 it's joint meeting of the Board of Trustees and the Select Board to order. Evan or Greg, are there any agenda additions or changes? None from staff. There is no consent agenda, so there's nothing to move into the business items, so I'm going to skip over approving the agenda. So it appears there are some people that are still trying to get in from the lobby. I don't know if there's a problem there. I believe Evan and Greg are the gatekeepers and are taking care of that as they happen. Because I've got something up on my screen that says somebody's waiting in there. We've been trying. There is one person that seems to have trouble getting in. Yeah, I keep hitting the admit. I think it's Sharon or Darren. I think it's Tracy from the zoning board. Is it possible to email her the link and phone numbers? I'm actually sure I have the issues getting in. I went back out, but I'm here now. Okay, great. Thanks. Okay, so thank you. If anyone else is waiting in the lobby, I'm sure Greg and Evan will handle the traffic. We'll move on to business item four, public to be heard. This is an opportunity for people in the public, in the audience who wish to speak to the boards on items that are not on the agenda. If you would wish to speak to the boards, you can do so by raising your hand with the icon for the hand in your upper right corner of your screen or in the center of your screen, depending on the version of teams that you have, or you can indicate you wish to speak in the chat. So if anyone would like to speak now would be the time. Okay, I'm not seeing any hands or chat. So we will move on to business item five a introductions. So this is a first for all of us. It's a joint meeting of the trustees and the select board and the town planning commission, the village planning commission and the town zoning board of authority. Welcome all of you. It's great to have you here. I think we should go around and do a round of introductions that is on our agenda and I would really love to see all the faces if possible of our volunteers who are here helping us with development and planning on a regular basis. You guys do a great job and I'd love to be able to recognize you by seeing your face and so everybody can know who's here. So I think in order to facilitate that I'm going to ask Greg to call on each person as you recognize that they're what they're a member of because I know most of them but not all of them and when Greg calls your name if you could say you know say your name turn your video on say what your role is and so we all know who everybody is. So your name and the board that you're on and your role and I would love to include I see there's some planning staff here too. I would love to include planning staff as well and thank you for being here tonight. And Elaine I do not have everyone memorized so as I search for a list to make sure I can do all maybe the the board members can introduce themselves. I'll tell you what I'll start and you catch the ones that I missed how's that. Perfect thank you. Okay let's start with Dustin Brousseau. Good evening I'm Dustin Brousseau I'm the chair of the planning commission for the town of Essex. There he is okay. Hey I have a suggested yeah Dustin how about you introduce your planning commission members. All right let's see who's down who's on here Josh are you on? I am hi everybody Joshua Knox vice chair Essex planning commission. There he is excellent. I don't believe John Mangan was going to be on with us this evening so David are you on? Joshua you're plus one tonight? Yes this is the youngest commissioner this is Douglas he's just over two months old and excited to be here as well. Thanks for bringing a date. David are you on board? I also have to be unmuted. Well we'll move on let's see who else we got on here I'm going down through the list real quick Ned are you on? Dustin this is David sorry I was here I guess I was I muted myself when I turned the video on thanks Evan. Dave Raphael. Tom Ferland. Hello Tom Ferland planning commission for the town. There he is. Hi Tom. Hello. Preparing for the Christmas season here. That's right always prepared. I don't see any others right now except for John Alden who's doing double duty tonight. That's right I'll shout out that I'm a planning commission member alternate for the town and I'm also the vice chair of the village planning commission. It's all that I see on the list. Thank you Dustin. Is David here from the village PC? David Nistico is the chair right? Yes I don't know if David's here I don't see. Yeah um okay so we have John well I'll tell you what I see Martin Martin would you introduce yourself? Yeah Martin Hughes I'm a member of the village zoning board of adjustment. Okay thank you and Tracy. Hi I'm Tracy Deltia I'm the chair of the Essex the town zoning board Thank you Tracy. All right um I'm wondering if um some town and village planning staff and community development staff would introduce themselves. Hi I'm Sharon Kelly. Hello Sharon and Sharon your title. Sharon can you remind the audience what your title is? Yes I'm the zoning administrator for the town side. Thank you. Also well you know what I'm trying to say the town anyhow um and I believe um our our chair Nick Martin is present too so if he wants to um and Mike Plagueman are and QB Norton are also here if they want to introduce themselves from the zoning board on the town. Absolutely he's new. Jump in guys. Go ahead Mike. Mike Plagueman uh member of the town zoning board of adjustment. Vice chair. And former select board member extraordinaire. Thank you madam chair. And former planning commissioner as well. That's right. Thank you mr. BB. Did I hear? Thank you. Good to see you. And did I hear um Phoebe as well? Hi I'm Nick Martin. I'm the uh a member of the zoning board for the town of Essex. Nice to meet you Nick. Thank you. Okay let's see I see Terry Haas. Hi uh Terry has uh system zoning administrative for the village of Essex Junction. Great to see you Terry. Thanks for being here. Sure. Um who else we have here? Jump in if I've missed you. Elisa. Hi this is Elisa. Um nice to meet everyone. I am the interim community development director for the town. Awesome. Did you get Robin? Alain? He's next on my list Robin. Thanks Alain. Robin Pierce community development director of the village. Thank you. Okay and I know oh Deanna. Deanna and Darren. I'm admin assistant at the town. That's okay. I'm admin assistant at the town community development department. Thanks for being here. Darren? Hi Darren Shibbler uh planner for the town community development department. Great to see you Darren. Okay I've gone through the list a couple times. I'm sure I've missed somebody. If there are village or town board members that I have missed please please jump in. Hi this is Patrick Scheldt. I am part of the village planning commission. Yeah Patrick. Somebody had mentioned that there was a Douglas two month old. Got me beat by two months. My son was born in June. Great to see you Pat. Thank you. Anybody else that we've missed? There's a couple more. This is uh this is Phil Battalion. I am a village planning commission member. Hi Phil. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay well this is a huge contingent of planners and community planners for for Essex. Thank you so much for being here tonight. Um we you know we have been talking when I say we the select board and the trustees have been talking about merger for a very very very long time and we have finally as the trustees know and the village residents know that there is a draft charter on the ballot in November and the select board just yesterday completed editing our version of the charter and we'll be going out to the public for some feedback during November but we really wanted to have an opportunity to come together with the planning commissions and the zoning boards to talk about planning for the community in the future. Our hope had been to do a much more involved and comprehensive kind of conversation. Unfortunately when COVID arrived it threw everything out of whack and we were not able to pull that together so having you all here tonight is very very helpful and we really don't have a ton of time to do all the talking that needs to happen but this is at least a start. Um we wanted to just talk about our proposed merger charters and what they mean for planning and development in the town as a whole and as the different areas of the town. So Greg had a memo in our packet which I'm not sure if the board members have seen but Greg perhaps you could bring up that memo that compares the two charters so that we can look at that pretty quickly. As you know we are proposing a single planning commission for the entire town of Essex and a single development review board. We don't have a development review board at the moment. Many many other towns in Vermont do. The DRB and the PC model was something that came up as a preferred method back when we did the thoughtful growth in action process. I think that's going on four years ago at this point and at the time we were looking at a single PC with two development review boards because we were thinking about two different municipalities the village and the town. As a merged community we would only need one of each so Greg has put up here what we have proposed in both charters and so there are some some differences between the village charter and the town charter. However in regards to planning there are very few differences in fact the only differences are that in the select board's version we have removed term limits from the charter or term lengths excuse me because that is something that does not have to be determined by charter and it's not something that we want to have to go to the voters for every time we want to make a change to the length of a planning commissioner's term. So other than that there are no differences between the two charters and what is planned for the planning commission and the development review board. What I would love to do now is to stop talking and I would like to hear from our planning commissions Dustin, John, Tom, everybody what are your thoughts and what are are there any red flags or concerns that you might have regarding the model we've proposed in these charters feel free to I can see if you've raised your hand so you can either raise your hand or feel free to just to talk there's a lot of us though so hand raising might be a better idea don't be shy. John Alden well you know I'd have something to say right so I was on the the Thoughtful Growth Committee and and I've been on the Village Planning Commission for quite a number of years and and a guest on the Town Planning Commission for the last year or so and I have no concerns about what you've proposed here that it's very consistent with what we on the Thoughtful Growth Study Committee had come up with you know the fact that we're jumping right to a single Planning Commission and a single DRB is really not surprising considering that it's a merger suggestion here so I think it's fine looks good. Thanks John. Dustin. So I'm mostly echoing John's statement I don't really see any huge red flags the only thing that I would I would I guess throw in is that I would actually suggest that you don't you don't limit trying to think how to phrase this here because this is just coming to me if you really don't you don't you don't appoint just three commissioners or just three commissioners in the town or just three three commissioners in the village I would actually take it a little further and say appoint everybody that's currently on designate you know the three that you want or the three from each each side of the the fence that you want as primaries but but put everybody else in as an alternate keep everybody who's been involved involved you've got I guess my concern is that if we go to the route of limiting the folks that we have to to pick three from one one community three from the other community we're going to be really potentially losing a large part of the of the of the domain knowledge that we have it's in place I look for an opportunity to to not exclude anyone from that process if they want to participate again designate the primaries and then designate alternates so that you can maintain the the knowledge base that exists for the transition period it doesn't nothing says that especially if you take term limits out of the charter nothing says you can't change the number of alternates you have over time you know let the normal attrition occur and you know folks that are participating today are up to follow I've been at this long enough that you know I don't see myself doing this for another umpteen years um but it would be I think advantageous to the process instead of trying to force drastic change let the change be in the in the structure the documentation and so forth but keep the people more or less the same for the time you know folk you have folks right now who know both sets of rules you have folks that that had put the time in and put the work in so it would potentially be a significant setback to initiatives that are ongoing in both of the village and town processes so I'm going to stop because I'm starting to feel like I'm starting to ramble but I would encourage I would encourage this process to try to retain everybody in some role by you know you have a you have a formal commissioner you can appoint them but then you can also appoint the alternates and maintain the existing staff of of commissioners who want to participate keep them involved that's my two cents for the moment you're muted you're in the line I think that's I think that's worth a lot more than two cents thank you Dustin um Joshua Knox his hand is up yes I I had put my hand up and then dusty essentially said exactly what I was going to say so in the interest of brevity I will just say a ditto to what dusty said I think that was well put okay okay thank you tom furlin yeah I would argue that the term limits are are probably a good thing not in the in our current situation but in the future I could see a case where there'd be a lot of political pressure on one issue or another and the idea that the select board could remove a commissioner in the middle of a very controversial issue is probably not a not a good thing to have hanging over everyone's head tom are you referring to term limits or term length well term length I guess yeah okay so okay thank you uh Hubert Norton again I'm the member of the zoning board for the town outside village and a couple statements were made that uh this part of the line was the thoughtful gross uh questions we had well about four or five years ago now uh that is incorrect uh the thoughtful growth process suggested two DRVs one for the village and north of the town and one prime commission uh I feel that uh because I think that that's dusty said that the uh regulations the the documents that we have within the village and in the town uh are significantly different that it would seem that if you have one a single DRV that they would be in fact acting as individual DRVs as a case came before them because you would have to be looking at two different sets of regulations until such regulations are unified into one set so our interior for Hawaii uh the uh gather was drawn up to have only one DRV when the recommendation came out of the thoughtful growth committee that had two DRVs okay I do believe that the goal eventually is for the land development codes from both communities to be merged into a single unit so um and the DRVs oh go ahead and that's not going to happen instantly you're you're going to have you know look how long it takes to create a town plan you know this doesn't happen if you look at an eye so you're going to have a period of time when you're going to be having to work from two different documents right he's coming for that to have one board and eventually they're going to be acting like a two boards because they're going to be working on different documents so uh I I think the thoughtful growths uh organization recommendation uh was the better solution I agree having one planning commission you got one community plan for one community but in order to do crossy judicial uh making decisions in a crossy judicial fashion uh you have more set up so I mean that's the plan so it will be easy enough to uh sustain a DRV within world two and a DRV within world one for some period of time until such time that you had a unified set of documents okay thank you as George and then John um I I Elaine I didn't I just write other people I think raise their hand up ahead of me but I just want to clarify the thoughtful growth in action and this did not anticipate a merger right thoughtful growth in action anticipated how to consolidate planning but maintaining two separate governing structures um so I just wanted to clarify that um how if we if we remain status quo how would we and could we bring the two planning structures together um and so the under-emerge government you'd have to have the select board appointing two separate DRVs if we were going to maintain two separate DRVs I think it's a fantastic idea and I think all the concerns that people have raised are excellent ones because you're dealing with when we are going to preserve the two building codes and municipal plans and everything um you know I so I think these are all good but I just wanted to clarify that technical point we were not looking at a merge government at that time thanks John go ahead uh yeah I was I was just going to clarify similar to what George said the the um thoughtful growth committee really uh looked at at the still being two communities so if we're if we're merging that sort of changes that sort of supersede that trumps the notion that we need two DRVs I don't think we would I think that uh my understanding is that the um the rules governing each district whether it's in the town or in the village would still apply until they're rewritten and in such case a single DRB would be required to enforce those rules whether um you know for whatever project comes before them and if you have a merged committee that has expertise from both the village in the town you'd have leadership to be able to uh continue with the um proper interpretation of the and and ruling on each application whether it's in the town or the village based on the rules that govern those districts and since we haven't talked about changing the districts at all we just talked about creating one DRB um I think that would be fine you know and it's it's kind of like saying hey look we're all one community we need one DRB we can't have two different bodies trying to do the same thing uh but we can keep the rules in place for each of the special districts that we have all recognized thanks john um dusty just one one thought and I probably am oversimplifying this but in in my eyes and I've seen ahead this conversation more than once in my eyes we first start going into this our rules are already written we're not trying we don't need to recreate any plans anything we create a cover page that says Essex and in it chapter one is the rules and regulations for that portion known as the village and this chapter two is that rules and regulations known for that area known as the town it's already written that's done to me the the struggle that we're going to have is how to integrate the resources to be able to to apply the different the different rules that exist already and then the work that will need to be done in the future to to more fully integrate um or decide whether or not they need to be integrated those different rules and procedures but they already exist so there's no lift I don't I don't see a big lift except a learning curve possibly um but we already have a structure in place so as as john just said everything's there so I'm off any other uh board members Tracy what are your thoughts you caught me just because I was putting my hand oh look at that um I'm just that I'd actually as a newer member I'd actually like to speak in favor of having an actual time from my perspective having seats that are coming available is a way to have that touch point with the community and garner interest in people you may not otherwise see I've lived in Essex for three and a half years I have extensive knowledge and experience with a planning commission DRB setup if there was not a vacancy I never would have known to put my name in the ring I never would have gone in front of the select board to become a VA member I don't see any harm in hey you have two seats three seats whatever open this year let's see what experience and what interest we have in the community interview folks and see where you want to go from there I think having sort of a appointing folks would know and they run the risk of becoming stale and I don't mean that personally I don't mean that is being applicable to Essex or the junction but that's the risk you run I don't think that there is a risk other than time spent in interviews and the application process in having specific terms um and I'd also like to echo that you know the zoning is that the zoning is um in both the town and the junction I think the heavier lift is going to come with integrating the comp plans uh count plans comprehensive plans um whatever the cases in in Essex yeah the goals the written strategies how do we how do we integrate those into one document yeah Tracy I don't think we were talking about eliminating terms for any of the boards it was more just not having the length of the term in the charter so that if the PC said you know what we would prefer if if our term lengths were four years and not three years we could decide that at the select board level and not have to go to a vote for that that's all we were talking about yeah I think it just gets a little confusing if you're not appointing someone to a specific term and those kinds aren't spelled out in the governing document I think it just it muddies the water and then you know what you're in for right so if you know that you have six members three members are up every two years every one year whatever the case may be you know what that workload is going to be as far as interviewing in the application process going forward okay I understand I understand what you're saying now thanks for clarifying that um Greg and then John just to elaborate on Elaine's point the the reason there's no term lengths put into the charter was that the statute state statute allows for planning commission terms to range from one to four years the town attorney or the attorney advising on this matter is advised that the cleaner way to do it is probably to just create a policy after the charter is approved and and my understanding of that was that every term would be three years or four years it would always be that way unless the select board changed the policy to create two year terms or four year terms but so it just I've heard it a couple times now I just wanted to elaborate on Elaine's point that there would be term lengths it's just not defined in the charter thanks Greg John go ahead forgetting my mic's muted anyway I I would support keeping the charter as clean as possible and keeping as much local control over term lengths and so on at the local level wherever possible so that you don't have to go back to the state and change something and if you decide you want to do it differently so I appreciate your clarifications on the term limits I fully expect there to be term limits but it would be really nice if we had you know control over that instead of stuffing it in the charter and wherever we have a chance to keep that charter as clean as possible let's do it um any other board members don't want to monopolize it please feel free to jump in with comments um I know John Schumacher has joined the call I believe so John please feel free to make any comments um haven't heard from Nick or Mike or or Martin or Pat or Phil David what are your thoughts I'm going down my attendance list I'm gonna call on you someone has raised their hands with the initials SCHU I'm not sure who that is but go ahead Elaine that's that's me John Schumacher from the from the town board great hi John commission I mean I uh I say ditto to uh most of what uh my fellow board members say I agree I think term term limits of some kind or another makes a lot of sense only just for the the the ability to sort of review the the people that are on the commission at some period of time um you know maybe at some point somebody might be incapacitated not realize that they probably shouldn't be on the board anymore or something I don't know I I won't go through scenarios I uh get out to uh most of what uh my fellow board members say I I agree I think term term limits a lot of sense somebody needs to mute their mic because we've got a delay someone's watching it online as well as participating so go ahead go ahead John I ditto to the rest of my my crew there I don't really have much more to add I'm just very interesting to me thanks thank you um Nick hi everyone um I I don't feel strongly one way or the other but I do appreciate the the discussion about term length and term limitations I think it's a good idea what I really want to know is the perspective of staff and the people that we rely on as volunteers to hear to receive information um and what their role will be if and when this merger takes place and um any of the later effects of any changes that may may come so I would before I I'm able to formulate a strong opinion one way or the other I would want to learn more from them I really appreciate your saying that Nick and I would definitely like staff to um make comments as soon as we are sure that all the board members have had um their their opportunity to speak Dusty and then Patrick Patrick hasn't spoken yet so I'll I'll yield to him first okay Pat shell um yeah no I was just gonna say you know it's I really appreciate what Dusty had said at the very beginning his first couple points regarding the historical knowledge and having the opportunity for alternates and everybody to be kind of brought on um to kind of maintain that historical knowledge you know having only been on commission member for about a year or so now for the village um yeah there's a lot that I I'm sure I don't know and I might never never know but then also you know hearing what John had to say at the very beginning as well that you know reading through the document that nothing really jumped out at me as a red flag and then just hearing that kind of I guess a little bit of confirmation from John having gone through that process and some of that historical knowledge that Dusty was speaking to as well um that nothing jumped out out out of the page at him for a red flag for as John as well so you know it all seems very logical to me um and it all kind of makes sense and I just wanted to share that that I I appreciated Dustin's comments about maintaining yep everybody thanks Pat um Mike Plagueman um I would just offer um I would second um the the comments made by um Dustin I I think institutional knowledge um especially at the very beginning of this process um is going to be critical and um I think having as many minds um to be able to pull from is going to do nothing but help help all of us in our work um I also agree with Tracy um I think term not term limits but term terms for members I think are important um for no other reason than to uh and again I'll I'll parrot her phrase of of just maintaining contact with the public and and letting them know um that their you know is a potential turnover on a particular board and perhaps encouraging them to uh to step up um and to apply so thanks Mike Dusty sure so so to get into some nitty gritty this isn't going to I'm not trying to to piss anybody off in any way shape or form but there's in in section 109 it's 109 we're talking about the planning and development uh articles B and C both of them call out a specific mix of town and village members specific numbers yep um and I think that's fine as an initial piece but I would be concerned about trying to force a configuration once if we are a full community I would not I would prefer to see that be more in in a policy instead of a charter for the similar reason as as as setting term limits and so if not term limits term lengths um I think it would be a goal of the the select board to try to have a balanced mix on the planning and the DRB but I don't think it should be enforced by statute because you may not get a good mix I think it should be the the target and it should be the the a valid attempt so I would be I I I read both of those sections B and C as being you know prior to the effective date they shall do this I would be concerned that that there isn't an indication that once the either once the full transition period which it looks like it's anticipated to be about 12 years or once the new select board is fully formed as its seats become basic vacant they they're held to a charter or a statute that says you must have three from this part of the community and three from this part of the community so I I think that's that that's a small concern and that I'd really like this to be a community wide um these these to be community wide seats and not restricted you can't sit here we run into that now we tried to bring folks from the village in to sit on the the town planning commission meetings informally we've run into conflicts when we tried to to go the other direction as well which is you know legitimate but it would like not to have a forced separation or segregation even once we've got the new structure built so I would just like to to offer that there should be some verbiage possibly in the next and another piece that just says you know that as the seats become vacant they will be reviewed and they will be filled by the community by members of the community. Justin your your point is very well taken and I do want to point out that the first chapter all of the sections that start with one is the transitional period so it's the it's that interim period between the vote of the legislature approving the charter and the start of the fiscal the next fiscal year when there's a transitional select board that brings together this the current select board and the trustees and this is the same kind of thing bringing together the three members of one and three members of another and then appointing a seventh that's just for that transitional period it is not for the duration so that's how I interpret it and I see George has his hand up so George can you help me out with this if you want to know if you're you're you are you are correct and the reason we struggled with a lot of this dusty is you know because it's sort of a it's sort of a reverberation of the of the elected board issue where you're creating voting a town in a village voting ward with the idea that through the initial phase you want to you want to get you want to bring the expertise from both sides in and you want to stabilize it but the the the structure of the and the term limits and all of that those are things that that first of all they can be changed we can do a charter change any year and that I don't think a charter change over the planning commission and DRB is something that the legislature is going to quibble over I think we can be pretty much assured that if we find something's not working we can change it relatively quickly but I think Elaine is right with this was this is the transition year but it's also we wanted to try to make this as as equal as possible of bringing village and town expertise together during that transition year and I think that we understood at least I did going forward that even just a number of people on these boards and their term limits we may find that there's something not quite right about it we want them to be longer we want them to be shorter we want more people less people so I look at this as a kind of a sort of a you know a very flexible part of the charter that will will probably more than anything need to be adjusted as we go forward if merger is approved by both parts of the community please so I George I'm I'm appreciative of that and I don't have any concerns I as a transition plan I have no concerns with this other than as I mentioned earlier you know let's find a way to bring everybody in anybody who wants to that's currently serving let's let's find a way for them to come on board even if it's as an alternate whatever my only concern is that when we've all been involved with rules and regulations long enough that if something is stated in one version and it's not clearly stated in the next version it will oftentimes will just carry over and so and I recognize that this is transition and I'm fully supportive of doing this transition in this way because it brings it brings folks from both sides of the community in and puts them in and puts them together we've been trying to do that for a few years and this just formalizes that yeah my concern is that if we don't say going forward that it's going to be a community-wide search or we don't even say it's community-wide search but we can just say that the planning commission and the drbs will be made up will be appointed by the select board from the members of the community or if if we're going outside but but not to to make sure that we're not focusing on by charter separation that's all I was looking forward I understand okay yeah and Dustin if you look further down in that that memo that Greg showed a little while ago section 803 about the planning commission in the permanent sense it says that members will be appointed by the town select board from among the qualified voters of the town so there's no more designation at that point and there's no specifics about who gets to do what it's open to the public and that's that's fine I just again since we're calling out in a transition plan oftentimes that becomes an expectation I really appreciate your calling that out Andy no my apologies I've been having trouble with my hand button there you've been saying everything I was going to say so I'm also sorry Andy board members or sorry commissioners and zoning board members do you have any other comments or questions because I really would love to hear from staff okay I'm not I'm not seeing any hands so how about we start with Robin and a we so the two directors of community development in the village in the town what are your thoughts well I agree with John and Dusty I mean I think a transition period is critical I also think that having people on the boards you know with knowledge of what's happened in the past why it's happened and is important if you start off with a new board none of which have ever served in any sort of capacity as a volunteer or even more so on a zoning board or planning commission that can make a transition very difficult and challenging thanks Robin a we so I don't want to put anyone on the spot I'm not sure if we so is still with us Sharon or Darren Dina and you know what feel free Terry please chime in with your thoughts this is Sharon I agree with everything that's been said Nick had asked a question of you know what he feels his expectations from staff should be and honestly I think until we know who's going to do what if this becomes merged it's a hard question to answer I'm guessing that will continue kind of as is as you know it said no one's losing position so we might continue to answer town outside the village questions would probably come from me as we're all learning each other's codes and I would expect the same as far as no different than the select board you can't just if we merge we're not wiping all the the trustees in the village the you know the select board out same with the planning commission and the zoning board there's got to be that transition period until it's determined I guess how can you answer these questions now if you don't know the answer in the end so but planning is good but it does limit you know how you can answer and how to know to go forward thank you understandable uh Darren thanks Elaine I'll echo what Sharon and Robin said and everybody you know so far and I think you know we'll look to Evan and management and select board the new select board to understand how to sort of move forward and emerge environment and I think we'll all just have to have a learning curve staff and commissioners and DRB members I want to circle back briefly to the appointment of commissioners and just noting that the charter says that it will be from among the qualified voters and just I want to make sure that it's deliberate you know that you're thinking about what that limits you to because that means you know a qualified voter is not necessarily everybody who is in the community and might have an interest in planning and zoning issues so just just a thought the statute says it has to be uh at least a majority of the planning commission shall be residents of the municipality so you're limited in that way but as with the housing commission we did seek uh interest from folks who weren't necessarily within the community we happen to have a lot of really great expertise from residents but it's worth considering and not saying it should be one way or another but just make sure that that's considered. Darin that's a great consideration especially when you know people who aren't voting like new Americans who live amongst us that shouldn't limit them from serving on our planning commission because those decisions affect them as well so thank you for for bringing that up I really appreciate that that's really important um any other staff members wish to speak Terry or Dina? Oviso did is your mic open? I know Oviso has problems at times with bandwidths. Yeah yeah all right well what I'd like to do at this point is um Evan or Greg if you have any thoughts that you'd like to share on this and then we can move on to the broader discussion of of different approaches and decision making in the future merged village in town go ahead Evan. I just appreciate the conversation the camaraderie and the dedication to the community um and you know it'll be new if it goes through and we will need all of the expertise of all these people um you know from side to side because as I understand it the people on the town side who have never touched anything in the village in recent memory would need you know that cross knowledge um so it's great it's nice that's all thanks Evan any thoughts Greg? No all uh ditto Evan um just appreciate the conversation and and um honesty and teamwork and just kind of mostly want to hear from people so thanks for thanks everyone for participating yeah yeah so I'm going to step back and let George step forward now and pick up the next part of the conversation okay thank you. Also I see I see also that Tom Weaver joined us I didn't want to move on without acknowledging he's joined us as well and Tom if you have any thoughts to share or not it's totally fine. I'm up guard here Elaine. Unmute too if you're muted Tom. I can you hear me out? Yes yeah okay I'm new at this thing I don't I don't have many meetings like this but anyway I'm just more interested in I was watching this on town meeting before I realized I should probably get into the meeting thing itself so anyway I've heard what everybody said and I'm I'm just here more or less to pick up what you folks are talking about and so forth and you know I've made up my mind how I feel about this and I think we're I think we're all kind of on the right track and I like to say hello to Martin I see him sitting there hello how are you I didn't recognize you at first with your new your new look or maybe it's not so new I just haven't seen you in such a long time I thought we have a lot of meetings I thought it was a face mask at first Thanks Tom. Good to see you. All right it's all yours George. Well I'm gonna first of all ask Greg is what is the understanding here am I doing the presentation that that PowerPoint would that be the best way to go and give us all something actually talk about and get angry about or is that is that sort of the plan Greg? Yeah I think that's a good idea just maybe a quick overview and your PowerPoint is kind of the discussion points and to frame the topic and then get into the conversation after that. So I'm gonna need to flip through the slides. Yeah you're gonna manage you're gonna put the slides up and I'll I'll babble on about them. Sounds great. All right so let me first of all say I am stepping in as chair for the trustees tonight president for the trustees because Andrew Brown couldn't be with us and sorry we just wanted to clarify that Andrew we wish he could be here. So in and again this is such a terrific group and this is such a terrific event and I'm a little reluctant to do what I'm about to do because this is a very sort of village centric presentation that I presented to the trustees a while back but we kind of decided that it probably would fit for this. So the first slide sort of just talks about where where we are and I'll let you absorb that and just I want to just mention a few things. First of all personally as I go through this and I talk about downtowns and cities and so forth I grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts which which is a small city in Massachusetts about 120,000 people and then I lived a good part of my life in Boston and then in Philadelphia so what I I certainly understand the difference between a big city and a Vermont scale city and a Vermont scale downtown. Secondly I there I I tend not to be around the bush in these presentations and this in no way is meant to offend anybody and if so if anyone feels offended by anything or challenged by what I'm saying please let me know it was not intentional and I'll be happy to talk about it afterwards but I do want to kind of be a little provocative with some of this stuff. Lastly I'm hoping that we can maybe put a presentation a similar presentation like this together from the town's perspective that would be a great presentation for us to have for our next meeting. So one other thing I want to just mention I'm this presentation is from me as an elected official and I realize we've got planning commissioners and staff and members of the public present and so we each bring our own perspective this is my perspective as an elected official and hopefully there are some points of alignment between the way elected officials see things and the way planners see things and the way planning commissioners and zoning board folks see it but I just want to emphasize that that's where this is coming from. So the first slide talks about where we are right now we are pretty much separate. It doesn't mean we don't talk to each other and we are friendly with each other and we are interested in what each other is doing but our organizations are entirely separate and I just want to point that out and we have had the village has been doing 15 years for the last 15 years that I've been on the board we've been really intensely focused on redeveloping the village center and sort of like if it's an entirely separate community. So let's and so the prospect of merging you know presents a lot of challenges and interesting opportunities. So again let's go on to the next slide Greg and I wanted to just look at the concept of our two centers and the green is obviously the village and the blue is the is the town center the current town center and I said I wanted to just highlight obviously as extension for now it's there are about estimated something like 2,500 residential units right within the green circle don't ask me how I estimated that I just did but reasonably accurate within a few hundred and I wanted to contrast the two centers for for just to sort of look at them and where they are now and what the potential is and the interesting point here is that we as we look at the village center we see it's surrounded it by a pretty substantial residential neighborhood in all of which is connected by sidewalks all of which lead into the village center. The town center on the other hand is is really in my mind and I'm sure I'm going to step on toes here but in my mind it's a suburban center the the state highways around the town center kind of form a pedestrian barrier so I think as it grows it's going to grow in a very different way and so in my mind when we say what's the center of Essex and if we merge what's the center of Essex in some ways is really not a competition there because the two centers are very very different one is much more the traditional old-fashioned walkable urban downtown and one is a sort of a new newly developing suburban center so let's go on to the next slide Greg thanks again sorry for the for the village centric aspect of this but I wanted to look at the village center and compare it with a couple of other Vermont downtown Vermont cities. Winooski is in the orange circle St. Albans is in the yellow circle our state capital is in the gray circle so I wanted to give you an in Essex Junction is in the blue circle I wanted to give every everyone a a sense of scale if Essex Junction were to separate from the town and become a city it would be by population the state's fourth largest city it would be larger than St. Albans it would be larger than Winooski and it would be rivaling just a little bit larger than Barry just to give a sense of of how sort of the city like and develop the village has become in recent years but I also wanted to point out and as I said in the last paragraph here redeveloping older municipal centers poses different challenges than developing suburban and rural areas with open space like the Essex town center and I don't think I'm telling any of you anything that you don't know already it it poses different challenges it has different struggles you have constrained boundary lines it's more expensive and so it it requires a different approach to development than we normally we probably would see in the town let's move on to the next slide and I wanted to give a sense of what I meant by specifically I referred to capital a political capital in the last slide in the seven-year period of 2013 to 2019 I counted we had 116 business items on our agendas that dealt specifically with community development issues things like real estate purchases the crescent connector the multi-use pass sidewalks bike lanes and so forth so roughly 50% of all our meetings on the board of trustees had one community development related question to be decided and I looked at the agendas of legislative bodies in other communities Winooski St Albans Burlington South Burlington but also Williston Hinesburg in other towns and it it occurred to me it seemed to me again not an exhaustive study that communities that have downtowns like Winooski and St Albans tend to have more development issues on their agendas and so and I contrasted it with the town select board the Essex town select board and they really the select board really has a slightly different culture they're not dealing and I don't mean in any way to cast dispersions on the select board but they're not they tend not to be dealing with the same kinds of community development issues that we deal with so there's a slightly different board culture and board focus between the trustees and the select board and as we think about bringing the boards together I think it's something we all have to kind of be aware of certainly there are things that the select board deals with a routinely that the trustees don't deal with that that we're going to have to learn about or the whoever it comes from the village is going to have to learn about so go on to the next slide please Greg and I also spoke about investing financial capital and I think the best way to explain it is to look at several different examples back when we wanted to redevelop Pearl Street and make it more village like and less Susie Wilson like and route 15 like we wanted the fairgrounds to join us the fairgrounds had a CVE had a bank I think was about a 1.2 million dollar earmark federal earmark in the bank waiting for them but they didn't have the match to make it to procure the to procure the funds so we actually loaned them the money from fund balance and would they paid us back with gate receipts over three years and that allowed them to make the match and then we were able able to consolidate and bring in their their rebuild of the front of their fairgrounds with our rebuild of that section of Pearl Street so it's sort of enhanced and it augmented the whole development project and when I when I looked at that and when we looked at that the village attorney looked at the deal and it was perfectly legitimate from a legal perspective we knew that CVE had the cash flow so it was perfectly reasonable from a financial perspective but I'll tell you when I voted to do this I fully expected to probably not to be reelected to the board of trustees and I heard a lot of complaints from people saying well what do you mean what are you talking about you took taxpayer dollars and you loaned them to CVE to do this so the issue was it was fine from a legal perspective fine from a financial perspective but you have to you know it meant from a political perspective you got to be willing to do this some other examples the village purchased 33 spaces of public parking in a privately owned garage that's currently under construction on Park Street we acquired Park Street school from the S extension school districts when the school districts merged and we really did that we we wanted to do that to you know obviously the our rec department is using it as a daycare and after school for after school programs but we also anticipated that it would give us the leverage to work with developers who are going in there we were concerned that if it had remained the property had remained in the hands of the school district they're not used to dealing with development they are not particularly interested in in in village center development and so it really could have delayed or even derailed some of the development initiatives we had going on in that section of the village and then lastly just recently this year we purchased a chunk of the former road rescue which is now firebird property and we have plans underway to put in a little pocket park and again my point in in going over all these things is that these are the kinds of of things that we've been doing on the board of trustees for a number of years and I mentioned Winooski and St. Albans and I kind of look at look at them as how they approach it and and they've got the same kinds of challenges we have the older communities trying to do redevelopment trying to do infill development and they they do the same kinds of things and so I wanted to just sort of introduce this idea this is something that we do in the village that is maybe a little bit different than what the town is used to maybe not quite in the in the town select boards comfort zone and so something we need to have a conversation about because I think for ongoing redevelopment in the village center you it's going to require these kinds of what I call entrepreneurial actions to try to move your plans forward so let's go on to the next slide Greg I just want to briefly go over the design five corners design five corners is our plan for redeveloping the village center this was done this just this particular drawing was done I think about five years ago now four years ago and the if you look at the two green circles those were theoretical buildings and interestingly now they're real buildings that are going up and the yellow circle was a theoretical place where we might put a little green area and now it's a it's a reality so my point is is that we are we are moving forward with the design five corners plan and the other point in in looking at the at this this particular slide if we look at the building going up on maple street and the building that's going up on park street when that when they're finished sometime next year you're going to be looking at approximately 90 more residential housing units within a block of each other which translates to something like a hundred to maybe 130 more people living in the village center 90 more cars so you know we really are becoming a Vermont scale city and I think I anticipate that we're probably going to see in the not too distant future some more applications for more multi-storey buildings I also want to point out that I am very pleased to point out we think of it in the middle of a pandemic in the middle of a kind of a recession the village has two multimillion dollar projects underway so I it's kind of a I think a tribute to the success and to the fact that the the developers we've been working with kind of see value on their investments coming into the village so let's go on to the next one this is a really busy slide and I'll try to just you know generalize here so we've been we've had success as I've mentioned but the concern that we have on the trustees going forward is how do we maintain the momentum let me discuss one issue for example if we get the Crescent connector bill constructed if that gets done in the near future the ultimate plan is to convert five corners to a four-way intersection it's a controversial plan but it's it's been studied but now but we've had two traffic studies and to show that it would work it would be a great way to improve the village center but you cannot make that kind of a of a change in a community like s-extinction disrupting the traffic pattern for thousands of people it's going to take a huge push it's going to take a huge amount of community will my experience and and having gone through these traffic changes in the past and these kinds of disruptive changes in the past is that you get a you get a a big burst of outrage and then after a while everyone says why didn't we do this five years ago so but I make I am concerned and I do raise the concern that the kinds of things that we're doing in the village center are going to require political will and financial capital to keep them moving forward let's go on to the next slide I wanted to just generally as we talk about reorganizing our staffs if we think back to the first slide right now we have a a town community development office that serves a community of about 11 000 people and a village community development office that serves a community of about 11 000 people and suddenly if we consolidate we're going to have a community development office and planning office that serves a community that's the size of south burlington and ruttland so you're you're talking about a different scale so how do we bring this together and I wanted to just throw this out there there's all kinds of different ways of organizing your planning and and development structure thoughtful ways and interesting ways that suit the needs of your community and one of the interesting points in in this slide is if you look at burlington south burlington and when I look at community interface ruttland and the rocking ham bellows village they all have development review boards and planning commissions which is the model that we're moving moving to so I think that's a good move and it sort of validates what we've laid out in the charter the other issue here I wanted to point out is that in burlington south burlington in ruttland they have special districts and they have special districts that deal specifically with their downtown redevelopment needs the south burlington has a city center project williston road streetscape project they have two tiffs in south burlington community development obviously burlington has a downtown improvement district church street market plate district they have a waterfront district a downtown plan and a south end plan ruttland interestingly is fully on board with redevelopment they don't even have their their community development director is not called the community development development director their their director is the director of the redevelopment authority and sort of everything comes under the auspices of the redevelopment authority and I think that says a lot about the age the size of ruttland being a fairly substantial and older urban center that is in need of a lot of and looking to do a lot of redevelopment and even little rockingham and bellows falls down in southern vermont they have a development director in a town planner who is also the manager but they also have special districts they have a downtown development district and they have a downtown development alliance so again I make I guess I'm stating the case here for as we move forward to try to define s6 junction in the village center as a kind of a specialized area that's going to need special focus to continue our ongoing redevelopment efforts so let's go on to the next slide Greg and so I I kind of sketched out again just not telling anyone what to do but I thought just to be provocative here how what might and a consolidated s6 community development and planning office look like and I like the idea and Terry and Sharon will like this that we have a development review planner and a zoning administrator and the idea is that you would have someone who would really whose job would really be involved in in getting applications ready for review it's sort of have that as a separate function but this is this was something I threw out and the special districts we I had some ideas of design five corners s6 town center plan and maybe integrated town and village municipal plans what we move on to the so I wanted to just make the point that because in over the last two years when we hear about village and town merger we hear people saying well you'll be able to find you know with consolidation you'll find deficiencies you'll be able to eliminate things and I would make the point right now is both are our development staffs in our development boards and maybe not so much the boards because they have to wait for for applications to come in but certainly our staffs are completely full and they are occupied with their various zones of interest and I don't see that changing if we are talking about somehow trimming or finding efficiencies in community development and planning I would like to know where and I think we should all be trying to think ahead of time well what is it what what piece of work what body of work would you eliminate if you were going to do some if you wanted in the name of efficiency and let's let's understand that there really isn't anything out there that looks like we can just get rid of it if getting rid of some function or some planning function that we're doing now would be eliminating something that currently we think is valuable so let's go on to the next slide the last one I wanted to this this point I wanted to raise is that in the village I having looked at at at St. Albans and Manuski one of the things I came to understand is that when you're doing redevelopment you you wind up working with really a relative handful of investors and developers and businesses certainly you work with anybody but the the developers and investors who come in and start building they they want to enhance their investment and you tend to work with them we work a lot with the railroad in the village we have I think nine or eleven crossings I'm not sure so we have to work with them a lot we work with v-trans the town obviously works with v-trans v-trans a lot as well but my my concern is that with disruption sort of reflecting what Dustin said about you don't want to lose your experience on the planning commission and your your zoning board I'm also concerned about not just it not just staff but also the familiarity that the trustees have in working in in sort of their working knowledge and their familiarity with these kinds of issues how do we how do we maintain that and yet consolidate with another board and consolidate staffing so this is a concern to me and something I again I'm not looking for answers but something that we I would like to suggest we all need to be thinking of as we move forward let's go to the next slide please Greg and again this is sort of my my question to the design five corners implementation plan it's a substantial it represents a substantial plan that involved community engagement it incorporates heart it was based on heart and soul values we've already invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in it and so I'm questioning and wondering and trying to begin the conversation it's not just about a municipal plan it's about a specific focused plan to redevelop the village center how do we keep this moving forward in a merged community and I I'm not sure if I even have another slide Greg let's see if I'm at the end of my discussion here oh that's it all done folks thank you very much once again sorry that it may or may not have been a too too much of a village centric focus but I did want to raise these issues and I think that probably doing a forum like this again would be great and maybe have a town perspective a similar perspective coming about the town center thanks folks and I'll throw it back to you Elaine and see if anyone has comments or questions or thoughts thanks thanks George I wasn't sure if you wanted to facilitate the conversation about this or not but absolutely I can do that I think I've got it so I've got go ahead I've got um quite a few comments I'm just going to try to be as quick as I can and then yield to Florida anyone else I really appreciate the thought that went into this I know that this is a deep passion for you personally right and it has been an intense focus of the select of the trustees for many years as well as the PC having been a trustee for many years and having been a village planning commissioner for many years before that I'm very intimately acquainted with all of the things you talked about and I I don't know how I can say this without making an empty promise but at least as long as I'm on this board the select board is not going to forget about the village sure you know you know so I I've sensed a deep concern worry and even a fear that um that the momentum that's happening in the village is going to go away and I want to make every effort I can to assure you that that's not going to happen um I don't want to see the village plans falter I'm convinced that the staff and our new planning commission and our new development review board and our new select board would all do the business that came before them yeah the way they're supposed to do so um I have a little more I hope you don't mind um I just want to reassure you that it's paramount to the success of our future community as a merged community for the village center to continue to be successful it just will help us all going forward um at the same time the town center has its own significant needs yeah and um the the town center is very different it has different goals and aspirations and it has different limitations right and as well um village leadership does not have a lot of experience with rural development so in terms of inexperience and experience you know there's aspects of each of our communities that our boards just aren't acquainted with and I know that the select board has kept a much wider arms length position between development and the the board because that is our policy and I believe there's even some history there with um decades ago a lawsuit between the planning commission and the select board so we have a different culture around that and we're guided a little differently around that right but that said the select board is definitely more than the sum of its parts and so culture and the the willingness to take risks and the willingness to invest and the willingness to do something big and whether the criticism that comes initially and then be happy when that five years something they say later you know why didn't we think of this five years ago right um culture's a function of the individuals on the board in a lot of ways and elections change that so we can't necessarily predict what the new select board will do in five years none of us will be on that board most likely maybe some of us will but it's important for us not to put limitations on a future board and I'm not saying you're asking for limitations that's not what you're doing but I want to be conscious of any of the future board that's going to have to do the work that we're laying forth for them on in this charter and in our plans and the select board has never dealt with major downtown development before because we have you um the village trustees have existed since 1892 so we um the select board has never had to think about what five corners needs to look like because the trustees have always done that and so that's not an indication of the culture of the select board not being interested in village development rather the select board has had the luxury of being able to focus on town development and we've done a great job of that because we have you guys the trustees and the village planning commission and the village uh zoning board to do the excellent work you're doing so we're confident that that's going to happen and we have to there will be a learning curve for sure we will have to bring all that work to the table of the new select board and we'll have to step up to do that um but I'm confident we absolutely will and the only other thing I want to say is um um your your observations about staffing and potential models that we could follow I'm really happy we have those different examples but we have to be very mindful and very um attentive to the fact that organization of the staff is entirely the responsibility of the manager and not us and while we have that conversation and we can talk to staff and we can talk to Evan or the manager whoever it is at the time in the end by charter it's the manager's decision and so I'm uncomfortable having specific conversations about specific jobs and specific roles I would rather let the manager make a presentation to us of what he thinks we should do going forward and we can advise or agree or whatever but um that's a limitation we have that we really have to be attentive to that's all I don't want to take up all the time I'd much rather have other board members now um weigh in and I see John Alden has his hand up as well let me before I get to John let me just respond with a few things I I do want to point out that if merger is successful you're going to have half of the select board is going to be from the village so I can assure you your culture is going to change and it will be focused on the village center because that's half the board is going to be from the village and they're going to want to focus on the village center so I guess I part of what I'm saying here is to anticipate that it's not just a plea it's also kind of saying you're we're not the town we didn't set the merger up as you know for the town to absorb the village we're creating a new entity which is called the town of Essex but it's half it's going to be half village of Essex Junction on the board and I think they're going to whoever they are I think just about everyone I know everyone on the trustees and I'm going to guess anyone who would run for this new board is going to have the same kind of interest and passion about the village that we all presently have on the trustees so get ready town select board your culture is going to change if merger is successful I think one of the other things if maybe if I could just quickly everyone's I'm sure a sick of listening to me but let me just try to encapsulate what I you know what I really trying to say back a few years ago we considered taking out having the village become a TIF district a tax increment finance district like St. Albans like South Burlington like other communities have had and trying to and you you know you you improve the property and then you sort of like borrow money against the future the increased property values that you're going to do with the with the loan I wanted to do that but I thought we can do that but not put the community on the hook for the money but in my mind let's have a TIF district but without actually putting the community on the on the hook for the money and I didn't see the value of a TIF district being so much for the money in my view for St. Albans and other communities that do it what's really important is that when you know that five years coming you better get this job done you better get this development done you better get these projects finished because if whether they're finished or not the community is going to be on the hook for those increased tax that those increased tax revenues so you need to get them done so it's the focus it's the it's it's it's forcing staff elected board planning commissioners everybody to work as a team and get the project done and I think that's what we've been trying to do in the village center that's how I see it and that's that's the concern that that going forward we could kind of lose that that intense focus so that that was real that kind of sort of summarizes what I'm trying to say here so I'm talking and I think John Alden had his hand up first John go ahead can I just make one quick thing you were super clear George very clear um I just want to make one more very clear thing I'm pretty sure the town of Essex is not eligible to have a TIF I just want to be very clear with everybody we are not talking about getting a tip no we're not talking about it it's not in the merger we are just using it as an example no we're not very clear before rumors start flying no we've got we've got too much money here for TIF district they wouldn't let us have one let's have John hello well I have the distinct honor of being both on the design five corners and the Essex town center planning initiatives make committees whatever you want to call them and I got to say that was a little bit of a one-sided presentation from the village point of view which George admits but that we spent hours and hours and hours with the Essex town center study project and it would be fair to say that both the town and the village both have significant initiatives and and planning operations in place and underway to re-envision parts of their community and so I'll go back to what Dusty said which is that these planning initiatives are extremely important to the community as a whole and that it's going to be very important to maintain the knowledge base and the the resources that are already in place for for each component for the town and the village to to take them forward and and they can go forward together they need to go forward hand in hand and that's going to be the challenge for the combined government which is you know not to ignore either one to respect them both and and to take those tremendous opportunities and and all of that knowledge that's out there right now and all of the work that's been done and keep it going and so I think it's very important that we go forward like a marriage where we say okay I like what you're doing and you like what I'm doing and we need to support both of those things as we go forward together under a merger condition and so therefore I think what Dusty said about keeping the the people that have that expertise and have that awareness already in place for as long as you can have them whether they're voting members of some committee or just advisory or what have you that will be extremely important until we all get our feet under us then we can go forward with the final arrangement okay thank you John I don't know if anyone else had their hand up is everyone just completely bored to death or okay Tracy Delphia yeah I'm I'm a little confused I think most of the questions that were in your presentation can be answered by is it in the comprehensive plan is it in the vision do we have goals in place that identify five corners specifically that calls that out for development for transportation for affordable housing for housing in general for infrastructure if it's not in the comprehensive plan why not I'm in I I don't want to step on anyone's toes but I'm actually surprised that we're having this conversation now as part of planning and not a year ago and I'm very surprised that a draft combined comprehensive plan wasn't in the merger planning documents because I would argue that the comprehensive plan the vision the goals the strategies and how we're going to meet those is just as important as a charter covering our governmental makeup in terms and how we function the comprehensive plan the municipal plan is what we're striving for how we're going to plan getting there and that's definitely a conversation that I feel should have been front loaded in the merger conversation and not happening at this point in the phase and just a little background George I think that South Burlington only has one TIF district multiple projects within the city center TIF district but I think it's only one TIF district just for a little bit of background I was the vice chair of the South Burlington planning commission during a major comprehensive plan update during city city center form-based code creation and you know it's very much we should be striving as a joint body to tie every single thing we do development and otherwise back to the comprehensive plan that should be our go-to for strategy for then for how we get to where we want to be Tracy thank you actually the in the charter it calls for the village first of all the all of the the village center development plans are in our in the village comprehensive plan and the charter calls for the preservation and integration of both comprehensive plans right now the town comprehensive plan but we joke and say it has a giant hole in the middle of it and that's the village and so the village comprehensive plan will fill in that hole I think what I was trying to get at is that in my experience and again I look at it this is coming from elected official as opposed to planning commission member I think plans are great I think plans are fantastic you've got to have them but you also have to have an elected board that has the will to push that plan you know what I mean it's a nuance I don't have to say we're not we're not just waiting to see if someone likes our plan we're going to go out and find find ways to to push to make this plan happen but both comprehensive plans are the charter calls for both comprehensive plans to be honored and preserved and carried forward in the new community I don't yeah Tracy yeah I just I mean the the planning is the groundwork for the political fortitude to go ahead with to enact what that comprehensive plan says with input from the public through surettes through you know the whole gamut of planning tools you know it's not just up to the select board or the trustees to say nope this is what we're going to do this is my political decision this is what we're going to do it all needs to tie back into a visioning document a strategic plan what is the overall what are we doing here basically right right I don't want to again prolong the conversation but in I I'm not disagreeing with you at all but I think if I go back to my original point we had a plan to rebuild Pearl Street we had a plan where that included getting CVE to you know work with us and collaborate with us but we didn't have the money so we could have just let that go but we took we took the kind of unusual step of finding the money to let allow CVE to get their federal earmark that allowed them to do their development and and that's kind of that that's the sort of the nuance I'm talking about that's where the elected board has to step in and say are we willing to put money and political capital behind our comprehensive plan that you know what I'm saying yeah we're saying the same thing but it's you know there's there's in my planning brain there there's a rhyme and reason and a planning force that needs to be behind every single decision whether it's downtown redevelopment whether it's transportation affordable housing which are all in the comprehensive plan but I've looked at um but you know I always come back to the quote if you can't define what you're doing in the form of a process you have no idea what you're doing um and the claim holds true for municipal planning if you don't have a vision and strategy to get there you're basically just going for a road trip with no destination right yeah read yeah um I don't someone else had their hand up annie cooper annie um hi is it okay for public to speak right now is that a thing yet no um yeah I no we have not opened it up to the public yet let me just make okay I was going to say let's make sure that all the planning commission commissioners and staff have spoken first annie and then we'll get to the public um so who else anyone else uh have comments members of the select board any thoughts or comments pat uh I do have one um and actually stretches way back towards the beginning do we need to make any changes to the charter um that would define the request that was made from us to allow for a large amount of alternates onto this new planning commission or is the position of alternates not something that needs to be included in the charter um I just want to get some clarification because that seems to be the one point pat you know what if we just get the answer to that that'd be great pat we have a item on the agenda for this evening to to discuss charter changes based on what we've heard tonight so I think we might want to defer that question to that point because there might be others that come up and I'd love to hear from Craig and Evan about that okay absolutely hi this is Sawiso I have a comment I can see that that there's a lot of concern and a lot of protectors and I think that moving forward whatever happens between the two communities that develop is a very special place that deserves special recognition and I think that it will be handled that way through zoning or some sort of special overlay district or designation George you're muted and uh who is it was it Tom Tom do you have a question and I have someone um Patrick Scheldt has a question Patrick yeah George thanks for the uh the presentation and you know I I just want to echo that I'm part of the village planning commission and I think um the development of the village and the development of the new Essex town center in the different directions that the different planning development has gone I think they really as Elaine said I think they're paramount to each other they really need to complement each other in order for the town as a merger as a merged entity to continue to take that step forward and I I just want to kind of reiterate that kind of special district and state designation village centers downtown centers you can have those different centers and have those development plans for those designated areas I thank you for bringing up bellows falls which is a village which is in the town of rockingham that I don't you know that's not very commonly known likewise Jeffersonville is a village in the town of Cambridge white river junction is a village in the town of Hartford in fact Hartford has five villages within itself qui chi is the village within the town of Hartford so there are examples of how these things and these different development plans can complement the overall community and really push the overall development I think they're just their examples out there and and I've seen on front porch forum and I know this might not necessarily be the place but you know people are worried about the village losing its identity if we merge with the town and become the town of Essex and I just think that's inherently false when you look at these other designations and these other special places they just they hold their identity and five corners in the village will always be the village of Essex junction we're just going to have a different governance a different way of potentially moving ideas forward so that's all thank you George for your presentation no problem great thank you good comments pat I can't I'm not able to see oh Darren Darren hit okay Darren please yeah thanks for that presentation George and for the discussion we've had and to follow on Patrick's comment a little bit you know there is the village and there is the town but there's actually lots of places within each of those jurisdictions that I would consider their own special places there's 40th and Allen there's the Susie Wilson corridor there's Saxon Hill and the whole rural Essex I think there's you know it's I think a lot of a you know focus should be had on you know emphasizing that these two places are unique and they are part of the community in the broader fabric that I think we want to try to encourage and I'm excited to you know get into more of that the longer I'm here all right appreciate that and I want to follow on it and go back and say you know part of the rationale for for this presentation and trying to pull this this meeting together is to say this is a I think we we see that there's a great a really good conversation to be had here amongst all of us and so in it and there's no time like the present to start it so you know let's get the ball rolling and have more of this discussion and who else had their hand up someone did but no they disappeared sorry anyone else have a question or comment can we go back to Annie now yeah let's go back to Annie and you want to say do we want to do an official open it to the public for comment is that where we're ready to be on the agenda yeah if no one else has a comment about the presentation don't know none of the other planning commissioners or staff have a comment or question about something let's maybe take some questions from the public see what that takes us is that okay Elaine yeah can we just confirm that none of the trustees or select board have any comments or questions just wanted to do that formality all right so we're gonna shift to item G in the agenda which is comments from the public and Annie was the first person to raise her hand but if you wish to speak to address what we've been talking about raise your hand or mention in the chat and we'll call on you in order go ahead Annie thank you for waiting thank you so much for the respect to be allowed to speak George I have been watching you I'm gonna cry I've been watching you be so strongly thoughtful and gracious and and your role in the village since 2009 has been one of constant support and kindness and diplomacy and you have really really put your time in and you've really been so solidly consistent for us and I'm really true George you're really and I think that I think that what you presented here this evening was a lot of your passion from all of that work that you have put in and my respect for that work and your thought process and what you know and your historical knowledge and your dreams and goals for our village are extraordinary all right well thanks Annie I appreciate that and I'll send you your check next week for well you might want to when I finish your mic so anyway did you want to ask just time or okay it's a challenge and I'm so grateful for all of that I do think however that with all that not however with all that being said I do feel and I saw Andy nodding along when I agree with the we so I agree with Pat I saw you and Tracy get on the same page before I think that ultimately we can trust deeply our emerged community to carry as Darren said also these pieces that respect all of who we are and and maybe it won't look exactly like you've been going for for a long time but I think I think that the camaraderie and collaborative effort will net us such a beautiful thing that maybe it will be better than what we dreamed of even if it's not exactly the path that you were hoping for with your entire presentation and I know I see your face I think I think that we can trust emerged community to look after all the gems that we have and are and yeah I think trust I think we need to trust our our future that's what I want to say appreciate it Annie I think that the most important thing and I really appreciate the kind comments thanks sincerely that's very nice I wish I could actually live up to all of that but I appreciate you saying it but I think the important thing is I keep saying is that we begin to be thinking about this because I think for the last two years we've been so focused on other aspects of merger and we hadn't really thought a lot about this and in my mind this is this is the real this is the really critical stuff that that we haven't been thinking about no offense to anyone else but I you know but I think so and I if I did if I was trying to be a little provocative and I hope I was because I think being a little provocative stimulates good thinking and good dialogue so thanks Annie I do too and so do I understand then George that you're saying I got to be honest with you people I think some of the apologies you were making before got me a little bit lost until I until I understood so if I understand you correctly you're saying that you just want to ensure that as we grow forward we we recognize where our work needs to begin and what what we really need to aim for just sorry thank you so much thanks for the time you've given me to speak right thanks Annie appreciate it anyone else please nope we all good any other comments from the public go ahead Irene I see patty waving her hand I think she was doing that first would you like to go thank you yeah I'm not getting everybody's hands I so Elaine if I'm not calling on someone could you call them because I'm not sure if I see everybody absolutely but pat patty waves to the camera so patty go ahead I just wanted to say that you know to tag along with Tracy Delphia Delphia I Tracy I'm probably mispronouncing her name I just want you to know that the year and a half I sat in all the Essex board community development meetings of planning commission meetings that it was such an honor to sit through that and look at and and learn about the community plan like like Tracy was talking about having a plan because if we respect each other's town center I mean I'm obviously involved in the Essex town center because I went to a lot of the planning commission meetings and I found them fascinating they work so hard John I you did a lot of the talking on the planning commission I just want you to know that you're awesome and everybody on the planning commission in Essex that I got to know I really really learned a lot and enjoy those meetings I just want to say that I think that like Tracy said we may have different plans for our centers but I can see someday our two centers connecting whether it's a trolley whether it's route 15 between the two centers down the road we just have to have that respect for each other now that we we want to develop our own town centers but that doesn't mean that we can't have all these little areas within our two town centers between the two and invest in that connection between the two that would really be cool but I that's all I wanted to say like Tracy said you have to you can't have the cart before the horse you have to have that plan and if we have two different plans we need to go forward with those two different plans and then eventually I think we will connect one way or the other we will connect that's it right right great thank you patty thank you and I like the idea of a trolley I really I think that's a fantastic idea go ahead Irene Irene thank you um I see that we have a seven member board proposed for the planning commission and the drb and so I would ask that you honor what the voters asked for in March and make that an even board and since the planning commissions have always been larger than a select board in both districts I would ask that you make it a four plus four board in both places and that way we have an adequate number of people to speak to whatever district they have the expertise in as plans come up and things come before that new board or those new boards thank you okay thank you anybody else okay thank you for the comments folks um our next item on the agenda is discussion of possible changes to draft charter um based on our conversation here I'm wondering um Evan and Greg I wonder if um because my head's kind of spinning a little bit with all the the excellent input we've gotten did you catch did anything catch your ear that we need to make some edits to the charter I one or two things caught my ear and I want to know what Evan and Greg caught the only thing that really caught um my attention was what Pat brought up and we can ask Dan Richardson if we need to put in any sort of condition or clause about having alternates for the planning commission or DRB okay yep and I would echo that other than maybe having that as a policy if that will cover it we'll talk to Dan about that um I think seven member an odd number board is appropriate um they are if I remember correctly they are elected at large so they should be resent representing the entire community and the plans as as Tracy had mentioned and others they are implementing the land development code and the plans the comprehensive plans of the community that's what their job is it's not political right Evan I mean they're the planning commissioners aren't elected anyway they're appointed in our community and um the voters voted on the select board not the planning commission so yeah one language change that um Darren Shibbler called my attention to the section 803 planning commissioners will be chosen from among the qualified voters so I would like the phrase qualified voters to change to something that allows for non-voting residents and uh actual non-residents um Darren alluded to state statute that allows something like that so perhaps we could ask Dan to um change that language so that we can make sure that um underrepresented populations are able to serve on the planning commission even if they are not registered voters and then if there are other experts from outside of the community that want to serve that they have the ability to do so Greg uh we yeah we'll be happy to check with Dan on that one I believe if my memory is correct that statute um just says that the majority of planning commissioners have to be from the town I think that Darren mentioned that as well I believe right now the current village charter specifies having planning commissioners from within the village that's probably where that came from yeah the the village charter doesn't specify uh registered voters but it specifies that they have to be within the village they have to live within the village I think we need to take out the phrase qualified voters yeah we will we'll we'll talk with Dan about uh better language yeah I can I I want to jump into the car here I I think if something I'm anticipating that if something like that went down to the and by all means you should take it out of the town version um it's obviously too late to change it in the villages version but I would imagine if something is is kind of contrary to state statute that the government ops committee would comb it out of there um if the mergers or if the charters were approved um I you know I think they would they would say your policy unappointing planning commissioners isn't doesn't align with state statutes so that this needs to be changed I think that's the kind of thing that we anticipate would would change um in committee I think I saw Raj Raj yeah no I just want to say that um echo Elaine and Darren's thank Darren for bringing that up and catching that um it's always nice to have more eyes that's a great catch and uh we would do very well to have um a more accepting and open process than simply uh voters so thanks thanks for that Darren please go ahead and just to point out quickly that that also applies to section 804 for the development review board not just the morning commission thank you is there anywhere else we've used that um uh uh Brown L library trustees I'm seeing um well so the the only other place we talk about voters is elections so the Brown L trustees and the select board members they do have to be elected by qualified voters so I'm just doing a quick search I just that's sorry that yeah we should probably do a quick scan anyone else uh Elaine um what is the uh do you have the agenda in front of you I do okay is your question what's next the next hang on a second I'm getting it so we're we're still talking about uh discussion of um uh possible changes to the draft charter is that what you're that we're doing now right right but you know not seeing any other hands um so if board members or commissioners don't see any other significant issues that merit a change to the charter then I think we're done with that part of the conversation and Evan and Greg I I'm getting I know you said you'd go to to Dan Richardson with those specifics but perhaps um you could also when you talk with him just talk about the overall gist of our conversation tonight with the commissioners and the zoning board and make sure Dan doesn't have any other um doesn't pick up any other possible changes that might have to be made based on our conversation absolutely we have a couple of cleanups uh that he was looking into this will be a pretty much a quick conversation okay so George I think we can move on to next steps unless you know I I I think that I think we should move on to next steps and I think I one of the things I'd like to just throw out there is it I have a feeling that this should not be been a one-time event I think we I'd like to get everyone's feeling about maybe doing this again um and having one or two other presentations as a centerpiece so that we for us to bounce ideas off um so I'd like to throw that out there but also um go around the horn and get everyone else's suggestions for other other ways of doing this so um I'll I'll throw it out I'll I'll throw out that um to start it off I'll I'd suggest that we try to do something like this again um it's we're heading into our maximally busy season for um the elected boards and staff um so it might be difficult to find a slot but you know in the not too too distant future it might be a smart idea for us to do this again um it you know probably maybe before the the town merger vote in uh on annual meeting in March what do you think what do you what are your thoughts Elaine I think that's a great idea um I think maybe after the like middle of January or later after the staff has had a chance to put the budget to bed yeah okay that sounds good yeah other thoughts folks there's like 25 of you out there if someone has to have a comment Tracy yes please hi again um in my time on the zba there's never been a like consolidated forum for communication and I just wanted to raise the idea of potentially having at least an annual meeting between the select board the town zba the town planning commission and likewise in the village if merger passes all combined one happy family um in previous experience what we would do is we would get everybody in the same room uh feed dinner choose a topic uh and really flesh out the details just to make sure that everyone is sort of pushing in the same direction uh just a touch base um you know use it for a charrette for you know a presentation from potentially a consultant just to have that that in-person communication uh from a planning perspective from a government perspective I couldn't agree more Tracy that's an excellent idea yep agreed I'm not sure any anyone else please any other thoughts follow-up after tonight Andy um I just did a quick look through the the charter and library library trustees and the moderator the other two places where it says qualified voter there's only so thank you yeah I think that's a great a great thing to pull out where we can yeah I just have a late thought on this um this is sort of the Tracy's comment just made me think of this but uh included in her list I put the housing commission um yeah yeah and I'm wondering in this conversation um now that now that she made me think that I thank you um you know maybe future conversations like this they should be represented as well um and maybe not tonight obviously um just more to do with the charter but um they're getting going and it would be uh good to keep them engaged with all of this I'm trying to catch up and learn how this all works myself so um but um yeah just wanted to throw that in there also Raj bike walk committee and the EDC yeah you know you raised a good point Raj um I'm not even sure that that all of our planning commission members in the town in the village are they even aware that we have a housing commission now I don't think at least we in the village haven't had a formal discussion with them and how how are their activities how is the how how is the housing and because this is a joint village in town housing commission how are their activities going to be integrated with our planning and community development activities that's an interesting conversation for us to be having and I you know down the row we've been very busy but we sort of just launched this commission but really haven't sort of brought them into the process so to speak so that that might be something to um do for our next meeting as well I mean maybe that maybe that's something that um we can we can put together a subcommittee you know of uh maybe members of the planning boards our boards the housing commission just so they can get to know each other a little bit and have a conversation about how to work together as the housing commission started right started on the right foot get them started with some relationships um and uh I don't know yeah I think Aliso is trying to talk Aliso yes sorry and I I apologize Raj I did not mean to speak over you um even with my spotty connection um so um so I've been working with Robin and Darren on the housing commission oh okay one of the things we've been working on and so we've only had one meeting it was um attended only by four members because two have been the emergencies at the last minute and one had um one had explained previously that she was not going to be available until the beginning of November but in any case the what we talked about was spending the roughly the first three months educating the board on um on the going on in the town in the village and so we have I have a list here of I mean it's not an exhausted list and of course it's everyone that you've mentioned already the EDC conservation and trails planning commission ZBA the energy um the energy commission literally like all of these issues touch housing and to the extent that this board should be grounded in Essex and Essex's um issues and processes we believe that we need to come up with a program of guest speakers and lectures to them at their group as well as have we're having them give individual presentations on a weekly basis one essentially now one per week um so that they understand what strengths they bring to the board because that's not always clear to everyone and so I think we're going to take the first three months of this process as an educational process for them as well as sort of start to get their feedback and understand where they're coming from I just thought that I try that with you thank you thank you we so Elaine you're muted sorry that's a great next step is to start thinking about planning future communications between these committees an annual event of some kind is a fabulous idea but also maybe the chairs of each committee being together on a quarterly basis just building more communication making sure that everyone knows what everyone's doing that's an outstanding idea no matter what the results of our votes are so thank you always so for getting that ball rolling um so George oh Raj go ahead no and that note if these are for the time being sadly are going to be team or zoom meetings um maybe there's a place that those can be uh like we all want more of those right everybody yeah sign me up are you serious um that said uh in the interest of learning more about what everybody else does and how this process works um maybe there's a way that you know some of those emails could go out and just kind of maybe it's a cordial invitation to some of the I'll just say me I can't speak for the rest of the trustees but I would love to be in on some of those as a fly on the wall and some of those housing commission uh orientations and um I'm going to try to start attending some planning commission meetings as they start to happen virtually but um it's really easy if they're virtual so yes maybe we could get some notice on proactive notice I know I can go look them up I suppose but um sorry to interrupt your line oh not at all I think that's a really everyone is swamped but virtual meetings do make it easier to drop in on what other committees are doing and so everyone is welcome to do that of course so but it's a good practice for all of us um so George next steps for the village your your merger charter is on the ballot right right the merger charter is on the ballot we have a another public hearing next week Greg Evan right next Tuesday I'm thinking yes correct and um you know and invite every one of you to attend if you want to um we're just taking questions um we had quite a few people attend online in our last meeting but no one asked any questions I guess either um they were shy or they knew everything they needed to know or they've decided made their minds up already so um but yeah a public hearing next week and then um the decision we will know um and then just for for everybody's sake um going forward the plan is for and I don't want to steal your thunder thunder Elaine and Andy um but the idea is for the town to put a roughly equivalent merger charter before the voters I think an annual meeting Elaine if I'm not mistaken you sticking to that we'd like to it's not definite we have it right and if if that gets put out and that gets townwide that gets voted on by voters in the town and the village um if both charters are approved and there are some and we know already know there are going to be some differences between them but we have a sense that those differences can be um negotiated or resolved in the government operations committee meeting um in the state in the from on house um that it's not unusual to have that happen and just to digress a little bit um probably we we're talking about minor nuances and some minor changes like we discussed tonight but um you know obviously the big one is in terms of a representation board um the town looks like you guys are going to go with a stay with a three three model I'm not sure I don't want to assume I'll let you speak after me and the village that many ways my way of saying that in the village we have um our representative board is would have three um three folks three seats reserved for village residents three seats for town residents and one seat would be elected at large from anywhere in the community and that's that's our plan that's going that's in front of the voters right now and Elaine I'll throw it back to you in case you want to um correct me no corrections George thank you um the select board just last night finished editing the charter version that we're working on and we were anticipating that this meeting might generate a couple more changes which um we most likely will get a few small changes based out of um the two items that we discussed just a few minutes ago and we'll go to Dan Richardson for that so that we're not spending a ton of time word smithing um November we will have two listening sessions um I'm assuming they'll be tagged on to existing select board meetings um the November 2nd and I'm not sure when the next one is in November but 16th the 16th awesome thank you Andy so we'll do listening sessions there and my hope is that our first meeting in December which is December 7th we will um come together one more time to look at the last final version of the board of the charter and then have a vote to um put it on the march ballot so um that's what the plan is and that's it that's what the plan is for the for the select board and and you're right if it does pass the town voters two different and it passes the village voters two different charters will go to um the state house and they will not be materially different except with the representation models and we are going to have to await the ruling of the legislature as to how to resolve that issue so I think that's everything we have for this um we have a board member comments section and an upcoming meeting schedule I don't know that we need to talk about the schedule but do board members have any further comments and by that I mean also um planning commissioners and zoning board members any final comments or questions our meetings are kind of long but sometimes yours are too nick hi everyone there I am okay uh just for interest of fairness perhaps next time during one of these meetings we might have somebody from the select board or one of the various boards that might be interested in presenting something similar to what George presented tonight from the town perspective absolutely the town has been working on diligently in in in our development and preservation of our wilderness areas whatever that may be so that would be of interest to me yep that's a great suggestion to wholeheartedly endorse that nick thank you that's a very good idea thank you nick I would love to have that happen evan and oh we so perhaps if you could put your thinking caps on and have a presentation about town center development and saxon hill area development and what we've got going on in the town I think it would be very enlightening for everyone oh I I have a sense that we so really want to talk about etc next I can't wait Elaine Mike has to stand up wait wait wait wait let we so sorry oh I said yes I just unmuted myself for this I'm so excited we should be delivering the ethics town center plan to you very shortly um it should be going before the planning commission so it should be publicly available by no either october 30th or november 2nd and it's going to this um to the planning commission the um on november 12th and hopefully there will be plenty of time for public input and then everyone will get one last chance for public input and the final presentation will be given to the select board hopefully at your meeting in in december so it's a little later than we'd hoped we we were shooting for november 16th but under the circumstances I think that since there's been so much time that's passed since a lot of people may have seen it for the first time there may be additional changes that everyone wants to make I know it took a couple of extra days to get um input from all of the town departments because we wanted to make sure that all of their information was current but we're really excited to get this to you like really excited uisa I can't wait to see it and nick thank you so much for that suggestion Mike has his hand up Elaine um I would just like to say thank you to uh to George and Elaine and to staff um for putting this all together I thought it was a really good meeting I enjoyed all of the perspectives um that everybody weighed in with I just thought it was very well done and uh just wanted to say thank you thanks Mike thank you Mike okay well if there aren't any further questions or comments I think we can all wrap it up and um adjourn our meeting but I want to thank all of you for taking the time out of your evening to spend with us and I really appreciate your feedback your thoughtfulness your thoughts and your concerns and and excitement about going forward we're on a really great path and one of the reasons for that is because of all of you our planning is outstanding in Essex it's something to be really proud of and it's because of all of you so thank you for being here and have a lovely evening um select board would you like to move in second and a motion to adjourn I'll make the motion to be adjourned in the Essex Select Board thank you Dawn I will second that motion thank you Vince any further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye and on behalf of the trustees I will make the same comments of observation as Elaine I appreciate everyone coming here um you know back we had thought of doing this we we thought listen to this folks back we had the idea long before there was a pandemic of renting a beautiful spot somewhere up on Lake Champlain and spending a weekend together talking about planning and development doesn't that that sounds like that would never happen now that's never gonna happen and you know we had I had visions of us walking around you know after a long day maybe with glasses of champagne overlooking like you know watching the sunset thinking about grand visions of the future for our community you know now it's not gonna well maybe we can make that happen you know we'll do our best we'll do our best but anyway this is this has been almost as good almost as memorable good Elaine I'm gonna put my mask on too and so for the trustees for Amber um and Raj and Dan do I hear a motion to adjourn the uh trustees meeting I'm moving adjourned second second um any further comments all in favor aye aye thanks for coming guys all right thanks everyone be safe be safe please