 So it looks like we're ready to go everyone. Thank you, Linda. Thank you for letting us know. Okay, so I will call the town of Essex Select Board regular meeting to order for Monday, January 11th, 2021. Are there any agenda additions or changes? Evan. You're muted, my friend. Oh, did I do a pat? Sorry. We have a letter from Andrew Brown to the Select Board that we've added to the reading file. And then also we have two additional handouts, 6B and AG, 6B is a draft Essex murder charter comparison document that showed some of the changes, all the changes. And as I mentioned, the letter from Andrew is also a handout as well to the Select Board. Okay. Thank you, Evan. Board members, do any of you have anything you wish to pull off the consent agenda to make into a business item? Andy? I'd like to pull the joint meeting minutes from December 28th. You got it. We will make those minutes, business items, 6G. Thank you. 12, 28 minutes. Anything else from the consent agenda for Board members that wanna make into a business item? Andy? Sorry, that's a residual hand. Got it, thank you. Okay. And can I ask folks who are not speaking to turn their microphones off? I'm getting some echo. Would much appreciate if you keep your mics off. Thank you. Okay. So if there aren't any further changes or amendments to the agenda, I'll accept a motion to approve the agenda as amended. So moved. Thank you, Vince. Second. Thank you, Dawn. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, the agenda is amended. Now onto item four, public to be heard. This is for the time for when anyone who is in the audience would wish to speak to the board on items that are not on the agenda. So if you have something you wanna say to the board that is not going to be covered tonight, now would be the time. You can do so by raising your hand or indicating in the chat that you wish to speak. I see Betsy Dunn raising her hand. Go ahead, Betsy. Good evening, Elaine, and the rest of the crew. I have a question about tomorrow's school board meeting that you're going to attend. Is that true you're attending it? We've been invited to attend it. Are you intending to go? I certainly do. Good, because if there's three of you there, isn't that considered a quorum of the select board? And doesn't that meeting need to be warned as such? Because we'll not be conducting business at the meeting and we are guests at another meeting. I do not believe it's required to be warned as a business meeting for the select board. Okay. Okay, thank you. Anybody else with items that are not on the agenda? Betsy, can I ask you to lower your hand unless you have something else you wanna ask? Thanks. Okay. Then the first item of business this evening, 5A is a public hearing on the addition to title seven, motor vehicles, traffic and parking of the municipal ordinance, section 7.12.015 to change speed limit on portion of Sandhill Road from 30 miles per hour to 25 miles per hour. I will open the public hearing now. And if anybody would like to speak on this proposed change to our traffic ordinance, now would be the time by raising your hand or indicating in the chat that you'd like to speak. The change is up on the screen. Betsy, please go ahead. Yes, thank you. I'd like the idea of this. I would like to extend this all the way to the beginning of Sandhill off of Route 15. And that's due to the summertime use of that road by children from the Parks and Recreation Committee. And I think it is a danger because they're trying to cross that road all the time and I think 25 miles an hours would work well. Okay, so you're suggesting for Span to Route 15. Okay. Thank you for that. Looks like any curtains in your hand, go ahead. Yeah, this doesn't fit here, but a point of order, I don't know, an online point of order. Can we ask that those members of the public that are not the select board or people invited to the meeting have their cameras off? It can be very difficult to keep up with the meeting with all those cameras on, or does it not matter? I'm sorry, I should have said it earlier. Thank you. Thanks, Yenny, that is a best practice in terms of general video meetings. People who aren't part of the proper meeting to keep their cameras off, that's up to folks, but it does change what you can see on the screen if your cameras are kept on. Does anybody else have any contributions to the public hearing? Diane Clemens. As I was reading this, I did not get out any measuring devices to figure out where the heck this segment is. It would have been nice to have maybe house addresses so I could figure that one out. My experience with roads that suddenly change, speed limits, my familiarity is heavy with Pearl Street is that most drivers ignore it. So, and that's even with signage. I do know there's signs on Pearl Street. I do know there's signs on Sand Hill. I would suggest that you make the entire section there from Ellenmark and Parkway to Route 15. Make it 25 if that's the whole idea, because quite frankly, there's a lot of kids on that road. There's a lot of pedestrians on that road, especially in summer, as Betsy noted. And with a pool being right there and the kids with the bikes, it might be best to just go 25 and just be done with it. Okay, thank you very much, Diane. Are there any other folks who wish to speak about the change to the speed limit on Sand Hill Road? And Diane, can I ask you to lower your hand? Thanks. Okay, I am not seeing any other requests to speak. I'll give it another little bit. Okay, seeing no other hands from the public, I will accept a motion from a board member to close the public hearing. So moved. Okay, I heard Dawn and Vince, so I'm gonna take both of you as the moving and the second. How's that? We're gonna let Dawn have the movement. Okay, Dawn gets to move and Vince gets the second. All those in favor, any further discussion? All those in favor of closing the public hearing, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. So now we will move on to Business Item 6A, consider approval on addition to Title VII, Motor Vehicles, Traffic and Parking of the Municipal Ordinance Section 7.12.015. Board members, would you like to discuss? Andy? Yeah, one comment to potentially address at least one of the issues that was made by a member of the public was the, there are already signs posted, they're lighted signs, they're covered up right now. But I think as soon as we approve this, we can take those down, I've actually driven by there and it's, the sign was flashing telling me that through the black plastic, I can see the corner of it was flashing telling me that I was going too fast. So we do have some very obvious signage that shows where the speed limit is reduced. The other point is, I know when this first came up, Dennis talked about the fact that speed limit changes need to rely on traffic studies and that there was a, at least an informal traffic study done on this part of the road. I think if we wanted to extend it, we would have to do another or other studies to look at the rest of it and certainly could. There's no reason we couldn't approve this today to do the section that we wanted to cover at this point and potentially review it again some other time, but just wanted to bring those points up. Thank you, Andy. Okay, Vince, go ahead. Yep, I just wanted to echo support for what Andy said, especially about the latter part about revisiting this. Okay, thank you. Pat or Dawn, any thoughts or comments? I think that's helpful. Andy made the statement for me also and I'm getting a lot of feedback from a female voice here. Yeah, there's a couple of folks in the public on the phone and can we ask you to mute yourselves? That would be super helpful. And when it's time to speak, you star six. Thank you. And Pat, did you have any comments or questions? No, I agree with Andy. It was a point that we pulled this out specifically to get this done quickly. So I do think we should pass this tonight and then I'm certainly for a study to extend it further. The public members who spoke absolutely make a lot of sense. This is one section of road that I think has been mentioned. There was a request at one point, I think for a crosswalk that I just wanted to address. Speaking to Dennis, there's an issue with the curve on that road that prevents one from being put into place. It was something that was looked into and was brought up. Just wanted to make sure that was sort of addressed in public that there was a reason why we aren't able to put that into place because of the line of sight issues. Okay, thank you. If there aren't any additional comments regarding this change to the ordinance, then I would be willing to receive a motion to approve. So moved. Okay, actually Vince, can you just confirm that there isn't some specific language in the packet about there? There is, I don't know. I have it up, if you want me to do it or you wanna find it? Yeah, hang on one moment. On the screen, Vince, down the screen. Yeah. I move that the select board approves the final passage of the additional provision to title seven motor vehicles, traffic and parking of the municipal ordinance, chapter seven, 12, section seven, 12, zero, one, five. To change the speed limit on portion of Sand Hill Road from 30 miles per hour to 25 miles per hour to become effective immediately. Thank you, Vince. Is there a second? I'll second it. All right. Any further discussion? Oh, sorry, I lost my camera for a second there. Here we go. All right, seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, thank you. Moving on to item six, B, consider approval of the plan for merger of the town of Essex and village of Essex Junction and the proposed charter for the merged communities. So just very quickly, I'd like to say I've received so many emails. Thank you so much, residents, for reaching out about this. And I see we have about 48 people in the audience tonight which is fantastic. So I'm very happy to see so many folks here to talk about this. And just for some background, on December 7th, the select board did authorize the placement of the merger charter on the ballot but there is still the step for the select board to approve the charter itself. And so without an approved charter, there is nothing to put on the ballot which is why we're doing this tonight. Village voters have approved their version and there are some differences between the two. Some minor differences and one significant difference being that the village version has an odd numbered board and the town version has an even numbered board. But we anticipate that the legislature will look at both, should the town one pass as well, the legislature will look at both of them and we will work with them to reconcile the differences between the two. But we must take this step of approving the charter in order to move the process along to get the charter into the hands of the voters so that they can approve it because we've prepared it but you have to approve it. So what I'd like to do this evening for this topic is to have the select board discuss it. I believe there are some village trustees in the audience who wanted to make some comments and so I will open the floor to the trustees briefly and then we will open the floor to the public briefly. Each person in the public is welcome to have two minutes to speak. Each person can speak once and we're going to keep it to comments and not dialogue because there's a lot of us here tonight and we have a long agenda. So board members, let's discuss this agenda item and begin there. So who has comments or questions or thoughts about approving the merger charter? I see a hand but I'm not, I don't think it's a board member hand. Hold on. There's a bunch of people coming up from the audience and Dan Richardson just put his hand up. Yeah, that's right. That was a mistake on my part. I apologize. Oh, okay. But thank you my mistake of not introducing you this evening and welcoming you. We asked Dan to be here in case there were any questions of substance that we couldn't answer this evening. And so thank you for taking the time, Dan. You have held our hands collectively for a long time and we're very grateful. So board members, what is your pleasure? If there aren't any comments, that's totally fine. I would be happy to open it up to Evan to see if he has anything to say and then we could move on to public input. Dawn, go ahead. Before we discuss it, I would, having been receiving a lot of emails too, but I would still like to hear from Evan and the public before we discuss it as a board. I see, you'd rather do the public input first and then have the board discuss. That's correct. Okay. Board members, are you okay with that change? Yeah, it seems fine. I see nodding heads. I'm fine with that. All right, well then that's what we'll do. So Evan and Dan, Evan, I don't know if you had anything in particular prepared to say, but why don't we get your input and then ask Dan to stick around because even though the board discussion will occur after, I'm sure the board will have questions and some of the comments coming from the public may need some interpretation. So it'd be great if you could stick around for the entirety of that. As for any comments, I don't have specific ones other than most of the people here tonight, and if they don't, I can go through some of it, know the history of this document and the governance subcommittee and all the negotiations and talks with the village board of trustees and the citizens about what is in this plan of merger. Dan Richardson is a special attorney hired by the town in the village. He does a lot of work on charters and mergers. And so we didn't want to use the village attorney or the town attorney. So people would think maybe their answer was biased. So we hired a separate attorney who does not do any work for either the village or the town other than this that I'm aware of. So he's here tonight to answer any legal questions that are not answered or procedural as they relate to the merger statute. Would that be correct, Dan, and you'd have to unmute? Yes, that's correct. Because I know you memorized the entire statute. Or can put the trigger on. I was told it would be an open book exam. Good comparison. So we're here to listen to the public. Okay, great. So then, yes, let's do that. So if you are someone from the public who wishes to speak, you can raise your hand or indicate in the chat. And before we do that, I would like to invite the trustees who are in the audience. I see Andrew Brown and George Tyler. Are there any other trustees who wish to speak? You can be a trustee and not speak. It's totally up to you. But I do want to give the trustees who are partners in this discussion a chance to speak first. So go ahead, Andrew. Thank you, Chairperson Haney. I appreciate the time today. I know that I sent a letter and I don't want to assume that everybody had the time to read it. So essentially the letter constitutes my comments. I'll just go ahead and read it briefly. So during today's meeting, you're being asked whether to approve of the plan of merger and the proposed charter. On behalf of the 4,658 residents of the town who also reside in the village who voted on the same question, I asked you to put this on the ballot for the entire town to vote on so our community can decide. I know there are differences between the plan which was voted on by town inside the village residents and the plan you are asked to approve. The overwhelming majority of these differences are minor and I for one would happily accept the version within your proposal. Frankly, I like them better than ours. With regard to the difference of a six-member select board, this differs from Vermont statue and historical practice of odd numbered boards, thus being a question that must be resolved in the legislature. I know there are questions about whether the existing plan of merger and the charter are perfect. I ask you whether a perfect charter even exists. Our own charter in the village of Essex Junction has been altered 11 times since 1985. The city of Burlington has such a frequency of charter changes, they have a charter change committee. And during the 2019-2020 legislative session, there were 16 bills introduced regarding municipal charter amendments. Municipal charter changes are common in Vermont, so please do not let perfect get in the way. While you may still have some reservations about whether to vote yes, please keep in mind that 3,453 town inside the village voters voted to merge. In other words, 3,453 of your constituents give you their formal input to merge. To continue the analogy of merger and marriage, the village is standing at the altar and we need the entire town to decide whether to join the village. I ask you to please vote yes and put this plan of merger after the community this March. Thank you for the time. Thank you very much, Andrew. George. Yeah, hi, thank you, Elaine. I'm gonna just try to add a couple of other things and probably for some of the newer members of the select board, I just want to give some information that they may not be aware of. The special district and taxing framework that's in the town and the village version of the charter. I sent that at the request of the select board and the trustees and the governance subcommittee. I summarized it and sent it down to the government operations committee for the Vermont legislature last February and Dan Richardson can also speak to this. Dan also took a copy of it and it was reviewed by the government operations committee. I believe it was reviewed by the legislative council and it was also reviewed by the Vermont tax department. And what we were looking for on behalf of the select board and the trustees were there any major problems with our taxing scheme with our idea of having a 12 year, for example, the 12 year phase in and so forth. We got back the message, the input we got back from all of those entities, the legislature, legislative council and tax department was they saw no problems with it, they were fine with it. I would also point out, I'm not sure who was on the board but in February of last year, we had a joint meeting at Essex High School where again, we on behalf of the governance subcommittee I created a PowerPoint presentation. We invited all of the state representatives from Essex, Essex town, Essex Junction and from Chittenden County to attend that meeting. I presented it, we fielded questions at that point in time, there were no major objections to the general framework that we were presenting from either from the select board or from the trustees. So, and I think that the general framework that's in the town charter and in the village charter has withstood the test of time, it's withstood the scrutiny of basically of the people who are gonna have to be approving it. I just wanted to point that out. I don't think there are some major legal issues going on with the charter right now when you wanna consider if you're, for your consideration of putting it on the ballot, the current version on the ballot. And I also just wanna, I'll wrap up, I know there are a lot of people wanna speak, but I'll just wrap up and reiterate what Andrew just said. When we embarked on this three years ago, three years ago now, it's been, we obviously, we had to embark on it from a perspective of compromise. I know that the village version of the charter and the town version of the charter have things that I wouldn't have, it had been up to me, I would have put different things in there. I believe that I'm assuming that all of us made compromises. There is no such thing as a perfect charter. Charters are not constitutions. They're not etched in marble. They're working documents. As Andrew said, since I've been on the trustees, I've sponsored I think four or five charter changes. So charters get changed. And the idea that we're going to create, we have 10 elected officials sit down and create an absolutely pristine document that will withstand the test of time is just, it is an illusion. It's not a reasonable thing to expect. So I'll finish up by saying, and I'm sorry to be a little bit, to get a little bit dramatic about this, but we're watching what's been played out on the national scene. We're seeing a lot of effort to try to suppress and divert the will of the voters. I would say, we've been at this for three years, select board and trustees. How about letting the voters have a voice in this? How about putting this in front of the voters? I think it's time to do that. It's not a perfect document. We can amend it later on, but I say it's hope you agree with me that it's time to put this in front of the voters. Thank you. Thank you, George. I see trustees Dan Karen and Raj Chawla. Do either of you wish to speak before we open it to the public? I'm all set, Elaine, thank you. No, thank you, Elaine, thank you. I think George and Andrew covered it. We'll save some time. Thank you. Thank you both. All right. So I am going to call on folks as I see their hands come up. So do raise your hand if you wish to speak. The first person I'm going to call on is Dan House. Please keep it to two minutes and direct your comments to me as the chair and you get one turn to me. Thank you, go ahead. Thank you, Chairperson Haney. Can you hear me? Sure can. Great, thank you. I will be brief. My name is Dan House. I've been a resident of the town outside the village for approximately 16 and a half years. I served on the Essex Town School Board for seven years, usually as vice president or vice chair, I don't even remember the exact title at this point. And so I was actively involved in that merger process as well. And many people have said much more than I can say about this. So I will be very brief and just say, please put this on the ballot. It seems that regardless of whether someone is for or against the merger, it's time for the town to say we're for or against the merger. And it really doesn't seem like there's much way to move forward until we get this step done. So I will just leave it as, please put this on the ballot for March. And I will relinquish the rest of my time. Thank you very much for all the work you're all doing. Thank you. Next is Mike Sullivan. Thank you, Elaine. Thank you all for the work you guys do. Much appreciated. So please, please approve the child, putting this on the ballot, approving the charter. The select board and the constituents have worked too hard to let this atrophy any longer. It's, we've done so much. We've come so far. We, you know, attending the meetings at the Brown L and up at EMS and all the work of that working session up there. Just like justice delayed is justice denied, a vote delayed is a vote denied. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Thank you guys very, very much. Thank you. Harlan Smith. Hi, can you hear me? Sure can. Great. I just wanted to throw my voice in there also that I would love the select board to put this to a vote. I believe a lot of time and a lot of money has been expended to get us to this point. I'm gonna agree with Andrew where I actually as a village resident feel like the town has put together a slightly better charter than what I voted on as a village resident for the village. I think most of you know that I was not a supporter of the three plus three, but I respect the fact that it was voted on by the public and they wanted to go to the state and either yay or nay by the state and I agree with that. If it was to go through, I would absolutely respect that that's what the town, the community wanted and would be willing to sit back and see how it works. I understand it for business. I have my concerns about a municipality. For those who may be objecting, I would, Elaine, I would request that if there are select board members who are not willing to put the charter to the ballot this evening and will be voting against it, I would love specific reasons as to why they feel it's not ready to go to it. I know Andy had some concern about taxation and he didn't understand why we would even go through the trouble and I agree with you, Andy. I mean, I kind of, I don't understand why we go through the trouble, but that's a piece that we could work on after this charter is approved. If need be, it would be one conversation that the community could get involved in and we could discuss it further. So ideally, I would love to hear specific reasons. If anybody was going to vote against this this evening, what their specific reason for voting no would be. Thank you. Thank you, Harlan. Patty. Yes, perfect timing after listening to Harlan. Harlan, I'm really happy to hear you bend a little. I mean, you and I have been sparring and I'm so happy to hear how open you are because I'm gonna tell you from my heart that I personally don't trust our current leaders. Right now, the trust factor is what doesn't work for me. At large representation doesn't work for me and that glimmer of hope in your voice that you're open to three, three, Harlan made me very happy. But let me explain a little further because I have two minutes. I'm just gonna say my two cents, here we go. I believe that no outside the box solution has been looked at by the select board or trustees or manager on how this merger process would benefit both of us. For that, I am voting no. At least status quo won't hurt the town outside the village residents financially because we've been fiscally responsible. We paid everything we're supposed to pay towards the village to everything we share. We try to be as diplomatic as we can with everybody. We won't be basically a lot of us feel manipulated and demand that equal voice representation that Harlan was just talking about that he might go for in discussing the merger process. While we're discussing the process, I wanted to trust my officials. I wanna share police and some essential services but not other services because we here in town wanna be able to walk to our own town center whether you like it or not. I'm just telling you, I got my two minutes almost done. We are ready, we already are one town but we live outside the village and demand services with our own fund money that we have left over to be used on all sidewalks and hiring people outside of the state with a CDL license and paying them well. We don't deserve the tech shift. Okay, we don't deserve the tech shift. Thank you very much. Okay, that's it. Next, Tom Torti. Good evening, thank you. It's not often that I join your meetings. I've been a resident outside of the village. We bought a house here in 1989 and as some of you know, I served in a number of capacities until 2006 when my job kind of prevented me from continuing. First of all, let me begin by making a comment that I wasn't planning on making, which is this, that I believe people of goodwill and good faith stand for election and serve on select boards, village trustees and commissions in the town. One of the things that I find most disconcerting is the vitriolic diatribes that are launched towards elected officials about trust and honesty and integrity. Second, no merger, no political process, no piece of legislation is ever perfect. I've been involved in this business for 40 years. You pass a piece of legislation, you pass a merger and you work continuously to make it better. And you believe that people of good faith are going to work to make it better, whether it's during your term of office or in terms of office to come. You believe that people want to always make it better. And I think that this plan should go forward to the voters. At a time when voters more and more in this state and across these countries are urging their elected officials to have their voices heard, it's the least that we can do, you can do as elected officials to put this before the voters and say, we will respect your voice this time on this issue. Thank you, I'm done. Thank you very much, Tom. Nice to see you or hear you. Next is Max Levy. Good evening, yes. My name is Max Levy and I live in the town outside the village. As a few of you know, I was a select board member for 12 years and chair of that board for five of those years. We could spend the next 10 years trying to perfect this merger charter language and it would still not be a perfect document. So please do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. That's not the first time we heard that tonight. Perfect may exist as a concept, but it is not a reality. Be the leaders you are elected to be and plan for a brighter future for our community. Get out of the weeds and direct policy that will lead us on a more sustainable path together by a merger. So please don't blow this amazing opportunity that we have that we've been progressing to for so many years. Please do the right thing and provide a unanimous vote of yes to approve the plan for merger of the town of Essex and the village of Essex Junction and the proposed charter for the merged communities. And let the voters decide. Thank you. Thank you. I don't see any hands raised now, but I do know that at least one person is on the phone who wants to speak. Linda Myers, are you still there? I am, can you hear me? Yes, please go ahead. I'm calling tonight because as a former chair of the select board and a 42 year resident of the town outside the village, I am calling to urge the select board to approve placing the proposed charter change on the March ballot as written. I think what we have been proposed will be ultimately bring unification to the village and the town outside the village. In the combined 30 years that my late husband and I served on the select board while there were differences between the village and the town outside the village, most residents were in agreement. It's sometimes yes and sometimes no, that things worked well. Now I am seeing pulling apart of our community, which I feel hurts Essex as a whole. Efforts to continue making changes in the proposed charter which would then conflict with the village charter approved by voters in November just pushes the issue further away from a beneficial conclusion. It is time to stop going over procedure. It is time to get the issue to all of the residents of the town of Essex and time to let them make a decision. If issues can be approved with the charter and the changes are warranted in the future, the question can be taken to the legislature. Charter questions, as was mentioned earlier are continually sent to the legislature as communities opt to make changes in their governing documents. I am asking the select board to unanimously approve placing the charter as written on the March ballot. Thank you. Thank you, Linda. Brian Sheldon. Hi, I didn't realize my hand was still up. I would just like to agree with the former representatives of the town saying that it's time to let the voters have their say on all of the hard work that's been done for three years and longer. Please put the charter on the ballot for March with the union's vote. Thank you. Thank you. Annie Cooper. Hi, can you hear me? Sure can. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak. I would like to echo so many people here this evening and thank you to Dan House for starting us off. I would like to thank, I'm sorry, wrote his name down, Tom Torti for his kind and generous words about our elected officials. The five of you here seated at the table before me. I trust you all, whether in agreement or disagreement, I know that you are always working from a place of integrity and never once have I wondered whether you were working from there, never. So please don't hear anything other than that from anyone that you are very trustworthy, hardworking people. That being said, I also asked for a unanimous vote here this evening for this charter. The 3-3 citizen led charter change slowed down a lot of the work that was being done, but we pulled through and got that document worked on. I, at one point, had not felt comfortable voting as 3-3 on the merger vote. I agree with Harlan right now that I am happy to go with the 3-3 that was passed. And please move forward with this unanimously and thank you for all the work that you do and thank you for my time. Thank you. Okay, is it Gil Allen? Sorry, I had to unmute myself. Again, I'm just gonna echo all the words that you've heard before. I'll echo what Annie said. I don't know all of you on the select board. I have gone to several meetings, but if Annie Cooper trusts you, I trust you. But most of all, I trust our voters. I trust our community to make the right vote. And that's really what it's all about, putting it on the ballot. I think Mike Sullivan spoke very well to this as well as Mitch Levy. It's a Mitch... Max Levy, sorry, Max Levy. Perfect is the enemy of good. You'll never really get there. And I loved Mike's comment about a delayed vote being a denied vote. I think any vehement efforts to get this taken off the ballot is really in some, to some regard. I don't mean to be overdramatic, but it is blocking the democratic process. But the voters decide, put it on the ballot. I trust you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Hubert Norton? Hubert Norton? I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I am now unnooted. There you go. Thank you. With trepidation, a little hesitant to speak here, but particularly with all the comments that have come before, my comment is not about necessarily the way the current charter is put together. It's a very complicated document and so on. And I certainly appreciate all the work that everyone has done working on this. It has been many years. I've been to numerous presentations. It's difficult to understand all the ins and outs. My concern, as I expressed in the December meeting, is that with the current COVID-19 situation, I feel that we are going to exclude the opportunity to debate this issue in an open meeting. This technology we're using tonight is an example of how this is not effective. I could only hear half of what Evan was saying. He was cutting out. There were other people that were cutting out. We need to be able to have an open meeting. I believe that this should be postponed until next year. And I know that's not what people want to hear, but I cannot believe that come March, that things are going to be so much better that we're going to be able to have an opportunity to openly debate this in a town meeting like it should be debated. So again, I'm not so much against the charter as it's currently exists and so on and the opportunity for the voters to vote. I just feel that there are people that are being excluded from this process that are not used to using the technology. Can I use the technology comfortably? 10 seconds. And so on. So anyway, I also was a little bit displeased that some of the earlier people did exceed the two minutes, but they weren't given any warnings where some of the latter were told 10 seconds, 30 seconds, whatever. Anyway, those are my comments. I do feel that the general public and many of the people that are going to be most affected by this are not going to have to discuss this in an open meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you. Liz Subin. Hi, everyone. I'm Liz Subin and I am currently serving as the clerk on the Essex Westbrook School District Board having served as a board member before, during and after the school merger. I am just wanting to urge you all to let the voters decide on what the elected leaders have worked tirelessly for many years to put in front of us. Thank you for all your hard work and please it's time for the voters to decide. Thank you so much. Thank you. Karen Dolan. Yes, hi. I would echo what a lot of others have shared. I think the piece that really stands out for me is that there's over 3,000 village voters that are joining me and others on this call tonight to ask you to move this forward. And so if we can just picture that those 3,000 plus people are here and I just want to make sure their voices are captured because they might not have been able to be here tonight but they are here, they have shared their voice and I think the other piece about engagement folks are very engaged right now. I think the fact that we're seeing what 40 plus people here on this meeting is huge as Essex delegation, we held a community conversation this weekend. I think there were close to 40 people there, 30 plus. Facebook, this is a hot topic. There's a lot of engagement, a lot of energy around this issue. And I think it's important that folks are heard. These are uncertain challenging times and folks really want to be heard and be a part of the process. And so I urge you all to vote yes and moving this forward on town meeting. Thank you. Are there any, I don't see any hands at the moment. Is there anybody on the phone who wishes to jump in? Okay, I'm not hearing anyone on the phone. So the next hand is Sarah Stoltz. Hi, Elaine, I agree with many of the people here. I also want to point out that there are many venues for getting the word out, front porch form, so many different things. Our national election is a great example about how everyone is engaged and I agree with Karen that it is time. I'd like to respond to the no outside the box comment from Patty and perhaps she doesn't know but being a somewhat new resident, she may not know about the many community conversations and workshops that have been held over the years that have engaged all of the residents in the town inside and out. As far as trusting leaders, I think that's a new one. Haven't heard that one before. Sounds like the retortors are trying to come up with something and scraping from the barrel. My family and I demand that we find an answer and we demand as Patty was talking about demanding tax equity in relation to merger. So I'm also in support of placing this plan of merger to a vote this March. And thank you very much for everything that you and the other members do. Thank you. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak? I'm gonna put one more call out for that and then if not, we're going to bring it back to the board. Okay, I see Irene Renner. Thank you. Once again, I would urge you to put this off. This is not the time to be voting on an issue like this where we cannot have the public debate. So echoing a Huey Norton's comment, I think it's very appropriate given the pandemic to put this off just a little longer. And I would also urge you to do the math. 40 people out of 16,000 voters is not a whole lot of people showing up compared to the number of people that need to be voting on this very soon. It is very difficult right now for people to focus on understanding a very complex merger plan. And those who have not had immediate contact with COVID have certainly had their lives, their jobs, their childcare and other things disrupted. This is not the time. Thank you. Thank you. There is somebody with the initials RM with their hand up, go ahead. That's me, excuse me, that's me, I'm Lisa Marin. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. I just as there is no perfect document, there's also no perfect time for a meeting. This year, it's the pandemic. Who knows what it can be next year? Last year, we were told that we would be voting on this in November. It's not that this is coming out of nowhere. I grew up in a very community oriented and involved family. And from the time I could do anything, if somebody came to the door and said, I want to run for office, you signed the petition because you let the voters decide. And that's what I am asking now. Let the voice of the voters be heard if it's voted down or voted up or whatever. But without it being on the ballot, we can't do anything. And having these conversations in community groups on Facebook ad nauseam isn't gonna solve anything. Thank you for your time and effort. I greatly appreciate it. Please put this on the ballot. Thank you. Are there any other folks in the audience who wish to speak? Ken Signorello. Thank you, Chairperson. I guess I should say something. I'm not going to say whether you should or shouldn't put this on the ballot. That's certainly a decision you folks have to make for yourselves. But I do want to tell you that I've been through good part of the town now and spoke to many people and there are a lot who are not online. They will not know the details of what they'll be seeing on the ballot when they get it in the mail. It'll be the first time they're hearing of it in many cases. In-person meeting, this is not, what we're doing is not a substitute, I'm afraid. It's good and we should do it in addition to in-person meetings, I'm sure. It adds for participation but there still will be folks excluded if we don't have that alternative. It's your decision, obviously. You worked very hard on the merger plan. I can't argue that. And the voters will decide. I think consider the situation, it's difficult. There are folks who won't be in the loop. Over. I'm sorry, Ken, are you done or did you get a couple? Yes, over and out. Got it, okay. Thank you. Betsy. Thank you, Elaine. So my only question and request would be given the fact that several people have said that people who don't have access to computers, they may not have one or don't know how to use them well and how the Microsoft team, sometimes you can't see names and whatnot, would you consider, I would think it would be nice to consider sending out the document because we don't have the reporter, that's a paper item, for people to read the entire merger, which they need to do to know what they're voting for, send it out to all the homes in essence. Thank you. Thank you. And you, Betsy, answer to that. I'm sorry. Well, Betsy, we're just taking comments and in fact, if you look at the agenda, you will see that what you asked is the next agenda item. So you'll have an answer shortly. Are there any other people who wish to speak in the audience? Diane Clemens. I would echo the individuals to say that that you need to send it out because people don't have access and broadband is at a premium for some people. But then again, if you do recall that at town meeting, there was a big complaint about going to Australian ballot because people couldn't make it. Well, consider that this evening, there are a lot of people who probably could be here if they weren't working and could be here if they didn't have other things that they needed to attend to. So please send out the information so all have the availability to read the information just what the heck are you going out with the town booklet anyhow? So put it out there so that it's all out at the same time. That should overcome some of the fact that some people can't be online and voting is 12 hours plus whatever, whatever we decide to do with the ballots. So, you know, the time to do this is now, okay? We need to make a decision now. Let the voters make that decision. Thank you for letting people do that. Thank you. Sharon Zuchowski. Hello. Hi. Yeah, we can hear you Sharon. Oh, great, sorry. Sometimes I can't hear you. This is a short suggestion about the mailer which I think might save the town money which we're going to need with mailings and stuff. You might consider sending out just a one page of paper with a summary and then say, if you can't do this and you want a hard copy, call the town and ask for one. Because that would say, like, I get the budget, I don't want it. I feel bad for the paper, I look at it online. So you could save a lot of money by a one sheet piece of paper, a little bit summary and then they can request a paper copy if they can't do computers. That's all I have to say. Thanks. Okay, thank you. Does anybody else wish to speak who hasn't already spoken? Tracy, Delphia. Thank you, Elaine. I just wanted to tie that point on mailing the charter and the proposal materials out to voters back to the KSV survey. On that survey, the vast majority of voters wanted things delivered to them via the mail or directly via email. I understand that we don't have everyone's email on file where we can just hit a button and send it. But I really do firmly believe that something should be direct mailed in keeping with the wishes of the people who responded to that survey. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Anybody else wish to speak? I'm hearing some comments. How do I do this? Is that you, Margaret? That's me. Hold on, let me do something here. You can hear you just fine. Okay, I've never done this before. I'm sitting and looking at my computer and it says I've been waiting to be led in for 15 minutes. Oh dear. Well, we can hear you very clearly now. So if you have something you wanna say, please go right ahead. Well, that's because I'm on my phone and I'm also watching the video, the public TV video. So I just wanted to say that as a resident of the town outside the village since 1974 that I have always felt excluded from village happenings. And I'm really concerned about the tax increase that people are not aware of. It's likely to be coming down the pike. And it definitely needs to be a three plus three representation. And I would strongly urge you to delay this because I don't think that all those people that are saying, yeah, do it. I don't think any of them have actually read it. So, and I guess that's my two cents worth. So thank you. Sorry, I still don't see anybody letting me in. We'll try to figure that out, Margaret. Sorry about that. Okay, it's been a great night for technical difficulties here. So thank you. Madam Chair, this is Evan. I don't see her anywhere waiting to be admitted. Usually I see a list and usually this program is set to allow people to be admitted. So I don't have an answer as to her issue. Margaret, I suggest you try to exit and then try to get in again and see if we can't let you in that way. Are there any other members of the audience who have not already spoken who wish to speak? I, at the beginning of this process, I said that everyone gets to speak once. Okay, if I am, if there are not any other residents who have not spoken yet who want to speak, then I will be bringing the conversation back to the board at this time. Okay, so we're gonna come back to the select board. Members of the public, thank you very, very much for your feedback. And as always, we take what you say into consideration and we've had many, many, many meetings like this with lots of public input regarding the merger. So thank you for staying engaged and thank you for being here and thank you to those of you who haven't been here before. We appreciate knowing that there's more people out in the world paying attention than just the few that we see here on a regular basis. We really appreciate knowing that. So board members, Dawn, the request was to wait for the public to weigh in and so they have. So why don't you kick off the conversation on the board? Well, my kickoff is I have a question first of all and last time I thought we already voted to put this on the ballot and tonight we were approving the merger. Am I wrong in looking at it that way? Cause that's the way the wording is. Last time on December 7th, we authorized the staff to get ready for the ballot to put merger on the ballot but we have not approved this document. So if we don't approve this document there is nothing to put on the ballot. That was for the clerk and for the staff to do the things that they need to start doing. Thank you. I was just looking at that way. Okay. It seems a little backwards, it seems a little backwards but we weren't ready to approve the charter in December cause we were still having conversations about it but the timing was starting to get close so. Thank you. Yep. Anybody else? Andy, I know you had, you have concerns and so do you want to talk about those tonight? Yeah, I guess I should. With regard to what Don was just saying, yeah, the way the motion was worded last time it was a question of whether the select board would commit to putting the question on the ballot and yeah, a majority of the select board has already decided that. So that's in the question we're talking about tonight, right? Is whether we agree with the contents of the document and as you said Elaine, we had a discussion about this on December 7th but nothing has changed since then. I haven't gotten any of the explanations for the issues, concerns I had additional concerns have come up in my mind as well as we've had discussions about what annual report actually means and the value of the districts that we've proposed is I think is problematic and I've already talked about those the last meeting. I won't reiterate what I said there. So one of the things I do want to respond to too is I've heard the word perfect many, many times from many people I fully understand that the document is not perfect. If people remember back in the summertime frame I had the 17 pages of comments on the document and there are plenty of them that I chose not to continue to object to. So I know there are certainly still problems in many places in the document and things that certainly could be addressed in the future but having said that though there are lines that I don't wanna cross and not understanding how we're actually going to implement the districts is a big one for me. I mean, we're told that there are concessions from the village but it's not at all understood how they're actually gonna be implemented whether the capital one for 12 years would stand up in court and how do you just, how do you convince a judge that a parking lot repair at the Brown out library doesn't benefit the entire town? So there are, I just am not ready to and the document that we're gonna talk about on the next agenda item is nowhere near ready to send out to the public. And so I just doesn't, we're just not ready. I'm sorry about the timing but I don't think the document's ready and I don't think we're prepared to explain it. So Andy, I just feel, I just wanna say that I know you've sent us by us, I mean Evan and Greg and myself, you've sent many comments to, that you just reminded us of, you emailed those comments to us this weekend. I know that Evan has responded to address them and I know that we have discussed the sidewalk district. I've lost count of how many times and the structure of how we're going to implement it is very clear in terms of it is a district that is composed of the current boundary of the village and the village would continue to be taxed for that amount. And so I'm not understanding why it's unclear how that's supposed to work since it's been pretty clear. And we have, most other board members have not had a problem with this and I'm not understanding what the, what is the barrier to understanding how that's going to work because we have talked about it so many times I'm trying to understand. So the finance director tells me that it's a fixed amount that is 120 or $125,000 divided by 12 and it will be added up, boom, boom, boom, each year. Another 12th of it will be switched. No, actually it'll be stayed out. So that 120 or 125,000 will just stay out of the, the town budget. It's my under, and I have the town manager, the unified manager telling me that, oh no, no, it has, it'll be done actually at cost. And then I have the finance director telling me, well, if it's going to be at cost, it's way too much, it's way too much work to implement that way. So we need to do it as a fixed dollar amount. Then Richardson, on the other hand, has said that it needs to be done at cost. So we don't know, even among staff, how we're going to do this. My understanding is that. So that's a problem there. So, the boundary I understand completely, I've, during our budget discussions I've talked about, we have two neighborhoods outside the village that are designated as walking neighborhoods for the school district. And we can't even figure out how much it's going to cost, it would cost to do those two neighborhoods. I don't, I have very little faith that 125,000 dollars is all it takes to plow the entire village. I, it doesn't make sense to me if it's, if it's overwhelmingly expensive to do two neighborhoods outside the village, but you can do the entire village for 125K. So that needs to be explained to me some more. So these are the questions that I still have on that. So the cost of the village sidewalk district is the cost of two employees, their salaries and benefits that add up together to 125,000 dollars. And those two employees drive the plows, and they're the ones that plow the sidewalks in the village. That is what the cost of the district is those two employees. So it's a discrete district expense that the village is well aware of and they know about it. We have had many conversations with Dennis about the difficulties that he has in, in monetizing various sections of town to decide how much a cost and how much time it takes because there's a lot of juggling in his schedule. Dennis does the plowing schedule very differently and the village does their plowing schedule. They just know it's two guys and they plow every single sidewalk. That's it. That's why we have a definite amount. Dan Richardson is here this evening and he could possibly clarify what he had said regarding sidewalk districts. I'm wondering if we could bring Dan in for that. And also Evan, I see your hand up. Please go ahead. I just want to correct something that you stated Elaine. The village uses two employees to do plowing. Our budget only has them at half time, the winter for doing plowing. The other part of the year, they do other activities. So we took two full-time employees plus benefits, cut it in half plus the machines and their replacement schedule and the salt and the time that it takes that and the overtime. That's the budget for the village district. The only time it would change is on an annual basis, you have the cost of the employees that goes up every year. If Dan suggests that it be done at cost, we have that. The town is a different animal. The village's sidewalks are connected. The town's areas should get some priority where they are schools and where there is business, but the town has not adopted a priority where sidewalks and paths are the priority. Their priority is streets and roadways so that the buses and other people can get out of their driveways into work. But I'll let Dan take over the legal part of it. Sorry if I stepped on you, Dan. Not at all, not at all. So I guess as far as the sidewalk district goes, my advice before, and I'll take the prerogative to maybe characterize it as I understood I delivered it if it's somewhat different than what you heard. Trust me now, but the test is really one not of a bright line, which is it's not a dollar for dollar, but it's more of a general cost that a service does. And if I can sort of use by example, so if you have a sidewalk district, you know, the costs that go into that sidewalk district should generally be attributed to the sidewalk district. That goes into that sidewalk district should generally be attributable to the district of the taxpayers, which is it shouldn't be a sidewalk way outside of the district that gets served by this sidewalk district fund because that does create problems. Now, if the Brown out library, for example, I think someone used as an example gets plowed as a part of this. Does that render the sidewalk district fund subject to a legal challenge? I generally don't think so because it would be a relatively minor part of the overall fund. And we're not looking at a sort of bright line test where as soon as you spend dollar one outside of the district, it's now becoming valid. So, you know, it's a much more general sort of rule of thumb. And part of that is because any charter change that is approved by the legislature becomes a statute. And the test at that point really becomes not, does this violate the, so normally when you're analyzing a municipal action, you're looking to say, is this municipal action authorized by statute? And the beauty of a charter is that the answer is always yes, because the charter is always approved by the legislature. So if the legislature approves the sidewalk district is by default a statutory power that has been given or authorized to the municipality. The question is really one more of a general constitutional issue. And in constitutional tests, facts matter. And, you know, but the analysis goes to a much sort of broader level. So that if, for example, you spend $100,000 in a sidewalk district, but about $5,000 of that is attributable to something outside of the sidewalk district that just gets added in. I don't think that would survive a constitutional challenge. I mean, sorry, it would not fall to a constitutional challenge because that additional money is a minor, relatively minor part and the court in a constitutional challenge is looking to the core function of this, the primary function. Is this a rationally related activity? To frame it another way. So in that respect, what I'm offering with these type of specialized tax districts is general rule of thumbs. It can't become a fund that funds something outside of the district because then the town or municipality opens themselves up to a potential challenge where the taxpayers would potentially say, hey, I'm paying for this but I'm not receiving the benefits of this. As opposed to I'm receiving the benefits of it but somebody else is receiving a little bit of the benefits of it. That's a different type of challenge and that latter challenge isn't going to necessarily be sustained. I apologize, it's a somewhat windy, long-winded way of saying what I think the principle at issue is. Thanks, Dan. So Andy, I'm not sure. Can I clarify my question for Dan? I'm not sure he answered the, I didn't, I don't feel like I got the answer I was expecting or that I understood. The question, Dan, is there's a proposal to have the cost of the tax that's levied for the sidewalk district be constant for 12 years. And I'm pretty sure you had said in one meeting that no, it has to be done at cost. So you would have to add in the wage growth of those folks that are doing it across those 12 years. Well, and again, I think the question in that context was much more about whether that fund would be used to, well, there's two answers to it. I'm trying to frame this in a way that has the greatest clarity. The first of it is that if the language of the charter itself talks about at cost, you would be limited to not be able to have any type of growth. You're stuck with the language of the chart itself. And the second really goes to, and I intended if I'm remembering correctly and if I'm remembering the context was that the ideas that this can't become a fund beyond its scope, which is you can't raise the fund, the sidewalk district fund to fund other non-sidewalk district activities. So it can't become another source of revenue. So for example, the city of Montpelier has a parking fund and that parking fund does not fund just simply parking meter administration or parking related activities. It funds a great deal of the police department. And that's just simply what they've done. So it's an alternate revenue stream. And so the sidewalk district, at least in the way you have set it up, you being the town and the village, it is really intended as a very special functioning tax district, which is for a particular purpose, which is to fund the maintenance and upkeep of these sidewalks in a particular area. And so when I talk about what are the limitations on that, that's really one of both charter language as well as what is the intended function of this particular district. Andy, can I, Sarah has raised her hand. Can I ask her to speak, would you mind? Go ahead, Sarah. Hey everybody. So Andy, I actually think that I might be the best one to answer your question here. When you had asked about the sidewalk district in your email on December 6th, I had originally thought that the way we were going to implement this and the capital. So the capital district, we're gonna take the dollar amount that we're funding that capital district and we're just gonna continue with that set dollar amount year after year. And in my mind, that was exactly what we were gonna do with the sidewalk district as well, simple as possible. I don't know, maybe a simpler method even would have been to take a set tax rate and use that year after year up here. I think that I was mistaken in that expectation for the sidewalk district, looking at what it's gonna pay for, it is, it's gonna pay for two employees, half of their cost, plus the annual amount that we took away for machinery, for the equipment replacement, which is between $25,000 and $35,000 a year, repair and maintenance on that and some supplies. Those aren't things that lend themselves very well to staying within a flat amount year after year. So I think if anything, my response to that email a few days later was a, yeah, I was trying to answer the question without really thinking it through. And the more that we've talked about it internally, the more we've landed on, yes, this will have to be costed year over year in order to actually do what it's intended to do. I hope that that helps. And I apologize for. Yep, I was looking for clarity. I was looking for that confusion. Looking for clarity, because I was giving different answers from different people. And then to, I mean, I feel silly here because it seems like the intent here is to work through all of my concerns. Is that what we're doing? But the other issue that I would have with the sidewalk district is it saves the average household of $28,000 a $2 a year. Right on the order of $2. And so I don't see it as worth the administrative costs of doing that. It doesn't make any sense to me to save, you know, what we're doing is we're guaranteeing sidewalk plowing in the village for 12 years and we're saving town outside the village $2 a year. And it just doesn't seem to pay up or doesn't, I don't understand. It's not, I don't think that, I don't see it as worth the effort. I think the select board on its own can establish a sidewalk district and include the neighborhoods that the select board wants to choose in the future. And I don't think we should limit future select boards by putting a 12 year district into the charter. I think the saying you're looking for, Andy, is the juice isn't worth the squeeze? You can say whatever you want, I guess. Pat, go ahead. I mean, I think Andy specifically in regards to that, I mean, that was put in because we had a specific request to try to bring down the shift as much as possible. You know, that was part of the whole point. It may not be much to you, but I mean, I seem to remember in the past, people had very serious issues with people comparing some of the tax increases here in Essex to it's only worth a cup of coffee per month. You know, the whole point was that we were looking for ways to reduce that level of tax increase for TOV. And I don't think that it's worth not approving the entire charter specifically because this $2 that we have that I believe was part of an overall goal of trying to reduce that amount. I mean, to be honest, sort of signaling that out is, I just, I'm really having trouble sort of getting to see, you know, why that is as much of an objection as it is. So it was a lane that brought up sidewalk district and asked me about it. It's not my only issue, right? So I mean, we're going down this and yeah, one of my questions was answered. Thank you for that. But I still have concerns with that. I also have concerns with the 12 year capital district when there's no 12 year capital plan. So there are, it's not just this. It's also the fact that the information material that we have is, I think needs a lot of work and it'll be difficult to have that available in time to send out to folks to review thoroughly in time for a vote. I, you know, and as I said earlier, we've already, it's already been voted that we're going to, that this is going to make it on the ballot. You don't need my vote today. I think it just becomes a matter of how much discussion you want to have about my concerns today, right? Andy, a couple of things. We are required as a municipality to have a five year capital plan every year. So it's five years this year. Next year it's another five years, adds on another year. Next year it's another five years. So it may not be a 12 year plan, but every year we have five. And this was getting back to the general concept of districts. We talked a little earlier about compromise and it's very important to remember that our partners, the trustees have come to us and said, the village voters are willing to continue to tax themselves for these services, even though it only means another $2 reduction. So instead of $26 of a tax increase on the town outside the village average home of 280,000, maybe it'll be 24. That does not seem like a lot. But as Pat said, I remember when the local option tax was first discussed in the village and a trustee said, it's the cost of a pizza once a year. And some people said, but I don't have money for pizza. We were instructed to reduce that increase as much as possible. And those districts, they decreased it a little. It was the best we could do. But the trustees came to us and said, we're willing to do this. Village residents have voted to say, we're willing to do this. So and on top of that, we need to deliver if merger is approved, that charter has already been approved with those districts by the village. The charter that we vote on also needs to be as close to that charter as possible. I realized that we are talking about you have a lot of different concerns. The districts were the big ones. And so I'm glad that I asked you to talk about them because I wanted you to have your big concerns answered. But I appreciate also you're noting that we have spent a lot of time going through your lists of concerns. And I'd like to highlight that we have spent a very long time making sure you feel good about this. And your concerns are getting answered and it's really great that they are, but we're now at a point where we need to move forward. And so I really want to remind folks that we are not in charge of the final outcome of this. We have delivered it as far as we can get it and it's up to the voters. And I also want to hear from the rest of the board members but I do know that all of our board members today and board members in previous iterations of the select board have all said they favor merger in general. They think that's the best way forward. We have all agreed to that publicly. So not moving forward with this sends a message that we don't think that's the best thing for the community. And so our votes are communications to the community of the future that we think we need to have. So Andy, I'm gonna call on you one more time. And then I would love to hear from Dawn and Pat and Vince because we haven't heard from Vince at all. So I really want to hear from everybody. Go ahead, Andy. I just want to clarify something that you just said in that public discussion where I said that I supported merger. I also said, but it depends on how we get there. Yes, you did. Dawn, what are your thoughts? Oh, sorry, I can save you for last. Okay, Vince, what are your thoughts? Do you mind if I pick on you now? Oh, pick away. I'm kind of the neo fight here along with Dawn but I think that this is a pretty solid proposal and I do hear Andy's concerns. There are some things that I'm not entirely sure of myself but for me, this wasn't just about about what we're doing in this meeting. It's about the work that's been done over the past, however many years this has been going on. And any project is like a culmination of multiple people's work, multiple people's opinions. And I think that it's a pretty solid document from what I understand. And I don't think there's anything, my opinion, I think this is a pretty fair assessment of what our merged community is going to look like and how that is going to be executed if that's approved by the voters. Thanks, Vince. Just to add on to that a little bit. After we merge, there are going to be growing pains. I mean, the next select board is going to have to see what in this document works and what doesn't. Speaking to Charter Changes, that's going to be up to the future's board to determine what's best for the community. We're just doing the best we can to get this in front of the voters so that that new body can make those decisions for all of Essex as a merged community if merger goes forward, if merger's voted. I can't sit here and say by myself that I know exactly how this document's going to affect every single person in the town, wherever you live, but there's going to be a lot of board input needed to the new board to make a merged community work. This is the start. Right. Thanks, Vince. Pat, anything you want to add? Yeah, I think there are a few things maybe getting into the specifics. I think that in particular the merger document itself I think is really well done. I think that it covers some of my biggest concerns and I think it manages to do that in a way that I think covers compromise. Certainly things are in there that I would not completely agree with, but they're in there and I went with them because I felt like portions of this were going to, portions of this were things that would benefit those residents who live inside the village, and portions of this benefited those I think who mostly lived in the town outside the village. What this does cover, I think, pretty specifically is what I see as a sort of continued problem of tax inequity. That levels that and even in the public tonight, I heard instances or references where it's clear that there's not an understanding of how that tax inequity is happening. And we need to solve this problem. And every year that goes by that we don't, we are effectively saying to those individuals who live in the village of Essex Junction that we are taking money from you and we are using that to lessen the taxes of individuals who live outside the village. It's not an easy truth to hear, but it is the truth. This is a way that we can rectify that permanently. So I feel very strongly that this is the best way to go and I would not be at all content in pushing this off for another year. There certainly, I respect that there are people who don't think that the online communication is enough, but I do think that there are television presentations that are planned, there are documents that we ideally hope are going to go out with input to hopefully make sure that they are okay with the full select board. And while many of the objections for the online nature of these meetings brings up the difficulty of the technology, I also didn't hear any arguments against the point for people who don't have cars, who don't have a way to transport themselves to meetings in person. No way of registering input is ever going to be perfect, but if we can conduct an entire presidential election in November, while in the midst of a pandemic and social distancing, I have very little doubt that we could do the same thing for a March Town meeting vote that has this merger plan on it. I think that covers kind of the specifics. I think overall, if I can maybe sort of wrap up with a message of positivity, I think that this plan creates one single community and I think that that's a gorgeous thing. I think that the ability for all the residents of Essex to be able to access all the services evenly is a long time in coming. I think that we have shown, and I've given examples in previous meetings of the strength that Essex has as a merged community. There's a lot more strengths that I don't get into the specifics, but that all of us see day to day, that the merger of a community brings together economies of scale. It is something that we have seen with the school district in multiple occasions, even though there are members of the public who would argue against it, the numbers are there and they've been very well documented that the merger saves or has saved the school district millions of dollars to this point. I foresee the same thing for a much larger town of Essex. We are the second largest or could be the second largest community in the state of Vermont and it's time for us to kind of take hold of all of the potential that it has and use it and go with it. The first step is putting this document on the ballot for the members of our town to have the final say. So I will absolutely vote yes to putting it on there and then respect the will of the voters to that point. Thanks, Pat. Okay, Dawn, held it off as long as I could. I can't procrastinate any longer, huh? So I have to say that it makes me chuckle to hear everybody address the newest members of the board when I probably listen to more merger presentations than anybody, but anyway, I don't oppose merger. I do oppose the fact that this is not a complete merger at the time that we have some departments that are not being merged. And as some of our ordinances are not aligned and someone made the statement, well, once that we merge we can patch the rest of it together which doesn't sound appropriate to me. And my concern is that yes, the village gains and yes, I know they've paid more than their fair share over the years but I can't see where the town outside the village is gonna gain anything at this point other than some added services with Parks and Rec. But they're also going to receive a tax increase as well as inheriting an aging infrastructure that's gonna need a lot of work in the future. So at this point I still cannot support the merger as presented but I thank you all for your input. So Dawn, a couple of things and I appreciate what you're saying and thank you. Some folks have said, yes, this is not a perfect charter and so let's pass it and then we can fix it later. There is a plan in that charter. So if it passes when it starts there is a plan to merge the remaining departments. There is a plan to deal with the taxes. There is a plan to schedule everything out. I mean, we're not just gonna vote yes and wing it from there. It's not the disruptive unplanned thing that some might be asking you to believe that it is. The town outside the village does end up with a tax increase but they also end up with things that they don't like going away. For example, the village will no longer be able to vote twice on anything. That has been a problem for town outside the village voters for years. It's been confusing and many have felt it is very unfair but it's just what an incorporated village gets to do and it's a state statute thing and we are making it go away with merger. That's a big deal for some people because it's bothered them all this time. Another thing that they will get is the opportunity to yes, parks and rec, but for families with childcare the ability to not have to wait online while other people take the spots of their kids in childcare, that's a huge deal. S. Exjunction Recs and Park offers five star childcare. If you don't have to wait for it and you are equally eligible for it, that's a great thing and that's one of the things that town outside the village residents will get as a pro as opposed to a con. Another thing that town outside the village residents will get as well as village residents, this is something that everyone has asked for, same day voting. This is something that the Essex Governance Group asked for back in 2015, whatever we did that report. We will be able to hopefully put the school budget vote and the town budget vote and all elections all on the same day. No more voting three times a year if you're a village town resident and four times a year if you're a village resident. Of course, there's always the November presidential and gubernatorial votes, but those we don't have control over but there will be more consistency in voting and that is something that the whole community has been asking for year after year after year. So yes, the $26 a year on average increase is a burden. We're asking town outside the village residents to give up but on the other hand, there's a lot of good stuff coming with it. So I want folks to remember that there are some things that are not tangible other than they're more convenient and also the fact that we would have one budget to look at and understand. We won't have two budgets to mesh together and we won't have two budgets that are dependent upon each other. Like, well, the village can't do this until the town does that. We are looking at streamlining our finances so much to the point that transparency will be greatly improved. I think those things have value. I think those things are worth $26 a year for 12 years. So I just want to make that case to you that there's lots of things and infrastructure is aging whether we merge or not and village residents will continue to pay for it and town residents will continue to pay for it. It's just that for capital, especially when village residents are paying for capital projects that happen out in the town and don't happen in the village, that's not fair. And that's what we're trying to make go away. So yes, we're all stuck with aging infrastructure and that we just can't get away from. So I just feel I need to make those points too but I appreciate where you're coming from. I appreciate where Andy's coming from is a difficult thing to do. What I'm hoping to ask all of us to do is remember that we will get there together and we will do better to solve those problems together and have a more sustainable, more fiscally sustainable and operational town going forward as one Essex. That's what I'm seeing with this merger. So I think I'd like to make sure everyone has had an opportunity to say their thoughts and then I want to call for a motion. Thank you, Aileen. Thanks, thanks for listening. Okay, has everyone had a chance to say how they feel? I think they have. Okay. Would anyone like to make a motion? Vince, please go ahead. Yes, I move that the select board finalize and approve the plan of merger of the town of Essex and village of Essex Junction and the proposed charter for the merged communities dated January 11th, 2021 before a warning of vote for the ballot in March. Thank you, Vince. Is there a second? I will second that. Thank you, Pat. Any further discussion? Vince, is your hand up for that or for leftover? Sorry, leftover. Okay. Okay, if there isn't any further discussion, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. I'm seeing that we have two opposed so we're gonna have to do a roll call vote. So Pat? Aye. Vince? Aye. Andy? Nay. Dawn? Nay. Okay, and I'm voting aye. So the merger charter is approved by a vote of three to two. The merger charter passes. Thank you everybody for the enormous amount of hard work. We're not done yet, but we're almost there and we appreciate, I appreciate more than I can say, all the effort and all of the respectful debate that has been going on about this. Thank you all very, very much. Okay, the next item is six C, consider approval of merger vote informational materials. And I just wanna say upfront, I totally get a 48 page document coming to you on Friday night and you haven't had a chance to read it all the way through and to discuss it today and try to approve it as hard. So I appreciate your forbearance with that. And I also just wanna say that it took many weeks to put that together. It's the compilation of multiple documents that this board has seen before. There was some presentations from Sarah, a memo or two and various different things that have been all compiled. And so for the members in the audience who were asking about mailing something to the community about merger, this item is a booklet that contains everything you could possibly need to know to vote on merger. It will have a copy of the charter. It will have a summary of the charter in less legalese language. There will be an explanation of the taxation system, an explanation of the sidewalk districts, excuse me, of all of the districts. It will have an explanation of a timeline, a visual timeline and it will have a lot of frequently asked questions that are pulled from Facebook, from front porch forum, from the KSV survey, from letters and emails to the board, to public comments. We scoured all of our resources and pulled together a ton of questions. And we also intend to mail this booklet to every single household in Essex, just like we would the annual report. So we need to talk about it tonight and we are on a very tight timeline to turn around to get it to the printer and then get it to the post office. So I would love to talk to the board about this and acknowledging that it probably does need a little work. And so we could conceivably not approve it tonight but we would have to approve it next Monday in order to get it to the printer in time. So just wanted to give you that preface that we are putting together materials to send to every single household. Go ahead Dawn. I just, I read it through twice now and there are a couple of very repetitive areas that we need to clean up, that's all. So if you wanna send, Andy has already sent a very lengthy email with lots and lots of great suggestions. So Dawn, if you wouldn't mind sending us your comments and when I say us, I mean me and Evan and we will get it to the staff to make sure that we make edits and then we can look at it again on Monday. Excuse me, Pat or Vince or Andy, do you have questions or comments about this document? Andy, go ahead. Yeah, I've got a question. If you can scroll back up to the memo that came with us, the cost is very, the way it's written is confusing. So I don't understand what the cost section there is saying. Evan, I think you have some information on that to share, am I right? I'm sorry, could you ask that again? Can you explain the cost section here? I mean, it says 4733 plus estimated cost of postage. Then it says 1775 staff time, is that, I'm not sure. I'm not sure if I could, I think- Is there a function using here or something? Yeah, I think Tammy and Linda who did this work are here. Linda or Tammy, do one of you wanna answer that? I can. Sounds like Linda. That's Linda here. The 4733 is the cost to print the document. The 1775 is the cost to ship it. And then you should have put a period at the end of that. So that you can also see staff time is, I just based it off of past memos for writing. So that was fine. Yeah, I guess the missing punctuation at the end wasn't sure whether the 1775 went with staff time or whether it was right. I didn't charge that. No. Thanks for the clarification. Sorry. It was hard to parse. And then Elaine, beyond that, I sent you a list of my concerns already. Yeah, and thank you, Andy. And Evan has done the great service of reviewing them and providing success. He's responded to many of them, yes. Did you, yeah, I didn't skip to all of them. Did you see my responses to Andy? Yes, I did. Yes, I did. So we can take those edits and update and turn it around for next Monday's meeting, and we'll get that to you for you to review. But just keeping in mind, we have to get it to the printer. So, yes. Elaine, is that, maybe just a little bit. One of the reasons why we are trying to get this out so quickly is because of absentee ballots and the way certain, you know, people will start getting their ballots sooner than you believe. You know, I believe the vote is at March 1st, March 2nd, but early voting and the ballots go out a whole lot sooner. So that's why we wanna get this information out to the public. Yeah, also, we're hearing that the legislature will most likely pass legislation to approve mail-in balloting for us for town meeting this week. And if not next this week, then the beginning of next week, including having the governor sign it. So we're expecting we will be doing a mail-in ballot for town meeting. Oh, Tammy's, thank you, Tammy. The next meeting is Tuesday the 19th because Monday is a holiday. Thank you so much for reminding me of that. So I'm guessing from our conversation, what we will do is not approve tonight, but we will put some edits together. We will get a fresh copy to the board members and we will take care of that on next Tuesday. And so the earlier we get your comments, earlier we can make corrections, the earlier we could send it out to you for next week. And I'd like to especially thank Linda who pulled lots and lots of overtime and skipped a few commitments in order to get this to the board in time. Thank you so much, Linda. We really appreciate your work. Thanks, you're welcome. Okay, let's move on to- There are some public, there's at least one public comment. Do we wanna open it to the public? Certainly, go ahead Betsy. Thank you, Elaine. I just have one quick question that you are taking recommendations for changes to some of the wordage. Will you also take that from people who would like, who out here in the conversation have an idea for a change as well? Can we send those ideas in as well? I appreciate the request Betsy, but this is something the board is putting together as outreach for merger. So I think we are going to limit it to board member comments and staff member comments. If you wanna share your comments with a board member and they feel compelled to pass them on, that's great. But we do not have the time to edit by committee. So I appreciate the offer, but I'm going to say no to that. Annie, go ahead. Yeah, I was having a pop, my mute and unmute button was a little quirky there. I don't understand how the rules of order would work, but it's disconcerting to me when members of the public type comments in the side chat when you've asked repeatedly that it not happen. And so I'm not sure what would happen in a regular meeting if people were speaking out of turn, I don't know, but if we can find a way to treat that chat box with the same level of respect that we treat the actual in-person meetings, I would appreciate us doing that. Thank you for hearing me. Thank you, Annie. We do ask that members of the public use the chat only to indicate that they wanna speak. Comments that are mentioned in the chat do not get in the minutes. And so therefore that's not in the spirit of open meeting. And these meetings are difficult to run and having comments popping up, we don't always get to them. So it's better if you wanna speak to speak publicly. Go ahead, Irene. Hi there, I'm the one who wrote into the chat window because there was no opportunity to speak before the motion and after Pat Murray suggested that we are not one town yet until we merge. And I take great issue with that. We are one town, we pay taxes as one town, we budget as one town, and you the select board represent the one town. So if we could possibly eliminate false speaking on that front, I would so appreciate that. And I really appreciate if that doesn't end up in the document you're editing. Thanks. Thank you. Okay, so we are not voting on that document today. So we're gonna move on to item 6D. Consider approval of fiscal year 2020 fund balance assignments. Go ahead, Sarah. Hi again. So one of the memos that was included in the packets last Monday at budget day was this memo here that you're seeing tonight for discussion and possible action. And so our audit from FY20, so the year ending June 30th, 2020 is the audit is complete. We're working on the financial statements right now. And as in prior years, staff is recommending that the select board consider assigning a certain amounts of fund balance per the select board's fund balance policy. FY20 ended up being a strange year with June 30 landing after the shutdowns in March. And us not really knowing what was gonna happen. It actually feels like a lifetime ago, honestly. But we ended up with a surplus on the year. I know that for the current fiscal year in FY21, we decided, and when I say we mean the select board, just decided, and staff was supportive of this to level fund the tax rate decision. The majority of this was once again, police vacancy savings, where we have a practice of budgeting just about the full amount for full staffing. And then we seem, and then we have had a hard time finding people over the last few years. I just got a notification that my connection was poor. So if you miss anything, just wave and I'll see you. Sarah, you might need to, if it continues, you might need to just turn off your camera. Okay, awesome. So thanks Elaine. Yeah, the error just went away. So I think we'll see what happens. So let me just run through this memo because I'm kind of getting off everywhere. So as of, oops, I've already found a typo. So as of June 30th, 2020, so FY20, the total general fund balance was $5.5 million. That is just shy of a $450,000 total fund balance increase from FY19 to FY20. Now, I'm gonna get a little bit accounting geeky on you here. There are different categories of fund balance and they align with the level of restriction or the nature of the funds that end up in fund balance. So fund balance is the government term for our equity accounts on the balance sheet. And so the first type of fund balance, and I wanna talk about them from most restrictive to least restrictive is non-spendable. And this is nothing more than items that are in non-spendable form. So these are any sort of salt and sand or chemical inventories we end up having at the end of the year or prepaid expenses. So things that we literally cannot spend. Tammy, could you scroll down just a little bit to that table, thank you. And those increase just slightly year over year, we have pretty consistent operations. And so the nature of those increases really just relates to the cost of supplies and not any large changes in the volume of inventories or things that are prepaid at the end of the year. And usually that's the health insurance that's paid in June for July because that's the way they like to get paid. The other item that we have in this most restricted category or as restrictive fund balance is funds for the reappraisal. So every year the state sends us funding to go toward a reappraisal that is restricted by the state for use for reappraisal. We have no, we can't, the board can't assign that, can't commit that for other purposes. And so that grew with the state payment during the year to about $815,000. So the first table on page one that you're seeing on your screen now is a summary of their non-spendable and restricted fund balance types. There's no action needed on these. And so these are in, so the total fund balance is 5.5 million. These are a part of that. So if you, oh, hold on. Yeah, no, I, so if you take those out of the 5.5 million, you're left with 3.2 million, I'm sorry. I'm getting confused with my memo here. So go ahead, Tammy, yeah. Let's go and scroll from there. The next category of fund balance that I wanna talk about are items that have already been assigned. And so the majority of these stay in where they are. There are items that have been assigned for certain purposes such as the planning reserve that have been spent down slightly during the year. There are other items such as accrued retirement benefits that follow an internal formula about accruing for people who have hit a certain age and accruing funds for their payout because in modified accrual accounting, which is the way we do accounting in our general fund, we actually do not account for long-term assets and long-term liabilities. So in a business, you would be putting a liability on your balance sheet year over year for the amount of retirement benefits that people accrue during along the way. In governments, we don't do that. In the enterprise funds, we do, but not in the general fund. Record preservation is the next one down the list. And this comes in from the per page fee for recordings in the clerk's office. And a part of that gets topped away for record preservation projects. We have had a few different pots of money assigned to reduce property taxes year over year that has been holding steady at about $100,000 a year. We use some of that in FY20. We will be using some this year. And as you all saw last Monday in that budget day, I am proposing that we are increasing that amount for FY22 from $100,000 to $300,000. So, Tammy, if you could scroll down to the next, the rest of this chart, please. So the change in categories that are already assigned was a net decrease of $485,000, bringing those down to $1.2 million. And then I'm proposing a couple new assignments for this year at the bottom. And so what I've done is I've taken the amount of fund balance, which is over the 15% cap on unassigned fund balance. And I designated this year the majority of that. So that's $790,000 I'm rounding. I'm recommending that the board assign 600,000 of that for tax reduction. We have a number of new initiatives in the FY22 budget. We level funded the tax rate FY20 to FY21. And we just don't, I just don't think we know where the year is gonna take us with the pandemic. I think that this is a good use for these funds. I'm proposing that we use $300,000 in the FY22 budget, which you've seen in the budget document, and then the other $300,000 to step back down from that. So as you've heard me say before, fund balance is not a naturally recurring revenue source. So once it's spent, it's gone. And so if we offset taxes by that 300,000 in FY22, we need to step that back in order to not have a big jump then by kicking the can just the FY23. And then my recommendation, which I think that you will always see is to put some of these funds over into the capital fund to deal with the ever-growing list of projects. I would be happy to answer any questions the board has. That was a little bit rambly, so. Sarah, thank you. You're welcome. Board members, do you have any questions for Sarah about the fund assignments? Andy, go ahead. Hi, Sarah. The records preservation, why is that not a restricted fund? That's a great question. It might be. We do just have it assigned, don't we, as opposed to restricted. I will have to look into that. So restricted is restricted by constraints outside of our organization. Committed would be restricted by the voters and then assigned is restricted by board action and then unassigned has no such restrictions. So I will just have to check and see what is driving the restriction on that. And maybe it's gonna change categories. An accounting question. My night has been made. I got a couple other questions. There's a row there that it says assigned to future tax reductions, the 93, 721, that's kind of, we've had that money for quite a while. You've not, rather than, you treated the $300,000 later differently than you did for some of these other items. Why is the 300K not included here to show that the amount is now 393, 721? Style maybe might be the best answer. I think that I wanna make sure that first 300,000 is tagged to FY22 because I've been talking about that in the budget. We are gonna workshop the budget more here shortly. And one of the suggestions that I have to bring it back down is to use a little bit more fund balance in FY22, particularly $50,000, which was just like a round number to start with for discussion purposes. And I would propose taking that from that, assigned for future tax reduction pot. I can see how that second 300,000 proposal to reduce property taxes in future years could have easily been just added to that 93,000. It was a large number. And I wanted to make sure we broke it out for discussion purposes. But it would be essentially the same process. Okay, can I keep going? Yeah, let her rip. So do we actually have uses for some of these? I mean, generally we don't assign something unless there's a request that says this is what we'd like to use it for. So the economic development 9713, what's the plan for that? That is old. I can't tell you that predates me, that predates even Lauren coming over to the town and same with the planning reserve. I do know, so the academic development, that was an under spending one year by the EDC and they wanted to make sure that they were able to spend those funds. I think between turnover, I really think probably turnover, I'm not sure they even know it's there. So certainly something we could make a point to share that information with them. And then the planning reserve, there had been extra funds budgeted and raised one year for consulting fees that weren't used that year. And we wanted to make sure to tuck those away. And that one I know more about because the former community development director and Greg and Lauren briefed me on it for them. So. Yeah, Dana specifically came to the select board asking saying I've got a planning project that didn't get completed this year. I will, I need to do it next year. But it looks like it wasn't done because we still have the 30,000 in there that was asked for. So I have concern about, and I've heard Evan say he doesn't like to park money. It looks like we have some money parked in these two. Although there was some spending out of the planning reserve this year. I could answer both of those. Economic development. Yes, that is holdover funds, but the Economic Development Commission is looking at ways to get involved. One of which might be in the future doing outward economic development materials that are either like advertising like you see in the paper like Winooski does or Burlington or other communities. We may run an ad one day. Also back to planning. ETC Next has some outstanding bills and there are other planning initiatives that don't normally has not normally been in the budget, but we wanna look at some corridor work and some zoning work. Okay, so these dollars are not asked for also asked for on the budget. No. Okay, I'll keep going then. There's one that says a sign for FY21 costs. Are those gonna be spent this year? Yeah, they are. I have to confess I missed last year's meeting because I had a death in the family. So I didn't maybe remember the details of these, but. Oh yeah, I can tell you what they were. I think that we can all have a moment to just sort of like shake our heads at me experiencing my budgeting learning curve in public. I think that in hindsight, there was a better way to have included these in the budget and I've made it. That has been noted instead of including them as in the expense budgets and then increasing the amount of fund balance used to offset tax revenue. We did a few things that were approved in the budget through fund balance assignments. So it was the detectives vehicle in the police department. So it's the year that they replaced three cars instead of two or maybe four instead of three. So it was the bump year. And then there were some additional one time costs in the IT department. And so those, oh, and then the additional costs for the election. So it was three items that landed here. And I have a better way to handle those in the future. But are we gonna spend those, actually spend those in FY 21? Yes, actually the chief of police just texted me the other earlier this week. Well, it's Monday. So it must have been Friday and said, we were good to buy that detective car, right? You know, and I said, you are, you're good. So yes, I'll have to check in with Rob. But I know that the election hit where we, you know, higher than where we thought it was going to. So. Okay. And then the assigned personnel costs. My memory is that this was to address a potential contract negotiation that involved potential back pay. That's correct. There's that. It was about a contract negotiation. Why are we keeping this? Why are we keeping that money there then? We're keeping this because one of the payouts in the contract happened in December on a calendar year basis. And so it just happened last month. And so I would like to hold that there to make sure that when we can, when things shake out. You know, that was it was the particular contract that it was intended for. But there was a piece of it that just happened in December. So it was delayed. Okay. Okay. Then the row that says assigned for merger related costs. There's a $5,000 line item in the select board budget for merger related costs. Can we spend that $5,000? Where in the FY 22 proposed budget? In the FY 22 proposed budget. Yes. And the, yes. We sure can. We'll add that to the list on our next item. Same goes for the canine supplies. There was a comment about the dog's eating more than we expected. Wait, I was going to say we got to feed the dog. Yeah. But we have this money already set aside for canine supplies. Can we get the dog from money we've already collected rather than raise our taxes? We can definitely do that. And that's $2,000 in the police budget. So we will pull, we'll tack those, that 7,000 on to our next discussion. Good finds. Then the other thing is, I don't have anything specific, but there are a couple of, and maybe I have it more documented in my budget notes here, we have things that are increases that are coming because of COVID. Couple of departments are asking for more funds for FY 22. In case there are, we continue to need to provide COVID-like, services that we've added because of COVID. Should those come out of somewhere, somewhere out of the fund balance because they're contingency rather than being added to the budget and potentially not coming out in the next year. Again, I don't have the specific, I have a long list of things we'll talk about when we talk about the budget, but it makes it a little mushy because I've asked for a couple of changes here and we don't have the final number in front of us. So I don't know how we approve this or not or what we do. Actually, I don't, this is just the fund balance piece. I didn't know any changes here. I think we have enough funds on this sheet assigned for the particular purposes that we talked about to approve this as is and then we can make some adjustments in the budget, particularly increasing that line use of fund balance. I'm thinking by the $5,000 to offset what's in the select board, the 2,000 to offset what's in the canine, possibly another 50 or so we can talk about that to bring the tax rate down. And then this additional pod of assigned for future tax reductions for the programs that are, for the things we're talking about, things that were requests because of COVID. I think we should talk maybe a little bit more about that. I don't have any specific dollar amounts in my mind. Like what is the dollar amount attached to that? The one that I'm thinking of in particular is the curbside service at the libraries. And it's my impression that that may be more of an expanded offering. And when I look at that particular budget, which we can hear shortly, the majority of the changes or increases in that budget are personnel related, and then the computers to not rent out. That's not the right term to lend to patrons, so. But I think we have what we need in the fund balance categories to do what we're talking about in the budget. So how about the 50,000 that you're suggesting that we reduce FY22? Does that, does that 3,300,000 right there on that bottom table, the top number need to change in this before we approve it? Or does that, we just say what's gonna come out of that, that the line item that's 97 something? Correct. It would just come out of the 93 line item, the 93,721, because that plus that second 300,000 are really the same thing like you mentioned before. They're not really different. They're both assignments for future tax reduction. Does that make, does that answer your question? Yeah, yeah, I'm just trying to figure out whether, depending on what the discussion goes for the budget, we, do we need to revisit this? Or what order should we approve these in? Yeah. It doesn't, as long as we get this approved so I can tell the auditors what the numbers are at some point tonight, I don't, I don't mind what order it is. Were you thinking that if we don't use some of that 93,000 you would want to re, re, like reallocate it for something different? No, the, my only concern is that this document explicitly says that we're gonna reduce property taxes in FY22 by 300,000. If we change that to 350,000, which I think is what you're proposing. Oh, I see what you mean. So you're thinking that future, future years wouldn't, wouldn't possibly, wouldn't also cover FY22 if that's what we decided in the budget? Well, this explicitly says 300,000. If we decide to do 350, then we're in conflict, I think. That's, that's my only concern. Yeah, I don't mind, I mean. I don't know what others think, I'm sorry. Can I jump in for a second and just say that perhaps we put this aside, put a pin in it for a little while while we talk about the budget. And then after we talk about the budget and we've narrowed down all of the amounts, then we can go back to the fund balance memo, change the number so that we're very accurate in exactly what we said we do and then we approve it that way. I think that would make people feel better. Is that all right, Sarah? Yeah, that works fine for me. Okay. Board members, does anybody else have questions or comments on the fund balance? And forgive me, Andy, I'm sorry, were you done with your list of questions on that document? Yes, yes, yes, thank you. Thank you. Pat or Vince or Dawn, any questions on the fund balance memo? I'm good, Andy caught mine. All set. Pat, go ahead. Yeah, no specific questions. I did have some comments, but I'm happy to wait until we circle back around with the specific numbers. Okay, so I'm seeing some audience hands. Board members, do you mind if we go to the audience for a few minutes? Okay, first Betsy and then Ken. Thank you, Elaine. So as you know, I have asked at multiple meetings about having money for the abatements that the BCA does. Well, we try to, but we don't seem to have the money to allow it. And I'm wondering if we can add abatement as a line item to the new staff recommended assignments so that there's money set aside so that we can abate people because every time someone asks, the pushback from the people who are on the boards at the meeting say, well, that money's already been spent, we can't give them back money. So I'm looking for a way that we can do the abatements, not just listen to their needs and say, oh, we're so sorry, but we can't give you the money or relax the penalty or the fee. They're still gonna pay the taxes or whatever, but they just don't have the penalties or fees. I would love to see us put this in. Otherwise, I don't think the BCA really has a reason to be there doing it. Thank you. Thanks, Betsy. Ken, go ahead. Thank you. Brilliant idea from Betsy, I must say. Two things. First of all, Sarah, you'll appreciate this, Mr. Listening. I'm here. I've previously brought up the fact that we have this recurring occurrence of planning to hire X number of people, particularly on the police force, it's very difficult to hire folks. We end up not hiring as many as we had budgeted for, giving us an excess, and I've been advocating for adjusting for that and not just rolling into the fund balance. I wish you would have said to me just something I realized just today. That's a problem, obviously, because I planned to hire three, I only hired one, I've got leftover for two. You can't roll it into the next budget year, that budget's already in play. It's been voted on by the voters and it's rolling. You might say, we'll roll it into FY22 or the next year, after the current year. And that's effectively what you end up doing with this fund balance mechanism. So I kind of figured it out for myself, but if it ever comes up again, there's a good explanation. You could have explained it to me that way and I think I would have got it. I'm really glad to see that most of the excess revenue is going back to taxpayers and not bypassing the budget system. I think that's a wonderful thing. I particularly appreciate Andy's effort to claw back budgeted items that were already allocated in the fund balance. I didn't even think of those and noted them and I did remember hearing about the dog eating more than anticipated. Puppies tend to eat less, as they grow, they eat more. You would have thought that could have been anticipated, but that's okay. Appreciate that very much and I'm really glad to see the only adjustment I would request and ask you to consider is that there's enough excess fund balance to cover all of the tax increase in FY22 and still have money left over to add to the future revenue. I didn't think of Betsy's idea, but alternatively that's a wonderful idea. Either one of those adjustments, I think would be a great addition to this proposal. Over and out. Thank you, go ahead Pat. Just some clarification about the BCA and abatements and how they work. I think it's important to note that most of the objections on the BCA came certainly during the last meeting that we had, where in fact, I remember myself was very explicit about this and that we have a very strict set of rules of what can be abated and what cannot that we must follow. And the BCA is explicitly not allowed to choose to abate something or not abate something because we feel sympathy for someone or don't feel sympathy for someone. They must meet that criteria and then once it is set, it must be held universally through basically each adjustment that we make. So when we decided that COVID was not an adequate reason to choose abatement, we have to stick by that for every abatement that comes up to us. We cannot then at a later date decide that someone who says that they've had issues paying their taxes because of COVID, we can now begin abating them because that is an issue because we have previously ruled that that was not a problem before and anyone who had us rule against them in the past for that reason, when we then make a change, we would have grounds to come back to us with serious issues or objections. I think it's important for clarification. I'm honestly not even sure if we are allowed to pull and set money aside to cover people's abatements like that or I think Dawn's shaking her head. I believe that that's, I don't believe that we can. Certainly while I feel sympathy, again, the clarification is that we must be consistent on the BCA and it's that consistency that those of us who were on the select board argued against when we were doing those rulings. Being on the BCA is my all time least favorite volunteer position. It is horrible because we have to constantly say no unless the rules, unless we find that way in that one particular rule. Betsy, I'll give you one more comment and then we need to go back to the agenda. Well, I respectfully disagree with Pat because Mr. Richardson, when he gave us the little tutorial before the last meeting that we had, he did say that COVID might be a reason to be able to abate someone. And we did have a person that had a thing that came up and I don't wanna make this in a particular thing and I apologize for using this particular thing. I won't even mention it again but we did have a category that we could have abated but the statement was then we'd have to abate everyone who fell into the same thing. We're gonna have a lot of people with COVID. Well, that's exactly right. And that's why we were given funds from the United States government to help with monies for people that were gonna have these kind of issues. And I think that we need to be a little more proactive and being ready for this to happen and not to just drag our feet and say, oh well, thank you very much. Yeah, Mr. Richardson in fact told us that we needed to be consistent with each ruling and that COVID could be used but that we needed to make a decision and once we made it, we needed to be consistent with it. Also, there is no money that the town has received from the federal government set aside for individuals abatements. Okay, let's move on Irene and then Patty. Thank you. I would just like to make a request and I don't know if it goes here or in the budget section that we try to minimize in the future how much fund balance is left and whether that means reducing the amount set aside for those open police positions that never seem to get filled or what. I think it's really unfortunate that over $2 million is once again available unassigned when more money could be put toward minimizing the tax increase for taxpayers, especially when you're like COVID. Thank you. Patty. Yeah, on that note, I remember last year at town meeting when the town outside the village we stood up, a bunch of us, a couple of guys got up and said, but yeah, we want to hire two more police staff, $45,000 a piece, and then apparently we couldn't find anyone. We need to advertise outside of the state and we have the money to and pay them well so they want to move here. Same with plow people. People say, oh, they don't have a CDL license, hire them out of state by paying them well. If we have the money, we got to go out of state. Then we can use the money up. Okay, thank you. All right, let's move on to item 6E, fiscal year 2022 budget work session. We will return to the fund balance memo when we're done with that. Tammy, do you mind if I take over the screen? Thank you. She's like quiet in the background and then it just happened. Okay, so I'm gonna start, I'm gonna share my actual screen so I can move things onto it when I want to. Okay, so I'm gonna start the memo. I can see you all over here. So I've got three screens, I wish you could see me. It's like tech paradise. So first up, so last Monday, we had our all day budget work session. Hey, anyone had forgotten? And we ended the day with the proposed budget just as it had been proposed to you that morning. So we didn't take any time during the day to really make any changes. And that had a proposed expenditures that crossed the $16 million threshold, which was a 5% increase over FY 21. Just to refresh everyone's memory, there were some driving factors in new initiatives in the budget, which included the addition of the village rolling stock, the new full-time assistant manager position, some additional funds for racial equity work and stipends to volunteers and a part-time economic development position. So those four things together were driving that overall bottom line increase. If you remove those, we were closer to a 3%, I think 3.15% bottom line increase. On budget day, I had just to follow that through, it's a tax levy, so that was a 5% bottom line. It was a tax levy increase of 3.9% with an estimated tax rate increase of 3.8% over FY 21 which was same level of FY 20. One of the things that we did in last year's budget that at the time I felt a little hesitant about because I was feeling kind of new at this and I was unsure if maybe this would be the year we did hire all the police officers as we cut back the budgeted police salaries and benefits by 1%, we ended up having those vacancies. Again, so I would like to see, I'm suggesting that we do that again, I'm suggesting that we do it this year to cut it back to 98% of the total. Those are, I do understand that those are small steps but in my mind, I still think, well, what if this is the year we hire them all? That would be a different story at the end of the year. So that's about $44,000 per percentage point. I'm suggesting we shave two off, that's $88,000 decrease. I did discover a place that I had double counted $6,400. And so I'd like to take that out, that was just a mistake. We did get our actual request from Green Mountain Transit after putting the budget together that that is an increase from the proposal. And then we also have an increase to non-tax revenue sources of $14,000, which is to pay for work that the IT department is gonna do with the Village Waste Management Facility. That's an enterprise fund and then it'll pay the general fund because that's where the IT department is paid for out of. So those are my recommended adjustments to start with. That would bring us down to an overall, sorry to throw so many numbers at you all, but bring us down to an overall budget increase of 4.4%. It would make the estimated tax rate at 3% change over the current rate. There are some other adjustments that I would like us to discuss. Well, I guess actually a couple of the first three I would probably recommend, which are just small corrections. I think I have postage over budgeted for the tax billing, that's $400, but every little bit is good. Decreasing repair and maintenance on one of the newer administrative pool vehicles and then decreasing pool other purchase services which got increased and I think that was just an error. Two of the other, so we just talked, Andy just brought up $7,000 of items that we could use fund balance for out of the current categories. So that would increase the use of fund balance by $7,000 more dollars. And then I'm also saying let's discuss maybe using another 50,000 out of that line item assigned for future years. So if we do all that, it gets us to a bottom line change of 4.3%. And this does, I am taking into consideration the 7,000 that just came up that only impacts the tax rate change because that leaving those expenses in unlike last year and increasing the amount used for fund balance. But we're at a 4.3% change. It's $15.98 million and then it puts us at a projected tax rate of 0.5306. So that $7,000 brings us down 0.0003. It's still a 2.5% increase over FY 21. I am going to just pull over this screen momentarily and point out because I think this is, this is worth sharing that I'm looking at an estimated FY 22 rate of 0.5306, which is 2.5% increase over FY 21. Can you see the pointer on my mouth? Yes. Oh, good. I'm so glad to know that a year later. Thank you. I've been using it all along, but that was a 0%. I wanna scroll down here and just to show you that had we set the FY 21 rate, had we not level funded the FY 21 tax rate, we would be looking at a 0.5% tax rate increase in FY 22 over FY 21. And I think that's just worth noting, even though at this point, all those things in and we're at, we're down where we are at the place where we normally are from a percentage perspective at 2.5%. So I had to turn my incoming video on again so I can see you all. I'd be happy to answer questions or talk about, oh, and then just wanna note that whatever we finalize, I then just will, I will tweak the human services 1% because that just falls out at the end and it gets my brain all in knots to try to do it along the way. So yeah, questions. Who has questions or anything else you wanna talk about or items to consider? I have no questions at the moment. So board members, Andy? I hate going first though. I always seem to go first. Is anybody else? You're reaching in first, every time. I get a long list. Everybody else would get tired of hearing what I say. No, we won't. Sarah, one of the things that came up last week is Susan said she's dropping her fee change request so her revenues need to be adjusted. Has that been accounted for? Right, there's a question of the dog. She wanted to change the dog license fees and she also wanted to change some sort of entertainment license. If I can interrupt you, that's pretty small and she's been exceeding revenue with the fees. So either way, it's probably very small. Okay, okay. Yeah, I'm good. I agree with Evan there. Also, any change, I think that nevermind. Thumbs up. Next question. Yeah, and so unfortunately I've got a page of items that are small items, right? But they add up to... Here's what I would say. So how do we want to do this? I'm interested in hearing them. I think that for any of them that are potential small reductions in non-tax revenue, I don't know if we want to go there. Well, no, I'm not talking about the revenue. Sorry, I'm not talking about that. Oh, no, okay. I was just trying to categorize. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just had the one revenue question. The rest are... The rest are generally based on history of spending and current request, right? So... Can I ask a quick question, Andy? I apologize for interrupting. So is it possible for... I'm looking at the email you sent and I see I'm assuming that that's the list you're referring to. Yep, yep. So I'm wondering if there's a basic general question about reducing amounts based on history that Sarah could answer. And then if that's the case, you could maybe forward her your very long list and have her look at it and see if those are adjustments that we are able to make. As opposed to just in the interest of time as opposed to going through every single list. Some of them for $150, some of them are for $200. Right, but they add up to $30,000, right? So that's... Sure, that's great. So I'm asking if we can aggregate those based on... Yeah, so it depends then on what you want to accomplish tonight, right? Because if I send them to her, she's not gonna... I don't know, is she gonna sit there and just look at them while we stare at her? No, my brain turns off at nine. Yeah, that's what it was for. We do not have to finalize this tonight. We can finalize it next Tuesday night. I would love to have an opportunity to look at them with a fresh brain. So if you wanna send that to me, I will get on it. So I can do that, but there's a couple, there's the least one that's fairly large and that's the clerk election expense in an off year. Is that 20, there's a $20,000 there. I believe that... Did you freeze? I know we have this vote in November. We asked Susan what the cost of an election was. She said seven to 10,000, not the 20,000 that's in there. And also, have I dropped off? Can you hear me? Your sound is skipping. Okay, yeah, I'm getting similar message to what Sarah was getting, I think. It's my understanding that money will be coming to pay for, potentially pay for mailing ballots for town meeting. And that's actually in this fiscal year anyway. So I don't think, I think the 20,000 is just too much. But that's the biggest one than the other one. We talked about the canine supplies. We talked about the 5,000 for the other one. Oh, the other one that might be related to fund balance, sorry, is the landfill certification. FY20 had $2,500 in it for the landfill certification, which allows us to test less frequently to bring the cost of the testing down. So there was 2,500 already collected, which if it wasn't spent is presumably somewhere in fund balance. And I was asking for another 5,000. I just wanna make sure we're not asking for the money a second time. And if we've already got the 2,500, can we get that 2,500 out of fund balance rather than asking for it again? I'll send you the list, but that raises the question of fund balance. If that certification question is still open. I have a suggested solution to that. I think we should just rename those assigned for future tax reduction categories to assigned for tax reduction. Maybe, I just wanna, maybe if we loosen up the name of the category a little bit, then when we finalize this budget, because what we'll do with this budget is we'll finalize the amount that we're gonna use out of fund balance. And then during next year's audit, I'll pull that out of the appropriate category of funds that have already been assigned. That seems like- Rather than have fund balance used documented in two places. Yeah, I agree. So it's problematic to have the same thing documented in two places. Yes, and so that is the lesson I learned last year that is now being applied here. And Madam Chair, Ms. Evans, Sarah, if you don't mind, Sarah, we had a conversation with Susan about elections. Refresh my, if my memory serves me, we have a couple of different issues at play. One, there's the state is likely to approve Australian ballot, but may not pay for it. So there'd be extra mailings. Two, every other year, we have either a congressional election or a presidential. And we kind of go from low money in her budget to do local election, to big money for doing congressional and even bigger money for doing presidential. And kind of like what we tried to have is sort of work on that like we did in health insurance. We don't wanna see rising, somebody changes their health insurance from single to family is a big jump in anybody budget. So we try to budget a position if in the middle. You know, so I remember that being part of her conversation. I don't remember it being 20 being the number, but I do remember trying it not to have her budget bounce every year up, down, up, down, up, down. Do you have any thoughts on that? Or is it after nine o'clock and I should have asked you at 8.30. That's one conversation is stormed and it's filed away. We'll just, I'll just need to circle back with Susan and ask her to list out, because it came up last Monday and I haven't seen her response yet but I think it just needs to follow up. Dawn, your hand went up for a second. It did go up. I can't tell now if it's up or down, but part of it down. Thank you. Part of what Susan told us was is that she was asking for an increase to her election workers and that there was no guarantee that the secretary of state would continue providing the cost of postage for the mailings. She explained to us when she did this presentation. Good memory. Thank you. I wrote it down. I didn't have memory. Well, I wrote a bunch of things down too, but I don't remember where I put it. Okay. Pat. Oh, sorry. Excuse me, I'm sorry. I'm just gonna say there's one item on this list that's also potentially controversial. And I raised the question of the MOU that is in place with the village for transferring their highway budget into the town budget, includes a clause that provides for touring up of over and under expenses. And I went through the, I think it's FY 16, 17, 18 and 19 of the four years that I was able to get numbers out of annual reports. And some years are over, some years are under, as you'd expect. And I think FY 19 is complicated by the fact that there was an additional 100K that was approved at town meeting that needs to be understood by, yeah, yeah. Yes. But based on the numbers I could find and not accounting for that extra 100K, it's on the order of $9,800 that has been transferred to the village that they haven't spent in those four years. And so the question is, in a, do we wanna pursue truing up with over and under? I certainly couldn't understand that it would not necessarily be a full true up. It could be a partial, it could be, I don't know, or do we, because potentially, supposedly that those funds have gone into their fund balance and they've used it for, which I guess they typically use to support capital. That's my understanding. But I guess that's a discussion we should, I'd like the select board to have, do we want to ask for that, some sort of truing up there? Since it's built into the MOU. Sarah, did you have a response to that or is that just a question for us, Andy, as a potential discussion with the trustees but in a subsequent joint meeting? I brought this up at the meeting last week and Sarah did quickly look at a couple of, I think on Friday the last two years and right, it was up one year down the next, but I just, as I said, I went and looked at the four years that I have data for and it says that there's a $9,832 or $9,872. I don't know if it would be an over or an under, depends on your perspective. It depends on what side you're on or what side of the table you're sitting at. I don't mean to say something so divided. And I understand it can be a sensitive question, but the MOU was specifically written with that provision in it. And if, you know, yeah, $9,800 is, of course, we said earlier that the cost of the pizza, right? And so some people, so it is money that potentially we could go ask for. We could go in for havesies, we could go in for a quarter of it. I don't know if we want to get a little more chipped off of the tax rate. So I guess the question is, perhaps we should put an agenda item to on a subsequent joint meeting to make the trustees aware that we have reviewed or you have reviewed the MOU and we want to make sure we're adhering to the terms that we agreed to and we should address that there is a shortage that the village needs to make up in some way. And then we can talk about how to make that up. Yeah, okay. So then maybe we could put that on a forthcoming agenda. Yes. Okay, Andy, is that everything? Because Pat has his hand up. Yeah, I'm sorry. I will send the list of all the other small items. Thank you. Go ahead, Pat. It was just a more of a general question for the rest of the board itself. But when I was looking, the recommendation for the 300,000 in FY22 and then 300,000 for future years, I'm just wondering if given that we are in the COVID year and that it is more difficult for people would a different amount like say $400,000 for FY22 and then $200,000 for later years be more appropriate? And Sarah, would that be a terribly difficult thing to incorporate in the calculations? It's just something to consider, since we did level fund the tax rate last year and then they're seeing a jump and just wondering if it might be, if not a bad idea to apply a little bit more money for FY22 than it is necessarily making it even over years in the future. I imagine it because I thought it was a good idea. So I, you know, I think I bore it, but if, you know, the recommendation was clearly to split that down the middle, so. Well, my thought was 300, 200, 100, and then we're back where we started over multiple years. But my memo with potential adjustments did suggest we use an additional 500, sorry, 50,000, decimals, 50,000. If we were to bump that another 50 to a full 400, I don't think that's a terrible idea because we have that 93 or 92, I can't remember now sitting in that other category. Let me just tell you what that does. So if we were to make that $400,000 use of fund balance in the current year, plus the $7,000 that Andy identified for the merger stuff in the select board budget and the $2,000 out of canine supplies, if not layered in the 2,500 land fill because I just want to touch base with Dennis. Again, I know I have an email from him. So we're looking at $407,000 in fund balance that puts us at a tax levy increase of 2.3% and the tax rate increase of 2.1%. And I just really like this 0% last year. That would have been a 2% last year that puts us at 0.1% over where we would have been last year. So 0.0006 over where we would have been last year or 0.0111 over where we were the last two years. So we're talking about just more than one penny on the tax rate at this time. Yeah, and I'm thinking that if there's a year to do that, if there's a year to reduce as much as we can, obviously I think that this would be the year to do it. Assuming that future years, we're not hit with COVID-22 or something along those lines. I'm knocking on wood. I just think that the larger reduction happening sooner would be more advantageous for a tax-paying populace, but willing to obviously go with the full board. I think I would definitely wanna know what everybody on the board thinks of about this. So with my finance director hat firmly on, this is really a question of risk tolerance. So the risk is this. If we use that fund balance to offset the tax rate in FY22, and then there are other unanticipated factors that either make expenditures over budget, which has not been the trend. I will absolutely agree with that or revenues under budget such as increased delinquencies. So modified accrual accounting again at the end of the fiscal year plus 60 days, anything uncollected on property taxes gets stripped back out of revenue. So if we have a year where we have, as we have increasing delinquencies, we're gonna have decreasing tax revenues over time. And then what ends up happening is, if you guys remember last year we had a bump or maybe the year before we had a bump in fund balance because we had tax sale in 2018 and we had collected a large amount of our delinquency. So we ended up with revenues over budget because of that timing issue. So the risk in using more fund balance in FY22 is that something else may happen causing lower than normal revenues or lower than anticipated revenues, higher than anticipated expenses in 22 or 23 or a combination of both. Once that fund balance is spent, it's not a self, it doesn't replenish. And so then there isn't anything to fill that hole the next year. I mean, that's just the risk. So there's also a chance that as we've seen, we'll be under budget and expenditures. We'll have vacancy savings and we will have unanticipated revenues causing an additional fund balance. So I just wanna be very clear with the board that those are really the two possibilities. I don't know which one it's gonna be. We've all seen the trend of there being fund balance at the end of the year. And so I would wanna make sure that everyone was comfortable. Everyone has a chance to weigh in on what is the dollar amount we should use to offset the tax rate in FY22, knowing those things. And? So some of what Sarah was talking about, the reason we have the 15%, what's the right term? On assigned fund balance. On assigned fund balance is to account for unexpected things that come up that cause swings in either revenue or expenses. So we have that buffer in there as well. That's true. So if we did have it close the year in deficit, it would close against that on assigned fund balance and it would reduce that balance. And I would, I could argue that having money that we assign for future, if we take money and assign it just for the purpose of having it in case there's an emergency, we're circumventing our 15% policy by making the number that we have actually set aside for contingency larger than 15%. And so I'm in line with Patrick. Sarah, can, oh, Vince, go ahead. Yeah, quick question. So once we set aside these monies for tax relief, are they like static and assigned? Like they cannot be touched. Like that's what we've decided. No, the board can assign, reassign, unassign at any time. So we make this plan to, you know, $300,000 this year. You know, and then we keep, or I'm sorry, I can't remember all the numbers. It's late for me too. And all the, so in the next year, if there's something crazy that comes up, we could reduce the amount that we're setting aside for tax relief and use that to like, I guess offset those unexpected costs. Yes. Andy, does that address anything? So, yeah, Vince, it comes down to how you look at it. I am very against assigning something for future tax relief and then deciding later, we're going to use it for something else. That is, you know, promising the, I mean, our policy says over 15%, you have to give it, unless we assign it somewhere else, you have to give it back for the taxpayers. And if we assign a chunk of money to be future tax relief, but then we decide later, oh, we're going to build a statue with it, I think that's a bad choice. I'm not, that's a bad example. That's just a bizarre example. But in the 15% that we have set aside as unassigned is supposed to be used to address that. I mean, that's what that's for, is to address emergency situation. And so if you have an emergency situation, technically, I would say that you would spend that money first and then, then looking at what's your fund-violent situation, you may say, well, we're below 15%. So we have to fill that back up and you could take that from money that we've allocated for future, for, you know, so it may be semantics, but I think it's important. Right, no, I totally understand that. My, you know, my thing is like, we're talking about like a worst case scenario, like Pat mentioned, you know, COVID-2 knock, knock on some wood, you know, it's like, for me, it's more about like, if we're worried about risk over the next couple of years, you know, and we have something that comes up that is, you know, extremely unforeseen, like how risk averse are, how risk averse do we have to be with our money if we know that there's a pool to address some emergent concern that's out, that's totally outside the realm of our thought process and normal way of like budgeting our fund balance. That's, I don't know if that makes sense, but that's kind of like my thoughts on the matter. Like I don't think we have to be that risk averse or like that risk averse over the next few years, not because I want to assign that money to some things, to some disaster, but just that like we have that money in the event that there is a disaster. Right, I think I get what you're saying, Vince. Evan, do you want to respond to Vince or can I have Antha Pat go? Well, first let me ask Sarah, let me ask Sarah a question. What is in your opinion the highest risk that we face in terms of revenue? And we should do these, I should ask you these questions in advance, you know, during the day, but in your estimation, what is the highest risk we face? Well, I think the highest risk has to align with our concentration of revenue, our main revenue source is property tax income. So I mean, sure, you know, maybe we risk some grant funding that is not what we're relying on for revenue stream here. Is that what you're asking, Ian? Yeah. How much of a percent of our revenue is from property tax? One moment, please. And so the reason why I asked that of the board, you know, of Sarah for the board members is we were very concerned several months ago about what COVID's effect would be on the property tax. We actually did much better than, we did better than expected, but that doesn't mean we will always do that. Right, and that was just the first payment and we level funded the tax rate and we implemented the grace period, we reduced the penalty, so we still suffered, you know, losses. Yeah. But not at a rate as high as we were concerned about. So we rely about 90% on property tax revenues in this just general fund and that's last year's numbers. So for everybody when we asked the question of how risk averse are you, it would be best to know where your money comes from and how tied to the economy you are as to being able to pay your property taxes, which means you're tied to jobs, which means you're tied to, you know, listen, it's really nice that the government sent out $600 checks, right? But is that gonna pay your mortgage over six months if you're unemployed? Is that gonna pay your property taxes? You know, it's six or seven, you know, $6,000 at $280,000 value. These are the things that Sarah and I and others probably wake up some nights, mornings and go did we cover our risk appropriately? So again, if it's something that you wanna talk about 25 or $50,000, interesting, but it's already on top of 300 or 400,000. I'm more of a guy that likes to think the long game. So if COVID sticks around another six months or a year or we have another surge, what are we gonna need going forward? That's all I ask. I accept whatever you guys wanna do this year and next, but just please understand, our largest revenue source is property tax and that's tied to the economy and people working. Pat, go ahead. I mean, I do hear what you're saying, Evan, but I think something else important to mention is that this relief that I'm proposing is not spending the full 600,000 by any means. And it is going to come when, honestly, I think that we'll probably get some clarification tomorrow night, but the vast expectation is that school property taxes are going to rise significantly in the upcoming year. So if we do have a way to counter in whatever small way we can as a municipality, the amount of taxes that our citizens are going to be paying next September and next March, I think that this is worth pursuing. And they spoke to it, we do have the 15% to cover emergencies and I'm not advocating, spending that full 600,000. I'm just thinking of ways that we can help reduce what we know is going to be a difficult year coming up for property taxes because of, again, I anticipate we're going to see school taxes rise quite a bit unless there's some sort of federal government intervention. Maybe there will be, maybe there won't, but right now, what we do know is that there's a whole education fund that needs to be filled. Andy? The other thing is this is our first go at Australian Ballot for our budget. We have no idea how it's going to go. We have the discussion we've been having with the village, right? There's concern about taxes that are being paid into them. And I don't want to, we could get a surprise. I don't know, I don't know. So I think being cautious about the tax rate this year is a good idea. Like you said, I don't vote, but I just wanted you to know your risk. Sarah, can you talk about the gradual step down you had recommended 300, 200, 100? At the end of that, is there zero? Does that mean that at the bottom of that step down we are no longer planning to set aside or an option is that we no longer set aside money for reducing the tax burden so that we don't have the risk of continuing to do it one year and then not having the revenue and not being able to do it another year? Not necessarily, no. I think that on a $15 million budget, this one is upwards, is pushing the high end of that. To give me a percent, what would you, other than 100% on target with everything, what would you say a damn fine job would be at the end of the year? 98% on target for budget? Like let's say, what would be a perfect year knowing that perfect is not a possibility? Let's say it's 98%, that's $300,000 surplus every year. Or every year we did that, but it might be 102% and then we need to have that backfill. So I'm not saying that we should get away from this practice of using the fund balance to offset the tax rate because we end up having the funds there year after year to do that. I just wanna make sure that everyone is aware that it is a possibility that they wouldn't be there. And so that we're all just to just understand the concept before making a change to it. Because going from 100,000 to 400,000 is a large increase in one year. Right, that was my point. And I don't mean to imply that the budget is being managed in a way that we can't count on a surplus, that it was not my intention at all. No, and I don't mean to be flip or suggest that at all. I just wanna make sure that with such large numbers and then things just happen. Right, my concern is that it has become an expectation that we do this every year. And I understand the desire to increase it to deal with the particular emergency we're faced with right now. So I get all that. Sarah, can you or Evan talk about what aspects of the fund balance were helpful this year with COVID? What did remind us whether we had to tap into it at all because of COVID? What were some emergency decisions that you were able to make because you had, you know, the fund balance had your back. You know, what are some impacts that this emergency had on our fund balance and our budget in general? And then did we receive or will we receive any grant funds to replenish what was spent related to COVID? You go first, Sarah. Grant funds, no. Evan, how about you take a stab? Having a fund balance occasionally lets you make a tough decision easier. While it didn't necessarily fall directly on the town, I would say knowing that we had the fund balance allowed us to take a chance with daytime school childcare and not charge our residents for that when all other entities charged their families for kids while their kids were not in school. I would say that anybody can have a bad year, probably not Amazon anymore, but they've had bad years before and your bank account lets you, you know, move things around so that you can make things work. Other than that, I think that last thing, I never know what the next storm is gonna be, whether it's ice, whether it's 18 to 20 inches or whether it's a gully washer that wipes out a whole bunch of roads. And I could tell you, while the federal government will eventually declare a disaster, you need to get things done before you see the money. And so it's always good to have some funds in reserve to be able to deal with something as terrible as a storm or, you know, whatever you can think of that comes along. So that's my answer. Hopefully that sparks something for you, Sarah. That was kind of what I was getting at, Evan. Thank you. My concern about using more of the fund balance than we normally would and more than is recommended by staff is the risk that we take with being able to make investments on the fly should we need to in the event of an emergency. I just wanted to point that out. Do you have any thoughts of, okay. So we've reviewed the budget and Sarah, you were gonna get some additional suggestions from, I believe, Andy, about additional reductions in aggregate. Board members, do you have any additional questions about the budget memo? Not seeing. Okay. Vince, are you good to go? Okay. So at this point, so Sarah, are you saying that it's okay for us to sort of table this and talk about it again on Monday? Tuesday. Tuesday, thank you. Yeah, that we will need to finalize it Tuesday. Okay. To vote to warn it in order to get it all in time. And then have we settled on hearing dates for the budget? Because these will be particularly important seeing as we won't be, we'll be having Australian ballot for the first time. The budget meeting, the budget discussion definitely needs to be available. People need to know about the hearings as much as possible. So have we set, Evan, have we set dates for that yet? I was going to ask Tammy, because we were talking about that. Tammy, can you unmute? Do we have those dates? Yeah, the dates in front of me, but that was, let me see. I had to approve the warning tonight, but if that's not going to happen tonight, because we were going to hold one of the public hearings on Monday the night, or Tuesday the 19th. So you're talking about this for this operating budget. And then the capital budget would be at a later time. So Tammy, does that bump us up against the warning deadlines to move the hearing a week later? Look at that. I think you could, I don't know why you can't do that at the same time as the capital hearing. Because that would be on February 1st, if we were to stay on schedule. I really would have to rely, I would have to look at this again. I'm sorry, I'm not as quick thinking on the fly here with all of these dates. Because also we've got in there, we're gonna have a couple of public hearings now for the merger question as well. So there's gonna have to be two public hearing dates, one on the first and one on the 16th for that. Right. So you're talking about actually holding several different public hearings in the next few meetings. Right. So just to jump in, sorry, Tammy, I'm just found the budget calendar. Our first day to Warrantown meeting is Thursday, January 21st. And my notes say the last day to warn it is the 31st. So if we approve the budget on the 19th and have the hearing on a different night, we're going to have to have a special meeting in order to do that, I think. In order to finalize the budget for the 25th, because right now we have select board doing some separate voting on the 25th specifically for the capital budget because of the same reason. Even though it's a joint meeting night, we have some vote, we have that on the schedule for them to do that on the 25th. I think we talked about that last week. Yeah, to fit in that window. So what I was trying to do here was to save the board and the staff some time and take care of the smaller budget adjustments in aggregate, but if it's better to not mess with the schedule and stay here longer this evening, we can go through Andy's list of concerns about the budget right now and not mess with the warning calendar. Is that, would the board prefer to do that? I'm concerned because Andy says he has $30,000 worth of suggestions for the budget and while I realize that going through them $100 at a time or $1,000 at a time is a little tedious, I don't wanna throw off the warning budget but the warning calendar. So I'm asking the board if you would be willing to sit and go through those adjustments together now or take, we make some adjustments to the calendar. What is the board's pleasure? I'm willing to stay if it needs to be done tonight. Okay. I'm willing to stay as long as we can take a five minute break. Yeah, that's a good idea. Andy, are you willing to go through your list tonight? Yeah, if you wanna do that, I can, yes. Well, by all means, let's get started. Or should we take that five minute break? Yeah, let's recess for, let's come back at 9.55. Right, excuse me, 9.50. All right, everybody will recess until 9.50. I don't know, Sarah, if the easiest way would be to bring up the budget charts, they're the, because they're gonna hit a whole bunch of them. I don't know. Yeah, we can do that. I'm just looking at your email now. So let's start from the top. So without department head input and just seeing this for the first time, I'm not gonna be able to answer your questions at all. I think that we can go through one by one. I just looked through the list. I know that community, the only one I would vote against is community development, printing and binding, the others, or no, let's just, let's run them. All right, let me resume in. Let's, do you wanna drive, Andy, or do you wanna run down them? Sure, town admin. Printing and binding. You got 200 in there. I was just suggesting cutting in half to 100 because the low usage, 45 in 2019 and nothing in 2020, or FY20. So that's the first one, just minus 100. Like I said, there's small ones and then they end up adding up. Clerk, the election expense I mentioned, I brought up, but this is again, you said it needs to be a discussion with Susan on that. Pretty sure she said in the meeting that the annual election, a single election is on the order of seven to 10,000. So I'm wondering in an off year when we don't have a major November election, why this is so big. Andy, that's without the postage and printing the ballots and stuff. That's just election workers. And by the way, just remembered, aren't we gonna have a vote on cannabis? Probably late summer, early fall. Yeah, so that's the one I'm talking about, right? I mean, or are we saying that the town meeting is now gonna cost more than $4,000? That's typically what we budgeted in a town meeting only election year is 4,000. Well, I think we can do that. So if we do town meeting at 4,000 and we do an extra meeting or an extra election in November, that's, I don't think that adds up to 20,000. I just don't know the answer to that question. And that's really the big one, right? That's the big one. Yeah. Board members also feel free if you have questions or comments on these particular items as well, please weigh in. And I just, Andy, a lot of the comments that you have in your email are like changes based on history. So I just wanna make sure that some of the changes, some of the histories you're referring to, is it because those funds weren't spent in the past year because of COVID or is it actual history that like has shown over time that the budget maybe is a little off? I don't know the answer to that. Well, I understand that you don't. And what you're saying is change the budget based on history, but I would be reticent to change a budget item. If the reason it wasn't spent was because COVID happened and prevented something from happening. But in other previous years, it was spent. And so cutting it now would just lead us to raising it later. So I just wanna make sure that we're extended. So Elaine, I didn't look at anything. I wasn't done yet, Andy. Andy, please, I just wanna finish my sentence. I just wanna make sure that we are giving or understanding completely what the history is where we're relying on to determine whether these cuts should be made. And that's department by department. And none of us can answer that at the moment. That's the only observation I'm making not trying to be disrespectful or doubting what you're trying to do. I'm just trying to understand and make sure we're doing the right thing. Yeah, I'm sorry I interrupted you. But yeah, in no case did I use a single year to suggest a history change. Okay, that's great. I looked at all years that were available in this chart. And also I wanna make it clear that I included all of these comments last week in the input I've provided last week. So these are not new questions that I'm asking here. To that end, if you wanna talk about elections, if you go back, the highest we've spent is 12,000. That's almost 13. You wanna play it somewhat safe. Maybe you could cut it down to 13 or 14 if that's your goal. I'm fine with that, but I don't know what others are. I'm concerned about not understanding the context that Susan asked for that increase. She is usually spot on. So I'm guessing there's a reason why that's a 20. But if we wanna reduce it at this time, we can be prepared to increase it if need be on a case-by-case basis. If we end up having all the meetings we're expecting to have to special media or the town meetings that we're expecting to have. Any other board members interested in making a change to this dollar amount? Not seeing any hands and I can't see faces at the moment. So Dawn, go ahead. Sorry about that. I disconnected myself. I dropped my budget book on my internet connection. As far as the election expense goes, I don't know, I hope I didn't miss too much here. Part of that may be updating the, some of the, I don't know if it's hardware or software for the voting machines that have to be adjusted each time. I'm not sure if that's included in her listing, but you know that this last election that we just did, the village alone had 32 election workers. And if you just pay them, I think it's $10 an hour. I'm not sure. I don't know for sure. That's $3,200 for one, just the village part of the election plus the town had at least 20 people up there working. So I don't think she's over estimated what she needs. Pat. I mean, with all respect to the changes, I mean, I realized just now as we're getting into it that without the department heads here to explain them, I'm going to be very hesitant to accept any of these changes. I just, you know, and he said them in last week. And if we don't have answers to them tonight, I mean, why would we change them when the department heads submitted these? We have to trust in our people that they submitted what they feel was an appropriate budget. And you know, I, you know, we just, we don't have all 15 of them or whatever number here to explain them tonight. You know, Evan, I'm sure can do what he can. Sarah can do what she can, but they both said, or really, excuse me, Sarah just said that she's not comfortable, you know, guessing at what the department heads, you know, put on. So, you know, with, you know, with respect and you know, understanding what Andy's trying to do. I think it's a good to go through and reduce where we can. I just, I'm not going to be able to support any of these changes tonight. Okay. Okay. So with that, Vince, are you, how are you feeling about the change to the clerk's budget that Andy is suggesting? I mean, I, again, I'll kind of echo what Pat said. Like I would really like the department heads to be here. And I kind of think that that's what the meeting is for when we have the department's head here to bring up those questions. Not no disrespect to you, Andy, but like I would have rather seen that concern brought up then and then, you know, we could have worked it out in the moment with the department head there. I understand like we missed some things here and there. But I just like, I can't in good conscience say, you know, 20,000 isn't going to cut it or 10,000 is going to cut it without knowing why that line item is there. So are we focusing on this one just because it's a big one? I mean, a lot of the other ones are small, but... If we have other ones that are like, you know, that you're concerned about that are like more minor changes, like I'd be willing to go over those. And you know, which is like, yeah, go ahead, Sarah. Or sorry, that's a little... I'm looking at the list. Could I run through the list? Andy, would you be okay with that? And I'll flip screen. I'm fine with that. There are some that I can't answer. There are some that I do know the answer to now that I've seen them. So let's just table this one for a lot of elections. Your next one on your list is that the increase to the capital contribution in IT was not explained. I don't have the specific increase there or the specific explanation there. I can tell you it appears like we're inching that up. You're over a year. I don't have a problem. You know, if you guys want to bring that down the thousand dollars, I would hold that one out for some discussion. I will just hold it out. I'm just going to run through the list. It will circle back to the ones we want to talk about. And this one in particular to get to Vince's point, I did bring up, I asked Rob this question and he didn't know the answer. That's why I asked it again. He didn't know why it was increasing and I haven't gotten the answer. So the next one is that the assessor's office had higher than actual on repair maintenance vehicles and equipment. Andy's suggesting a $500 decrease. I actually already got that one in my memo. There's a sister line in community development for another 500. So I picked that up too. Next up, assessing also had $150 for advertising that historically has not been used. I don't see a problem with pulling it, although if we're going to be, and I can't remember exactly when Karen thought reappraisal was on our horizon, but I think she did say maybe a couple of years out. Now reappraisal funds are available for that kind of stuff. But sort of I think she might have been thinking like RFP, getting some stuff out there in advance, some communication around that. So I don't mind we can circle back and say yay or nay on that, $150. Community development printing and marketing that is at the level $500. I know that the ETC Next project is wrapping up and that there is going to be some printing costs associated with that. Yes, we do have the fund balance item. But this has been in the budget year over year. You had suggested maybe we reduce it by $200. There's the fund balance item for community development. The ETC Next is wrapping up. I think if there were any consulting fees around that project that still needed to be paid, the fund balance is a good place to pay them. And then we are going to need to print and publish that document. Economic Development Commission, you're suggesting we come back down, come down by $500 on the appropriation to that committee. I think that that was increased because we're proposing a part-time person here. And if there's a part-time person to work with that committee, hopefully that committee will be able to leverage those funds to do the work that they've been tasked with doing. The next item on the list is the canine supplies. We covered that. I'm good with that. In recreation, the first one was travel in the admin segment. One of the things that Allie had talked about was that previously her costs to attend the National Conference have been covered by the Vermont Parks and Rec Association because she'd been the chairperson or on the board. And so I think that the change or I think that she's not expecting those to be covered this coming year. Again, I don't know about reducing it or not, but that is one of the ones on the list. The next in parks, small tools and equipment, I would feel comfortable reducing that $150 and fine with that. Between that and then the small tools and pool, there's been some plans that haven't materialized. In the senior center, your note is that COVID has been used to justify an increase in postage. I think that I would argue to keep this in here. I do think that I know that there's been an increase in mailing to the senior center. It's not showing in the FY20 actual column because that was covered by the FEMA grants that we got over the summer. And then the 25% match was covered by the elder grant that we got. But I do know that Nicole and Allie has talked to us about communicating with this population and wanting to do more mailings to them. The seniors, the other purchase services, reducing that $500 or $600 based on what was actually spent, I don't recall what that one was. But I would make a case to leave the postage in there. The library, the rental of vehicles and equipment, this is their copier. So this is monthly copier fees and then the rental charge and then usage on top of it. In prior years, patrons, when they print or copy, they pay per page and that revenue is netted against the cost on this line item. With fewer people in the library, we still have to pay that monthly rental fee for the copier. So do you think that this $1,500 is a good spot for this copier to be at? Library training conferences induce. I know that Caitlyn has plans for her staff to go to more trainings. You can see we increased this to $1,200 from $700 and FY20 budget. That didn't happen primarily because of COVID and then also staff turnover. I think that she has some new staff there. I think that we should support leaving this for them to pursue the trainings and conferences that she has in mind for her staff. The technology subscription and licenses is an order to beef up the books and the online, yeah, the e-books overdrive and getting particular subscriptions just for the Essex Library patrons and not making everyone stay for some of the more popular items instead of being part of that statewide waiting list pool. And while this is definitely boom during COVID, Caitlyn talked to us about this being a really popular service as well. Yes, Andy. I was just gonna go there, right? If this is driven by COVID, and it shouldn't be a permanent, it shouldn't be an increase to the budget, it should come from contingency, but you're saying this is an expansion of expected future service as well. Yeah, and I'm also saying it's kind of too soon to tell for some of these things. So it may be that we go back to normal, everyone gets the vaccine and then we have this whole population who've discovered overdrive and e-books who no longer wanna go to the library as often. And so I don't know, I don't think any of us really know if this is, if this is gonna be a sustained increase in demand for service, but right now it is an increased demand for service. Well, yeah, okay. So it's a question, right? But is there an offsetting reduction in hard copy books? Probably not. No. One of the things that Caitlyn has said is that, again, the state library, if you'll call it, of electronic materials, if it's popular, you're gonna get a long wait. So her idea and thought was, if we buy it, then there's a much shorter wait time. So that seems to be growing and growing. We had the same issue with Brinell. They wanted the same. So there's gotta be a trend in there. And then on the library, other purchase services, the $260, that's because the state cost, the courier cost is going up. So the contractor that the state- I thought this was the curbside service. I think that that's reflected in supplies because what that is is paper bags to put books in. But also the processing- My apologies, then I think I put this in the wrong place then, okay. And then also supplies is also going up. So for paper bags and for the place they buy books, the processing fee where they put the protective stuff on is gone up as well. And then we touched on the landfill certification. I don't have a problem having, using another $2,500 of fund balance for that since it was in the budget previously. Sorry. PW Admin. Oh, that's in buildings. PW Admin buildings, general supplies. Wait, maybe not. No, PW Admin general. It's just PW Admin. There's just, let me find it. Looks like I have that one labeled wrong. I can't find it either. There's a lot of lines. Stormwater, other purchase services is up at $12,000. You're suggesting to reduce that by $2,000. I don't recall. Let me see if I can find the... My assumption is that it wasn't clear in the details, which is why it's in your email, so. Would, Sarah, which one is this? Stormwater professional services? Other purchase services in stormwater. Yeah. I remember, I think so many details, but I know that we're going after several grants that that may be where those expenses are. So there are, so Dennis has $7,000 in there to storm drain to use the camera and the storm brace to identify problem pipes. $3,000 permits pet mitts for per hour stormwater permit and then $2,000 for storm drain markers. And so that's what Dennis has in there for the full $12,000. And now that I read the TVing of the lines, I feel like I remember Dennis saying that they weren't able to get it to as many as they had hoped in recent years and that they're behind. So yeah, here's your mentioning here to reduce the Village Highway contribution based on the net of 16, 17, 18 and 19. I'm gonna skip that. Sounds like a future discussion, yeah. The $5,000, I'm gonna circle back to some of these. The $5,000 select work professional services to use merger-related fund balance instead. We already picked that one, I'm fine with that. And then we're already using fund balance for the merger-related legal costs. Okay, that is the end of the list. So I think the ones that need some discussion are whether or not to cut the IT transfer to capital, the assessing advertising, printing and community development, the EDC appropriation, travel in parks and rec and other purchase services in seniors. So that is $2,000, I think. Overall, on those items. So the list that you guys went through, is it exclusive of the clerk conversation? Is $2,000 in total changes, Sarah? That's what you're saying? I'm saying the ones that I, as I was going through the list, the ones I felt like I wanted the board to weigh in on. So there were some that I'm okay with. I think I made some notes. I hope that I was also thinking out loud and there are some that I already had and there are some that I think we should not change. You want the board to weigh in or you want the department heads to weigh in? No, I'd like the board to weigh in. Okay. Please, sorry, it's 10 o'clock and now there are no banners. It's totally fine. Yeah, so we've gotten into the point where, right, it sounds like it's probably not worth going through the exquisite details of each of these, if it's on the order of, if we have too many questions about some of the bigger ones to even address. And so I think that maybe the, and if we're gonna go talk down the Patrick's suggestion of increasing the amount of fund balance that kind of washes that whole thing out anyway. So it by a long shot. So I'm okay with instead having the discussion about where we wanna park fund balance rather than going through the minute details of line items that are only gonna end up at $2,000. Okay, we did, I didn't say I was good with tapping $2,500 in fund balance for the landfill stuff as well. So I'll just, I'll talk that in on this screen. I do have the 400,000 that Patrick proposed, which tab, which tab in here. So those things all considered were at a 2.2% tax levy increase. That's $314,000 looking at a .011. So 1.1, yeah, .011 tax, estimated tax rate increase, which is 2.1% over the prior year, which was level funded. So looking at that, we're still at that .1%. So we're looking at, I don't know, there's so many ways to say this that an estimated FY22 tax rate level funded to what 21 would have been had we not level funded it's FY20 or about 2.1% up, which is lower than our three year average, not looking at FY21. Bottom line is a 4% increase. Remember, we do have those new initiatives for a total of $15,986,414 plus the change in the human services. So Sarah, thank you for providing us in your memo with some alternatives. And Andy, thank you for taking such a close reading of the budget and looking for more opportunities to save. So board members, do you have any other questions or comments about the budget? And if not, I think like we're at a point where we could go ahead and approve, Sarah, we've, is there anything outstanding that you need to go elsewhere to get information on? I don't think so. I see a hand, you probably see that as well. I do, well, I see a member of the public and I understand that and I will recognize them when we're ready, but I want to make sure the board has all the questions that they needed answered and they have all the information they need before we make a decision to approve the budget. Everyone's okay? Can we clarify what it is we're actually gonna vote on? We've just voting to warn it. We don't, do we approve it tonight or do we approve it some other night after it's been warranted? I mean, not warranted, I mean, sorry, we've warned the public hearings. Do we approve after the public hearings? Right, we were just, go ahead, Sarah. I was just gonna say based on prior year memos, what we've done is we've adopted or sorry, you're right, we have just warned the public hearing and we've plunked that total amount in once we've landed on it and I think we've landed on it. Right, so yeah, your previous memo, well, which item number is that memo for? Is that? This is the warning. So looking more closely at my memo, it really just asks the board to discuss and determine which adjustment should be made in order to finalize the budget and I think that we're there. And then we warn the public hearing, we hold the public hearing. After that, the board will be asked to adopt the budgets so that we can warn annual meeting. Right, okay. So then the conversation was our, but a business item, 6E, so unless the board has questions before we move on to approving the warning, I'll open it to the public, but I want to make sure that the board has been satisfied that all their questions are answered. Does anybody have any further questions or comments on the budget? Dawn, go ahead. With all the changes that are going to be going to give us a national number to put in it later. Dawn, I'm sorry, can you say what we're getting at? With all the changes that we've just discussed or Sarah's going to make, at the bottom where you're warning an amount, is she going to be able to give us that amount tonight? Yes, I have it all right here. I knew you were awesome, thanks. Okay. I remember the scramble from the last couple of years so I set myself up for it. And so also we are going to be needing to go back and approve the fund balance memo. So I'm assuming we will do that after we take care of the budget, if that's okay with everybody. Okay. So I'm not seeing any other comments from board members so I will, with your agreement, will go to the public. Go ahead Ken, you've been waiting a very long time. That's okay, thank you so much. I didn't know you, if you saw me I thought you were going to go to approval and didn't notice I was there. I'll be quick, it's late. I just want to point out that we have $780,000 left over from fiscal year 20 due to either over-budgeting or under-spending or a combination of both, which is great. And there's a few suggestions to reduce the budget by somewhat $30,000 and I'm frustrated by the pushback on that. We have a pattern of having excess money for at least nine and maybe Sarah can fill in your nine out of the last 10 years, quite a track record. I'm not worried about a little extra adjusting there and then maybe having to dip into the future fund balance left over to cover some of these expenses. One last thing, if you haven't noticed, we're in a state of emergency. The governor continues to extend it every month. The 15% fund balance is for emergencies and if for some reason we need to hoard more money to reserve for future emergencies on top of that 15%, I would suggest that maybe the 15% is a little too low and needs to be adjusted. Otherwise, what is it for? That's it, thank you. Carry on. Annie. Yes, I'd like to thank you all for taking a deep breath and staying longer to just get this work done. That was really great of everyone. And also I agree with the respect shown to Susan. I think she just crushes at her work and I really appreciate that you guys took a beat to respect her ask in that budget item. Thank you. Thanks, Annie. Anybody else from the public wish to speak on this agenda item? Okay, so we're gonna move on to item 6F and proceed with the warning. Would anyone like to make, excuse me, before we do that, Betsy, do you have something you'd like to say? Yeah, yes, thank you, Elaine. I'm just wondering, when we do this budget presentation, I've never gone to a budget presentation before for the town. And do we also include the school budget so that people understand the total tax impact? That's a great question. Normally no, the school has their own annual meeting at which they present their own budget. We are responsible for just presenting this one. Would it be helpful to the public to be able to have those two things together at the same time when you go to the meeting tomorrow? Would you ask that maybe they can do that? It makes sense to me, I don't know. Thank you. Thank you. Any other members of the public? Okay, so board members, unless you have further questions or comments on the budget, someone can go ahead and move to approve the warning. I just put the number in the comments. I see that. Okay, thank you. I move that select board warn a public hearing for the fiscal year 2022 operating budget for the town of Essex in the amount of 15,985,320, oh, it just went away to be held on January 19th, 2021 at 6.35 p.m. online. Second. Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Dawn. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you very much, Sarah. Thank you as always for your hard work on this. Board members, let's backtrack to the fund balance memo. So we changed some numbers here with what we just did in the, oops. My phone is recording what I'm saying to, let's see, so we changed some numbers. So second page, please Tammy down towards the bottom. So what we decided was we have $5,000 that's coming. So in the new, in the budget document, I now have $409,500 coming from fund balance. 9,500 or 7,000 is from already existing lines here. The 25, additional 2,500 is the landfill monitoring. My recommendation would be that we make the reduced property taxes in FY22 dollar amount, $402,500 that we adjust against the line right below it. And so that's what we're going to do. So that's what we're going to do. Line right below it. And that would be my suggested change. Is everyone clear on those changes? It would be $402,500 for FY22. Taxes, 170, I'm sorry, that's not, those are not the numbers. 197,500 to increase that line that's reduced to reduce future taxes. Does that make, is that logical enough? Or is that kind of weird? I understand what you're saying, Sarah, and I'm making Dawn go ahead. So where it says reduce property taxes for future years, we're taking 100,000 and putting it into the line above it. And then we're going to take the 195 and put it in that reduced property taxes for future years. Not quite, Tammy, do you mind if I draw the screen? What if I just, can I just steal it from you? I think I can. I made some notes for myself, but I haven't. So what I'm suggesting is that instead of 300,000 in this line that we actually make it 402,500 and that 2,500 is the landfill monitoring that was raised in a prior year. And then I'm suggesting that in order to make all the numbers still work out, that then this one becomes 100 and not, oops, that's not right, 197,500. And while we're looking at this, whoa, wrong one. I'm just going to highlight the ones I changed. And I would ask that whoever makes the motion to call those out in some way so that it's recorded and I don't, in the future, come back and just look at my original memo. Right. Please. I can tackle that, I think. I move that the select board assigned fund balance in the following amounts, reduced property taxes in FY 22 in the amount of $402,500, details assignment for future budgeted tax reduction, reduced property taxes in future years in the amount of $197,500, detailed out fiscal year 22 proposed budget includes increase in use of fund balance. This will need to be stepped back gradually to avoid a spike in tax rate. I'm realizing I probably don't need to say that. Transfer to capital in the amount of $189,717 for a total of additional assignments of $789,717. A second. Thank you, Dawn. Thank you for that. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. We have our fund balance assignments. Sarah, thank you again. Thank you all. I will send that to the auditors. They'll be very happy. We definitely want to keep the auditors happy. Okay. Earlier in the meeting, we amended the agenda to pull the minutes of December 28th joint meeting out of the consent agenda so that we could amend them. Andy, did you have specific changes you'd like to make? Yes, I do. We had modified the order of the agenda. So I would like lines 222 through 234 to be moved after the trustee's adjournment because that's when it happened in the meeting. Flo. Okay. Kathy, you got that. Was that 222 to 230? 34. 34, thank you so much. Yep, I've got it. Okay. Any other changes to those minutes? No, not for me. Okay. Before we vote, we have a hand up in the audience. Go ahead, Irene. Thank you. Couple of corrections, if I may, line 96. Talks about promotion passing the trustees by five to zero, but there were only four in attendance. Online 100, 101 and 102, there are four, one, two, three, four, five people who are listed as representatives or senators who are only elect. So I would ask that their titles be amended. That would be by Hofsky, Black, Dolan, Chittenden, and Roth. Same correction, please, to line 181. The Hofsky is a representative of elect. And finally on 180, I believe Mr. Murray was asking about statewide introspection on policing, not community-wide. So I request that change with his permission. Thank you. Pat, we have an audience member making a change to something you said. Do you approve? Yeah, I'm reading that now and that is correct. It was statewide. Dawn, what would you like to add? No, I don't have it. My hand just never came back down. Thank you. Oh, okay. Okay. Are there any further amendments to the minutes? All right. Would someone like to make a motion to approve them? So moved. Thank you, Vince. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Pat. All those in favor of approving the minutes as amended, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Moving on to the consent agenda. Does anybody have any questions or comments on the consent agenda? I make the motion to accept the consent agenda as presented. Thank you, Dawn. Second. And was that Pat or Vince? That was Pat. Thank you, Pat. Any further discussion on the consent agenda? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. And thank you. Moving on to the reading file. We have the addition of the letter from Andrew Brown. Are there any comments or questions from the board? So, unless any other questions or comments, I'll take a motion to adjourn. So moved. Thank you, Dawn. Seconded. Thank you, Vince. At least that worked. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? We are adjourned. Thank you, Evan, Sarah, Tammy, all the staff who are here. Thank you, everybody. Have a lovely evening. Good night, everybody. Yes. Thank you, staff. Have a good...