 I have to change that, yeah. Okay. Mike, you ready? Okay, welcome to the Essex Junction Trustees Meeting. Please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Welcome, everybody, and if you haven't signed in, please do so, appreciate that. We're not sure if Trustee Dan Caron is gonna be joining us tonight. We know that he was on a tour of Spain, but we're not sure if he's gonna be with us tonight, so go now. First order of business, Evan, do we have any additions or changes to the agenda? I do not believe so. Okay, so we'll just move ahead. First order of business is audience to be heard, and does anyone in the audience have any questions or comments about something that's not on the agenda tonight? Okay, no hands, so we'll just move on to the next piece. And I don't think we need to, I keep forgetting, we don't need to approve the agenda when we are changing it. It's the agenda that's posted, okay? So first order of business is a public hearing on the FY19 water rates. Oh, Dan Caron is here. And Lauren, are you gonna take us through that? Yeah. Welcome, Dan. So staff is proposing a 6% increase in the water, the village water user rate from last year. The main reasons for that are an 8% increase in our operating budget, and the reason our operating budget mostly is increasing is we have added $50,000 to our capital transfer. Our capital fund in the water department is, in the water fund, is not very healthy. It's gonna end the year at about $30,000, and we have a lot of projects coming up, and so we have started to gradually add money in there. The sanitation department, we've been adding money as we get higher than expected hook on fees, but we haven't gotten those in the water department, so that is one of the big increases. The other is a 3% increase in the CWB wholesale rate. So our fixed charters are based on 50% of the budget and variable are on 50% of the budget, and we still have the next to the lowest water sewer rates in the county. Mm-hmm. Lauren, do we know why CWB increased its wholesale rate? Don't, I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I have to keep up with expenses, I'm sure. Sometimes when global foundry goes down, everybody else goes up. So global foundry's has been pretty steady, go ahead. Okay. Dennis, did you, do you know? Yeah. Dennis, can you give him the microphone? I can say move ahead. George, I'm the CWB commissioner from South Burlington. So we've tried to program the CWB rates out for about the next five to six years at about a 3% average per year, because that's the cost of doing business. Actually global foundry is up slightly in terms of their use. They had dropped for the last two years, but they picked that up. This year we should finish just about on budget, almost exactly, and that's what we programmed with about 3%. With a lot of the, what CWB's tried to do is they retire debt. There are projects coming up that need to be done in terms of tank cleaning or tank repair or whatever else. And so they've tried to keep that balanced so that there's no significant increase in any given year, nor any significant decrease. And it's, we've tried to work through their capital planning so that debt is controlled and that stays at about 3% per year for at least five years. We'd like to see that go out 10 years. Okay, so last week, last week Lauren and I met about both the village water and sewer and sanitation budgets. And while I certainly appreciate that CWC is, CWD is doing that, I believe we should mirror the same. I have been in the water business for about 20 years of my career. And the things that I've learned from many very good finance directors is you need to have an operating reserve, just like you have in the village reserves for the entire village. We do have a lot of water main coursing throughout the village that at any given time could have an incident. You have fire hydrants all throughout the community. I don't know the local pricing, but probably somewhere between $4,000 and $5,000 a piece to replace them if something happens. You have all kinds of different apparatus that you're going to need to adjust to at any given time and you really don't want to do it in an emergency. So I applaud them for doing that. I would say this $50,000 is a great start and needs to continue for several years until you get a healthy balance that can at least be a double digit percentage range of the total of what you'd have. The other thing I would also be concerned with is as everybody in this room knows and maybe the people at home, you have a extremely large customer in global. And we know that they're not going anywhere today, but there's always the future and you're going to want to make sure you have monies in reserve to be able to deal with any variances of water usage up or down that are out of the norm. So it's just something we talked about and looking at scheduling, this one's done already, but as we look out into the future, we want to do a lot more water and sewer forecasting, making sure that we're financially solvent and can weather bumps in the road. And that's also part of, over the years, people ask you, well, why is my water bill so high? I only use 1,000 gallons a month. Well, it's really not necessarily always about how much water you use. It's the availability of water. You turn on your spigot, you get clean, safe water at any time of day or any time of night. And when it goes down the drain, it goes to our world-class treatment facility for which we have all kinds of regulations of that. So it's the availability of it that it costs the same for us to get it to you and take it from you versus 1,000 gallons or 5,000. It's then you're just paying for the commodity. Well, what was it, maybe 10 years ago or eight years ago when we were looking at the water rates? And basically, similar to what you're saying, people that live here at parts nine moved down south to Florida maybe for the winter. And like you're saying, they're not using much water, but then you got the infrastructure that's involved. Also, now with flow restrictions and less water being used, people conserving the water, even though the water's being, you know, less water's being used, the infrastructure, the pipes, everything that you're saying, the galactic was underneath, as we're all over, it's required to your arrival. There was a one main break over here off of Maple Street that was very, very expensive. And along with that, like you're saying, the availability of water, when it comes to a fire, the same water that comes out of that fire, people, it's gonna pay for that. So when there's a fire at your house, that's not on your water bill, that's everybody contributing into that. So that just explains some of that cost. Thank you, Dan. Anyone else? What have we been doing in the past to make arts, to putting money aside? We've been putting money aside, but we've been using it. We've been using it, so that's the best. So now we're gonna start really increasing that transfer into capital so that we have, because the capital committees come in with all kinds of projects that need to be done. Although our system seems to be a lot tighter than it used to be, our water loss is down, so we're making progress in that. Plus it appears that we metered more water to our customers this past year than we had in the year before. And I think that's due to the fact that we switched out all our large meters. Rick and the crew got after that. Which is also a policy that I would recommend that the village look at on a more regular basis. Meters do slow down as they, here's it, meters slow down when they get old. They don't increase. So when residents say, I don't want a new meter, it's going, meters have slowed, they just slow down. That's just a fact. I'm sure they've talked about that. And so when you have a large customer, you need to keep up on that flow. And so I think Lauren had said maybe about once every 10 years, I would look to cut that down by two to five years. And then just start the process. You don't have to do it all in the same year, but you should be putting them out largest to smallest in a rotation. I've been doing this a long time. It's taken us quite some time to do what we're doing now. Yeah, and so when the money, so instead of saving up say $200,000 to go replace, you know, 50 meters all at once, start doing five or 10 meters every year. And therefore in that five or seven year rotation, you'll have gotten to all your large meters and start having monies to replace residential ones and also making sure that they get in the telemetry and all those other new things that we have. And the technology is great nowadays. In fact, they have some stuff where people can go online and see their water usage in real time. And I know that we do a very nice job when people say they have a high water bill with check it out of many things, but and people that go away, they don't realize, you know, yeah, you may not be using it, but if you didn't turn your water all, either all the way off or you have a toilet in your basement that you don't go down there every day, I've had that by the way, you could lose a lot of water very quickly. Okay, any other trustee questions? Good. This is a public hearing. We have another rate. Oh, yep, sorry. I just want to make sure if anyone in the audience is okay, go ahead, Lauren. So we have our large water user rate, which we only have one large water user in the village and that's the Global Foundries. Yeah. And so they pay 13% of our operating budget, not counting water purchased, plus a percentage of our lost water on an average. And then at the end of the year, we kind of true up with them so that they don't pay more than we've lost. One thing that happened this year, they went from telling us that they were going to have 3.5 million gallons a day, down to 3.4 million gallons a day, that has the effect of increasing the rate a little bit. And then of course our budget went up 8%. So with our capital transfer. Do you give them special notice of this potential rate increase? Yes, actually we send them a copy of our budget when we're working on it. And then before our hearing, we give them notice that we're going to have the water hearing and that's why we have two water hearings so that they have enough time to, if they would like to attend and have their say. Okay, great, thank you. Any other questions? Are we good in the audience? Any questions about water in general? Okay, so now we have another hearing. Next meeting. Is it our next meeting? We'll be the next meeting and it'll be water sewer and sanitation. And what we're recommending with them all put together is a total increase of 4.8% because sanitation isn't going up as much as the other two actually waste water soil as well. Great, thank you very much Lauren. Any other questions folks? Okay, then I will move to close the public hearing on water rates. Do I hear a second? Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Great, thanks. So we are now on to item C, which is interview citizens for appointments to boards, committees and commissions. And some of the, I see that some of the folks are here, some are not. I thought what I'd do was just go right through the list and the people who, I think we have one new person who is not being reappointed. Everybody else is up for a kind of a reappointment. So what I thought we would do is that if this is okay with the board, the various folks who are up for reappointment, we can just ask them what's going on, what's happening and so forth. But I think we, as Caitlyn Hayes, and we'll ask, maybe have Caitlyn since she's new enough and we haven't met her before. We'll probably spend a little bit more time with you if that's okay, Caitlyn. Would you like to come on up here and join us so we can find out more about you? And Caitlyn is applying for an opening on the planning commission that was, Joe Weith was- Oh, right. Great. Yeah. So welcome, Caitlyn. Thanks for having me, wow. So- It's not that great. So just tell us a little about yourself and what are you interested in, in particular in the planning commission or just generally in volunteering or? Well, I would say, so I moved to SSI group in Burlington and have traveled around quite a bit and came back to Vermont just about a year and a half ago and worked for the state of Vermont. I worked for the Agency of Agriculture, new water quality work for the Agency of Ag and new policy work for them and bought a little house over in Essex Junction last September and have begun selling in there and have just wanted to be more involved with Essex Junction and the community here and I work, part of my job is I do some land use zoning at 250 type of work. So that's part of my interest in the planning commission is I'll be involved with Act 250 as I undergoes revisions in the next year or so. So I'm interested in that for that reason but really just wanted to be involved and was interested in some of the other positions as well but it seems like this one might be a little bit. So I wanna ask you a question. Do you see any potential conflicts of interest because you do active 250 work? I don't think so. If there were any particular projects that intersected with farming agriculture potentially but as of now with how active 50 is structured agriculture is primarily exempt from active 50 anyway. So I don't foresee that being a problem. Okay, I'll leave it open to other folks. If I can have a quick question as well before we get too far into things. Given your position with the state everything you would say will be out in the open in the past. We have to have some of these in executive session where we whatever you say happens in the executive session stays there. Is that something you wanna try this time for? Do you have any concerns with anything you would say being out in the public and your employer hearing? Everything I say is argued in public for work and so I'm pretty used to that and it's not a problem at all. And what I do in my own accord is my own accord. Evan, did you have a question? Well, first really appreciate you looking to volunteer for your community. So I appreciate that. Maybe give me a little experience. Do you have any experience in reading plans or obviously you'll be looking at development plans, you know, landscaping, site plan. Could you give me any experience in that? I don't have an extensive experience in looking at site plans. A little bit just in general out of interest. I've taken some, I did a degree at Vermont Law School and then did some land use there. So looked at some plans in that capacity but not I would by no means have sat down and spent a lot of time looking at blueprints. Okay. Caitlin, are you aware of the kinds of things that we're doing? A lot of the, I would tell you that the planning commission, the village planning commission, some of its work is outside the village center but I think we're probably it's hardest, it's most complex applications have to do mainly with projects that are going on within the village center zone. And I think I don't feel familiar with what's going on here. I just wanted to get a general sense to you. You think it's good. You know, we're going for residential density. Any thoughts about what's happening around here? I think I'm very supportive of that. Working in agriculture really support the working landscape and preserving that. And so focusing on improving and increasing residential development and density I think is really important something that as a state to avoid urban sprawl and fragmentation that we're going to have to look at in all of our urban areas. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. How do you feel about the planning commission is sometimes there's an audience full of folks who aren't happy with what's being discussed. How do you feel about potential contention with development plans and wishes of the neighbors? In terms of dealing with folks who are displeased or have a closing views and very used to that in my job. So I'm comfortable dealing with that. And I think it's important to always try to get a larger scale picture from a higher level. And folks are involved generally have different views that contribute to the resulting decision. So I'm happy to do the work and to fully understand the situation which I think is important and also happy to deal with the situation if they arise. If you were to waive your magic wand what would you like to see be different here in construction? Oh, gosh, I don't know. I don't know if I've been here quite long enough to be able to see that. I don't know, I think that the farmers market is really great in all of the other developments. I think that, I really don't know what I would change at this point in time. I'm still getting settled, I'm sure. So you say you moved here from Burlington? But you've been in other places. I grew up in Burlington. You grew up in Burlington. Why did you pick at 6th Junction? Well, I think that the, I really enjoy the feeling of the setting here. I really like being in this residential community. It's the neighborhood is excellent. I really enjoy that. It's also convenient for me. I work in Montpellier Sundays and I also have an office in Burlington so I can bite to work in Burlington when I'm there. It's really easy for me to get to the parking lot in Richmond from here. My family's in Burlington still. So it's, you know, I'm outside of Burlington, Winooski area, but still very much in a community setting close to town. Do you have any questions for us? Anything we can tell you? And don't worry if you don't have anything, but just something you really always wanted to ask the people in the 6th Junction guys. Not at this point in time, actually, if you do. Okay. Any other questions? Well, just a statement. Well, thank you for coming in. You know, we just posted this maybe a couple weeks ago. Yeah, I think we'll have some discussion about this. I think we're not, we're going to be making a decision later on, so let's see where we go with that. Yeah, yeah. But if we don't make a decision tonight, we will definitely let you know real soon. Okay, that's fine. Yeah, thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you. So next, the next person we have going down the list is Dave Nistico, and I don't think Dave is with us tonight, but he is planning. He is up for reappointment on the planning commission, but we do have Amber Tebow here, I think. Amber? Amber, do you have any questions for us? I got nothing. How's the planning commission going? Everything's good? It's good, it's good, yeah. It's quiet. I don't remember when our last meeting was other than the joint meeting that we had, so. Yeah. But Robin tells me there's stuff coming, so. Okay, good, good. Keep us busy. And you're ready to go for a few more years? Yes or no. All right. Yeah. Yep. Any questions for Amber? Yeah, go ahead. So you said it was quiet. So is your sense of the planning commission that you'd like to be doing some planning when there aren't applications before you? I believe that's true, yeah. And we've kicked that around amongst ourselves, and it just still hasn't happened yet, so. Do you need any help from us in that, partners? Possibly. We'll get back to you guys. Yeah, I'd like to Andrew's questions, so if you can wave your magic wand, which I know you have one. I do have one, yeah. Yeah, I do. What are some of the things the planning commission could be doing and would like, thinks our community needs, or things we don't need? I don't know. I mean, I think we've done a lot in the last year and plus, I mean, I don't even know how long I've been planning a commission at this point. I've kind of lost all track of time, three years? At least three years. So, I don't know. I mean, I think to Elaine's point, we probably need to get together a little bit more to plan for things as to how we want to see the community. I know we've got some updates, revisions to, I don't even know which one it is, comp plan again. I think we just finished it and it feels like now we have to go back through it. So, that'll be a good time to, we go through every single page of the comp plan and things come up when you're doing that. So, those two, the rewrite, revision, whatever, and planning are gonna hit smack together there. Okay. As the planning commission's rep on the Capitol Committee, I just wanted to say thank you. So, you're doing double duty. So, I appreciate your continued interest in volunteering for the community. So, thank you. Thank you very much, Amber. Thanks. Any other questions for Amber? We good? Thanks. Okay. Tom Weaver is the next one and he, Tom is not here tonight. He's up for reappointment of the zoning award. And next, so next we have Micah Hagen, the Byte Walk Advisory Committee. Welcome. Hey. How are we going? Same offer extends to you. Any questions for us or? I don't know questions for the group. Yeah. How's things going? Pretty well. You know, we've had some good progress. I feel like Pearl Street's come along with striping and that stuff. You know, we're pretty happy with Nest's interest in getting a pair station out there. It's pretty cool. Yeah, we're kind of, we did a rolling meeting a couple of weeks ago and looked at that, you know, went through some of the areas kind of trying to, you know, catch a little thing, science covered by trees, little problem areas, that kind of stuff. You know, so the infrastructure stuff moves along a little slowly, but you know, we've got a couple more passes that have come in since I started three years ago. And it's moving. You'd always like to see it go faster by the end of this. We have grass that haven't come through and things like that. So it's, you know, you can with what you have. Yeah. Yeah. I know it's, I have to say, on the other hand, from our perspective, we think you guys have done really well with grants. I mean, it's, and we appreciate the effort that goes into that. So if there's anything that we can do to support that and help and assist in any way, you know, let us know. If you see something that might be a little bit too much of a push for, you know, time-wise, if you need a little more help or something like that, I, you know, talk to Evan about it. Sure? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I just want to say thank you to the group because, you know, as you, I'm a perpetual look at homes and communities. We deliver, you're like, I'm never going to move, but I pretend I'm going to. Mm-hmm. And, and as extension is, is continually stated as one of the last walkable community pedestrian places to live in Vermont. And it's so important that we maintain that. And what you all do in the Big Walk Committee is a really big piece of that. So thank you for what you're doing. Appreciate that. Just a quick, so you mentioned how infrastructure forks are moving quite slowly. Other than the, I know one of the projects that the Big Walk Committee has expressed interest in is the... Science. Which one? The flashy science. I was thinking more of the bike path that hasn't, or the multi-use path, whatever the right phrase is by the railroad track. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Railroad is a whole other set of challenges that we've thought about, but yeah. And it would be wonderful if we could get them to come on board for that. And, you know, building that path would take some money and my understanding is that, you know, the railroad, we don't have a lot of ability to push them all that hard, not enough to state level. Right. Other than that, what are others? I mean, there's other things I'd love to see, like, you know, you've got, you know, Wilston that has built this, you know, great separate bike path that goes up one of these busiest roads, and it dead ends when it gets a lot further to us. And I would love to see... We would love to too. A productive bike path from there into town. I'd love to see some of the paths that we have kind of creating a circumference around the junction interconnect so that you could navigate the junction that way and kind of falling into locomotions long-term, during what seemed kind of a series of those interconnecting the towns at their level and us biking the town navigable with those protected type of areas. Right. And there's riders like me that are okay hopping with traffic and that stuff, but, you know, that's not going to draw a lot of people out of their cars and into biking that's a risky, you know, somewhat different. I've been hit before. Yeah. It happens. Well, I want to say to those flashy lights, I see we're talking about that later. Thank you for bringing that forward. That's one of my list of things we have to get done, so I appreciate that. Just wish they weren't so expensive, but they are, they are, you know, but they, the comments that we do receive from the public about them and to the motorists out there who say I didn't see it, that's hard to believe. Yeah, and I was just at Maple Street last night and I was waiting at the flashy light, but I did turn it on. I thought, I'm just gonna test it out. So I just stood there. And at least five cars went away, by me without stopping, as soon as I pushed that button, the next car on each side stopped. So, I mean, it really does work. Okay. Other comments, questions? Last up, we have Mary Jo Engle with the Tree Advisory Committee. Hi. Hi. Good to know. How are things going with the Emerald Tree Board? Are we hearing any more about that? Oh yeah, we're gonna start planning for that. We're going to war, we're going to war with that. We have, I think 137 public trees that are ash. Wow. Mostly over in Wilkinson, La Voie area there. So Vermont community, Vermont forest and community, whatever the name of that group is, they have a grant to help communities for planning. So we're gonna be working with that and trying to get together a educational program and we'll probably be presenting something to you folks at some point in time about costs and some kind of approach. Yeah. So, still Tree City. Tree City. And how many recent trees have you, you guys have planted a lot of trees? 25 trees. No, there's a Blinken Street. Yeah. A educational drive central. That's great. Yeah, we have an ADL, we did a Arbor Day planting over there. So yeah, we're really kicking along and it's lovely to go through the neighborhoods and see all the little bags. Yeah. We've been ordering bags for years. Definitely. With the emerald ash borer, obviously there's reasons to remove trees somewhat early if you're gonna replant so that you don't get completely deforested and look barren. But that's on, we can do certain things on public properties. What might be the idea on private property? Well, that's the educational program is to educate folks about the timeline. So of course right now there's a quarantine down in the area where it's been found and it will ultimately probably be here. For instance, I worked for a community in Illinois. We had emerald ash borer and our public works department would evaluate trees as well on private property and we could force people to remove a dead tree or dead or dying tree at their own expense. That's the type, because it's infested and once it gets infested, it can hollow itself out from the inside and become dangerous. So I was just wondering if there's any thoughts on your part in the commissions? Not yet. If not, but. Not yet. Yeah, so we wanna come up with a comprehensive plan of educating folks about that, educating them about that. Two-year cycle, like once an infestation starts, looking for the crown, dying off, just different symptoms and of course we're focused on public trees, but we do have a comprehensive idea of having an education for the public. Just to follow up, sorry, I spoke with Darren Scheibler of the town about this as the plan for that and they have the tree plan as well in the town and trying to mirror how many trees we are replacing from the ones and making sure that when we do replant trees that we are changing varietals. Right, the species. And the species to try to be more resistant to the next wave. So don't go just go plant 37 elms or 37 maples or 37 lindens. We try to be more resistant to the next bog of whatever it is. And you know, interspersing trees, like even if we do plan on taking some trees down, maybe interspersing early on to have the growth of the ones that tree does have to come down, we've already got a new tree that's... So I'm gonna just, I wanna get back to not talking about the whole tree. Yeah, I mean that's just one part of it. It's all about you. So what's going on? So what's going on? Elsa's going on in the tree committee and... You know the tree walk was a big hit and I did just do a walk through Mabel's tree park where we did the tree walk and we didn't lose any trees. Fantastic. So some of them are looking a little like they need some attention, but we didn't lose any. We did lose the plexiglass frame of the map. So we're gonna replace that now that we know that we haven't lost any of the trees. Okay, great. So that's still in place. Obviously Tree City was a big thing. Fantastic. And just planning education. Yep. I think we had a couple of articles in the Essex Reporter. I'd actually like to get one out there on volcano mulching, which is a subject close to my heart because I hate to see that. That's really not protecting your investment in your tree because ultimately that'll kill the tree. Putting the mulch all the way up to them. And not allow, you know, you should see the taper. Little, you should see the taper. Lane, did you have a question? I did. I've been touched on it primarily, but it's more of a question for Evan. Just wondering if the tree committee and Darren could connect. And yeah, his plan, yeah. His plan, his plan. Thinking the same thing of having those resources work closer together and make sure that, you know, we're not working at cross purposes. I have even, I know Derby Maybill's in the audience and the public outreach about tree maintenance and things that I think people are under the wrong perception about how to mulch around their trees. How to maintain the grass and other things around their trees. And just mulch in general of what they should do to help not only their lawn, but their trees specifically. Oh, there's a multitude of issues. The right tree for the right place, you know, proper planting. There's just so many different things. Darren actually attended the Arbidate Conference with us. We all traveled together to Mumpilier. And that was a really good conference. Good. Any other questions? Mary Jo, anything for us? Any questions for us? You're doing a great job. Well, we, right back at you. So we really appreciate you stepping up and being on the committee and really. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah, it sounds like it. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. So I think that ends, I don't think we have anyone else on the interview list at this point, right? And I would like to say, I would like to move on to old business and a discussion of the memorandum for the continuation of the public work services. So I would say everyone who was just interviewed, if you're very welcome to all stick around, but we're probably not gonna be making, we're probably gonna have some dialogue and we may not be making probably some decisions tonight from all of them, but you're welcome to stick around if you want to. Okay? So I think at this point we are now gonna move on to discussion regarding extension of the memorandum of agreement for consolidation of public work services. And Evan's gonna lead us off on that. Well, it is simple and complicated at the same time. The simple part is the agreement that was signed several years ago, expires on July 1, 2018. Dennis Lutz took it upon himself to draft a successor agreement sort of an addendum number one to that agreement looking into the crystal ball of the next several years. And the town did review it. They said they didn't have any issues. We bring it here tonight for a conversation and then the plan was to bring it to the joint board on Thursday. I know that some of you have some comments about the agreement. So I'll open that up and Dennis will come to the microphone. We can answer certain questions and take direction. And also Claudine is so far. Yeah, thank you for coming Claudine. And would it be okay if I lead off, guys? Is that okay? And then maybe, I'll try not to be alone and I'll try to be as succinct as possible. And maybe, and listen to what everyone else said. If I could narrow it down, I would say the concerns I have is with three words. And coincidentally, I'll begin with letter A, accepted, approve, and address. And I just note that last October, the trustees accepted the recommendations but we didn't approve the recommendations. And it's an important nuance because some of the recommendations were very sweeping. For example, one of the recommendations was to consolidate the capital projects for the village and the town. And the funding would be put into one fund and my immediate response, and that's not necessarily a bad idea, but my immediate response is that's something that, there's a village capital fund and there's a town capital fund, village tax payers, town, we have control over the village capital fund. So there's a lot of policy component to that. It's not just something we would wanna hand over and be told, here's what we've done with the capital fund. We would wanna be involved in that. So on the one hand, in my mind, we approved at least in my mind, I accepted the recommendations but I didn't necessarily say, I think each one of these needs to be implicated and I'm okay with just having someone else implement it. So that goes on to the next piece which is the agreement that we're looking at tonight which is that on paragraph two, it says the manager shall be responsible for directing staff to address the select board and trustees approved recommendations. And I don't know what that means. What do we mean by address? Does that mean the manager has authority to implement the recommendations or I'm not sure what address means and maybe Claudine can help with that. What my interpretation of it is it's saying to me is that the manager has sole authority to implement the recommendations. And as I said, some of these recommendations are sweeping and they get into policy areas. So I would wanna, I would be, it's nothing to do with current staff. It's just generally in principle. It seems to us to me as a board would be surrendering some of our authority in our responsibility to say, we're not gonna make policy and we're not gonna be dealing with things like capital projects. We're just gonna allow staff to rearrange the whole thing any way they want to and then inform us of what they've done. I think we, I would wanna be involved with that but if that's what address means, I, to me that I would want that word changed or I would want something else in there that says the manager can make recommendations but before anything, that kind of a scale happens, we need to be consulted and involved in the decision making. I don't know if I'm, so maybe Claudine, could you help with what your interpretation of address what that means right there? So my interpretation of that would be similar to yours. I think that address in this paragraph as I read it would be intended that the municipal manager would be directing staff to implement what was in that report. Right. And as, as approved. I took address. That's the way I read it. Okay, okay, okay. Dennis. Yeah. This isn't the constitution. I know. But if you wanna go back to the constitution, you wanna look at intent. Right. And I think that's what lawyers do all the time. The intent of this, and I think you can work and ship it. That's great. But I think the whole intent of the document was try to come to you with a simple document that didn't get in a whole lot of detail. Try to make it as vanilla as we possibly could. Right. So that we weren't into the weeds. And to give us, give the manager and staff, Ricky and I and whoever else, Ricky, I'll let them involve a plan to figure out where we're going. We've been meeting on the public work side. We've had a couple of years looking at what's going on with public works and how we make things better and all those kind of things. I learned a long time ago in my previous career in the military, you don't get ahead of your bosses. So there's no intent to do that. The intent was to provide both, use the timeframe. I picked five years, could be any number, but the idea would be to give enough time because it's gonna take time to provide the information. There was no intent in terms of the writer of this to say, to try to put the two capital plans together. It's impossible to do without some form of consolidation of boards. But when the time comes and you're talking about the next steps, you're gonna wanna know what's the implications if we were to do that? And so the whole intent of this was to have the manager through staff or outside consultants or whoever wanna do it, make a combination of both in some cases, look at those issues that were in the recommended report and basically provide that information to the boards because both boards are the decision makers. They are the policy makers. The recommended, my do it is all we can do with staff is recommended to add in and all of them can only do it in terms of policies because policy falls in the hands of the officials. So there's no intent to go forward to a point where these things are implemented at any level. We were talking today as a sideline, the public work director role. I don't evaluate Ricky. I'm an advisory role with Ricky. We work together on things. Ricky still works for Evan because he's a village employee, okay? There's no tent to change that over the next five years. That's not the intent. But you're gonna, I think you're gonna wanna know what's the thing, if we were to do this or even if we weren't to do it, what would that consolidated framework look like maybe ultimately and how do we get there and what are the minesfields that you're gonna step on to get there? And what are you gonna have to overcome to get there? Capital planning to me right now, it's important but in a grand scheme of things it's probably the lowest thing on the list because it's the hardest thing to do. Right. If you were to, as two boards, decide you're gonna solidate the capital funds, you'd have to set up a capital committee to decide which projects are gonna be done in each town or you're gonna have residents that say, well, how come they're funding this road in the town and how come they're funding this road in the village? Right, you don't wanna go there, not yet. But what you wanna know is, what are the differences between the two systems? How could they better be put together so that they're better on each end and if you wanted to link them, meaning at some point in time the boards decide to consolidate, you've got the plan in front of you because if you wait to that time frame where you finally get to a point where you say, we would like to really further consolidate, you're gonna have another two years trying to figure out how to put the package together. We would like to get the package together ahead of time and it's basically an information package to say, here's what needs to be done. Right, Dennis, I'm not arguing with that. No, that's the workmanship part to try to, you may wanna try to wordsmanship those words to reflect that so it's not a question of, is it the intent for the manager to start the process? I think the words have to reflect that it's a grind past to get to where we wanna go. Right, so I'm just being, if I could go back just to be very concrete because the agreement says to me, I sign this and I look at every recommendation, there are lots of recommendations in here. I mean, another one, locating consolidated public works, departments management and administration into one location. Maybe that's a great idea, I don't know, but it's, there's lots of recommendations like that and what the agreement is saying to me, if we sign this on Thursday night, that gives administration the authority to go out and do each one of these recommendations, just do them and get them done. I understand what you're saying about planning and coming up with a scheme. A flowchart and a schematic for how we would further consolidate things and then we would all get involved with it, but what the agreement is saying to me is that it's not just about planning, it's about implementing. We're giving, by signing this, we're giving administration authority to immediately begin implementing the recommendations and that's where I'm hung up and I know that that's not your intent, but that's how I'm reading the agreement and I have to look at, none of us may be here five years from now. We can have a complete change of boards and staff so we have to not just look at how we understand it, but the logic of it has to be contained in the agreement that we're signing, that's all I'm saying. One last statement, just because you did mention it, the issue of, for example, facilities, we put in the capital plan this year, monies, to look at capital planning to see if it works. If the village had to build a new facility alone, what would it look like, what would it cost? If the town had to build something alone, what would it look like, what would it cost? If you put them together, what would it look like, what would it cost? Forget about sites, just those three elements. You can't take it any farther with that without some vote on the part, Evan can't go out and say, we're gonna do this. It's gotta come back to the boards for decision, we wanna do A, we wanna do B, we wanna do C, or do we wanna wait to do A, B, or C until we make decision D. But that's the kind of stuff that we need to put together in the context of this. So the work of it is important, so there's no misunderstanding going forward what the intent is. But the intent was not to implement, the intent was to get it ready to implement, let's put it that way. Elaine? So I just wanna bring everyone's attention back to the recommendations of the review committee and to remind everyone that when we, the trustees accepted the recommendations of the committee. The recommendations were, because we're coming up on June 30th and we have to make some kind of decision, the recommendation was that we extend and then we undertake whatever studies necessary to understand the path forward on accomplishing the recommendations. And multiple times within the recommendations, it says that there's no timeline, that there's no insistence that it be done a certain way. And so when I approved, when I was part of the acceptance of it by this board, I understood that we're accepting it in concept and that we are moving forward to research it to figure out how we're going to do it. And then the next step we took was when we hired Evan and told him, please move forward with making a plan to do this. And he presented his work plan to us at a joint meeting two months ago. And both boards accepted the work plan. And I didn't get the sense at the work plan stage that Evan and the staff were going to move forward and implement actually enact changes like policies and procedures, training, classifications, payroll structures. I did not have the sense that Evan was empowered to do all that without commission. Right, agreed. So I don't, I disagree with your interpretation of the extension of the MOU, but I would be more than willing to remove the word implement and be more specific in the phrasing. Well, it's a dress and that's what's hanging me up. And I agree with you, I'm not arguing with in concept. I'm just saying this, if someone who didn't know anything about any of this came in here and read this document tonight, I think that they would say, oh, you just gave staff full authority to go back to these recommendations and just do them immediately. That's all I'm saying. And if we all for some reason or other just disappeared and a whole new group of folks came in and looked at the document we're being asked to sign, they would interpret it as saying, we allow the, we want the manager to take all of these recommendations and just do them. And that's what I'm concerned about. I need that, I understand what you're saying. We wanna study this, we wanna think about it and come up with an overall plan for doing it, but that's not how I'm interpreting this paragraph right here. So would it be accurate to say that we should look through the document and find all those phrases and ask Claudine to rewrite them or to ask Evan to rewrite them? Well, maybe Claudine has some, has a- A magic word? I mean, some magic word, I'm not sure. I don't know if I have a magic word off the cuff, but I think that that could easily be rewritten, but I think it's probably gonna take a little bit more time than just one word, so I think, because I think that that is correct. That is the way that the document does read without kind of having the backstory. I think I would have read it that way too, is that there were these recommendations and the idea was we're moving towards consolidation and we want you to go ahead and take those steps to work towards doing that, whatever that is. So I think that is kind of the way this is structured. I admittedly thought that was the goal and if that's not the goal, I think that's easily changed, but it'll probably take me about 15, 20 minutes to rewrite. I don't have time. Why? It's probably not even necessary to do it. Not that I'm not good on your feet, but. You can take it home and have a couple of days. I think that's easy to do, though. I think that given that understanding, that's just changing a little bit of verbiage. Well, maybe a little bit more dialogue will help improve and even get further clarification. I see Lori's had her hand up for us, one of us. So I have to admit I read it like George did and it really put up a lot of red flags for me and it really caused me to think about what we're doing. And so I actually prepared a statement because I want to say the same thing to the joint meeting and I know I babble, so I want to make sure I say the same thing. So as at least you all here, as trustees know, I've been advocating for board governance conversations for quite some time. For me, the last couple of joint meetings have been very informative and hopeful as we've talked about what should be next and what big conversations we still need to have. I also stand by what I said a few meetings ago which was that I do believe Essex needs to be one community with one new charter with equal representation and equal taxation. I know our residents are really tired of paying for duplicate services, I am too, but I also believe our residents want equal representation. Everything we've consolidated to date has made sense and although it didn't feel like it, it was easy. What is remaining is the really hard stuff because it involves services we as community members experience every day. Our parks, our libraries, our community programs and our streets. I would anticipate we would keep the status quo if we did nothing further. But what is remaining to consolidate is at the heart of each of our communities and may not be easy to disentangle if we needed to. That is why I firmly believe we should pause on further consolidation of any individual departments until we make strides towards solving board governance with equal representation and why I won't be signing the MOU as written because I do feel that that is putting a lot, not that I don't respect what you're doing, in evidence. I appreciate all the work of the committee members who have outlined the recommendations and I still agree that those recommendations should eventually be achieved. But for now I would like us to see us extend the current Public Works MOU if possible, encourage the continued progress of the two departments that they're making while we as our 10 members focus on the top three priorities that we've outlined for our joint meeting packet on Thursday. And for those who don't know, there are enhanced governance framework and structure of the legislative body with equitable representation, benefits of economic and overall sustainability and tax equity and fair taxation. And I really feel really strong about this. That's why I did that. So thank you for the time. No problem, thank you for reading it. Thank you for reading it. Other board members, Dan, Andrew, you had something. The only things that I had were were smithing verbiage for number two that I think would fix it. But if Claudine, you're gonna do this. You're the one with a legal degree. So I'll just defer to you. I'm happy to hear your thoughts. So then with number two, what I would do is I would change the word approved into accept or accepted. I would change address to research steps to implement. And then I would remove at the end of that where it says or implement. So that way of the way I would interpret that is we've accepted it. We've, Evan and staff will research the steps necessary to actually implement the recommendations. But at the end, will not be updated on the actual implementation, but be update that we would then be updated on the study. So the progress being made of the research. Cause again, somewhat of what you said, I will hardly support the work that the committee did, which I was a part of. And thank you for shaping us through that process. It was not an easy one. But again, I think governance is our priority at this point. Yeah, I mean, I just want you to both, everybody understand tennis in particular. This is not a criticism of any work. It's just, I went, it was like we had the recommendations. I said, okay, I envision, we're talking about total consolidation. And I went back and looked at the minutes of that meeting and I asked a question. I said, I'm having a hard time getting my head around how you have a totally consolidated public works department that's responsible for two different legislative bodies. How is that gonna work? And it was like, well, that's not what the plan is. And so in my mind, I said, I accept these recommendations. They're fine, but we also have to, we can't let the tail be wagging the dog. We have to be, and I thought by July of 2018, we're gonna be a lot further along in the governance discussion. Then it turns out we are, it's actually turns out to be much harder than we thought it was. I thought we can get it done in six months, probably gonna take a little longer. So I just think that we wanna keep both, keep pace with both these discussions because what we don't wanna do is have a fully, I don't know what a fully consolidated public works department is when you still have two independent legislative bodies that have independent authority. And that's, and I think you see the difficulty. It would be very, very difficult. I don't know how you would do it. No, I don't know how you'd do it either. I think that the only thing that I guess with the dysregulatory answer is the issues that I think the boards have to work on are exactly the ones that you're working on. But I also think that the background work has to go on behind that so that when the time comes for questions, either pro or con, both boards have answers that you provide the citizens. Our decision to not merge was because of these studies, this information, or a decision to merge was because of these studies. If you solve those three things and say, now implement, I'll be honest with you, from the work we've done so far, we're gonna go crazy. We need to have that plan kind of identified and the problems identified so that if you reach that point, you have the answers that you want. So I think there's two things going on. There still needs to be background work going on while you guys are tapping the tougher issues. And I don't have a problem if you guys said, okay, one of the recommendations, I don't know what, I won't even try to pick one out. Just say you pick one out. And you said, look, we'd like to actually try to see if we can go forward with this right now. And here's how we're gonna do it. And here's what's gonna happen. And here's the impacts. Here's the implications of it. Here's what we'd have to do. Is that, what do you think? And we're gonna take a look at how it works. I don't have a problem with that. Then we'd say, fine, it's just, I'm having a problem just signing a blank check and saying, go do it. No make sure. Yeah. Yep. I appreciate all the words. And I think some of this is words on paper and style and expectations. I did not take this because it's not in my nature to say, okay, it says I can go do it. There may be hundreds of thousands of dollars of consequences and legal issues, but I get to go do it because I'm the manager. That's not how I operate. But I also didn't read it exactly that way. Consolidating any department has costs and opportunities and other things. And when you take public works, for example, it's union contracts, it's property, it's equipment, it's capital, et cetera. And for Claudine who's gonna do some wordsmithing, I would suggest that most of this be a recommendation to the boards for any plan or implementation approvals. That's their realm, not mine. Once they approve any said plan, it is the manager's role and responsibility to affect that plan and put it into place. And keep you updated. Should there be any conflicts and other things that need policy direction. So that's just something I think I agree. And Laurie, you and I full disclosure spoke earlier today. I think you are correct. Governance does need to keep rolling. And if you guys cannot agree on a governance structure, a lot of this is just not really gonna, we could still do alignment. We could still find places to work together, both town and village, both departments. There's like actually three departments within public works and find ways to work together for the betterment of both communities. And I've told you even before, you may get incredibly close and not merge, but you'll still be better off for it. Agreed. Yeah. Okay, I agree with a lot of what Laurie's saying. And I don't look at this, Evan, as a power grab by you, by any chance. So that's not the issue here. What the issue is, is perception becomes reality for people. And it's not so much with the reality of us here, Denny, any of you. It's perception of the people outside here, in the town outside the village, in the town within the village. So their perception, those are the people who are gonna have to approve what we're doing. We say we're at the top, no, they're at the top. The decisions and charter changes and everything are gonna come from the people. So if they have the perception that this is being driven, then that's the perception. That's the problem with this document, the way it exists right now. And that's what I have a problem with. It's not so much, we can understand it, but if they don't understand it, then I agree with Laurie. I think it's gotta be changed. I think that's not it. Other questions? Claudine, do you wanna ask us anything for two to help you along the way? Do you wanna? I guess what would be helpful for me, I think I would go back and change some of the whereas clauses, because then that I think might better align with what the intent is, but for me what would be a good background is to understand in that committee report, were there specific recommendations that you wanted to focus on as opposed to others or, because it's kind of a blanket reference to the recommendations that were contained in the report. And so if there are some that are elevated above others, I think it would be important to sort of set those out in the agreement. Or if they're the general recommendations, are we just looking at coming back and advising them the general recommendations, or is it some but not others? I don't think, it's not like there are a couple that are particularly difficult. It's not that. It's that in my mind the recommendations are all kind of, they're good recommendations and they're generally acceptable, but they have a lot of implications. They could mean a lot of different things. They could be interpreted a lot of different ways. And so, and they bleed into policy areas I could think of. So it's not a specific thing, it's just I wanted to make sure that before any of the recommendations go forward, we, the elected bodies are involved and are consulted with and involved in the process. And not, we don't just back off and sort of not have any input into the process. Does that help? Does that make sense? Okay, Elaine, did you have something else you wanted to add? I was gonna say, I don't think that the, it should have specifics to particular recommendations because we need to explore all of that. Yeah, yeah. I don't have a problem with the recommendations, the report, it's just, it's just, the report doesn't say, the report just says, here are the recommendations. It doesn't say, how are you gonna implement these? There's no timeline. It just says, here's what we think you should do and that's great. And then all of a sudden we have a document that says, here's how we're gonna do all these recommendations. And it was an actionable thing, taking a conceptual thing and saying, here's what we're gonna do. And we hadn't quite agreed to that. No, it's fine. Makes sense? Anyone else? Well, just so the select board has already signed off on this. So not signed off, but approved the amendment. So I guess what we need to do is communicate to the select board that we're going back to the drawing board with some recommended changes and then ask for their approval. So can we do that by June 30th? We have a joint meeting on Thursday. I'm not sure that the necessity of having a agreement in place when the two parties are not in disagreement of some form of continuation or in this case, an absolute disillusion of the original agreement. I'll leave that to attorney speak, but I think if it's forthcoming with new words and some stuff with some communication, it probably can wait a couple of weeks. Yeah, I don't think, does anyone have any? But that's one of the reasons why we've asked Claudine to actually be here so that she would hear the conversation and be able to work on that. Does anyone, Dennis? Yeah, I was at the meeting with Evan then and so was Rick. I got the sense that they were in favor of the direction it was moving. I don't think they had the same concerns, but I think that if they heard the concerns that you've raised, they may have the same issue about implementation as a word, for example. And again, I'm not trying to put your attorney on notice, but I think if you've got a joint meeting Thursday and you can agree in concept to where you're going, that might be helpful without dragging it on until a long meeting or if it's simple or if it's a wordmanship change that could be done, take out a few words, as you suggested, to make it available. I think my reaction would be the select board would feel comfortable with that. I don't think they'd be uncomfortable. If they didn't take a vote to say we're gonna approve it, I think what they said is fine. I mean, the intent of this was to have this kind of dialogue at both separate meetings so when you got together there was a common understanding and you might be able to reach a common understanding of the document. So it just wouldn't drag out. I don't think that, I don't get a sense that the trustees want to dissolve the initial agreement. What's basically the status quo cooperation that's happening now. We're not looking to disarrange that, that's fine. And the original document, we're looking to continue that. And all the other aspects of it that are in place, I think it's, again, it's just with the implementation of the recommendations that are in this new piece. That's really where, I'm hung, and we're kind of hung up on here. And I would imagine that that's, this is exactly the kind of dialogue that we're supposed to have about these documents. Sure. So I'm happy to do this and talk to Evan, get Evan a redraft tomorrow afternoon, that if that's helpful that you can all then be able to review tomorrow night or Thursday morning and then take him to the meeting. And I'm happy to also email it to Bill Ellis and communicate that concern with him so you have something on Thursday. Why don't you do that? And I would say, I would also add that there's no, there's no, as I've said to Evan before, the aggrieved parties here are us in the select board. And so if we don't, if ultimately there's some, still some little piece that doesn't get resolved and we don't sign it until July, I don't think anything comes apart. So worse comes to worse. And we don't reach some agreement on Thursday. I can't see it happening, but maybe if that does happen, it's still not the end of the world. We'd still have another couple of weeks. I don't, I think we could get it done in July as well. I'm not trying to delay things, but I don't think it's a crisis that we have to get this done on Thursday. Both boards will be here Thursday. They can agree verbally to an extension. They can agree to an extension. Yeah. Continuing resolution of the existing until such time as the final, you can do it 100 different ways. Right. Exactly. My suspicion is this is not that hard to fix. And I think within a half an hour we can put something together that hopefully will accomplish everybody's intentions. Great. So, and I think Bill will be easy to work with to get this done. Okay. I think we could probably have something to do on Thursday that hopefully fingers crossed. That's okay. That's okay. It's the intent of both boards. Okay. All right. Good. Everyone good with this? Anything else for anything further? Elsa? There was one other thing in here that I know I think you had raised in an email, George, which was a potential termination and exit strategy. So if there was an option for termination of the agreement, and that may, that's something that if I'm gonna be redrafting it would be good for me to know too. It just, it's, I'm not really hung up on that, but I wanted to throw that out there. It's just in terms of if for some reason or other we both board sign this agreement and then three years from now, I can't imagine what, but something happens and one board of the other says, oh, we won out of this. Is that something we'd wanna put in there? Or does this, or, you know, we can't get out of this agreement for five years. I again, I throw that out to the rest of the trustees how anyone feels about that. I don't, I'm not really hung up on that in particular, about having an opt out clause, but I just raised it as a possibility. You brought it up earlier, you said something about, well, who knows in five years we'll be on this board to the table. So maybe having that clause in there, I don't know. I don't have an idea. Andrew Palain. It would be nice to see what the clause would say so we can have a discussion about it. So we can strike it or not. Do you wanna hear it? Yeah, sure. RG fast. Well, I just, I wrote something up just with the idea that maybe something like this would work. I watched, so, Laurie, one of your other comments was did you, would rather see a one year agreement? Is that so? I would rather see a one year extension. Entire extension. As is, but depending on what the language is, you know, I'm not, I'm gonna be open to it. My, my big issue is no further consolidation departments until we figure out the board. If it means we're gonna be behind the scenes and that's not too much for the staff to do, great. And maybe, Claudine, it's something, we had written this for a five year, but maybe some language for affirmation at a certain time of the year that this is still the direction that the boards wanna go. So I think if you could do that, you could do a two year agreement or in terms of a termination, you could make it a longer agreement and then put, for example, either parties shall have the right to terminate this agreement and this amendment won within 90 days, with 90 days notice to the other parties to the other parties to terminate this agreement, parties shall cooperate in separating any public's work department services or functions. Yeah, I mean, I think if you had that something like that in there, it would address Laurie's concern. So you wouldn't probably have to do, put some kind of a time limit in there. If you just kept it at five years, but you had a potential termination at one board or another's decided something was not quite right, then they could terminate it. Right, so you have either a shorter term that then you don't feel locked in or you can have the longer term with the opt-out agreement as well. Yeah, Link. So I think having a clause like that's a good idea, but my concern would be that the implication from that clause is that if either party wants to pull out they give 90 days notice and then they get to terminate it. We had to have a vote and we would have to alert town and village residents that the budget is changing and we would have to move that money back into the village budget. I mean, that's a significant undertaking. So I don't know if that language covers that or it needs to be that vague so that it's just there and but keeping in mind that it's a massive undertaking to undo what we've already done. I know, okay. And maybe I can address that if you don't mind. Yeah. There was also the comment of status quo and not going back. So if the invocation of that clause is such we're not looking to move forward, we're also not looking to take back anything that's occurred. So at the date of that 90 day clause, everything that is current today or that day stays until such time as you agree. Yeah, that's an option. To unbundle it. That's good. Yep. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm. Madam attorney? Yes. See, I did listen to you. You did. Even with the notes? Crying children in the background. Not your crying children. So I think that the message is the activities that have been occurring over the last couple of years under Denny and Pat, Lauren, and others, it's good work. It's a beginning, really. It is scratching the surface. And it makes sense. It makes perfect sense. Yes. And we've seen some of those benefits already in the work that's being done. Rick is still in the room. And there's more to come. It is rare for municipalities to merge. You guys have heard that before. There's lots of reasons why. It might be a whole lot easier if you guys were a couple of 500 or 1,000 person villages, but you're not. You're together the second largest community in Vermont that co-existed in and amongst each other for over 200 years. And I'm on 125 as organized government. And you've just, you've been at this a little while, and it's going to take a little while longer to get the governance piece and the other pieces more in line. And that's why staff thought the idea of alignment was more important early on to be ready for the questions of merger. I think your citizens, and Dan, to your point, I think your citizens are going to want to know, what does it really mean? And while most of them don't even know where the public works yard is. They know they're important to them. They know it's important to it. They would rather know, are we getting to keep our fire stations and our fire departments and what happens? What happens to Lincoln Hall versus 81 Main? Those things are going to take a lot of time from the boards, not from the manager. The manager can't edict that at all. I'm in charge of operating the budget, not creating the policies within the budget. So that's your area. Good. But I do appreciate the thought that we had Claudine here and her availability, and that she would hear it from you. And it's nice that, I think I see Irene behind Mike. So that, and this will be on channel 17, this is not what people might think it is. It's just making sure good agreements make for good neighbors. OK, so let's wrap this up. So everyone good? Claudine, so you're good for us. Any more questions for us that we can clear up for you? No, I think I have adequate direction. If I have any other questions, I can probably give everyone tomorrow, and then I can try to get you guys something ready for the day. Thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate it. Absolutely, thanks. Dennis, thank you so much. Thanks, guys. Rick, you can stay if you want to. I'm going to see you late tonight. OK. Thank you, folks. OK, so we will go on to the next item. Reappointments and appointments to boards, committees, and commissions. And we have Evan for this one. And Tom. Tom, do you want to, we inter, we, how are things? We had lengthy half hour interviews with everybody. So you want to, because we're, I'm just kidding. You just run up and you just tell us what's happening on the zoning board and ask us questions and give us your thoughts. We haven't met in so long, I have to reintroduce myself. Well, for everybody's edification, this is Tom Weaver. And Tom, why don't you give everyone else a little bit of your history with the village. Tell us all the things that you've done. OK, I, in 75, I was a trustee. I was a trustee until 78. And I've been on the zoning board, I think, since 84. I'm not a back and forth. And I've been chairman, I don't know, 10 years from. And I've been in real estate development in the village, partnering in the Riverside Village and other things. Educated my kids here, with tears since 68. My daughters both live in the town of Village. And what else you want to know? Good enough. So anything going on with the zoning board that we need to know, everything good? No. I mean, the village is in kind of a position where there are a lot of things for us to decide. I mean, the zoning board's function is to interpret the evidence and basically be a late court to decide whether somebody has a violation or what have you. I have to say that except for a few times, like a few of them wanted to put a crematorium in on Pleasant Street, we almost had to move me into the firehouse or so many people here. And we have a few meetings like that, maybe one in 10 years. The rest of them is only us. And somebody comes in, usually it's their garage is too close to the sideline, and can they do that, that kind of thing. There just isn't a lot going on. However, the board is experienced, and it's ready. It should lead you. Well, staff tries to keep them from needing your services. You know, I have to thank you for saying that, and they should. I mean, I said that a long time ago. You pay somebody $60,000, $70,000 or whatever you pay a year to have a planner, and then don't let that person decide things that are mundane. They used to come to us for every kind of conditional use and all that stuff. And it really didn't need to happen. And it wasted a lot of people's time to cost money. And folks get nervous and have to do things that way. So pretty much the board functions, I think, the way it should. Way back after I got off the board of trustees, I went to a village meeting, and I said, the trustees put in a lot of time, and they weren't paid. We need to get paid a lot more, I think. So I made a motion at that meeting that you guys get paid. And I don't remember whether I said it was $300 a year, or the board said it was $300 a year. And I'm getting $300 a year, and I'm making $300 a meeting the way things are going. And I continually tell people, oh, well, I would accept $100. Yeah, well, we make the big bucks. Well, you're making $300, too. We'll make $500. I have to admit, yeah, we're way, way over there, right above you. So you guys can keep my money if you want. We'll put that in the minutes. It'll be on TV. Well, so basically, things are, I mean, I just want to keep you, and thanks for coming. But generally, development that you see, you sort of the fruits of your labor with laying out all this stuff, everything working, what you think, everything's going pretty well in terms of the development and the pace of it. Yeah, I think, you know, and basically, you know, the village is pretty much developed. I mean, there are infields and stuff like that. So it's not, I mean, about 20 years ago, there was all kinds of things happening around here. It was a bigger need for that. I mean, and I keep here that we may be going to design review. What do you think of that? I don't really care. I mean, you know, a board's a board. The only thing I want to tell you is, if my board becomes designed to do, I'm done. I don't mind going on a meeting once a month, but design review would be reviewing all the projects that happen in town, and that's a lot more intense. And, you know, I'll be 74 in the summer, so, you know, I don't think I want to start, you know, whatever. I'm just getting your feet wet. True, Carl, true. So anyway, you know, I mean, you know, as long as things, and I asked Robert before I said I would stay on what he thought, and he said it was probably a year or two away, I don't know. You guys are in the same, I don't know. Because nobody really knows, you know what I'm saying. So for the time being, you know, I'm happy to serve. It's kind of interesting, John, what you do get something a little bit. Okay. Any other questions for Tony? Very good. That's good to see you all. It's good to see you, too. Every three years. Two, two, two, three. I think it's great. All right. Thank you very much, John. Great, thanks, John. I'm coming in. Okay, so we, with that, Evan, do you want to lead us through this, or I can lead us through this? Let me see, let me just review. We had Caitlyn, and who we saw, Amber, Tom, and we saw Micah and Mary Jo. So the only one we didn't actually see was Dave Mystic, I don't know. So what is the board's pleasure? Do we want to go through them one by one? You want to do them all together? If I could just do one thing. So you have several reappointments, almost, if not all of them are reappointments, except for the young lady, Caitlyn Hayes, who came for the plant commission. Right. The one question I guess I would have for the village board is, we've received one application so far, it has not been posted very long. Do you want to hold it open, say for another two to four weeks, see if anything else comes in, interview any of those candidates, and then make a decision versus just accepting the first application that comes in. She does seem qualified, she does seem interested, but again, not listed way too long. That was the question I was going to say. Do you want to, how do you want to approach it? Didn't we just do that on the select board? We opted to leave a position open for a month to get as many applications as possible before closing it. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't want the practice to be first in the door gets to the position. We want the best qualified and for the right reasons. Will you get that if you hold it open for the next month? We may get no other applicants, but at least you've given people time to put their thoughts together. So they don't get a quorum every time, so. How long has it been out there? Yeah, I think it's, I'm not clear. Patty, it's on the end of May. Less than a month. Yeah, it has, I don't think it's been a full month. I think we just received, I think we just see the gentleman's notice maybe two, three weeks ago. Yeah, I think the thing is, I think what she normally does this, is that Patty just puts them, posts the opening on the Village website as they come up. I don't, and I don't know where else she posts. Darby, do you know, maybe you could help us with this. Do you know how long, when we have openings for boards, we post them on the Village website, and what else do we do? We put them on Front Porch Forum. Yes, I'm not sure if this was done in this particular case, if it was put on Front Porch Forum or not. Okay. I didn't, but it's entirely possible that Patty could have. And I believe she sends them to the Essex Reporter as well. Okay, but why don't I suggest, what I make a recommendation here, would everyone be comfortable in doing, making all the other reappointments, but we can table the appointment for the new Planning Commission opening, the opening for the new Planning Commission. Is that what we're meeting? And we'll just say that for another one. So our next regular meeting? Do it, do it at our next regular meeting. So our next regular meeting? A month basically, so. Yeah, is that good? Yeah. Yeah. I think Bob would have it, yeah, okay. We can make that decision. We could have it a month or we could just have it at our next meeting in the end of June. Right, no, you can't. Cut it. And just, Amber Tipo is my attorney for my closing on my house, just so everybody knows that. Okay. Does she do it a good job? I refuse to answer that on the grounds that there's a camera. So maybe, but you don't get to vote anyway. I don't get to vote anyway, but I just want to let everybody know that. I'm on motion. Yeah, go ahead, make a motion. I move that the trustees make the following appointments. Tom Weaver, Zoning Board of Adjustment through 630-21. Amber Tipo, Planning Commission through 630-21. Dave Nateska, go. Planning Commission through 630-21. Micah Hagan, Bike Walk Advisory Committee through 630-21. Mary Jo Nagel, Tree Advisory Committee through 630-21. Lauren Spinner, Tree Advisory Committee through 630-21. Andrew Brown, Capital Program Review Committee through 831-21. Robin Pierce, CCRPC, PAC, or Pete Pasey, Representative through 630-20. John Alden, CCRPC, PAC, Alternate through 630-20. Wait here a second. Second. No further discussion, and I will say that we will hold off the approval for the open position for, we will table that, but all the other, that's on the table. Yeah, the table, the table is set for table news or something. Right, just want to make that clear for the minutes, so it doesn't have to be concluded in your motion. So that's what we're doing, okay? So no further comments, so all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Great, thank you. No abstention. And one abstention, and Andrew Brown abstained because he is one of the appointees. Thanks, Robin. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So we are now on to discussion regarding formation of a Housing Needs Committee, and Mora is with us. Do you want to join us up here, Mora? You have to do it. Mora Collins, thank you, and welcome. Thanks for coming. Yeah. Let me, you know what, I'll hand it, maybe hand off the discussion to you a little bit, Mora, we had, this started when a couple of weeks ago we had the Planning Commission come in, I mean, and we talked about housing, and we reviewed housing, and we've been talking about affordable housing and housing needs and so forth. And I think from that discussion, we decided it might be really interesting, it might be invaluable and useful to create a Housing Needs Committee to look at various things. And I think the focus would primarily be on affordable housing, but I don't want to say that's necessarily true. And the other question was, do we want to include the town? And so this will be a Village Town Collaborative Committee to look at affordable housing, other kinds of housing, housing that's available, how are we aligning with the RPC's, you know, Housing Needs Assessment for Chittenden County, on what role did the village in the town, where are we, where do we fit? You know, are we ahead of the curve, behind the curve? How do we, what sorts of specific recommendations could we make for like Planning Commission and for staff to adjust and so forth? So I think that was just sort of a global thing, but we wanted to create a committee that would come up with some fairly specific recommendations. Is that, Elaine, is that what you? That's pretty much what I recall. And so I don't think we had it in particular, I think we, I guess one of the questions we had was do we want to do it with the town and the village or we just want to stay focused on the village, is that what probably one thing? And then what kind of a committee are we talking about? Board, staff, citizens, so I'll sort of leave it there. I would just say I think we were in general agreement that it should be a town and village committee. Yeah, okay. That it's not a question that we agreed that that should be something. Okay. But that if they don't want to, well obviously, right. Right. I would also be curious to hear from Laura, if you don't mind me, go to the spot with your experience, what do other communities and other towns do in terms of how they structure their committees, what they're charged. Yeah. So I've met you all before, because a year ago I was here asking you to create a housing commission. Probably a little while, yeah. So Evan, we've exchanged emails, but I'm Maura, I'm not only a village resident, but I'm the deputy director at the Vermont Housing Finance Agency. And you're asking timely, good questions. The one thing, you are all a lot of wonderful things, but the one thing you are is doing something unusual. So I just want to say that you would be following in the footsteps of many communities, especially in Chittenden County, which is our largest growing county, to look at this issue and form a commission as a result of it. And so Burlington, Winooski, South Burlington, the ones that come to mind, but there have been other ones, Williston. And they've all taken a slightly different spin on it. Some really honed in on affordable housing. Some leave it broad, but honestly being in Chittenden County, affordable housing then kind of takes over anyway. Williston took an interesting approach and they, knowing the retail strength that they had, they really wanted to look just at having, creating a housing trust fund. And so they knew the policy lever they wanted to pull and they did a deep dive into that and what would it take to create one different models, different funding streams and then moved forward in that direction. South Burlington did, I think is a little more than what I've heard you all do or talking about, which is let's study the needs, let's figure out where the biggest pressure points are for them, there was a lot of student housing demands and really changing demographics and then looked at what their housing policies could do in response to that. They were all on the table and they ended up implementing a handful of them and they continued to have a commission that looks at that. To the question of Village in Town and Elaine, you said, you know, it pretty much is decided. That was my recommendation when I first came, I approached both the select board and the trustees and the similar timeframe asking to create a joint commission, mainly because I am a fan of regionalism in general when it comes to housing, all housing is local, but there are real, when you're talking about development and patterns, you gotta really be mindful and so definitely always keeping within the Chittin County Regional Planning Commission's plan and their housing needs assessment and staying in alignment with those goals, but also in partnership with both the planning commissions for the town and the junction. You don't want a housing commission saying, we need to move forward in this direction and have the planning commissions with other agendas over here, which I don't think would happen, but you really need to maintain alignment and so the only thing I, you know, most communities will create a charter and the charter would be accepted by, you know, approval, probably drafted by staff, but then approved by you all to put some limits to it and George, you mentioned something that sounded a little bit like governance in terms of how do the planning commissions work with this and staff and everything like that and I wouldn't want to recreate the work of the Thoughtful Growth and Action Committee that I served on several years ago with many others, I'm thinking, Tom and I read in other people in the room, that there were recommendations, just as a reminder of that, but knowing the discussion you all just had about really focusing on board governance, I'm not trying to say that you lead with that change, I'm just saying that any, I would recommend that any charge that you put forward should really have the big vision of all those things so that we're not stepping on toes right off the bat with this, but the goal would be theoretically to assess the needs in the broader Essex community for housing, where are those pinch points and then the hardest part is and then what policy levers do you wanna pull in response and not all, let me put it this way, I get a lot of people emailing me a lot of great ideas that they read about in Des Moines or Utah or wherever it happens and they're wonderful and a lot of times we're doing them in Vermont but they're not always appropriate for that community's needs. They get hung up on one thing and it sounds great and it is a win-win but that's like a dying, shrinking community and not a vibrant growing one. So you have to really not just look at your needs but look at where you're going and what your demographics are gonna be in the future and respond appropriately in a way that your community will accept which is going to be the hardest part of this. Yes, yes, agreed, agreed. So we definitely, what, if you look at the different models around Chittenden County in terms of just actual structure of the committee, what in your opinion works best? It's usually a lot of citizen participation. There's staff support for it. It's usually separate from the planning commission, separate from any kind of governing board like this because it's a special project and so the planning commission has, and that's why these housing commissions are created is because planning commission's too busy to also take on another big assessment and recommendations and so size-wise, South Burlington started with a big, I mean I double-checked but it was 15 people. It was not all South Burlington residents. There were other housing professionals invited in, developers who may not live within South Burlington but that did a lot of business, South Burlington for example. There were probably 15 plus people with other visitors like me showing up and brought in to speak and present and focus on things and that lived for less than a year and then they came out with a set of recommendations. The city council approved some of those and then a much smaller ongoing commission remains of five-ish people that are being recorded and it's all gonna be wrong but it's much smaller and they continue to look at the impact of those policy changes and see how they're working and honestly they did a little inclusionary zoning in the new city center in South Burlington and from what I understand they're now looking to grow that so that the ongoing commission that would live on into the future after the needs assessment was done, after the first set of recommendations were made then monitors it and suggests tweaks here and there. Evan. Thank you for your emails. I think one of the things I'm not against this idea I'm concerned with the time of it. You were here a year ago, I've been here three months. We have our joint governance. We have lots going on. I'm very concerned with taking on a whole new animal on a large scale. What I would more like is some time to sit down with Mora and others and staff and kind of kick this around and come back to the boards with more of a terrible term holistic idea and a plan. The other thing is you'd have to also think about do you want this committee commission to do its work, make its recommendation and then disband or do you want it to live on like a South Burlington and how's that going to work and a little bit further back I appreciate the comments that people come up with great ideas or thoughts it is. The first one is what is even the definition of affordable and is that the right term anymore or is it more like work for us? Is it workforce housing? The people who work in and around our community and taking what our rates are locally and trying to figure that out because if you're trying to put in some other type of housing, putting in six or eight units in a town of 20,000 doesn't even move the needle one way or the other. So you want to have a discussion of what you're trying to achieve as well. Yeah, go ahead. I'm not be curious about the scope. Like you said, should it be an affordable housing committee or should it be a housing committee? And in the past we've talked often about rental registries. I've advocated for accessory housing increases. And what are the, you know, should we go for the new downtown tax incentive for housing improvement? Like what are all the options available to us and are those things appropriate for that committee to investigate? Yeah, and those are the policy levers I'm talking about. And so first you have to know where your pinch points are with your needs. And so I would start with a more simplistic charge of really getting your arms around what the housing needs are in the community and getting to Evan's point of, you know, where are the income levels that are most in need and where's the growth gonna happen and things like that. Sometimes we do get a little hung up on the terminology of things, you know, when we're talking about different income strata, you know, people talk about affordable housing. I know what they mean, but I'll say, you know, I wouldn't qualify for many of the government programs that my agency hands out, but affordable housing is more important to me than just, you know, we just, I need affordable housing just like all of us do. And the fact that 76% of the people who live in the government subsidized housing that VHFA supports, 76% of them are working means that is workforce housing. So we can't really differentiate affordable housing from workforce housing and stuff like that. But we do need to have that conversation about do we need more housing for people at $60,000 who are looking and wanting to own a home and live in Essex or are we looking for people who are earning $30,000 or less, who may be renting a home and where do we need what and where is Chittenden County growing and going and then where does Essex, this gets to, where does Essex fit into that bigger regional perspective? So I could make recommendations as someone who works in the affordable housing industry of what I think you should do. To me, those would feel very solitary and that would be more as take on where to go. And so the question of what should you do next? Most often what I see, I guess my recommendation would be if I had to pick one thing would be study the housing needs and when that's done then you can have the next conversation about whose best set to figure out the policy tools that you want to respond to those needs and whether that be staff or a housing commission that may live on or something like that. Then I guess that would be a good first step if you were only willing to go so far at this point knowing all the other things that you have on the table. And I'm familiar that the town of Essex has just gotten the regional planning commission to review their housing policies and look at where maybe some of the barriers are and that's gonna be the results of that will be discussed in I think two weeks with the planning commission. And so that'll be really, I'll be curious to follow that and see how that dovetails. Maybe the junction wants to do something similar. I don't know what Regina found. But will it be inclusive of the village? Will it? You know, that's a great question. Yeah. When this comment came up, Dana Hanley said, you know, we're working on this so we may wanna have a discussion. If I had to guess, I'd say no. I would say no as well because Dana keeps talking about it and Dana's just the town. Is this, is that, is that, I just want to, this is a side question, I don't want to get to you quickly, but is this in conjunction with the Essex Town Center? Is this what they're looking at? Are they trying to do a housing assessment for where they're? It's not mutually exclusive but it does have a component of what's going on there. Sure. Yeah, but that wouldn't have a village focus. No. Okay. Because you all have totally different, as you know. Yeah. My needs went, and so I believe it's just the town with it building. Lori. To Evan, to your point, I know, I know there's a lot going on with the staff and I completely appreciate that. But in my viewpoint, understanding the statewide problem we're having and the fact that we have companies who are hiring people and then when they come to look for a house, they go back to the company and say, I can't do it and they leave. This should be a priority on top of probably 10 other things you might have on your list. I mean, I think we have to prioritize this and get it kicked off. Well, okay. And to that end, have there been communities that haven't gone the citizen engagement route, which I understand I want to kick myself for saying, and have instead just gone the professional route and commissioned a study to save on time? Oh, absolutely. So the third hat I wear besides living here and working somewhere else is, I teach at UVM housing policy class and so the city, Winooski, I taught a bunch of graduate students how to do a housing needs assessment by doing one for Winooski. And there was the citizen involvement in that was limited to when we surveyed citizens to ask, what do you think of the housing needs and the four quadrants of Winooski and then the downtown? But besides that, that was the city manager and the mayor having a conversation with me and the three of us came up with a scope of work. Well, I came up with a scope of work show to them and they went with it and 10 grad students and I wrote a housing needs assessment presented to the city council and then from there, they create a housing commission within a year to then look at those recommendations and start enacting them. So that absolutely can happen. Here's the trick that is embarrassing for me to say, which is UVM hired me to teach a class and I had 10 grad students at my disposal and so that was the funding for such an effort. That's 11 people working on this effort. VHFA has been hired with money from municipalities to do this many times over. The CCRPC hired us to write the Eco's housing needs assessment for the less regional plan and we've done that for other regional commissions and communities. At this point, I am a resident who's engaged in serving my community. I cannot alone write a housing needs assessment in my spare time right now. I'm not set up to teach the class either and so that's the, trust me, I have a lot of communities who keep asking like that. So I'm stuck with you because essentially what I'm telling you is, yes we can do this and if you had a robust enough committee, I would be happy to lead a group of 10 through how to do this and I don't wanna say I'd lead it like cause that's really presumptuous of me but I would, with the experience I could sort of lay out here's how it could work and with enough volunteers you can make it work but unless you budgeted $30,000 for VHFA, it's, I can't do it otherwise. When you're talking about doing something like, what are you talking about time frame roughly? I mean, obviously, I did a semester, so. I mean, but you're talking about a semester. Four months. When Husky's a small, we're a small as well, but I mean. When is this complex? Yeah, but I mean, in area, you're not talking Burlington or South Burlington or Williston and so it's confined to a smaller area so you can, you know, get a better grasp on it We'll keep in mind Dan, if we're talking about doing the village. Well, we're in the town, right, exactly. Well, that's something I think we need to address maybe at our joint meeting with the town. But I think it's an issue we can make a decision on for us, but if we're gonna do it on a scale of the town-wide, that's something that we really need to have input by both of us. Just timing, it was a semester so that's about four months but we were meeting weekly about it and I don't know if a volunteer group of individuals, if you could find 10 who cared about this issue, would wanna meet weekly about something for four months? I mean, they were getting three credits, yeah. Well, you know, I mean, I just get just an idea to go to Evan's point about staff and lots of things on the plate but also Lori's point about trying to move this ahead. How about, first step would be, we have not approached the select board yet formally although we are apparently approaching the select board formally now since you're here. One of the conveniences of having a select board but we haven't made, there's not a commitment on the select board's part, they would discuss this and so maybe a possibility would be to have one or two select men, one or two trustees, Maura and Evan meet casually, throw some ideas around about how you might wanna proceed and then Evan can get a certain comfort level and the rest of you can about how you wanna go about doing this. Is that a possibility? Is that a good way to approach this? I would recommend that, I don't know if Thursday is the day to do it but recommend discussing it jointly with the select board. Yeah. And then based on the reception there, come to some agreement as to how to proceed but looking at what Evan said about staff workload and also forming another committee with two members of each board will be difficult. I would say that the exploratory conversations about this would probably not happen till the end of the summer at the very front. Well yeah, I think so, yeah. I think in the meantime, Maura, myself, Dana, Robin, Greg, Duggan, Lauren can meet and get some ground work done. And I'm happy to, I have the other committee charters ready to go, I have scopes of work of many housing needs assessments. I mean it's really gonna be, if you went down this road you'd really be looking at a half dozen examples of what other people did and I can imagine a yellow highlighter of yes to this, red highlighter, no to this and so I can bring that. Right and to Lori's comment, several of the businesses that I've had an opportunity to meet with and talk with, workforce housing, some type of housing where people of different pay level scales. What we are seeing is people being moved out farther to the rich men's, the Milton's and driving in and that is difficult as anything but then you also have, we've had this conversation briefly, you have seniors who also want to stay in their homes. Right, yeah. But the affordability of that is at issue not just because of taxes. Yeah, quick comment. Would it be possible to assess sooner rather than later understanding that the town also just did something with housing, whether or not they are interested in moving forward with us because if they're not then we can make our own timeline. Yeah, okay, I think as Elaine said we can just discuss it with the select board on Thursday. Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna, Raj, did you, I saw you had your hand up, go ahead. Just a quick comment listening, this is a fantastic idea but I think you need to also think of this as the school district may want a piece of this. Good idea. It impacts them just as much if not more than it impacts employers. Declining enrollment being what it is, no place for young families to live here and we're very, we're moderately diverse and you've got to say that with a smile. So, if this is something that's short on funds and short on staff time, this is the perfect thing to partner with EWSB. Great idea, excellent. But, just a couple. Okay, thank you, good point, thank you very much, Raj. Okay, so the next steps would be let's check in with select board and see what they are and then, but the idea, sometime, kind of prioritize this in terms of getting a, the next, after that, then have more, at least a couple of board people, maybe you two, meet with staff and talk about how to actually form, go forward. Thank you for having this conversation. I agree with Lori that, of course, I'm that carpenter, that hammer and every problem's a nail. Like, I'm convinced that we can solve all the social ills in the world with some good, safe, affordable, decent housing. And honestly, I have so much research that proves that I'm right. I'm telling you, I teach at graduate level fast, just on that. So, I know I'm right and I bring that confidence, but you really, it is, while I started by saying there are many other communities that have gone down this road before you, I don't want to take away from the fact that it is the right time for you all to act on this. And I think that it's so exciting if the town, the village can look at this together knowing how close the markets are with each other. I really thank you for looking at it and I look forward to giving my time and what I can offer to this. But I'm really thankful and I really hope that you all can push the town if they need pushing. Maybe they don't need any pushing. Maybe they're 100% there, but it will be exciting to really get this off the ground. Okay, good. And thank you for offering your help, because that will be helpful. Yeah, I mean, Maura, just to have you here as potential resource right in our backyard is awesome. So, that makes all the difference for us, too. I'm open. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Are you talking about me next or am I not needed for the next item? You have, with the ACCD, is that the, do you remember that? Website. Yeah. I'm happy to sit back. I think we, it's just a contract. Is that correct, Lauren? Yes. It's just signing. We've already made the dialogue with them. You accept the grant and then after that we're gonna adapt to the sub grant. Thank you, Maura. Okay, actually, so let's, if we can, so let's transition to that right now. Do you wanna do that? Or, sorry, why don't you just sort of repeat and flush out what you just said to me? Well, we're at the point with this grant for to develop the housing website that you need to make a resolution to accept the grant. Then the next step would be to form a VFHA will be writing the sub grant for us and getting that ready and then you'll have to accept that as well. That'll be right. Approve it. So this is just, you need to resolve and then Evan's gonna sign. Okay, I think I might have a little, if someone else has, does someone else have it, I'm a little... I'll move the trustee sign the resolution to resolve to accept and agree to the terms of the grant from the agency of commerce and community development for the purpose of providing a sub-grant to the Vermont Housing Finance Agency. Second. Okay. Any further discussion? Yeah, go ahead, Elaine. I'm recusing. Okay, do you wanna sit? I'll recuse because I work directly for the agency that's offering the grant. Thanks, I didn't want to. If you wanted to. You're supposed to give a reason. Okay. Any other discussion? Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Close. And one in one abstention. I'm recusing. I'll stop check. Abstain. Okay, and I will send this around for everyone to sign and now we are on to the Vermont Agency of Transportation Small Scale Construction Project grant. Arby. And Raj. And Raj. Thank you guys. Thank you for patiently waiting. Let's push her out of the way. Yeah. All right, go ahead, Darby. All right, good evening everyone and thank you for having us here. So we are here today with a V-Trans grant application for a I-Cupigastrian Small Scale Construction Project. And the intention of this is to put in three different rectangular rapid flash, sorry, rectangular rapid flash beacons or those little flashy things. Yup. That's true. Come with me. The two presents. They started flashing. Blinky. Blinky. Thank you for correcting my terminology. And we're interested in putting them in three different intersections. Main Street and Railroad Avenue. The intersection of Hiawatha and West Street and the CVE crossing on 115. So the total cost for those three is $17,210.10. And the trans will cover half of that. The majority of the match will come from the matching grant fund, $8,000. However, $605.05 will come from the Bikwok committee's allocation. And Raj, anything to add? We really want these. We really want them. We've heard from a lot of people. You guys discussed it tonight. You've probably discussed it in most meetings. There's some very lively discussion going on right now about the crosswalk at Athens and something that happened today. On my way over here from Maple Street, I watched Boyway Two Cycles. People just kept going by them, trying to get to Maple Street. And he was even trying to walk his bike across the crosswalk. So we did a community ride of the Bikwok committee Monday night, one around most of the community. There's a lot to do. We were specifically looking for these locations for this grant. And we have five others that's four, four others that we think are critical. But they're very much school related, so we're going to talk to you, WSD, and you guys about that together later today, to see if there's something they want to do together. So these, we felt, were more appropriate for this grant and at high travel areas. We're open to using more of our new, newly allocated budget. But we haven't had much of a chance to discuss what we're going to do with it yet. So I realize this is a large chunk of the action grant fund. So to your point, it's really important. It is, I guess it is. People are really noticing slight improvements slowly and are getting more and more frustrated when they can't get around without their car, which is kind of nice, actually, because they're trying to. Yes. So, yeah. There, I don't want to, and I'm totally in front of this, I'm just curious, are there studies? I hate to keep going with the study, but generally, are these where they've been tried in other communities? Are they working well, having the flashing thing? I think they are. And I think they're working well. And I think one addition that we might try, and I was thinking of this after reading the issue today, of Athens, is during the warmer months when people are out more, is putting something in the middle of the road. Athens, I think, is a 30 or 35 area. Really shouldn't be at this point. We'll be discussing that later. But there's a lot of places that, as we exit, what we consider to be the residential areas. The residential areas are pushed out, and I don't think we don't think there's a committee that speed limits have kept up or kept down. So using these in conjunction with a center road cone of some sort of high visibility, there's about four of these that are four crossings on Naval Street that are blocked. The signs for crosswalks are blocked by trees. There's a lot of business exits where you can't see the sidewalk when you're trying to leave the business. We've made a huge list. And it's funny, the zoning board chair, I can't remember his name. I thought he wasn't going to be busy. I just wanted to stop him on a man. So let me know you have this two page that we've got. We've got some corrections. Signage to retire. We do not want them to retire. No. I mean, there's some business signage that's blocking your sight lines for cars and pedestrians and bikes. So we've got to start enforcing the, what do they call those, the temporary signs that have sort of littered our community now. Sandwich boards. Sandwich boards. Sandwich boards. Yeah, they're blocking a lot of viewpoints. If you're in a car trying to leave, you can't see the sidewalk. The overgrowth of the trees and the shrubs and such, and you brought it up once. I know I've brought it up multiple times over the years. And it's incessant. It's going to go on forever. Just in case you can do your growth. But it's something that you keep fighting back. I totally agree with you. The sight lines, it's so important. In the wintertime, it's snow banks. You've got to worry about the children walking out and snowing. But these flashing lights work well. It's what they have in Winooski. And it functions quite well. There, you're talking massive amounts of traffic coming through and a lot of people. And it works, because I go down to there every day. Yes, I think they're a good investment. We can start smaller, but this is a pretty good grant. Any other questions for the motion? Do I hear a motion? Oh, did we have a motion on this? Did we have a motion on this? No, we haven't. Sorry, go ahead. I'll recommend the trustees authorize staff to submit the V-trans bike and pedestrian program small scale construction project grant and authorize a grant match of $8,000 from the matching grant fund. Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? All in favor? Opposed? OK, unanimous. Thank you very much. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Thank you. OK, that brings us to the manager's report. Couple of items, some quick, some sentimental. I have received Lauren's notice of intent to retire at the end of this year. I accept it. I buried it. For a little while, I've been unhappy for a little bit, but at the end, it's her decision. She's earned the right to do that. Lauren, please remind the board and the crowded home how many years of service to the communities? 25. 25. So. Oh, yeah. I will pay dearly for that. Why don't you want to go for 30? I mean, what's the problem? Do you don't love us anymore? I do. I love you. So one of the things we're also talking about, she's going to take her hiatus. And based on some staffing stuff, we may use Lauren on a part-time basis here and there, especially during people's vacations and stuff and working on our transition plan to our new assistant manager and director, which I'll be announcing sometimes soon. We had brought somebody in-house. And so we'll do that. So tonight, just many things. Rick was in the doorway for most of the evening. Their work, public works, working together. Both groups have been finding projects to work together on. Did a nice job. You know, last, is it January? You had the water main break. There was a lot of activity over at the main street bridge right past the town hall. That work was just to repair the water main and then the street that needed to be repaired. The next project is actually the bridge. That's coming up very shortly. So there's going to be a lot of road construction activity there. So public works is very busy. They've also, as you see, we are applying for grants. We are very good at applying for and actually receiving grants. So and for those of our board members and select board members who work for state agencies, just keep coming in with the ideas of what we can apply for. We like using other people's money. It's great. The blinky signs are important. One of the things that I've been talking to the chief about is finding ways for our officers to also be more visible. They do run from call to call. They have 36 square miles to attend to, but to be very diligent about our pedestrians and people who don't stop for our pedestrians and finding ways to do that. I think we've had two weeks or two weeks of farmer's market. The first week had gorgeous 70-degree weather, very well attended. Second week, not so lucky in the weather department, but also very well attended. I think the new location is doing well. I think the attendance is pretty good. It could always be better, but it's growing. People are saying, oh, it wasn't there before. No, it's why they call it a new location. But Laura, you attended, and others, I know I have attended, if you want to chime in. No, it's been great. As everyone knows, the farmer's market is near and dear to my heart, and they're really doing an incredible job with it this year. And as nice as the music and things have been for those residents and businesses at home watching, yeah, actually do need to buy things or from the vendors, or they can't keep coming back. So please try to buy something there. They do come out, and they have to pay their employees. And we just are continuing working on a lot of our projects on alignment. We are putting out, and just put out, and Darby just left, darn it, our first employee newsletter. So trying to keep the employees communicated and give them updates of what's going on, both with alignment, but with benefits, with programs, and what's going on. So Darby did a great job on it, along with a couple of editors from staff, me not included. But so we're just moving along. Great. Great. Thank you, Evan. While we're on the topic, I would like to throw out the idea of trimming our trustee meetings in July to down to one. How would everyone feel about that? No. You want to do more? We'd add extra meetings? Can we add some? We can. We can keep things in place. I'm kicking you from here. I'm just kidding. We'll have a joint meeting in July with the select board. And we have our, and we normally had two. But I think the first meeting in July, we would not have that meeting. What does everyone think about that? I agree with that. Good? Yeah, we need to set the tax rate at the second one, so you can't get rid of the second one. We can't get rid of the second one, so but we can get rid of the first one. And the joint meeting is the 17th of July? I think so. It is the 18th. 18th. Thank you. Everyone good with that? OK. Evan, you can still come here if you want to, but we won't be here. I will miss you. We'll probably be seeing you before then. It's OK. But I think it might be good too. Anyway, and other trustee comments and concerns? They're all good? I had one. Our son just finished Little League this year. Spent a fair amount of time over on Cascade. Is there, I don't know if anybody here can answer this, is there a plan in terms of maintenance over at Cascade with the playground area? Some of the equipment is literally broken. The distance between wood chips and the bottom of infrastructure or the start of infrastructure is as high as my knee, sometimes my thigh. So small kids are really struggling at Cascade. Yeah, yeah. One of the basketball courts is still completely covered with leaves and hasn't been exposed so that people can play. We had a letter back about addressing this. And Brad said they know all these things, and they just had to remember what the response was. I will speak with Brad tomorrow and see what Harlan's schedule is. I know that they had planned to do some work in the name of the park. That sounds familiar. I'm still trying to remember. But I will talk with Brad tomorrow. It was Cascade. Yeah, it wouldn't be Cascade. You know, it's something for the long term. But we are still adjusting to actually having a recreation department. That's not something we're used to having. And so we don't think about these things, but that might be something. Because Cascade, maybe that's a long term project for doing the facelift over there. And I know that the rec department has its own capital fund. And you know, he asked me for some new numbers today. And I could be. He asked what? For some new account numbers to charge things to. And I'm wondering if that's the project he's starting to go on. Yeah, he mentioned that they were about to do a big. It might be just their fiscal year is kicking in. Is that it? That might be. Well, it's in the capital budget for next year. So but we allow people to go a little bit ahead on the capital budget because it's been approved. And it's not on the fiscal year the same way as the operating budget. So sometimes we let them, if it works out for them. But yes, I will talk with staff about their plan for Cascade. Along those lines, one of the things that reminded me of this, is there still the reconvisory board? No, there is not. I was on the reconvisory board. There is not. It is something that he is trying to figure out the next reiteration of it. I think he's going to talk to them and try and help them. But no, there is not. But on those same lines, I will say, I've just been on a lot of Mabel Street cars. And was there last night, and they had three different baseball games going on. Park was packed. I mean, what a gem for art. It is. Really is amazing. It is. The closing ceremony was packed. Was it? Yeah. Though Cascade is also, a.k.a. known as, by my daughter's address, the stinky playground. It is stinky. It is still known. That's what my daughter used to say, daddy. Can we go to the stinky playground? It's down by the water. It's got so much better. It's much better. Yeah. That's not going to help. Especially those kids in the alfalfa picking flowers are wondering why the flowers smell. Tonight was also scheduled a CBE neighbor night. And I was wondering if you could ask Tim to provide us with notes or his impression of how it went, any concerns or anything. CBE. CBE. Shippin Valley Expo. They had invited. It was in our packet recently. They provided us to come. But it's the same night as this evening. So I guess we couldn't juggle it. But we just would like to know how that went. I will make note that in the reading file, I had Patty pull this off because in the Burlington Free Press, SX Junction gets the prize for the fastest growing town in the Burlington area, growing by 2.9% last year and 15.2% since 2010. SX Town is right behind us. So housing, it's back to it. Yeah. 10,000. And we've been the fastest growing. I think I heard we're the fastest growing for the last nine years. Yeah. We're doing something right. Where are we putting them off? We know where they're going. Some must be in the water. OK, so any more comments? We go with this read file. So we are on to the consent agenda. Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? So now, do I hear a motion to adjourn the SX Junction trustee? I'll adjourn the second. For the discussion, all in favor? Aye. Good night. Thank you. I'm going to let you finish that one. Did everybody sign this? Yeah. No. So.