people from the village and five people from the town outside the village. I know the village people feel like they're part of the town but as a long time town resident I've never felt part of the village. We've never had anything to say for the village governance. And, you know, so it hasn't ever been a two-way street and just to think about that. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. I appreciate it. Okay, anyone else tonight? We're probably to be heard. Okay. Again, thank you all for being here and sharing your comments. Okay, we're going to move on to our business items. And 5A is where we have some reappointments to boards, committees, and commissions. First one is for Chittenden Solid Waste District Alternate. And I've served as that position on that position for many years. Allen Nye is the primary and anytime Allen doesn't, isn't able to attend the meetings then the alternate kicks in. So I guess since I'm up, I guess I should probably recuse myself at this point and pass it over to Mike, right? You could. Okay. We'll do that. And just let me know when you're done. I will entertain motions for the position of alternate to the Chittenden Solid Waste District. I'll move that the board appoint Max Levy as alternate to Chittenden Solid Waste District. Is there anybody else's name to be placed in nomination? Okay. Then I will call the question. All those in favor of appointing Max to another two-year term as the alternate to the Chittenden Solid Waste District, please respond by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes 4-0. You don't want to jam all the rest in while you're doing it. It's tempting, Evan, but no, that would be untoward. Okay. We're going to move on to the next one, which is the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission Planning Advisory Committee Rep. And we've had Dana Hanley covering that for a number of years, and she's up for reappointment. So I don't know how to dispose of the last one, but do you want to talk about this? Do you want to talk about this in executive session, or are you comfortable reappointing Dana? What's the board's pleasure? I think we could have it in open session. Okay, then I would entertain a motion then. I move that we appoint Dana Hanley to the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission Advisory Committee Rep. Second. Thank you, Mike. And Elaine, any further discussion about appointing Dana Hanley to that committee? Okay, hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. That one passes 5-0. And then we're on to the CCRPC Planning Advisory Committee Alternate. So if Dana can't be there, then Darren would be the one. Darren's been doing that for how long? About a year. About a year? Is this something you'd like to discuss in executive session, or you want to do it in open? Open is fine for everybody? Okay. Then I would entertain a motion for that as well. Anybody? I move that the select board appoint Darren Shibbler to the CCRPC Planning Advisory Committee Alternate. Thank you. Andie, thank you. Irene, for the second. Okay, any further discussion about appointing Darren Shibbler to the CCRPC Planning Advisory Committee Alternate? Okay. Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Most passes 5-0. We're done with business item 5A. Thank you. All right. We're going to move on to the next item, business item, which is reducing the length of select board minutes. Greg, you know, was it one or two meetings ago? We had a discussion about minutes, and everyone agreed. That's a topic we ought to be bringing back because they are getting kind of long. So thank you for getting that on the agenda tonight. Sure. How would you like to kick this off? I can just do a quick rundown. Max just introduced it in terms of why it's before you tonight, but took a look at statute. I mean, it's recently for the select board averaging in the past year. It's been about seven pages. That's actually down from about a year to go. We're regularly up 15, 20, occasionally over 30 pages. So they're coming down. But as we've seen, it still takes up a fair amount of time of discussion at the meetings. It takes up a fair amount of time to write stuff up in terms of going well above and beyond what is required by statute. That's in the memo that Evan and I gave to you. But statute requires that the minutes cover all topics and motions that arise at the meeting and give a true indication of the business of the meeting. The minutes also need to include everybody who is present on the select board and in the audience. All active participants in the meeting and all motions, proposals and resolutions that are made, offered or considered, what disposition is made of the same and the results of many votes. That's the bare minimum. So it doesn't have to have a summary of what was discussed, just what the motion was and what the vote was. Correct. Correct. So that's the bare minimum. Staff's opinion is that it's worthwhile to have a paragraph or two summarizing each topic of discussion, but to even further reduce what you've typically been getting as a plate. I think it'll shorten the length of the minutes, shorten the amount of time spent on them from staff and from the select board level. For redundancy, there is Channel 17 is here. We do the audio recording, which can be made available if people want to hear the further discussion or in-depth discussion that sometimes happens. As an alternative, the select board could hire a court stenographer to take minutes. That'd be verbatim, just be a transcript. We have not looked into the cost of doing that. It's been brought up before. It didn't seem to be of much interest, but I'll put that out there again as going back towards the longer minutes. I included some comparables from neighboring towns, Colchester, Essex, Junction, Shelburne, South Burlington, Williston. Just so you can see what other towns nearby are doing, how they handle their minutes. They tend to be a little bit shorter. Basically, we'll turn it over to you again. Our recommendation is to keep shortening them, keep a paragraph or two of synopsis of each agenda item, but basically get closer to the statutory minimum. Thank you. Greg, who would like to start the discussion? I see Irene's hand pop up. Irene? I went back to the tape of May 7th, and what I noticed was Evan suggesting that verbatim minutes and minutes that mentioned the intent of the speaker were things that were not discussed in statute, were not allowed by statute, were not required by statute. I, for one, was blindsided by a conversation about shortening minutes when I thought we were going to talk about the content of the minutes. I think it's really important that the minutes themselves, the quality of them, no matter how long the minutes are pages-wise, that what is on the page captures what was said in a way that's fair to everyone involved and in a way that clues in the reader about what actually has been talked about. You'll see in one of the sets of minutes tonight that a petition is referenced that I brought forth to the select board, but it's not summarized at all what the petition is about. And I think that's doing the service to the people who turn to those minutes to see that a petition was presented but nowhere in the minutes in that one line that talks about them does it actually say what the petition says. There are other corrections that I made to minutes for this evening that have to do with the fact that I laid out a proposal for a 10-member select board with five members from the town outside the village and five members from the town inside the village. And once again, it was summarized down to almost nothing. You would have no idea how extensive the plan was and how many conditions that proposal actually meets. And yet, if you look at a trustee proposal for a reduced council of seven seats, he got nine lines of minutes describing his proposal. So I think there needs to be parity among the different types of minutes, among the different players at the table, but also just something that double checks to make sure that the minutes themselves are sensible, sensical to people who might be reading them from outside. Because if someone picks up the minutes and can't figure out what we're talking about, from just that one set of minutes, if it doesn't stand alone, I think we have a bigger problem than whether it's one more page long or two more pages long. And finally, I would say I'm sorry that we compared only minutes of certain towns and not others because I looked at the Jericho minutes and the Jericho minutes use wider page frames. That is smaller margins than we do. And they only have five members on their select board, but they seem to have a comparable number of pages and they're extremely well done. So I think, again, it doesn't necessarily matter length of pages, but the actual content itself. And I think that's what we should be striving for, is quality, not quantity on the high side or quantity on the low side. Thank you, Irene. Anybody want to comment further? Ellie. I'm in favor of more succinctness for our minutes and capturing the spirit of the conversation, but not in a verbatim way. I feel like the minutes are the most commonly turned to resource to find out what went on in the meeting. However, we also have video provided by Channel 17 that's easily accessible. And we also have an audio recording that's kept here at the town offices. So to me, it feels like if a person is interested in finding out more about the topics that were discussed, they have ample opportunity to access that information. And I'm confused about the comment about quantity versus quality, because you say, Irene, you said it wasn't about quantity and yet you're saying, well, he got nine lines and I only got one. And so comments like that sort of invalidate the other argument you're making. And the other thing I'd like to say is that in my short, very short experience on this board, but having read Town Select Board Minutes very often, a lot, not all, but a lot of the edits to the Select Board Minutes are clarifications of your arguments. I don't ever see edits very often of you clarifying Andy's arguments or Max's or Mike's. It's just so that we all know what you think. And it's important what you think, but not to the extent that we're ignoring what everyone else thinks. And I know that you're looking for clarity on all of the different things, but minutes should be not a transcript, but a succinct summary. And also, regarding the attachment of things like the petition to the minutes, in most cases, I'm not sure how we do this here when we post the minutes online after they've been approved, but something as formal as a petition is usually made a formal part of the minutes after the fact. So therefore, if the petition is not described to the letter in the minutes, it's attached. Okay, so that's something we could do. However, the materials for every meeting are on the website. People who want to look at the minutes for a meeting can also open the packet and see the petition. So I don't feel like there's any misinformation or missing information that isn't represented in the minutes and then can't be found anyplace else. I don't want our minutes to become soapboxes. They shouldn't be soapboxes. They should just be a succinct representation of the basics of the argument. And if people wish to find out more, they can go online to channel 17, which the taxpayers pay for to get coverage. They can ask for the full audio here at the town office. And I would be in favor of much more succinct minutes. I think the examples provided in the packet were ample and of good quality. Okay. Thanks, Elaine. Andy. I guess one thing that Elaine touched on one thing that I was going to say is that the petition itself was certainly in the select board packet. It's also available online. The other thing I was going to suggest, though, is we have this reading file now, which is this week 10 items long, including a memo that I wrote to clarify some information that I wanted to make sure folks saw. And I think that maybe certainly could be a way to provide a detailed proposal that nobody's... I mean, we don't go through and edit these, right? You can put whatever you want in the reading file, and then it would be available for anybody to reference. And certainly, I suppose we could, in relevant cases, comment on that so that it becomes part of the minutes that my position is documented in reading file on this date, you know, 7B or whatever, whatever the... So there could be an opportunity to each of us, ourselves, post whatever we want into the select board packet and have that information available and does not need to be part of the minutes to have the explicitness of your position. So am I hearing that you're in support of making them more succinct compared to where they are today? Yeah, from the standpoint, right. I'm fine with the direction we're going. In fact, as you know, I thought we had this conversation quite a while ago and we have certainly shortened the minutes from previously from previous, but given the concerns expressed about losing the details of an individual select board's position, I think we're all able and it's allowed to write up your memo that states your position and asks to have it included in the reading file and then you could certainly, during the meeting, I think we've added this thing that says board member comments at the top of the reading file, which I'm going to ask about later what that means, but I think during that time you could say, and if you want to see here my complete position on blah, blah, blah, here it is in section, you know, so that it is mentioned in the minutes that you referenced, there could be referenced, you know, if we put that part in, right. So it'll be in the agenda. It would be part of the select board packet and it could potentially be referenced during the minutes if more detail, if there's a feeling that an individual select board member wants to provide more detail about their position. So I am in favor of the direction we're going with the minutes. And I, to respond a little bit to what Elaine said, I don't expect Irene to edit my comments. I look at every, you know, when I look in the minutes, I look at every place where I'm referenced or any comment that I've made was referenced and if I think I was misrepresented, I do make corrections. So I don't expect others to edit my comments for me. Thank you, Eddie. Mike. I would agree with a couple of points. Number one, I certainly don't need somebody to edit my comments. I read the minutes. If I'm misquoted or my point is not made the way I would like to make it, then I certainly am fully capable of making those changes. Second, I think the minutes have gotten a bit soap boxy to coin someone else's phrase. I think that a synopsis of the subject is perfectly adequate given the backup that we've got here. And then third, it just seems that we spend an awful lot of time on grammatical errors and that type of thing. I think that's a waste of our time, quite frankly. I like Andy's idea of putting them in the reading file. I think that's where they can be reviewed there. And if anybody feels like their point is not being made, then a memo to that reading file would serve that purpose. I like the direction we're going in. I'd say shorter is better. I don't think anybody can accuse us of not following statute as far as recording minutes are concerned. Go beyond what statute requires. Exactly. I think we far exceed that. So I like the direction we're going in. I think shorter is better. I'm concerned about your comment about grammatical errors, Mike, because we've been told a long time ago to hand those to the secretary and to make sure that she has those and that we don't go over things like that. I'm not sure where that's happening, because I thought we dealt with that years ago. But maybe Sam feels different. Just to clarify, the policy is that if you have grammar, punctuation, spelling, formatting issues that don't change the substantive part in any way of the minutes that they can just be hard copied to hand it to Sam. So I grabbed a handful of 2016 minutes, and as Greg referenced, they go anywhere from 15 to 35 pages or more, and Sam's been with us the whole time, so she's seen the whole range of minutes that she's had to tie from basically verbatim to summarizing things. And I am struck by the fact that back then, when we had more minutes to read ourselves, there were fewer corrections at this table in real time. So I think that's a trade-off that we're looking at. If we're going to have very succinct minutes and have someone make a decision as to what belongs in them or doesn't, according to their opinion, then I think the select board members should be expected to be contributing where they see that something might have been left out that they feel was important that they said. So I think there's an inverse relationship between length of minutes and amount of time we spend on them. Okay. Elaine. So I get what you're saying, and it's very incumbent on all of us if we go this route that we have to be very attentive to the minutes and make sure we're not missing any salient points. In a previous life, I was a board secretary to a state board, and the members would range from people who were very happy with a summary to people who wanted every single thing they said, identified that they said it, and very upset if they didn't. The minutes are not supposed to memorialize us. It's not about us. It's about the business of the board. And so as long as we can summarize the actions, the activities, and the salient points, technically we shouldn't even be in it. I mean, if one of us says something super important, great, and it's in there, but it's not about us. It's not about the point I'm trying to make or you're trying to make. So the more we edit the words that we said and all these different additions that you're adding in of all the things that you said, I mean, as long as we have the salient points, it doesn't matter who said them. Mike? The other point that I wanted to make and forgot a little bit earlier, in a couple of instances, less than a handful, but in a couple of instances, we have come, in my view, dangerously close to trying to rewrite history. And I think that is a dangerous road to go down. I used to get my hands slapped when I was on the Planning Commission and made changes like that because I thought I was clarifying a position that I had. I think we've come close to that on a couple of occasions. And I think that if we do the synopsis and we do a gathering of the salient facts of a particular subject, I think there is far less of a tendency to try to rewrite and posture history. Thank you, Mike. Irene? I agree with salient points, and that's all that I would ever add to minutes are salient points. But as I said earlier, recording secretaries are human. They may leave something out. They may have a distraction for whatever reason. They may not pick up a salient point. And when those things are lost and I see something in the minutes that to me is unparsable, if I were someone who wasn't there, I feel compunction to actually put a correction forth to my fellow board members because that salient point is being, in my opinion, lost to history. And I think it's very important that we don't lose history even as we're trying really hard not to rewrite history, and that's a fine line to walk. Anybody else want to comment on that? I agree with going to a more succinct summary that catches the important parts of the conversation. I'd like to take it one step further. I would like to propose we put it to consent agenda on our agendas. And if there really is something important that needs to be changed, then we can have a vote to take it out of consent agenda and have a full discussion. But that way it's succinct. We can keep moving. We can focus on the real business of that's before us. Just an idea. You just spoke something to go back to Elaine and then I'll come back to you. I would just say that that's the Board of Trustees practice. All the minutes are in the consent agenda. And if there's an error or something, we pull that out and we have a conversation about that. We vote on the rest of the consent agenda. We make the change. We vote on that. Very simple. Statute handles that. Whether there's a preference to vote on it or not. I believe it's silent. It is the Board's decision how they want to handle work items. So as far as I could tell from reading through the statute, it's only mentions what are to exactly be in minutes, not where or how they're dealt with. Great. Just one step further. My understanding of statute is it doesn't even speak to how you approve it. It's that the one thing it says that it has to be posted to a website if we have one within five days. And that's just the draft. So I don't believe there's any statutory languages to how they need to be approved. Okay. Is there any other, Andy? And I'll get to the audience before we go to a motion. We actually do have one set of minutes that we never approved that was the vote was against approval. So there's minutes from December last year. I forget which meaning it was. I think it was December that the Board voted no for approval. So there's two to three. There's a precedence for not approving them. There's very few sets of minutes that we don't make at least some small modification to. So I think adding the complexity is the right word of putting it into the consent agenda and pulling it out. I suspect we'll be doing that every time. So I'm not really in favor of putting it into the consent. Well, it doesn't mean people who requested to come out has to get approved to come out. It doesn't necessarily have to be approved to come out of consent. Nobody, if the majority doesn't want it to. But we don't have to. It was just an idea. Just pushing it a step further is all. I guess I'm not in favor of putting it in consent. Just take a step at a time. Right? Okay. Is there any other comments from the Board before we go to the public? Okay. Anyone like to comment? I think I saw Barb first. I have a question first. I want to start with the channel 17 tapes. How long are they available? Forever. Forever. On our website. Because I know they're available for them forever. But I know in the beginning when we talked about putting them on our website, because of the constrictors, there was a concern about how long we could keep them. I think if you, I'd like to know that I can look back and access things easily. Clearly if minutes become less robust and by that, I don't, I'm not looking for verbatim by any stretch of the imagination, but I will often go to them first to quickly get an idea of the discussion. And if I want more, then I go to the channel 17. And if it becomes so short and it's just emotion, not on an ordinary thing like a liquor license, or I know that can be contentious sometimes, but on an issue regarding merger consolidation or any other big thing, I would like to know what the differing views are. So it's helpful sometimes to have an idea before one then goes to have to listen to an hour of tape or what have you. So it sounds like your question was how long are the tapes available? Right. It sounds like from the professional here, Scott, that they're... I believe your website references our website. So you're getting to our... So I can always... So if I want to look back five years, I can look back five years. Okay, that's fine. That's all I wanted to know. Thank you, Barbara and Scott. And okay, we'll go to Patty. Yeah, I just wanted to say... Would you say your full name? Patty Davis. Thank you. I've been coming to a lot of meetings and I just want you to know, Andy, at first I didn't really like you, but I want you to know that you are really... I want to just commend you and congratulate you for being a team player. I feel like what Irene says, a lot of things that she says I agree with and I like the fact, you're not accusatory of anybody on the board. Neither is Irene and neither are you. And I think the three of you, I'm getting to really feel, especially at the last meeting, Andy, when you said, you know, I don't know if I've really been that great about listening to the Essex town issues and you were admitting all this stuff. I just want you to know that I like you now. I just really think that you guys, the more that you're a united front, the more you're going to be able to get things done and be more succinct and by not accusing each other. If you're not working as a united front, I'm sorry, I don't know your name. Patty, do you have a comment on minutes? But that's it. I'm saying that has to do with minutes. I think your minutes are going to be more succinct. So I just wanted to say that. Okay. All right. Thank you, Patty. I'm going to go to Rich and I'll come to you. Rich. Rich Mangiani. When I saw this on the agenda, I decided to stay and reflected that. I've been on three different professional boards for shockingly 20 years total. And I always found minutes to be a pain until they were necessary. And on all three boards, two of which I chaired part of the time, the minutes were a separate part. And I never thought there were a big deal until one time something came out where the executive director of the organization tried to slip a $55,000. And it only came out in the board in the minutes. But what I really wanted to ask was how much time do you, to Sam, do you take? And I see typing away frantically here. Is there a lot of time outside of this meeting that you spend on the minutes? And my only second point is you're heading into a pretty crucial area that has been contentious for a long, long time. And I would be concerned that shrinking the minutes somehow loses what's actually going on. And I wouldn't want to see all this work and all this effort end up in a no-vote at the polls again because there's misinformation. I mean, really, what is it taking in the end? I don't know how many hours Sam puts in, but I'm... Greg? We budget about 10 hours per meeting. The thing that varies a little bit depending on the day and the date, but that's basically how we build the budget and shares based on both that. Okay, and remember, everything... most everything, not all meetings, but vast majority are videoed. Yes? Hello, Mary. My concern is that not keeping complete minutes defeats the whole purpose of keeping a public record. I think it's crucial to have the minutes remain the way they are. Okay, thank you, Mary Lou. Yes? Thank you, Kirsten. I enjoy reading the minutes. I don't particularly like to watch TV and I don't like to listen to things on tape. I like the minutes. And I like to see how each select board member arrives at their vote. And when I go to the polls, it's important to me to know who thinks like I do. So to me, it is important in the immediate. And 50 years down the road with all the technology that changes, you can't guarantee that those audio and video recordings are still going to be compatible with the devices that you have. The written word is always going to be there. Hopefully, unless it burns. But... Thank you. Anybody else from the audience? Yes? Hi. Hi. Margaret Smith. I also want to agree that it's a lot quicker to read the minutes than it is to sit through a two-hour video. My computer skills are not fabulous and the times that I've gone looking for the Channel 17 videos, I've spent 20 minutes, 30 minutes, poking around the website trying to figure out where they were. So that's my issue. And I'm really concerned that if you're going to be putting instead of all the minutes putting in intent, that who gets to decide what the intent is. So just something to think about. Well, the recording secretary would be requested to summarize the salient parts of the discussion and then it would come back to the select board to review and approve or modify as we see fit. Okay. There's no other comments. I'm going to bring it back to the board and ask them if there's any other comments based on what you've heard. Irene? As far as the minutes being easier than a videotape, I noticed that, for example, in the middle of April when Dennis Lutz mentioned a scoping study, he included three full pages of minutes from a 2013 meeting that beautifully laid out the issue, the options and the conversation, the select board that had about our alternatives. And I think that there's nothing like having that history for us to refer back to. I notice he didn't give us a link to a video. He gave us the three pages of minutes. And to me, that's just it all. It's easy to search on those where the videos are not indexed by anything more than just the agenda items themselves. But if you go to the file of 2016 minutes and you know you want to find something about the rec district vote, you type in rec district, and all those pages come up from that entire file and it's really easy to search and find things throughout large swaths of minutes. And there's nothing to me that can compare that. Thank you, Irene. Can I make a sort of related, when you refer to looking back at a previous year's minutes. So in the town website, when you look up previous minutes and not the calendar year we're in, like if you look up 2017, you get a document that's like 350 pages long with no bookmarks and no way to know which meeting you're in. So you have to page and page and page. And if you don't know which search terms to use, you can't find what you're looking for. So I would just, since we're on the topic of minutes and the website came up, I would say that we might want to separate out those by meeting so that it's easier for people to click on the record and get the individual minutes. Because I was pretty shocked to find that that's not a best practice and it's very user unfriendly. I don't know how much effort that is or cost would make that. I will talk to AT about it. I think part of the reason they can buy them is for it to save space. I think I'll have to double check. Okay, double check on that. Okay, anybody else? Comment? Okay, what's the board's pleasure on this one? Before we make a motion or discuss anything, I'm sorry. Is there any direction in terms of will we say to Sam, for tonight's meeting, give us a succinct version and then we'll look at that and say, okay, this is what we meant, or we would say, no, we want a little more detail or this is still too much. How are we going to judge? I think if you want to go that route to be more succinct, it would be having the motion saying that we'd like to have a concise summary of the salient points of the discussion and let's see what we get back and then we can check and adjust based on that we can either say, it's still too much or could you boil it down or maybe add a little more. So I think you're okay with that, Sam? I think it's kind of a check and adjust. We'll see how we get there. If that's the direction we want to go. Do we then also need to have some sort of policy that limits how much we can add back to them? If that's what we're fighting against? I think it should be up to the board to decide the extent because take it on a case by case. I think that's, isn't that mostly what we're concerned about? Is that we get three pages of additions at the beginning of a meeting to consider? I mean it's not, sorry, I guess I'm going back to square one here. Are we concerned about the minutes that we are getting to review or are we concerned about the additions that are made to those minutes that we get for review? What is it we're trying to limit here? It's so that we don't spend forever doing minutes all the time and having lots and lots of corrections put in there that don't necessarily really add much. It does to the person adding it but to the others, maybe not so. So it seems like we're trying to get to a more concise version of minutes with the backup of the Channel 17 tapes to really see what the discussion was about and if you don't want that you have the audio file to go to. Irene. I'll just review it again with what I opened with which is that this discussion came about because Evan as I recall mentioned intent should not be in the minutes and if we wanted something more verbatim than what we had we should have a conversation. I would like to keep what we have which is a lot shorter than what we used to have but I'm not willing personally to go for shorter than that nor do I think we need verbatim. I think what we have is a happy medium but if they are not done well in six or seven pages you will see me burning in corrections. That's just where I'm at. Evan. I asked what the board's direction would be. Do you want verbatim? Do you want something like intent? Do you want some encapsulation of what the issue was just so that we could give our minute staker direction. I understand commas, apostrophes, grammar. If we had more time and stuff we probably would try to correct those ourselves and catch them etc but in the time crunch that we have I would tell you that we don't spend nearly the kind of time looking at minutes before they go back into the packet. The direction that I believe I'm hearing is I want to go back a more succinct summary when people say something of importance usually motions, positions, those should be in there. I believe it's better for things to be searchable for the archive. Irene you said content and quality is important. Yes but in a succinct fashion okay. Mike you said we sometimes go back and revise what seems to be history those types of things. The minute taker is the minute taker and we supervise the minute taker. So we're trying to balance what she is typing as I think the audience said she's typing feverishly by the way she does go back to the tape the audio tape to hear what was said and we are trying to distill it down to some distinctness because we also have other business to take care of. You mentioned Jericho uses wider margins. To me it's not the length of the minutes necessarily although lots and lots of pages are just a lot of you guys going back and forth of a discussion and really what the people want to know is what did you decide and how did you get to that decision? Not verbatim. Get the content correct. It's not a transcript. Get the basics of the argument. Maybe we can go as you've been very good about it sending your comments in edits in advance that's very helpful. That's just the punctuation. And really just a synopsis of the subject. And then we can work it, I think maybe as a suggestion, we take those comments have Sam do a couple of the next several minutes this meeting and the next and then comment on those is that what you're looking for? Do you want a little bit of this and a little bit more of that hone it in and then let her repeat it over and over in that style. That was the check and adjust I was suggesting. You said it a lot easier than I just did. Andy. This particular meeting is not going to be a very good example because it has a very short agenda to begin with. This piece right here would be a great example of how to distill it down if you don't mind me saying so, sir. I would agree with that. Okay. I would venture to guess that the three sets of minutes we're looking at today even on our agenda requires some checking and adjusting because to me they are somewhat different than the kinds of minutes we've seen in the past but maybe others don't agree. Okay. Andy. I just want to say I'm pretty happy with the way my words have been portrayed in these sets of minutes just to say that. That's a great job. Sometimes I ramble on and come out as a stream of consciousness and I recognize that I'm doing that and I think Sam does a great job of picking out my mind. If she gets it wrong I will correct her. In fact there's one point tonight I will correct her. Evan. Just for maybe some internal things we try every time there's a select board meeting on a Monday to get the agenda out in a timely fashion as early on Friday as we can get it and as hard as we try to be proactive with staff and everybody it's a track me on Fridays. No offense to anybody there's always a, usually I'm late trying to get a memo done or somebody's doing a memo for me they want me to see it. We're in meetings and that's why we're always trying to get this out and we know minutes are important we know the public reads them we know they go on the website they also tend to live on forever. We're trying to get the packet out on every Friday and more of our focus right or wrong is the new business that's on the agenda to make sure that you have the materials from which to have a very good discussion and informed discussion usually a lively discussion to those facts and that's what our focus is so every time we go back on minutes it is detracting from the time that we are trying to get new agendas and new business in. It is nothing to do with the length it's just a function of the length and the correction that's all. You think it was great? It came across as length as being part of the discussion and part of the impetus for having this discussion tonight it's not just the length but that's to me that's how it manifests itself in terms of having discussions about intent and content and was enough said about the salient points and not and I think there's two ways to handle that one is to go to the extreme and have really long minutes that are a transcript that has no it's very clear what was said and intent can be interpreted however people want based on the actual dictation of what was said. The other way is to scale it back and just have a very brief summary of the synopsis of the conversation and therefore it's not getting into the was enough captured did this recording capture the important points for what the speaker considered to be important versus what she considered to be important versus anything else so that's where the length came into play was what's the best way to capture the gist of the minutes that meets the statute that hopefully makes them less controversial. Great. Okay. Mike. Are you looking for a motion Mr. Chairman? I am. We can have further discussion but I'd like to know what the board's pleasure is on this. If you want to make a motion. Andy? I was going to agree with the proposal to have a trial round here. Agree with the next couple sets of minutes. That's what my motion was going to state. All right. Thank you. I think we beat this. Sure. Why don't you make a motion and we can have further discussion. Move that the select board direct staff and the recording secretary to use their best efforts to succinctly record the salient points of all topics and do so from this point forward for the select board to review for content and completeness. Okay. Mike, do I have a second on that? I think Andy got that first. Okay. Further comments? I agree. Unlike a lot of these towns minutes who were looking at and comparing lengths of I would offer were a town that's had a village within it. We've had some really sticky issues and I'm not sure that every other towns minutes that are in this packet short as they may be are dealing with some of the complexity or with the size population that we're dealing with. Shelburne's got 7,000 people. Williston's got 8,000 people last day. Check that they would have shorter minutes is no surprise to me. I think with 21,000 constituents and this village town outside the village churn that we've had for many, many decades I think we need to be very careful to thoroughly discuss things that maybe other towns don't have to dig as deep or as wide in discussing so that our minutes might be a page or two longer at least the old minutes before tonight. I don't see as a problem. I think we really need to be careful that our unique town is not subject to what everybody else is doing because we didn't do what everybody else was doing back then to regional dispatch. There are so many other things that we've done around here. We're our own unique town. So Elaine then Mike. South Burlington which has about 20,000 residents has lengthy meetings of five hours sometimes and they're grappling with some pretty heavy duty issues like the F-35 and a couple other things and Shelburne has a lot of issues around their regional dispatch conversation. It's a smaller community and they have a lot of important issues. I would not compare Essex to any of our community other communities in Chittenden County and I also wouldn't say we're more special. We have our own problems some of them are more urgent than others some of them are much different than others but we're no different in terms of ability to record our own actions. First of all I couldn't agree with Irene more in terms of the topics that we are dealing with. Barbara made reference to it early on. I thought very clearly I have absolutely no disagreement with that at all and my motion was not worded in a way that pays any less attention to any of those subjects. It merely stated that we try to continue with the quality of the minutes and perhaps work on the quantity. That's all. Any further discussion on that? We have a motion on the table to make a motion on the table. Hearing no other discussions all those in favor of the motion. Signify by saying aye. Opposed? Motion passes 5-0. Thank you for that discussion and thank you to the public as well. We're going to move on to business item 5C which happens to be approval of the minutes. Do I have a motion for the March 13th 2018 special joint meeting? Thank you Irene. Do I have a second? Thank you Andy. We'll start with page 1. Sue Cook was also absent and that's more than a grammatical change. I wanted to put that up. She was absolutely right. Anything else on 1? We're going to go to page 2. Irene. Because it was brought up at town meeting in front of 200 or so people it was important that I asked for clarification and received it that budget to ballot would not be included as a topic on the first full paragraph of page 2. Is everybody okay with that? Board? Sounds like they are. Anything else on page 2? Page 3? Or page 3? That's it right? All those in favor of the March 13th 2018 select board minutes with corrections signify by saying aye. Opposed? Motion passes 5-0. We're going to move on to the minutes of May 7th 2018. We'll have a motion. I would move approval of the May 7th. Thank you Irene. Do I have a second? Second. Andy, start on page 1. Irene. I don't know if these are too small to mention but I'll mention them in front of you. On line 41, since we've been talking about minutes I think it's important that we say the minutes of April 2nd. 45. We're going to change the word minutes to mean different things so to add clarifying language there I think is also important. So what are you adding to line 41? Line 45, we're going to change the word to specific. Specific minutes? And then not a general discussion of the process of handling minutes. That's what you said. Is everybody okay with those changes? Andy? Did you say they were in front of us? Maybe that wasn't important. Sorry. I was looking for the age. No, I didn't hand out everyone. You're right. On line 45, the third word is change to specific. So it now becomes approval of specific minutes was on the agenda not a insert general discussion of the insert process of handling minutes. Did you get that? Is everybody okay with the changes proposed on page 1? Okay. Page 2? Marie? This is where I add language about what the petition actually said but I don't give you all four lines around the petition, I'm just looking to insert parenthetical expression on 72 and this should be in front of you. The sentence would read if modified she reviewed the request in the petition inserted dash to acknowledge and work to remedy and balances in representation such as the town side, the village residents have representation comparable to village residents. Is everybody okay with that? Sam? I do, I change my mind. Do you want to comment on that? I would just note that this is additional information that's not necessary. Yes, that is what occurred. The sentence that's already there seems explanatory to me so this is an example of what I would not call succinct. Okay. Would you like to see it not included? I wouldn't add it. The question I guess I have and I'm sorry I didn't investigate this ahead of time is the petition itself was presented at the April 25th meeting and I remember asking specifically in that meeting whether it be for it to be read allowed I think the content, full content that was included in the April 25th minutes so I don't think it needs to be added, additional comments need to be added here. You agree with Elena's reference in previous minutes in its entirety? Okay. Mike? Okay. So then we're going to not change line 73. Okay. 72? Okay. My proposal for 73 is to add an explanation that has not been recorded to my knowledge in any minutes and that would be added to the end of 73 explaining how the representation would be addressed immediately and my suggested addition would be that could be accomplished and the reason I'm saying this is because the next comments reference an overlay district and unless you are at the meeting and you remember my reference in the overlay district the minutes don't use the words overlay district applaud or put down having another overlay district so I feel it's important that my words explaining why I'm proposing and then backing off an overlay district are important. I'd like to add that representation could be accomplished with a town outside the village overlay district similar to what the village set up 125 years ago yet her preference was not to add such a layer of government but to fold the trustees into an expanded select board with five village and five town outside the village members which would decrease the layers of government. I'm going to because that's lengthy I'm going to ask again sure everybody's comfortable with that addition I'm seeing head nods but tell me if I feel like it's more than is necessary so you're saying don't add it is that okay anybody else not comfortable with adding that I'm still trying to put this together Mr. Chairman bear with me I got it I got it now but I didn't when she was talking I think it would be adequate to only include the first phrase that could be accomplished with a town outside the village overlay district because then that brings in the overlay district comment I would accept that change yeah can you explain that change again to me before if you guys would be on that line 73 it said that could be accomplished with a town outside the village overlay district period right but that doesn't capture what I said because my preference was anything else on page my preference is not to add LA or government and to put words in my mouth as if all I want was an overlay district is not a correct way to summarize my presentation my presentation was the town outside the village if it needs representation could have an overlay district but that's my main preference I would rather have less government than more government and if you don't point that out then you're misrepresenting what I said that night I think it's really clear what your preference is in this I don't feel like it needs additional clarity where do you see that 10 member expanded board in here because I missed it I'm not on what I'm saying is by adding that one phrase that could be accomplished with a town outside the village overlay district period is enough and going into the particular details about what you prefer would be the same as going into the particular details about what other people prefer and we're trying to cut back so if we I don't think I can explain it to your satisfaction I'd like to move on we have majority of the board that said we're going to add that one line with the period after district for lines everything I'm looking for any other changes to page 2 once again Mike is referencing a 10 member board but we don't know where he gets that if Mike comment is not correctly captured because I'm proposing the 10 member board Mike is not Mike is referencing my comment and since my comment is not correctly summarized you lose that chain of where just like with a really clear that idea for a 10 member board came so it could be more succinct but it needs to be introduced as I introduced it it can't just come up from somebody else Elaine did you want to comment not on that I have a different comment line 98 I would like some clarity around this line because I don't think that's accurate it said Ms. Renner explained that there was no knowledge of such changes proposed by the legislature at the time of the petition that's I think what perhaps means to be said is that the select board wasn't aware at the time there was lots of people knew about it you know I knew about it some of the school board members knew about it at the time of the petition I don't know that Irene knew that there were legislative issues to be dealt with which maybe the petition would not have gone out had that been known but I just don't think that sentence is accurate what would you propose a change to maybe just say that there was the select board was not aware that might be a better way to say it because is that true at the time of the petition the select board wasn't I'm not sure what the no knowledge is and who didn't know what the people who put out the petition was what we talked about you put out the petition so you're saying that you didn't know about the legislation that's not what I said at the meeting I said the people who put out the petition had no knowledge that there were changes brewing the legislature understood so that's not what that doesn't who are the people that were it's not relevant the point is that wasn't said at the meeting it's absolutely relevant you didn't know about the legislation and you put the petition out anyway and you are the one who put out the petition Irene was the author it was that we know that the petition were aware that there were legislative changes that had not yet been passed about the school and I would clarify this sentence to say that the people who put out the petition did not know that's what we said in real life but Sam summarized it otherwise so I wasn't going to correct every line of this because I know that's unacceptable I would like to change line 98 to say Ms. Renner explained that the people who put out the petition did not know such changes proposed about such changes proposed by the legislature yeah that's it that's great and it may sound accusatory but I need to get those facts out that's exactly what we said at the meeting it's fine anything else on page 2 Andy yeah sorry I got to listen to what Irene said on the I'm sorry I'm going to propose that we add another couple words to that could be accomplished with the town outside the village district with a 10 member board so that then she is the one who brings up the 10 member board or a 10 member board there are two different things right there are two different things the overlay district will give us outside the village trustees okay no changes to that you're taking that back anything else on page 2 we're only on page 2 page 3 changes for page 3 line 10 I think you want to have these let me find it first on the back of what you just looked at thank you line 1 at the end max had asked everybody in the audience that night to reference other people who spoke Mrs. Salatino said she agreed with Mr. Jesse I think that needs to be on there can I just I didn't know that she was talking to me I thought he was talking to the public so I didn't include that but if you want me to I will certainly include that for now when they agree with someone but I thought it was just for to shorten it was to shorten the comment section so the people didn't have to repeat what was already said they could just I didn't know that that had to get into the minutes so I don't know if you guys want that in the future or not you want me to put whenever they agree with somebody else no I mean I guess I put it in the one before I didn't want it to be consistent in the minutes if someone pops up and says I agree with Mr. Jesse and then sits down is it like they never came in the meeting was it a waste of time to come because you just didn't let them say anything no it clarifies it so is everybody okay with that if she agreed with Mr. Jesse to the end of line 110 with adding it we just agreed that we weren't going to add it oh yeah well I think if you look at line 107 it's basically just that I missed in line 110 and Sam's just trying to be consistent so either we tell her we strike those or we tell her to include them both oh yeah if you want to strike the other one that's fine too but the only thing that Mary and Krause said was that she agreed with Mr. Jesse so that's why I think that's why that was Sarah oh right that makes sense and then also agreed so I'm not sure where do you draw the line okay so is everybody okay if we leave it in hearing no comments other changes for three line 117 Mrs. Donhoflory mentioned several times she was upset about what she called a backdoor merger so I think it's imperative upon us again to capture that somewhere I chose to say nor has a merger about ever passed because she said that but feel free to add something else if you'd like this is more than a little bit everybody okay with adding not has a merger vote ever passed okay with that okay anything else on Annie that's actually yeah it did pass it is not true a merger vote passed in 2006 I think it was that's adding a statement that's not she said it but it's not correct so you're saying it like it's not added I appreciate the reminder and I would not want to add it then we should say she was upset at the backdoor merger plan because she used those words and that's to her that's the reality right do you want to put in something about backdoor merger are we getting back to the verbatim thing yes we are what's the use of people coming if their words aren't going to be captured at all any other changes to page three on other lines none let's go to page four page five and six page seven and 309 it says Mr. Watts requested a liquor hearing what I requested is clarification of the town's jurisdiction on liquor hearings yeah we're specific to this liquor hearing anything else on seven going to page eight okay all those in favor of the may seven two thousand eighteen select four minutes with corrections signify by saying aye okay motion passes five zero I will entertain a motion to approve the select four minutes of may 14 two thousand eighteen with corrections very do I have a second Mike let's start on page one all right this is content related line 35 I thought there were five of us here yeah it says three zero from page two page three and page four page five so this would be one more handout for me line 220 I was talking about tie breakers I was talking about an at large position would give one district a chance to have one more weight to have more weight than another got it other corrections on page five I tied the proposal to the larger consolidation process with TGIA having stalled out so therefore on line 223 I like to add back in what I said about how elevating all ten members to equal power would get past the power balance it's stalled out the TGA that's actually not stalled it out is anybody have an issue adding that to the minutes what Irene proposed for 223 I'm seeing a no from Elaine anybody else what wasn't accurate about it the the the statute says that the select board well correct me if I'm wrong but the statute says the select board appoints the planning commissioners and the trustees do not so because of the the statute it puts the trustees at a lesser level when appointing members and I think that was the main problem wasn't it Elaine it removes the board's ability to appoint its own commissioners for its own jurisdiction so it's not the only thing that's I wouldn't say it's the sole thing that stalled the TGIA process but it's a significant projection on the part of the board but you're saying do not add that to line 23 what Irene proposed I just because it's quite substantive I'm looking for board approval to say it's okay to include I think it's just it's seeing as Mr. Caron, Mr. Brown and Mr. Tyler all have something to say in that paragraph if Irene wants to put that in there that's fine I wouldn't say that it I would perhaps say instead of saying would get past the power imbalance would say would address parties would address appointment issues in the TGA process what's your name everybody okay with that Sam did you get that you're amazing okay anything else on page 5 Irene line 232 I've mentioned these things before but they haven't ended up in the minutes Mrs. Renner added that ordnances and will strike the rest of that sentence and apartments that currently serve the town outside the village only are overdue and being recognized with appropriate representation again substantive quite a bit everybody okay alright I'm seeing okay we'll leave that anything else on 5 so line 237 I'm actually putting words Mr. Fox's mouth now because this is what he said on the video he wondered how to provide for a sunset so that unification doesn't take 50 years and I think it's just a little vague the way it's currently worded providing for provisions so things don't take sunset he was looking for a way to sunset like a sunset of law he was asking about whether we could put a sunset on by X here sunset provision sunset provision can we have provision there then anything else on 5 excellent let's move on to 6 moving on to 7 alright all those in favor of the May 14, 2018 select forward minutes with corrections signify by saying aye aye, opposed? alright most passed 5 to 0 we're going to move on to consent agenda we'll have a motion to approve the consent agenda please thank you Irene comments yes, thank you do I have a second? second comments on consent Andy go ahead we had a discussion earlier about the track meet that's involved with getting the agenda together on Fridays and I question whether the consent items B and C are necessary to be in every agenda the B generally is empty all it says is we have regular meetings and we all know when our should know when our meetings are and I think that's a piece of work we're at that we several meetings ago somebody requested that we do but I don't think it adds anything and I would be in favor of not including item B or including item C in every agenda how often do you think would be more appropriate Andy for item C I think potentially quarterly those are usually larger ticket items I don't think they move much in two weeks having you keep track of presented changes or even just including it with no changes is a waste of your effort go on to B then everybody okay with moving the six C instead of every packet have it just quarterly in our packet that good we could also quarterly put it in the reading file and if you want to bring it up for a topic you can at a later date yeah does that sound good okay that sounds like good play and you want to make the comment you want to say something about B as well yeah B said it just is a calendar that says we have regular meetings on these dates and we have joint meetings on these other dates we already know where we should we set out the set schedule in our organizational meeting in April I've got the list tacked on my wall at home and put in my Google calendar I don't think it makes sense to ask staff to update that every week if all it's going to say is regular meeting regular meeting we don't generally put agenda items in there so we say never do it or quarterly yeah any value in it so Irene first then Mike and then Elaine I was just curious it's helpful to the public especially as we add in things like firearms discussions or you know extra events and joint meetings and all those things so were you suggesting that we keep that in for every packet Irene or do you I don't know just regularly enough that the public if they go to figure out when our next meeting is can find it I don't know if it's every meeting because just like it's easy to remember that it's there it's somewhat easy to remember that it's an agenda item that we just need to update we've added the monthly joint meetings there's events that occur that sometimes we like to let you know about it I appreciate the sentiment it's not this is like not hard work and I could say that because Travis does it shout out to Travis if you're watching but it's relatively benign and simple we just try to remember to do it because sometimes we forget that there's an event that we should and it's not always a board event sometimes there's other people's events that we like to let you know of so you're saying let's keep it in every it's not that it's six and one half a dozen other if you don't we could also then also put it in the reading file or not do it at all I'm not doing it at all because I don't recall you ever putting in another event if I remember the comment I think former select board member Cook may have brought that up I believe it was okay so we're okay to dump that one no okay Mike I said keep it it's a great reminder I used it today because I had down the meetings but I didn't have whether they were at Lincoln or whether they were here it's useful it might be helpful to the public too if Evan's telling us that it's not that big a deal there is absolutely no reason to do it I'm going to get killed by Travis I just think it's useful to the public to have a reminder each time okay so we'll put 6B to quarterly and we'll do B as you've been practicing right for 6C they do sound similar especially if you mumble okay anything else in consent agenda Mike so I'm looking for some feedback from the chair and from board members I don't I'm looking at the 7E hang on a sec anything else we'll get to that anything else on consent okay hearing none all those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying aye aye okay most passed by zero now on to the reading file Mike so now I don't think I need to ask permission I would ask month of June I'm gone for half of it item 7E is one that I feel is particularly important and one that I would like to be involved in to the extent possible so if there's I mean if I have to miss something then I have to miss something but I would hope that we could still move that wall down the field in a way that at least for this select board member maybe we could make it a little lighter the first two weeks in June than in the last two weeks of June and it you're you're gone the first half of the month but not the second half that's right I'm going to declare it don't tell the public I got it you got it okay Greg I think that's going to be hard Mike I hate to say it we've got a room booked at Essex Elementary School on June 5 and keeping with the timeline and it's down there we've got a little bit more details to it but basically in trying to get this some recommendations to use the board by late summer early fall so you can digest those and make a decision we're looking at having a kickoff form on June 5th at the elementary school the evening there to have a community wide thing have people come out and start to set up the topic in the process in the background and start to get some feedback there launch an online survey that will be online for about two months a little less than two months try to get some feedback that way looking at doing some kind of pop-up events around town whether that's at the farmers market at Sand Hill Park but just some staff people available to engage with residents and speak about what's going on what the options are get some feedback that way and then doing some kind of self-guided site visits at Saxon Hill Indian Brook just putting up some signs and some markers to give people an indication of what they're looking at how the firearms is in place now how it could change but to get all that stuff when are those scheduled for Greg? some of them are open-ended we don't make the site visits to Indian Brook or Saxon Hill people are out there now recently flagging to sort of sell where that 500 foot mark from the water is Saxon Hill we haven't done any work on that one yet but it'll be up there the idea is to keep it up for a few weeks so that people have a sense to walk around, look at distances get a feel for being out in the woods but in terms of that online kick sorry, not the online the in-person community kickoff event that's skidded for June 5th that's really kind of the trigger to get this going and push that back it kind of pushes back everything the trigger, huh? okay if it's okay with the board I know there's people here for this item 7E, I'd like to get their comments is anyone here tonight for the 7E item in the reading file about the firearms ordinance? any questions everybody? okay okay okay Irene I see a note in that very same memo about a third affected area do I miss something, is there some area that we should be calling folks to pitch in here what area are we talking about? sure, so if you can visualize sorry I didn't pull it up but if you can visualize the police chief's memo he sort of looked at three different areas of town one of them was Indian Brook area that was in yellow the Saxon Hill area on the east side of town was in green and then kind of the northern central part of town is in blue so that's what I'm referring to as the third area it's fairly easy to to get some self-guided visits up in the public sites at Indian Brook Saxon Hill park there's no public land up in that third area so trying to see if we can have a private landowner offer to host a visit one afternoon one morning something like that to get people a chance to be out at least part of that town and get a sense of being on the ground of what it would look like awesome so next thank you so if it's not too much trouble and I apologize if it is but if you could just scratch something out on the back of a napkin about what those first few events are I just want to see what I'm missing June 5th is the only date that we have scheduled at this point as the other ones come available I can pass that on to the board maybe they can go on to that you know that list of meetings the reading file item 7a it says board member comments what's the intent for that the intent from that is to borrow from the trustees a little bit came up at the last meeting a lot of times if the select board if you members have comments you make them at public to be heard whether if you attended the town fair would you report back on that or if somebody went to an interesting training or they heard from a constituent on a certain topic a lot of times that comes up during public to be heard there was discussion at the last meeting about should that be strictly for the public and not for the board so this is just we're playing with it it's adjustable but trying to check and adjust process but if the board members have specific comments about something that's not on the agenda they would be the time to discuss it so it's sort of like public to be heard but for the select board and if you can write it in advance then we get it in the packet I'm going to stick with any then I go to Mike so okay so I was going to comment about the fact that we have such a short agenda and ask why we were bothering to have a meeting with such a short agenda but now we're an hour and a half into it and maybe I understand why we've chosen to have this meeting with such a short agenda but I guess there was just a look of the draw but I know in the past when we've had not a lot of stuff to cover we've cancelled meetings that's why I was just wondering if this was an intentional and I have to apologize if this was part of the plan brought up earlier I am a strong proponent of cancelled meetings where they can be I was basically gone we didn't have a lot of agenda items but I knew that the minutes topic was going to be at least 30 minutes and rightfully so and then we are introducing some changes to how the agenda is worded a little bit and what's allowed in these comments Greg is absolutely correct that board member comments really should not be up at the top of the meeting that's where the public may want to say their piece and hit the road and enjoy what's left of their evening where you guys are captive to the end regardless so those types of things I wanted to make one other note item app is voluntary it is it was warned that this event I think you should if you're available you should go to it tomorrow night but just an acknowledgement that it's voluntary it is the 8th grade class doing a presentation and some tables before the actual business portion of the village board meeting and they would have liked to have done it at a joint meeting but because of the compressed time at the end of the school year we weren't able to do that but I did reach out to their teacher about maybe planning for this a little bit earlier then at the end of the season for whatever reason they get both of you at both boards but I just wanted to let you know that's how it came about and it was warned because there may be a quorum of selectmen there at a trustee meeting and asking questions about things related to the town so we thought we'd err on the side of caution but it is voluntary to go I was a panelist that had a class when they were doing this and the kids put in a a heck of a lot of effort in it and I would hope everybody could make it the kids really did work hard on this Mike 7-H Mr. Chairman it appears from the way that the memo was written that the decision made on April 11th is a done deal that management decided to continue with BLCT passive for soliciting insurance bids there's nobody outside of that that's going to get contacted for bids we're very comfortable with where we are right now and with all that we have on our plate we were not looking to go outside I'm very familiar with the state program we had in Illinois as well and a lot of people make a lot of promises to what they can and can't do they don't necessarily cover all of what passive has done for its membership including the ten million dollars per occurrence they've built that in that is awfully hard based upon a place that has snowstorms, flooding and other types of occurrences it is it's a level of coverage that's hard to beat and but you can buy it but it's hard to beat for the price that we get is that the only item that is particularly priced in our favor versus some of the others for example like comp sorry? like comp individual prices I have to check with Sarah some more but it's the total package that we're looking at and it's everything that passive offers we've heard stories about municipality might go to a different provider they might get a cheaper rate for a year or two and then all of a sudden it's jacked up and they're trying to get back into passive once we leave passive we lose a long standing ten year as well and I think that falls under workers comp a little bit when we step away from passive and decide to come back we've lost that history I'm not sure that that is the case I believe I have some knowledge of this topic and I believe I believe the modification that the rates are based upon the workman's comp mod I'm not sure passive monkey with that I could be wrong we're certainly willing to go take a look at that component the insurance part of the overall umbrella for all that we have on our plate right now I would recommend that we are not shopping for that but a workers compensation component I'd be open to look for that if that's the will of the select board well it's one man's opinion I just the other thing I would say is we're part of a big collective of municipalities in the state and I've heard it heard many times being the second largest municipality combined we are what we are the part of what we do and the rates that we pay into passive are related to every community and what they have to pay into the collective for this insurance sometimes you may find something slightly lower in price but for the collective good of the state of Vermont you may pay a little bit more sometimes and then sometimes you get the benefit of others being in that group so I just throw that out there that passive is as you all well know for all these years they have been a very good insurer to our citizens as well when they make claims they are not as profit motive motive give me a good word for it profit motivated than other insurance companies as well sometimes they do pay when maybe they should probably do more investigation but they do things for their members as see fit the only thing I would add is I think if you look at one component for example if you are going to shop workman's comp privately I think you are going to find that you are probably not going to do as well there because it is just one piece and I believe private insurers do you know wind up pricing things as a collective package much the same way as the LCT does so I am not looking to exercise the staff but it just seems to me that this is something that we should check just for no other reason other than to say we got another bid from a private and you know they can't you know they can't hold a candle to what we get to be VLCT if I can't I can agree to that I would maybe offer that we could certainly do that next year we do have some staff changing coming up that we really need to get certain things done before certain people retire and get some things moved into place we would certainly look to do this next year and I didn't say that out loud earlier and I should have I meant what I said looking to exercise staff and I did hear you that you've got a lot going on so I understand that I guess I just don't want to slam the door on that avenue so for next year anybody else on the ring file let's see who wants Elaine 7J the human services process I just wanted to say thank you Andy for providing us with your matrix I thought that the ranking criteria you used was really relevant and it was a huge help so thank you very much for doing it fair amount of work isn't it so thank you Andy so on the same topic sorry I've gotten two compliments tonight I just listened to a podcast recently that talked about corporate citizenship and one of the things they said is that it often leads to people cheating because they justify their and I'll get to the point here they justify cheating on things or stealing from their employee by the fact that they've done good things because of their corporate citizenship thing and one of the things they said is that politicians will sometimes do bad things when you give them compliments because they justify it by saying oh I got a couple of good compliments now I can get away with something doing something bad so no more compliments for anything but I wanted thank you Elaine for bringing that up I guess I shouldn't discourage compliments because they feel good but the question I have about I sent this email to Evan and thank you for including it in the in the reading file the question I have is I included a link to a google doc in the email so you got in the package is the email with a link to my google drive and the question I have is whether the public can access that my intent had been that that matrix be included not necessarily the link so I don't know if tomorrow morning we will go back through the document and remove the link from our website add in the table but add the table instead of adding the link we'll post the table you didn't give everybody edit permission did you anybody with the link has access to it but I don't know if that actually I don't know from your server standpoint whether that is allowed or whether it's only you know because I know that the intent in my we use this we use google drive my employer and it says anybody with such and such an email can access it this says anybody and I don't know if that's really what we intend my intention was that you would go get it and put it into the document my intent wasn't to put the email it's okay to put it in Evan you had also mentioned in your email to me that there was a 1% amount or some amount of money about $4300 that was unallocated unrequested sorry unrequested but would be in the budget and my response to you was I don't necessarily believe we should give people money they haven't requested but two we can segregate the funds that are left into a restricted fund and say let's just say there's $4000 left we'll put the money into a fund whether somebody comes any time during the year and the board select board says okay you know you're past our date but we have this money something new comes up or next year we take 1% plus $4000 that is in the reserve and say this is what we have next year please ask us for what you think you need and you make those calls but either way the money will get used for the purpose that it was set out for it may just not be done in one calendar year or other however you wish to do it but I am concerned with the practice of giving people something they didn't ask for and then how do you decide who gets it so we decide based on the priorities of that matrix that I proposed I mean that's a potential way to do it we can certainly do it other ways we have in the past and maybe had people known they could have asked for more they might have done so in the first place there were a couple of agencies that actually asked for less than they got last year which was a surprise and Red Cross did asked for less this year however you wish to do it okay anything else great job on the matrix thanks for doing that Mike I just want to give a shout out although I doubt he's watching but I want to give a shout out on number 7D that has lots who yet again has just made chicken soup out of chicken droppings as far as that winter budget is concerned the men is a politician I don't know how he does it but why am I sure glad he does how to scar tissue thank you Mike and as long as we're doing that 7B2 Annie who's the engineer an engineer under Dennis they received that award the green mountain environment association award so kudos to her and congratulations to such a quality staff I want to make sure Rick Jones knows that he's pretty much a magician as well on the village site anything else in the reading file okay hearing none we do not need an executive session I think we dispose of everything okay thank you is that how it works I would thank you Irene do I have a second all those in favor of adjourning signify say aye aye thank you all for your hard work tonight