 It's 6 30 and I'll call the Thursday January 28th 2021 special meeting of the Town of Essex Select Board to order. Are there any agenda additions or changes. Tammy does have a change. You have to unmute Tammy. There you go. Yes I'm here. I do. It's not a change though. It's just a few suggested edits for the warning. So I don't know if it's worth it. It's nothing you have to change on your agenda. I think we'll hold off and talk about the warning when we get to that business item. Tammy thank you. Yes. Yes. Board members do you have any changes to the agenda or items you wish to bring forward from the consent agenda. Andy. Travis had asked us to approve the emergency leave policy retroactively and the document that's in the consent agenda says TBD for effective date. I think it would be good to be totally unambiguous and provide a specific date. I think the date that's been recommended is January 1st 2021. So I'd like to pull that into a business item so that we can make that explicit motion to approve it with the retroactive date included. Okay so we're going to pull consent agenda item 7C out of the consent agenda and make that business item 6C and was there anything else Andy. No that was it for me. Okay Evan did I see your hand. Yeah quick question. Do you think there's going to be any questions on that other than the date because I'd have to contact Travis. I gave him the night off just to date. That's the only thing I have a question about. All right I didn't want to question it. I just wanted to make it explicit. That's fine I will try to if there are any questions I will try to answer if not I will contact Travis. Okay thanks. And I would like to pull the minutes of January 22nd out of the consent and move them to item 6D because I have a correction. Any other changes to the agenda. Would anybody like to move to approve the amended agenda. So moved. Thank you. Thank you Dawn. Any further discussion. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed. Thank you. All right we will move on to item 4 public to be heard. This is the part of the meeting when people who are in the audience who wish to speak to the board on items that are not on the agenda can do so. If you'd like to speak please raise your hand or indicate in the chat. I see Tracy Delphia. Go ahead. At the beginning of the meeting I heard Dawn and Evan speaking about stuffing ballots and when that will be taking place. I believe in the last meeting Dawn clarified that while she's running for office that she can be involved in stuffing ballots. Since I am a JP and I am also on the ballot I just want to verify that that is totally allowed because I think we're going to be in a situation where it's all hands on deck to get this done. Thank you. Thank you. Dawn is I see you nodding your head. Can you give us a verbal on that. That's fine. They're just the candidates can't be when the ballots are fed near the machines they just can't be there but they can help with the process of getting them out. Okay because they are BCA members. Thank you. Evan. And I already have the answer. Yes the ballot box will make a reappearance outside of 81 Main. Thank you Evan. For the audience at home it is chained down and it's under security camera. Thank you Evan. Really good security camera. Okay any other comments from the public. Go ahead Ken. Madam Chairperson what I have to say will take about five and a half minutes. Will you grant me that time. Is it something that is not on the agenda. Yes it is something that is not on the agenda. You can take about two minutes if you could possibly squeeze it in. I will reserve my time if someone else maybe will come along and see their time to me. I'll speak otherwise I'll just yield and wait. Thank you. That's not how that works. Yeah that's that's not how it works. You have some time now Ken. Go ahead and say what you need to say and then we'll move on to our business. So our agenda is pretty short. Do we need to limit people. It is very short. Go ahead Ken and let's be concise. I'm sorry Madam Chair. I really do need the five and a half minutes and it wouldn't do it justice otherwise. Can you leave my two minutes. Go for it. Go for it Ken I'm sure it's going to be riveting. Thank you very much Madam Chair appreciate it. I didn't complain when you cut me off after two minutes when there was no one else in the queue to speak at a public hearing. I didn't complain when you laughed when I suggested that there were maybe two zip codes would be the solution to the local option tax split problem. I didn't complain when certain citizens are given more time to speak than others. But to accuse two of your constituents of putting out misinformation and misinforming the public when you never even spoke to them to first ask any questions or even try to understand what they were presenting. I'm tired of this and I'm not going to take it anymore. If one thing to publicly disagree or even say you cannot confirm or understand something that was said but you characterize your disagreements as absolutely false and absolutely not correct a serious misrepresentation of the merger plan. You didn't give names but you alluded to the video produced by two clearly identifiable residents which by the way still gets more of you than yours. If only you had asked us we could have explained what we did. You took advantage of your position to disparage me and Irene on Front Porch Forum all nine neighborhoods town website various Facebook pages and groups if only you had asked us first. And now as part of a tepid apology you say you were not alone in crafting your serious misinformation memo. You shared the shame with others including staff and now you've conceded that you were wrong. That's good. But even then you hedged your apology. You said that we were correct after all but still misleading. I ask you is what you said any more mislead what we said any more misleading than what you guys were saying now. You say the tax increase was twenty nine dollars per year when you know darn well it's twenty nine dollars per year per year. Now I'm new to this arena. I can't even say if I voted for you or not. Three years ago I was clueless. But I'm in long enough now to see your modus operandi. You seek to silence dissent. Me Irene even your fellow select board members when they don't agree with your agenda. And this is not the first time when you were forced to deal with three plus three what did you do. Did you contact us. No. Did you give us a chance to explain. Nope. Did you seek to understand how it might work. No. Instead at a public hearing you opened with a list of six reasons it was no good all of which could have been debunked for you and eventually was if only you had asked again abusing your bully pole but you spoke for six minutes I only had to others had to see their time to me. This was on a charter change that the good people of this town wanted badly enough that they demanded it in such a way that you could not silence them. This is the pattern that after only one and a half years I can now see when you encounter serious opposition or dissent first you accuse and attack. If that doesn't kill it and it survives you join in like you finally did on three plus three when in reality you really had no choice. Now if you goof the attack like you did with the tax shift calculation you apologize in a limited way leaving the bogus that does disparagement out there. This has to stop. We need more conversation and less confrontation. I expect more from my elected officials especially one that claims to be collaborative. You need to listen and be curious about anything anyone has the courage to say to you you need to engage rather than attack. There are some brilliant people in this town. I see one of them online right now brilliant people in this town but they all can't be on the select board. So what to do about this latest situation. First of all I want to say this is serious. You have in writing accused me and Irene of misleading the public you have publicly admitted that you were wrong in your accusation on a major point. I hope no I demand that you publish a retraction and an apology in every media source that you use to accuse us. Now if your ego won't let you do this based on the leadership that I've seen over the last year and a half and your challenges with math you should immediately resign as chair of the select board. Help you've complained multiple times that it's too much of a workflow. Now feeling either of these remedies I thought I might pursue a libel suit avenue but I'm thinking that's foolish. It's just a waste of time and money. Instead I'll use the money I would have spent on a libel suit against the village in the town since you actually involved those folks at signatories. I'll spend the money to clear the record. I'll take the video and I will publish it everywhere I possibly can to try to clear clear the air and clear my name and Irene's name. What you have done here really needs to be rectified with more than a hedged and verbal apology. I thank you very very much for this time. I know it was a lot to ask and I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. The next person lined up to speak is Annie Cooper. Annie are you there. Can you hear me. Yes we can. I well that was something to walk into. Don't do it. Happening right now. Excuse me if you're not on the floor to speak you need to silence your mic. I was talking to my dog. Sorry. Betsy I'm so sorry too. Annie please go ahead. Thank you. Going on to and I think that you're all doing a great job. I think your leadership as the chair lane is appropriate and fantastic. I have seen far worse behavior on the select. As a matter of fact I shouldn't say far worse. I've seen terrible behavior on the select board and your behavior is appropriate professional kind thoughtful and open and I appreciate you. I'm not sure if I see a difference of opinion on one of the board's faces I hope not. I feel that there has been an incessant attack on the select board and I hope that the select board rises to the occasion and works as a team together as they should. I am horrified by a lot of what was said. I don't feel you over a retraction or anything of this sort nor do you need to be it have it demanded of you. It's ridiculous. Let's carry on and move forward. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public who wish to speak before we move on to the business items. See Irene. Thank you personally I thought that was riveting. It occurs to me to wonder why merger is still on your agenda to be warned for a ballot in March. After all Ken and I handily dispensed of the two reasons given for the past 10 or 15 years that I've been paying attention. The warning is on the agenda so is this appropriate. Okay. Yeah. I can speak otherwise. I'll wait to speak about it. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public who wish to speak during public to be heard. Seeing. I thought there was somebody on the phone who was trying to figure out there was a. Oh really. I could be wrong. I don't see any phone guests right now. Yeah. Andy I saw them too. I think they dropped. Okay. Okay. That's too bad. All right. Okay. Let's move on to the actual agenda. I will open the public hearing on this the second public hearing on fiscal year FY 2022 operating budget for the town of Essex. Does anybody in the audience wish to speak about the budget? You can do so by raising your hand or indicating in the chat. Walter Adams. Yes. Thank you. I hope you can hear me. We can. I will try and be much briefer than I was the other day. I had the first question that I have concerns. The grant the state of Vermont provided to the assessor's office to increase the amount of money being set aside for the reappraisal. Is that I assume that that $67,000 is considered revenue to the town and is that $67,000 currently in the revenue projections that are shown for this new budget or in the past one? Go ahead, Sarah. That money is not on the budget. So that doesn't that's not a budget item. So it does come in and then it gets restricted in the fund balance at the end of the year. So you are not seeing that in the budget. OK. I that raises some questions about why you would have argued that some part of the three million dollars in excess funds should be allocated to the $800,000 for this item. If it's not in the budget, why would why would that show up as excess funds when you didn't put it in the budget in the first place? So I can understand, you know, where you're coming from. We have two different basis of accounting. I've done my I do my best to make them very similar. But the fund balance comes from the audit. And those are the audited financial statements. Those are the actual results. They're on a modified, accrual basis of accounting. And when we're looking at the budget, we're looking at a budgetary basis. And so that I've done my best to maintain the basis that the budget has been presented on through former finance directors that we have consistency year over year. But those two things, you know, so what you're seeing on the fund balance, you're seeing all of the revenues that came in during the year, netted against appropriate expenses. And then that particular item falls out and it gets reserved or restricted for the purpose for which it was paid to us for. And that's not shown. If that doesn't come into play in the operating budget. I I feel like I'm not answering your question very well. But that's, you know, that's where the difference is coming from. Right. So you're you're right. It's not in the operating budget, but the balance that I'm talking about is, in fact, an operating budget surplus. So anyway, I got it. I heard what you said. I will move on. I just was surprised that you took the operating budget surplus and assigned some of it to that item or at least said, oh, so some of this money is, in fact, that money. I'm not sure I quite understood how that happened. Right. If you look at the it's not so much the budgetary surplus. It's the like the financial statement. So the financial results in the audit has that revenue in it. That revenue is shown in the audit. And then what it does is then it gets it falls down to the fund balance when the income statements close at the end of the year and it gets restricted for the purpose for which it was paid. Yes, I. I think I understand what you're saying, but I think it's still not quite right the way I see it. But I'm not an accountant. So as you all know, if you had a chance to see the piece of paper that got attached in your packets, I presented a budget. Basically, that budget is mute because it turns out I had presented a second page and somebody was nice enough to provide a second page with your budget that identified the correct grand list. I had assumed of a number that was not correct. So basically, the budget that I presented is of no value to anybody because it needs some dramatic adjustments in order to come into balance because as I see it, if as I would request you to do that you commit to a general tax rate of point five one seven, then the amount of money to be raised by taxes would only be fourteen million nine thousand three hundred and forty seven dollars, which is three hundred thousand dollars less than yours. And then I have a number of additional changes that I would make on the expense side to bring the budget into balance. I and which I seriously doubt you would consider to include changing the health and human services budget line item to one hundred and forty thousand oh ninety three dollars, which is exactly one percent of the raised taxes and deleting the third of the three salaries for the unoccupied positions from the police department as I had originally budgeted. If you read all the little changes I made, I had to suggest that eliminating to now I point out that I'm not eliminating those positions. There is those positions are dedicated. I'm just saying you they haven't been filled in three years. Why do we continue to fund them, especially given that you have three million dollars in money in a surplus money so that if an appropriate candidate was found for the police department, you could pay that person out of the surpluses and then put their money back in the budget for the next year as a full time paid employee, because the chances are that person's not going to be here the whole year. And I had assumed that those people, their salaries plus basic benefits were one hundred and three thousand dollars a piece. So ultimately, what that said is that I'm suggesting a budget that is fifteen million five hundred forty seven thousand eight hundred and thirty one dollars, which is a far cry from yours. But that's what I would suggest is a budget and we can certainly get into it more after that. And because of but here's where the real reality comes into play. A one percent change in our grand list will raise one hundred and forty thousand dollars. At the current time, the total amount of money being expended for salaries and benefits, so security, retirement and other employee benefits in the town, totals eight million four hundred and thirty thousand dollars. If you admit that that amount of money is going to go up somewhere in the vicinity of four percent every year, no matter what, that represents a three hundred and thirty seven thousand dollar increase in the cost of your budget. When a one percent increase in the grand list brings in one hundred and forty thousand dollars, that says that you're going to have to raise the budget two and a half percent every year just to cover the current employees. That does not include the new positions that are being authorized or suggested to be authorized in this new budget. So it says that we're in a no win situation, so we're going to have to figure out how to do more with fewer people or at least stay where we are for people until the grand list can begin to catch up or we have a good year. And I just don't see that there's any way that this grand list is going to change by any monumental amount anytime in the next few years. So in my opinion, that means that suggests that we're going to need to create budgets that look like this fifteen million dollar budget that I have and take some pretty draconian steps in order to prevent us from finding ourselves with a a humongous number that needs to be increased every year. I mean, a three percent a year increase is basically unsustainable. Now, the number that I created, the tax rate of point five one seven is basically the addition of the current general tax rate of point oh six seven or point five oh six seven plus the old highway tax rate less seven ten thousandths of a cent. I kept that seven ten thousandths of a cent and I put it into the tax agreement column, which is currently twenty two ten thousandths. And you would say, well, why are you putting seven cents? That's a 30 percent increase. But if the school district decides that they're going to raise their rate by 10 percent, that adjustment number is going to have to grow by somewhere close to 30 percent because our tax base, our tax rate is only a third of theirs. And because most of that money, I believe goes to the school system because as a deferral of taxes, I think that we're going to have to raise that number, produce significantly. Now, fortunately, it's a very small number in terms of what's raised, but it still suggests that we're going to need to keep an eye on that one. And of course, there is some frustration on my part that any part of the town budget is is, shall I say, based on what the school budget does. That that kind of is a little bit frustrating. So in my budget, what would happen is the town capital budget would grow by 500 to grow to five hundred and forty one thousand dollars. And the tax agreement number, which of course are not part of this discussion, really, are seventy eight thousand five hundred and eighty two dollars. And the net town tax rate as shown on my tax bill would remain exactly the same next year. As this year and in order to accomplish that, I had to take three hundred and twenty thousand dollars worth of surplus funds and put it in. If you'll notice in my budget, I did separate out the surplus fund number and I also took out all of the transfers from the various departments and put them into one line item near the bottom. The reason for doing that was it provided me the opportunity then to compare across the sheet and see kind of visually what was really going on with each department. That number kind of got convoluted. It's like, what are my real revenues? Because every year you put a different number in for the amount of money you're going to defer or pull in from the thing. So you don't really recognize what's actually happening with your revenues, general revenues, because it gets hidden by this other huge number. And in fact, this year, our general revenues, which look on the budget like they went up substantially, actually went down because the only reason it goes up is because you've put four hundred thousand dollars in from the surplus funds. So this way, I was able to take a look at those numbers. So with that, that's the those are the major items that I had. I'm sure I actually have spent the time to recreate the piece of paper that is after the budget, that is the discussion and recommendations, which I saw flash up a minute ago at the beginning of the meeting. And in my discussion, I say the FY twenty two general fund budget has been proposed for the amount of fifteen million five hundred forty seven thousand dollars with some pennies which is one point four percent increase from FY twenty one of which a fourteen thousand nine thousand eight fourteen million and nine thousand three hundred forty seven dollars will be raised by taxes, which is a point one percent decrease from the FY twenty one and results in an estimated town general tax of point five one seven zero, a one point two percent increase from FY twenty one with the elimination of the town highway tax, the combination of those two taxes general and highway are point one five percent lower than FY twenty one. And with that, I guess I'd love to have some other conversations. And I did present a second page with my budget when I sent it in, but I I noticed that it didn't make the packet. So there was some interesting information there at the bottom about towns around us and what they pay for taxes. And I was quite surprised that South Burlington, Colchester and ourselves have general tax rates that are within pennies of each other. In the in the numbers that show up and that the general tax rate in Williston is literally half our general tax rate. So with that, thank you very much for listening and I will mute myself. Thank you, Mr. Adams. Thank you very much for providing. You've clearly done an enormous amount of work on this, and we really appreciate your close analysis of the budget and your careful attention to affordability, not just for yourself, but for everybody. So thank you very much for that, Sarah. I thought I saw your hand. Did you want to say anything? I do. I am last year, Mr. Adams, you came to the meeting where our auditors presented and you had pulled up a number of years of our financial statements and looked through them. And I am it's been a long, a long week. And so at the risk of being too emotional in a recorded meeting, that means a lot to me. I really love accounting and I love governmental accounting in particular. I find it to be nuanced and ridiculous and just so much fun. And it's a wonderful feeling when those financial statements come together and all the numbers articulate and then they go out into the world for for for nobody to read. And so when you came to that meeting, having read them, that really meant a lot to me. And and when I saw your email after the last public hearing with your budget, now we differ on style a little bit. That's OK. I I just have to say that. I thought it was great in it. And I thought, do you want to be on my finance team? I mean, the amount of time. I know this is this is off topic and I and forgive me for taking up the airtime. But I just wanted to say thank you. And and I don't I don't know why I'm so emotional about it. But thank you so much for for taking the time to really go through it on. And I know the boards have and the departments have. And and you know, but we're inundated with this. We're in it all the time. It's our you know, it's our job. This is budget season. This is where my hair gets more gray every year. You know, but you really took your time and the effort to get in and understand and to make some connections between the financial statements and the budget. And I just it really means a lot to me. I do want to talk to the with the the board about this idea of, you know, in my mind. And so budgets is also new to me. My professional training is in GASB accounting statement, standards, financial statements, financial statement, analysis and budget is is this world in which there are there are no standards. Like, where are the rules? And so I I don't want to be author like I don't want to. You know, so Mr. Adams, you're talking about not reducing the authorised number of police positions, but reducing the funding because we're not filling them. And I think I would be open to trying that. I know we cut it by about two percent in the budget, but this might be a year where we can talk about maybe doing a little bit more of that, knowing that the way we have done it has produced these surpluses. And so I would be open, you know, to having a discussion with the board after we close the public hearing, maybe or now about how we feel about, you know, taking that suggestion and implementing it into this budget. So that's all I wanted to say before the next person has a chance to speak. Thank you, Sarah. Are there any other members of the public who wish to speak about the budget during this hearing, Annie? Yeah, I would like to thank Andy for his reminder that that we have that we have a complicated thing going out. We have the Australian ballot on the budget for the first time, right? That's the first time ever, right? And I've been I've been making sure that I hear, Andy, when I'm in my mind, when I'm talking to people about my thoughts about, you know, there's there's seats to be had, there's merger to be discussed, and there's the budget on the line. And so I just wanted to thank him for that reminder. I think it was during the budget day and I've been making sure that I remind people that there are various separate things and we need to make sure that we're voting carefully about all. So thank you all for all your work on the budget. Thank you. Is there anyone else who wants to speak on the budget during the budget hearing portion? Irene. Hi there, I'd like to speak a little bit about the fund balance. If I may, I don't know if this is the time. This would be the time. Last I checked, we were spending more than $90,000 total out of fund balance on merger related items, such as consultants, printing, mailing, attorneys and things like that, a merger manager. And that concerns me because I don't want one of our big economic stimulus is in town to be merger. It's great that it infuses our local economy with money from taxpayers, but I would suggest we find another way to keep our local businesses, our printers and our staff busy. It just strikes me that there could be so many other more positive ways of bringing us together than bringing that merger. And that was brought forward to me on Facebook by a senior citizen who's lived here for 40 years. And he posted on, I think it was the bottom of the thread you started, Elaine. He said, you know, I've coached and I've lived here and the only thing that ever reminded me that the town and village were separate were these merger conversations. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak on the budget during the hearing portion? Okay. Seeing none, just double checking. Would any of the board members wish to move to close the public hearing? Oh, Dawn, okay. I see your hand. I'm assuming that's what you want to do. Dawn has moved to close the public hearing. Thanks, Dawn. Is there a second? I can do. Thank you, Vince. Oh, Betsy put her hand up. No, no, it's okay. I only have one question. I was looking at the attendees. Why is Dawn a guest when she's actually one of the board members? It's an IT situation with her landline and her computer. It's not any denotation of her membership. It's just the IT situation. There's a motion on the floor and a second. All those in favor of closing the public hearing, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, the public hearing is now closed. We will move on to the first business item, 6A, Adopt Fiscal Year 2022, Operating Budget. Board members, do you have any questions? Evan, do you have anything, or Sarah, do you have anything you wish to discuss with the board about the budget? I do. Just following up from what I was just saying about let's con- Hmm. I'm interested in the board's feed. You know, I'm interested in exploring Mr. Adams' idea of maybe removing, I don't know how to say it, like as concisely as he did, but as of how do we, without reducing the number of available positions, reduce the funding in a way that's, you know, still, yeah, as a cop, I don't know. You guys, do you guys know what I'm trying to say? Yeah. May I suggest something, or may I ask a question? Of course. Is there a way to like chunk away some money in our fund balance for like, if a position gets filled, then we use that money to like pay those positions until we can budget them? I mean, I think it's already there, right? Because what ends up happening is we've been budgeting full staffing. I mean, it's very possible that next year we'll be like, well, we didn't budget full staffing and then we fully staffed, but that hasn't been the trend. And so we budget full staff and then what we end up having is a surplus and then that falls to the fund balance. So we have the 15% unassigned fund balance and then we have funds, you know, set aside for future tax reduction. We have some money assigned currently because of a contract issue that we thought was going to push us up over budget. So, you know, we have some things there, but yes, I don't know why I'm donating the airtime, but I think- No, it's cool. This is all good third date material. I just wanted to know if it was possible for us to make our own bucket in the fund balance for that kind of stuff. Absolutely, yes. So the select board has the authority to assign items and reassign items. So even the things that we visited a few weeks ago, we could look at and reallocate for this. Pat, go ahead. I'm gonna keep my video off because I think my connection is pretty choppy at the moment, but if we were going to be making a change like this, I really would have appreciated it happening before tonight and hearing about it before tonight to be frank. And if these are three positions that are, you know, set to be funded by the police department, even if we think that we can cover them with potential fund balance, I would also like to get the police chief's opinion on that maneuver and he's not here tonight. So I don't agree with making a radical change at this point in the evening. Evan. Why don't you go with the elected officials first? I'll come back later. Okay, thank you. Andy? With all due respect to Patrick, I disagree with his position. I think that especially given that this is the first time we're not having a floor vote and the opportunity for the public to offer changes to the budget, I think setting a precedent this year of actually accepting a change that someone has requested during a public hearing is a huge step forward with regard to, you know, moving forward with our, you know, Australian ballot model at this point. And not just for the, and I agree with Walter and what Sarah said, that we already have $200,000 set aside for personnel because of a police situation. I know some of it we're gonna spend, but there is, we've already allocated money to police personnel in the fund balance. So I would be very much in favor of making an adjustment tonight and I think it's totally appropriate, especially given the fact that there's no town meeting opportunity on town meeting floor to make a change to the budget. Vince? Yeah, I just kind of wanted to know like what's the lift of doing that? Like what are the technical like challenges involved with doing that tonight? I think we just changed the number that we want. Yeah, so I can tell you, I have up on my screen in the new budget software, I was able to get it very quickly, what I have budgeted for one of the vacant police positions and that's $90,921. So is this the half year one? No. So we're looking at 90, so that's right, 91,000 rounding. And so we would just reduce the amount of the total expenditure that we approve in the next item by that dollar amount. And I can, that affects the health and human services grants slightly, unless the board also wants to discuss a change to that. And I can, I have it up here to make those adjustments and get a new bottom line to put in the warning for tonight. And then I think that what we have already assigned in the fund balance like Andy said is descriptive enough and is specific enough to cover if we did need it, because it's for personnel. Evan. Thank you. I'm gonna direct my question to Sarah. Sarah, we already fund the police department budget at 98 or the personnel portion of the police department budget at 98%. We did do that already, yes. What does this change do to that? This would make that effectively 96%, which is actually, so last year was an outlier year, but the previous three years, the actual police department personnel expenses came in at about 94 or 95% of budget. And so this would bring us closer to that. Would it, and it still gives the chief the chance to fill if he gets the position. And what tax implication does it have for future years if he does, in fact, fill? Well, then we would have to include that position in back in next year's budget. So that would be an increase off the fact, but that's what you're asking me. Right. Then the board is saying that if they go along with that, then next, if my chance next year all positions are filled or he still has one or two to go, but has candidates, those positions have to be fit in with all other expenses of the budget in following years. Would that be correct? I was distracted. I forgot you were asking me a question. Okay. So you, when did the police finally get a person to fill let's say the last vacant position? And it's moving into let's say next fiscal year in the budget, that money competes against all other changes in the budget, like salary, benefits, health insurance or any other initiatives. Right. So we would have to put it back if it were filled the next year we would put the money back in, which would show a bottom line expenditure increase right off the bat because we're having the position in there and it's not currently that's, those are the, that's one of the, you know, that I think we have a competing, right? That's one side. And then the other side is, well, we keep raising the money, but we don't fill it. And so it's those two things that are. Well, and we raise the money, but when we don't spend it, we give it back in fund balance to reduce the, to reduce its impact. It then becomes part of that fund balance discussion. Yes. If it's the board's pleasure, I could try contacting the chief of police see if he can join us. We did not know that this was going to be the big topic that it is. I could see if he's available. Evan, before you call chief, just a question. What does the change of the budget due to the process and the calendar? If we change the budget today, do we have to warn another hearing on a revised budget or can we just go tonight and prove it tonight? I believe you can approve it tonight. You don't need another warning. That's what these hearings are for. I just want to confirm that. It is, it is quite a change. Yes, it is. And it's a different change of philosophy as well. So I will tell you, I'm going to defer to my finance director. Not that I want to put any more pressure on her. If we're saying that those positions, if we can fill them or gonna fill them, I think you will find the chief is okay with that. If you come to a different place when it comes time to fill it, that was not the will of the community, at least at the meetings I was at. That's right. Two years ago, I think it was two years ago or three years ago, the community voted to fill police officer positions sooner than it was expected, than even staff or the community had asked. I'm not aware of anybody asking us for less. Now we're talking about vacant positions, but we are still attempting to fill them. We do have another candidate that's not, we have two that we're filling. One candidate we're vetting, that will still leave us with vacancies and that doesn't mean nobody is going to leave us, but I just want to make sure that if that's what the board's wish is, and of course we'll see what the voters has to say, you may need to want to figure out what your commitment is to those staffing levels. Board members? I mean, I'm, I think there's a good argument on both sides. Maybe we could, I mean, like I'm more in favor of like not radically changing things at the 11th hour right now. I mean, I do think there's a good, there's a good argument to be made for it, but can we somehow like mark this for next year's budget process? Maybe Sarah, if that's all right. Yeah, I could definitely, I could make a note for that. Just so that we have some more time to get input from like the chief and kind of maybe roll this around a little bit. END? I guess I don't feel $90,000 is a big change on a $16 million budget. The other thing I guess maybe to consider is do we do a portion of a full person rather than part year, you know half year instead of a full year to help it feel less of a risk? I don't know. I don't want to give in, I don't want to give it all up because I really want to make sure that we appear to be listening to people at our public hearings and addressing what's been brought forth and maybe more people will come and ask for stuff. I don't know how many years we've had public hearings on the budget where nobody shows up, so. Dawn or Pat? My opinion remains unchanged. I still think that at this point, this late in the process, I just don't see. I don't, I understand in some of the respect the points that Andy is making, but I don't think that we should change it at this point. We do have a mechanism for giving back and I think that we use that at an earlier point already this year. I argued against giving back additional money in the form of tax relief. That's a way of doing that. If we have set aside through the budget process, we've set aside the money for these vacancies, then I think that we respect the budgeting process to this point and not change it at the very last minute. But part of the budgeting process is the presentation we usually make in the auditorium where people are allowed to make changes before we vote on the final numbers. I appreciate Mr. Adams' hard work. My question is, would the change impact public safety? Anybody? Well, since the chief is not here, I will make a couple of assumptions, assuming that we are not going to be successful in filling them, no, no change from what we're able to do with our soon-to-be, soon-to-be current complement with two officers coming through the academy. If we were available to fill those positions, the ones that are currently vacant, and again, I make the comment that we have the authority to fill them, budgetary or not, then the answer is no. But if it turns out that we go to fill it, we come to this lightboard and you say, well, no, that's for a different time or a different year, then the answer is, you are not allowing the chief to fill to his approved strength. That is a matter of whether you're going to be safe or not, I can't answer whether you will or you won't. I'm just saying that he has presented what he felt the community has asked for and needs that has been in budgets. There are mechanisms that we've been going back and forth. I would do more in favor of taking us from 98% to a little bit lower, but still allowing him to fill when those opportunities come. I'll give you one last thing. And Mr. Adams, I do appreciate all of your hard work. If you say you're not an accountant, but you did a lot more accounting than I think anybody would have ever thought of somebody who didn't do accounting. And I listened indently and you lost me after a few points somewhere in there, but if Sarah understood it, I'm good with a few of things. I'm going to tell you one of the problems of another community, very close to us. They changed their budget in the middle of the night. One of the problems with changing the police department budget is the lag time it takes to fill a police officer position and for that officer, man or woman to get on the street. We only have one police academy in the state. They do two sessions per year. It is not unreasonable to think that it will take 12 to 16 months to have an officer go through the academy, get certified, get on the street, do field officer training, et cetera, et cetera. It takes about two years for an officer to be solo. This other community is hemorrhaging police officers and they cannot fill them fast enough. I fear and I don't do this lightly that I don't want to send the wrong message about our police department, its staffing and our commitment. Choose however you want to go. We will make it work, but please be careful on the mechanism you choose. That's all, that's what I'd like to say. It is very difficult right now for many other reasons. A lot of people do not want to be police officers. There's a long process. I would hope we are able to fill these. We seem to be very good at it. We have gotten some very good officers from other local agencies, but we've lost an officer or two to other agencies, not in police, but in federal and other walks of life. So you never know, but it takes, like I said, if you're going to give us the ability to fill, I'm not so worried. If that changes, I get more worried. Board members, any other comments or questions? Sarah, could you provide the specific figures for us as to what changes this would make? Changes it would make to the budget numbers that we see in the packet. Definitely. I can, you should be seeing my spreadsheet here. I'm going to just on the front page. So where we started this evening is a 4.2% total expenditure increase, 2.1% on the tax levy. I'm going to pull the rounded 91,000 out here because of the way human services are calculated. I'm going to make an adjustment in this tab as well. Both of those will flow back to the front page. That brings us to a 3.6% overall bottom line. Oops, I can zoom in. Sorry, guys. There it is, 3.6% bottom line increase. That's a tax levy change of 1.5% or just shy of $210,000. And given using the average of the last three or grand list growth of one and a quarter, that is a 1.4% increase in the tax rate or a 7, oh, I'm not going to get it the way Mr. Adamson, but 0.007 is what I'm going to say. So less than a penny increase on the tax rate, which if you'll recall was ended up being leveled from FY20 to FY21. So board members having seen that, any other additional questions? Okay, putting a pin in that conversation, are there any other questions about the budget aside from this topic that board members might have? So then Sarah, in looking at the memo that we have for this business item, the final paragraph, that is the current amount that we would be approving, we would need to adjust that so that we could make a motion. I think you're muted. No, I just was not talking out loud. Oh, sorry. Moving my mouth. Okay. I can certainly do that and pull it back up on the screen. Yeah, I think it would be very helpful for everybody to see the final numbers. Yeah. Evan, do you still want to call the police chief or not? I've asked, I threw that out there. You tell me, I could try. It probably, again, I'm asking the question is if you're just removing the money because it's going to be vacant, but if it turns out it's not vacant, you're going to let them fill it. It's six of one, half a dozen of another. If you're saying you're removing the money from the budget and you have any questions about what it's going to do to safety, yes, I'd like to contact them. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a difficult question to answer, Evan, because we do have an election coming up and we don't know what the composite of the select board is going to be after the election. We could say what we five think right now, but I don't think that we could realistically give a solid answer when we don't know if the five of us are going to be sitting here six months from now. You can if you include it in the motion. I'm not mistaken though. That can be overridden by another select board, right? That is correct. It's yeah. Yeah, I'd rather just keep it in the budget and then put a pin in this for next year to talk about with the chief and when we have a little bit more time, as much as I want to like respect Mr. Adams and all the time and work that he put into it and I really do. I just don't want to jumble like personally, I don't want to possibly impact the safety of the town. If it comes down to a different board decides hey, we want to cut everything to the bone. Again, there's mechanisms. If you want to go from 98% to 97, that's fine, those types of things are fine. I also want to keep, I would like to make sure we're keeping the compliment available when we fill those positions. It's a whole lot easier to backfill 1% or something like that or some mechanism than remove a full salary out of a budget line. I did text the chief to see if he could join us. He's going to try to join us. Thank you, Evan. And again, I respect the request. I'm just saying let's go into this with open eyes. We did the budget hearing. We did the budget process. We've had budget hearings. Mr. Adams has made a compelling case. I'm willing to compromise some of this, but I'm just a little leery of the mechanisms. And I don't want to put Sarah on the spot because if it ends up being something different than what we expected, it's not for her. It's for the board to make a policy decision on how much you want to spend on your police department. Board members, any other questions or comments while we're waiting for Chief Hogue, Andy? So, Sarah, you said that taking the full position out moves us to 96, right? So then taking half out, take us to 97. Is that a quick math? Yes, yeah. Yeah, okay. Which Evan has said he's okay with. So every 1% reduction in funding is about $44,000. I see Chief Hogue has joined us. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for the very sudden appearance and your flexibility. No, no, no problem. I didn't realize that I should have been here tonight, so. No, this was a result of a resident request. And so we're deliberating that right now. So if I may impose on you, Sarah, give the brief rundown of what we're proposing to consider to Chief Hogue? Certainly. So, hey, Ron. Hello. So as you know, in the past few years, we have fully, we've budgeted 100% for the staffing, for the authorized staffing level in the police department, but we have had vacancies. Those funds have then fallen to fund balance to be assigned sometimes for future tax reductions, sometimes for personnel, sometimes for other things. Last year, we decided to fund 99% of the cost of 100% of all of the positions, knowing that the trend has been to come in under. So far in this year's budget, we trimmed that a little bit to 98% funding, and we're discussing the possibility of moving that first to possibly 96, maybe 97% funded. So not saying you have any fewer positions authorized should you find the right candidates to fill them, but just that we have raised the funds before, they have made their way to fund balance, let's see if we trim that a little bit more. You know, did that make sense? I'm not being terribly articulate, but we're discussing that, and then the question was asked, would this negatively impact the safety of the community? And that's when we couldn't answer that question. I couldn't answer that. Well, first I'll say, I mean, obviously I would love to have four or five great candidates come in tomorrow and be able to make it all the way through, and we can actually get them into the academy and they make it all the way through that, and then they're out on the street 11 months from now, but obviously I'm a realist and I know that that's not gonna happen. So unless we were to get some full-time certified folks that came right off, or within the next few months, then we wouldn't be able to fill all of those. So to be real, no, we probably wouldn't be able to fill those. Obviously I don't wanna see too much of the budget taken, but I certainly understand where you guys are going with that, and I understand that that may have to happen. So no, it won't negatively impact on public safety directly. It won't allow us to be fully staffed where we can actually do all of the proactive measures that we would love to do, but certainly if we don't have a position filled, that's not gonna impact us that much. Vince, go ahead. Yeah, do you mind if I direct my question to the chief? Please do. Chief Hogue, so if we just maybe said like 97%, which would be half of an officer, would that be okay? So that we're kind of like making sure that that officer is represented in the budget, but if we do hire someone like ready to go for tomorrow, we take that money out of fund balance, we pay that officer the remainder of his salary for the entire year with fund balance, and then we up the budget next year. Does that sound appropriate? Yeah, Vince, that sounds fine. I mean, as long as we're not actually cutting the position so that we're gonna lose that position, then I think we would be just fine with that. Like I said, obviously we would love to have those people right here right now, but we're not gonna do that. So, but if the contingency did happen, to have that available where we could take that position, if we had fund balance, then I would be fine with that. Thank you, chief. Thank you, chief. Board members, do you have any other questions for him? Do you want, you're welcome to stick around and get while we finish the conversation. I wouldn't want to have you leave and then we think of something else, so. I'll stay, I'll stay. Thank you, okay. Evan. That would be the procedure that I would support the most is if you want to take the unfunded percentage down from 98 to, I think we said 97-ish, that's fine because that preserves the number of positions we can fill. And then we're just, if we have to, and it's not in the budget that year, he gets very good at filling positions. Ron, you and I have had that joke. You're really good, just get better. Then we have the board's blessing to use those funds in that year and the public also gets their officer that they expected to be filled. Vince, did you raise your hand again? Oh yeah, I just wanted to give credit where credit was due. This was actually Andy's idea. Okay. So, Sarah, it sounds like the, well, before I say that, board, are you now thinking the half of an officer or the 97% or the full amount to 96? Can I get a consensus there? Madam Chair, I'm good with the 97% half officer. Same here. Angie's a thumbs up, Pat. No, I don't agree with 97, but I think that there's a clear consensus. I would prefer to see the full funding. Okay, thank you. All right, Sarah, can I ask you to update that statement one more time so we have accurate numbers for all to see? Certainly, I did it while Ron was talking. And once again. This is it. And once again, thank you. And once again, board members, are there any other aspects of the budget that you wish to discuss before we make a final decision? So it sounds like then, so the FY22 general fund budget has been proposed for the amount of $15,926,128, a 3.9% increase from FY21, of which $14,265,056 will be raised by taxes, which is a 1.8% increase from FY21. And resulting in an estimated tax rate of 0.5264, which is a 1.7% or 0.0087 increase from FY21. Board members, is that your pleasure? Okay, I see two nods. I can't see everybody at the moment. Okay, so if that is the case, then, and there's no further discussion, we've already had a public hearing on the topic. So we should go ahead. Whoever's presenting is presenting a team's conversation. I just want to let you guys know that, so. That's me, you guys. I have been so like, so careful about that until this point. And then I, sorry. Andy, go ahead. Or is that Andy's hand up? A-W-O, no, that's W-A. Board members, with your consent, I'm willing to open it up to the public for brief comments before we vote. Mr. Adams, go ahead. You're muted, sir. If you go back and look at your budget from last year, the general fund budget was 0.5067, so that at the end of that discussion period with a new tax rate at 0.5281, the change is not the number that's listed there. That's not the correct number. If the new one is 0.5264 or something, then that's what I saw. And the old one was 0.5067, then the increase is like 0.09, 019 something. So the 0.5067 was the general tax rate and then the highway tax rate. No, the 0.5067 is the general rate. Right, I'm going to share again very carefully this time. And that's what we're talking about here is the general rate, not the general rate plus the highway. When you're talking about the percentage change. We're talking about the general tax rate, which in the, this number is the general rate right there. This is the new one. So that difference is almost two cents, but that's not what your discussion says. Right? It depends on whether you're in the village or town outside the village because the village doesn't pay the highway. Well, it doesn't make any difference. Yeah, I know. I know. This whole budget is based on the general tax rate and has nothing to do with the highway tax or the capital fund or the tax assessment parts. It is only the general tax rate. I am the highway tax has previously been a revenue item in this budget and that is going away. So we previously broke our tax levy up into these two lines, the property tax line and then the highway tax line. So both of these were funding this book. I agree that it was a line, but what that, what you're, what I'm saying is that this, that the, this whole budget is based on what your property, what that general tax rate is, not what the general tax rate plus the highway tax is. Now, I appreciate that that may not be, maybe that was, maybe that's my error, but every time I've ever seen these numbers, what I've been assuming is that the general tax rate is the general tax rate. And that's what this is because that town tax rate is, is a fixed number has been that number for years. And it basically is not while the money may fund back here, that is not the number that we're really discussing tonight. The number we're discussing is what is the general, the town general tax rate going to look like. Now that's why in my statement, I indicated that that, that if you added the highway tax to the general fund difference in my budget, it turned out to be a zero, but yours, you're talking about the general fund rate and the general fund rate currently in 2020, in 21 is 0.05 is 0.5067. And the new one will be 0.5264. So therefore the discussion that's in that are really it's immaterial what the discussion says. You've agreed on an amount of money. So when you write, when you speak up and say, this is what we're going to approve, you're not approving all that discussion. You're just approving a number that says here's our budget. So it really doesn't make any difference what's included. I just want to be clear that you can't claim credit for the highway tax money. In my opinion, I just not without indicating that you can't claim credit for the highway tax money. I just want to be clear about that separately. Thank you, Mr. Adams. Annie. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Great. I really, really appreciate. Mr. Adams. Demeter this evening and the discussion and every, all of you all have worked through so much in the past few meetings. It's a pleasure and a privilege to, to watch this all pan out discussion and integrity and everyone. My concerns were, I really appreciate Andy's point that if we're going to set a precedent for what Australian ballot is like that to, to have the public to be heard in this regard, like the guy standing on the floor saying that what was that last year, Andy, the guy that stood on the floor and raised the, what was that beautiful thing that happened at last year's public to be here. So Mr. Bates requested an increase. Yes. Yes. And so I appreciate that Andy is pointing out that we can bring that, that kind of feel to, to this conversation. I do, however, also agree with Pat that I'm a little nervous about the, the change, but all the, all the ensuing conversation, the fact that we've got Chief Hogan here, like this amazing, we live in a wonderful extraordinary town and I'm, I'm proud of us. If, if this, if our, if our paperwork and everything that's going out can still go out as it was going to go and we, and we can align all our numbers and everything still functions for those of us who are residents. And there's not anything that's going to confuse us in, in what we've learned thus far and what's going to be received in the mail versus what's being spoken about this evening. I applaud, I applaud this entire conversation. Thank you very much. And nothing has been set on paper yet. That's the result of this conversation. So hopefully we'll avoid any confusion. Okay. Let's bring it back into the board. Would any board member wish to, Sarah, can I ask you to put that, that document back up on the screen? The resolution. Would any board members like to make the motion? I will. Go right ahead. I move that the select board adopt the FY 22 general fund budget proposed in the amount of 15,926,128 dollars. Thank you, Andy. Is there a second? Second. John, I heard Don first. Sorry, man. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Nay. We'll do a roll call. Andy? Aye. Dawn? Aye. Vince? Aye. Pat? Nay. And Elaine? Aye. All right. The budget passes by a margin of four to one. Thank you, everyone. And we will continue now to move to 6B adopting the town annual meeting warning. We have a memo to that effect. And I believe there is a question. Andy, you had a question regarding article one. Andy, go ahead. Right. Yeah. So this, it's, it's a, it's an article that we've always approved at town meeting. It doesn't really mean anything. It's more tradition than anything else. It, there's no ramifications if the reports of the officers are not accepted. It's not required by statute again. It's more tradition than anything. I just assume remove any possible confusion. And just take it off the ballot. I don't think it needs to be there. Okay. Tammy, I see your hand up. Is that in response to this? Yes, it is. Great. Go ahead. So Andy asked this question earlier and Susan found some actual wording on this and he's absolutely correct. This is, it's perfectly, it's just out of tradition. It is not something that is legally required to be on the warrant. And the three things that need to be, that are legally required to be on the warrant is the budget. And the, any election of your officers. And anything that you have that you've placed on the ballot, or it's a petition backed placement on the ballot, those are the only things that are required to be on there. So this actually could be removed. And so with that, I wanted to further comment that I had, this kind of forced me to go and dig a little deeper. And I found a model template to use for informational here, you know, actually hearings this year, because it's, it is a new things, particularly for like Essex that uses the, you know, where you start a meeting that I before, then you reconvene the next day. And since that's not happening, there is a template that we can use. And I have a couple of other small, minor suggestions to this particular one that I have up. And I've got a tracked version of it, which I could show to you when one of the big things, one of the things I would recommend changing would be the word meeting to hearing wherever it shows up in there. And I've also made that edit that Andy is suggesting. So if you would entertain, I could bring that up and show that to you. That would be good. Yep. Give me, give me a minute. I'm going to find it on my screen. I'm like Sarah, I have all these little screens that I drive. And this is what I'm doing. Okay. Can you all see it? Yes. Okay. So my suggestion would be just to change the word meeting to hearing, as you can see. And then I would add a couple of other little pieces of language to maybe just offer a little bit more security out there for anybody that needs a little help with connecting. They could contact us directly that evening. And we can try our best to try to get them connected. So by adding that one piece there, the phone number and the email manager at sx.org goes to me. It goes to Greg. It goes to all of the staff. So one of us would be available to help. And also the ability to have somebody email their comment ahead of time. If they're not able to attend that was also a recommendation. This is, these are recommendations from BLCT. And then I did remove that article that Andy is suggesting. And which would change your article numbers. Yeah. So very minor little edits, but I think it'd be worth considering. And I'm sorry that I didn't have that all put together for you nicely. This is a, this is all new this year. We couldn't just like take last years and change the dates. Unfortunately, we ended up having to create new, everything this year. So I appreciate your patience and working with me on this. And this is my first trial going through this too. So. We're all in it together, Tammy. So thank you. Why don't we. And board members, any questions or comments about the, the new wording of the, of the warning and regarding the removal of the current article one. Okay. Not seeing any questions or comments from the board on the warning and Tammy, thank you for the explanations and for sharing the trapped version. That's always really helpful. Andy, go ahead. Yeah, sorry. I somehow thought you were asking just if we were concerned about the format, or are you asking about other content as well? No floors open for this topic. Yeah. Okay. So I'm. The, the warning for the merger vote. I'm, I'm still in the position where I don't think we're ready to do that. And I don't think I'll make any difference whether we vote it now or whether we voted. And say November. I think it would be. Asking a lot to have to ask the legislature to set aside. COVID priority discussions that they say they want to focus on this year to, to deal with this. I think the fact that we have two different charters that are going to be going before them, assuming this, if this passes, I think the most likely outcome is that they'll, they'll sit on it until next year and then kick it back to us anyway, in which case we'll lose two years. So I'm much more in favor of. Not warning the merger vote at this time and instead planning on, you know, inviting the trustees back to the table to hammer out a common proposal that addresses some of the. Some concerns, you know, any concerns that have come up. And, you know, have everybody vote again in November. And I understand that, yes, there's a cost to that, but we have fund balance already set aside to support merger costs. I think we could pay for it out of that. And so I'm not in favor of warning the merger vote at this time. Okay, thank you, Andy. You've always been very clear on your concerns. So I appreciate that other, excuse me, other board members. Okay. So before we vote, I will open it up to the public. Mr. Adams has had his hand up and then Cooper. Yeah, sorry. There are a couple of things. If you went by it, so I'm going to come back to it in a second. The first is given that this meeting is already remote. And that you are not having people there. It would seem to me appropriate that you should. Eliminate the entire language that says that I don't get a free dinner that you don't have to tell me that it's canceled. It's pretty obvious. And I hate to say it, but I would think that more people would be offended by the idea that you canceled that. Then by just not seeing that it's going to exist because they're not expecting it to exist in a meeting that is fully virtual. So in my opinion, I think you ought to at least think about taking those words out entirely. I don't see that is germane as it were. The other item is there, there was a discussion about adopting the budget. And I appreciate that that's the case, but I wonder whether that language should say that there's an informational meeting on the budget on March 1st, and that the adoption of the budget shall occur on by Australian ballot on March 2nd. That language is the same as it used to be when you actually got to adopt the meeting at what people thought was town meeting. So I guess I'm a little, I'm not trying to tell you what to do. I'm just saying that I think it needs to be worded slightly different. So people don't think that this gives them an ability to adjust the budget again, because it's that's not what's going on here. So I guess at this, at least at the March 1st meeting. So I guess if you say it's the March 2nd meeting, I don't know which, which day is which, because if you're going to have a meeting on Monday, do you have to tell them what's actually, what potentially is happening on Monday, as opposed to what's going to actually happen on Tuesday. Now, if you say this is only the Monday meeting or the Wednesday meeting, then I'm flying with it the way it is. So, but at the top, it says there's two meetings that kind of suggest there's two meetings because it says March 1st. And March 2nd. Well, so what's happening at the hearing on March 1st. And then maybe you should say. That there's a hearing on March 1st and discuss what is going to happen there and then say that there's an annual meeting on March 2nd and get into what's going to happen there. I just don't want, I mean, I appreciate that everybody should understand by now that we're voting the budget by Australian ballot, but I'll bet you dollars to donuts. There's lots of people who haven't made the, the concept connection yet that they aren't going to show up at town meeting and or virtually show up at town meeting and have a chance to judge the budget and adopt a different budget. So, yes. So, yes, thank you for pointing that out. There is there's underneath the beige box on that page that Tammy is showing on the screen. There is a paragraph that says that we will be holding an informational meeting and then no voting will take place at that meeting and then the next day, which is March 2nd, is when we'll be going to the polls. So I think that it's pretty clear and really the only difference is that we will not be approving the budget on Monday night, March 1st, we'll be approving it on Tuesday at the polls. So we'll be doing a great deal of outreach to the community to make sure they understand this very big change. And then this is just one piece of that communication. And this is the official legal document that we're trying to follow the proper language to say that in. But you're right, there is going to be some confusion and we're trying to help avoid that. Annie. Hi, yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Great. Thank you. I'm disappointed to hear that anyone would suggest that we not have merger on this ballot. Our community would go into a tailspin. We, we expected it on the October ballot. And then the select board was not comfortable and so moved it to March. If our community had to wait till November, we would, it would be bananas out here. So we need to put this to rest and we need to vote one way or the other. This needs to go on the ballot now. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. I'm going to bring it back to the board. Andy, go ahead. I'm sorry. I don't see a hand up. Betsy, did you want to speak? Oh, I did think I hit it, but I must not hit it hard enough. I apologize. Yeah. In contrast to Annie, which I respect her opinion, of course, we all do have our own. I think that it is worthwhile in holding this. And I don't think the people in the junction in the village or the TIV, however we want to respond to who they are. I think that it is something we should go into lightly. Let's make it right. And let's, let's get the things that we want in it. And making sure that the optics are good. You know, one of the optics that is really a problem for people I've spoken to is that the transition board is made up of seven people who live in the village. And I know that you are all supposed to be working together, but that leaves three people from the town. And I think that optic is horrible when we made a vote for a three by three governance. And given the fact that in that first year, many things are going to switch around around our ordinances and other smaller issues. That it is worthwhile in looking at what we've done there. And not that it's, you know, a problem to do that. I think people will appreciate that we want to get it right. Thank you. Thank you, Irene. Thank you. A post on Facebook this week by a long-term resident noted that folks on fixed incomes like himself will be especially harmed by a merger plan that charges. Accumulative penalty. Of now. The latest number is. $2,374 for the privilege of living outside the village. Now, this number of course only increases. Only continues to be paid after year 13, but it's a big tax for those first 13 years as well. Just to say that we're merged. Speaking of potential harm. Back when I attended the economic development commission meetings in 2019. That commission had received an assignment from the select board to research the effects that a merger tax would have on local business. After all, we want to keep these businesses happy, right? And they own huge properties, which will translate to massive tax increases under merger. Unfortunately, no one from the select board has followed up with the EDC, nor has held them accountable for their inattention to that matter to my knowledge. I have a question for you. I have a quick beg of you. Hold off on warning a merger plan until you can find a way to combine our governments without financially penalizing both the residents who live here and the businesses for happening to be in one part of town rather than the other. Again, I ask. What is the problem that merger is trying to solve? And what does this plan do to resolve it? Well, I've never heard for having a merger. That the town doesn't pay its fair share, which the TOV absolutely does. And that the village thought it got nothing for its tax dollars, which we absolutely proved it does. What merger only does is it tries to solve the problem of a bloated village budget. By shifting costs that village voters alone approved. For services that they mostly receive. That is the wrong reason, especially during COVID. To push this on to a March budget. Thank you. All right, we will bring it back to the board. I'm sorry. There's a Mary. Who wishes to speak. Hi, it's a Mary post. I just want to say that I, I wish that we would take longer also to work on this merger, but this time include the public more. I think one of my probably main reasons that I am. Having such a problem with this. Is because it's been made very, very clear. At least to me. That the public is not really appreciated to be involved in this. And this affects all the public, mostly. More than just the members of the select board and the trustees. And I feel like it's been pushed through. And I think that's the way that people have not really been listened to. At least that's the way it feels. And I just think that. We have a better chance. I don't even know how to say it. I just think everyone might feel better about everything, no matter which side you're on. If we take a little different approach before we have a vote. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else before we return to the board. Okay. Andy, go ahead. I think, I think Mr. Adams raises a good point in the past when we've had an in-person town meeting, the, the warning essentially acted as a, an agenda for the meeting. And we have no agenda for the, the Monday night meeting. It just says that it's going to be informational. I mean, there's no, I don't, do we have, I mean, are we going to make a budget budget presentation, a merger presentation and then have public to be heard? Is that the intent or do we know? I mean, I guess we haven't talked about what we're going to talk about in that meeting, but it seems like we ought to have an agenda included in, in potentially in the warning here, or is that coming later? Or how are we dealing with the agenda for that night? I think that's a good point, Andy. And I think that we are just getting this business done of approving the warning and then we'll be moving on to the, how we're going to run the meeting, my assumption, which we have not discussed publicly, but I'm sure we will, is that we will be doing a budget presentation and we will be doing a presentation on merger because it is an article in the, on the warnings or on the ballot. So just like we would conduct any other town meeting, we would do it the same way except we would have, no voting. So, and I see Tammy's hand is up. So Tammy, maybe you have some insight onto that question. And I actually do. So last year for town meeting, your town meeting actually went off as normal before COVID hit, but the village did not. And if you remember, they ended up having to delay and then they held their meeting in June and they had to do this fashion. They had to do an informational hearing the night before or actually it was a week before because they do it a little different. And then they held their election after that. And so what happens is because this is like, this is a notice of your town meeting, but the hearing itself is what we're talking about. This would be just like any other public hearing. So say for instance, we have like, for instance, we have a public hearing that is being noticed and warned right now for Monday. And we're creating that agenda is going to go out. You'll get that this Friday. So even though the notice goes out before the agenda, that's okay. But you can, I will say though, alternatively, you could put the agenda in this. It's a lot more to look at and read and pay for and you're publishing and all of that so and so forth. The only other thing you have is that you have maybe finalized some of those details such as your presentation and such. But to give you an idea last year when the village did this, they did their, their warning was very similar to this. They did a notice and then they did a regular agenda. And on their agenda, they had call to order. They had an announcement that was basically explaining that this is a different format this year. You know, so there was some sort of a language there. They discussed them. They had discussed article one. They had presentation and discussion about article two, which was their budget, discuss article three, discuss article four, and it has each article. And so each item is listed as a discussion and then an adjournment. So that was the basic of the basics of the agenda. Hope that helps. That's really helpful, Tammy. And in fact, in seeing a draft of next week's agenda, which the rest of the board has not seen yet because the manager and I have not had a chance to review it. Preparing for town meeting is a business item for our meeting on Monday. So we can talk about changing the warning now, but we will be talking in depth about it on Monday. So that's the board's pleasure. I could also, I'm sorry, Elaine. I also could add to that that they require the legal requirements for posting this is the annual report is going to be the legal requirement for the publishing piece, but we still do plan on putting it into the newspaper. Regardless. So just so that you're aware of the fact that what actually needs to get posted is the announcement, the location that it's remote and all of your connection information, but the agenda is kind of a choice. You could, you can include it or you can wait and post that as a separate item. Okay. Thank you. So board members, do you have any other things to discuss about the warning or shall we go ahead and vote? I thought Evan had his hand up, but now I don't see it. Yeah, I don't see any hands. I took it down. Okay. I don't have a problem with removing the community dinner canceled. You may want to put that the hearing is virtual, although it has all the information below it. I don't have a problem with maybe putting in there some, you know, some of the items that there's a budget discussion and a discussion on the articles on the ballot. The more information, the more information, the better. It is costlier, but this is new to all of us. It's probably a decent idea. Okay. As long as it fits Tammy's research. So. Our understanding then if we look at the warning itself, there are three articles. We will be discussing, we could put an agenda of discussing the budget, discussing article two, the budget discussing, excuse me, article one, the budget discussing article two, adoption of the plan of merger. We normally don't discuss the offices up for election, but we can certainly announce the offices are up for election. Are there other agenda items that board members feel should be included on this warning? Public to be heard. Yes, for sure. We usually do that last instead of first though. Yes. And there, I do believe it mentions at the top of the page, Tammy, can you scroll back up? I believe we have, it mentions that there will be a moderator. So we have included notification that the public to be heard portion will be moderated as it usually is at our annual meeting. Anything else that you feel should be included. So it sounds like we've, we've settled on that. So Tammy, you'll be able to add those agenda items to the warning, probably under the paragraph that you've got there under the, the beige box. Elaine. Yes, who's speaking. That's Betsy. Betsy, the board is having a conversation at the moment and the public to be heard portion is closed. I was just going to say that representatives usually talk as well. Betsy, thank you for your input. Board members or Tammy, would you mind putting that brief agenda underneath the paragraph about just above where it says annual meeting, an agenda that includes discussion of the budget discussion of article two plan of merger and public to be heard. Right. And this, this middle chunky section. Yeah. That seems like the best spot. Okay. Do you want it like right after this, like right where my curse, I don't know if you can see my blinking cursor now. I can. Okay. Is this where you're looking to add this, what you're saying. Yeah. Just an itemized list of the topics. And we absolutely will, as we do in every annual meeting, we will have the opportunity to identify and introduce and thank our state representatives who may wish to speak. And we will go through all of the formalities that we usually do. We may not have a choir this time. I'm not sure how we would pull that off as a virtual meeting. And I'm sure we can incorporate the Pledge of Allegiance. They make it work at Rotary. I'm sure we can make it work here. I actually have Alexis Koch has, or I'm not having fun saying her name right, but she has offered to have one of her students do the National Anthem for us. That's fabulous. Since we're going to be discussing this at more length next week when we have our meeting, I suggest that we just talk about the warning now and we finish this conversation next week as one of our business items as scheduled. Board members, do you have any other questions or comments about the warning? Okay. Would anyone like to move the approval of the warning as amended? I move that we approve the warning as amended. Thank you, Vince. Any second? Second. Thank you, Pat. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? No. Okay. We need to do a roll call. Andy? No. Dawn? No. Vince? Aye. Pat? Aye. The warning is approved as amended in a vote of three to two. Thank you very much. We will now move on to six C. Thank you. Madam chair, can I just make a quick statement? Certainly. I do approve the budget and I'm glad to what we did. I just don't think we're quite ready for merger and I agree with what Andy had said about making everything a line before we vote. So that was that. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And the next item which is what we're pulling out of the consent agenda temporary COVID-19 emergency leave policy. Andy, you had a amendment to the. I'm having trouble pulling it up right now. You wanted the date to be put back due January 1st. In the policy. Right. Travis Travis said asked us to make it retroactive. So with that change, we're fine. As far as I'm concerned, yeah. Okay. Board members, do you have any questions about the policy? All right. Andy, would you like to move to approve? I would. I move that the select board adopt the proposed temporary COVID-19 emergency leave policy with an effective date of January 1st, 2021. Second. Thank you. Thank you, Dawn. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Opposed. Okay. Now we will move to item has his hand up. I'm sorry. I was looking down. Evan, go ahead. That's fine. Thank you. This, this is again, why the federal government chose not to extend this. This is a good show of faith to our employees who hopefully for no. Fault of their own end up going out with COVID. So thank you very much. They will appreciate it. Of course. Thank you. Okay. The next business item is pulled from the consent agenda as well. The minutes for January 22nd. I want to make a correction or an addition. And I believe it should be at the end of line. Oh, stop moving. The end of line. 25. I have already sent this edit to staff, but I'll read it aloud for approval. I'd like to add two sentences. Bruce post asked the select board chair why she is not listed on the grand list. She responded that questions about her personal finances were inappropriate. So that's what I'd like to add to the minutes. And Tammy already has a copy of that. So. Are there any other questions or comments or changes to the minutes of January 22nd? Would anyone like to move the minutes as amended? So moved. Second. Thank you, Pat. Thank you, Dawn. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Thank you. We are now on the consent agenda, which is considerably slimmer. Would anyone like to move consent agenda? Go ahead. I move approval of the consent agenda with select board member comments. Do you want your second view? I will. Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Reading file. Board members, any comments or questions or observations? I just want to say I think we did some good government tonight, especially with the budget conversation. You know, it's, it wasn't fast or efficient, but I think, you know, we really tried to. You know, respect the process. And I appreciate that. Thank you, Vince. I'd like to thank everybody for their input. I think that was awesome. More than we usually get. Great. Anyone else? All right. Well, if there aren't any further comments on the reading file, we do not have an executive session this evening. I'll accept a motion to adjourn. I make the motion we adjourn. Thank you, Dawn. Any second? Seconds. That's been all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Have a good evening and thank you for making the time for the special meeting.