 planning commission meeting. So first thing, if we can put up the script, Erin, we're gonna go make a slight change in process. And instead of reading the entire open meeting script, I'm gonna read the open paragraph and let the displayed document stand for the record. So I, Dustin Burso, as chair of the Essex Planning Commission find that due to the state of emergency declared by Governor Scott as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and pursuant to the addendum six to executive order 01-20 and act 92, this public body is authorized to meet electronically. So the full text is available from the town staff blade and the meeting. So the first thing before we get rolling, I would like to note amendments to our planning commission agenda. First, as supplied by the staff as a note that on item two, it's update to the 1991 town center master plan. I would also like to offer a change this evening to take item number three and number four and move them up in the agenda to be items two and three. So that the final item on the planning commission meeting is the discussion with the select board. Is that planning commissioners? Are there any concerns with that? No. Hearing none, they're noted. All right. Thank you. Elaine, would you like to open the select board meeting at this point? Thank you, Dustin. Yes, I will call the select board special meeting for Thursday, February 25th, 2021 to order. And I believe there is an agenda addition for the select board. Yes, I have staff as a couple of proposed additions for business proposed item five C, consider ratification and reaffirmation of a decision made on February 3rd, 2020 to extend the contract of the unified manager. That discussion may take place in executive session with the decision being made in public session. So I would propose an item eight B in executive session may be necessary to discuss the employment of a public employee. And lastly, a reading file addition the minutes of the December 21st, 2020 select board meeting. That was the select board meeting with a board discussed ETC next and had the presentation from Mark Kane of SE Group and discussion. So I just wanted to get onto the packet and onto the record since tonight's meeting is a follow-up to that December 21st meeting. Thanks, Greg. So very quickly, if we could just ask the select board to approve the agenda amendments. Are there any other changes to the agenda from the select board? Seeing none, I'll take a motion to approve the agenda as amended. I make a motion, we approve the agenda as amended. Thanks, Dawn. Is there a second? Second. Thank you very much, Pat. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. And just to note that Andy Watts will not be here this evening, he's out of town. Dustin, it is all yours. Thank you very much, Elaine. So to begin with, let's like to do a roll call of the commissioners that are present. Beginning with myself, Dustin Burso. Joshua Knox, present. Dave Raphael, present. Tom Furlin, present. John Mangan, present. John Schumacher, present. And John Alden. John Alden, alternate present. John, you, we are down one commissioner. So if you're agreeable this evening, you are sitting in as a full commissioner. Fantastic. All right, thank you all. First item on our agenda at this point is public comments. So I'd like to ask anyone that's in the audience to please raise your, use the hand raising tool. It's part of Teams. And let us know if you have any comments for the commission for the items that are not on the agenda. This is a opportunity to engage with us as you wish. And I see Patty has your hand up. Hi guys. Hi John, I'm glad you're part of the group. You guys are all awesome. I just wanted to comment that, I know what you're gonna talk about, but this is just my two cents being a master gardener. Biodiversity and sustainability is our future. And I just wondered as you discuss, if you keep in mind, especially the wetlands that we need to shift, shift the way we approach construction and biodiversity by looking at the wetlands and possibly building above ground with no basements to keep the natural streams going between the village and the town and the habitat thriving. Anyway, I just want you to know that if you decide once you get going on this beautiful plan, that if you want volunteers, I would be more than happy to be a volunteer to help you as a subgroup to run a little task force to obtain a collaborative team of biologists, ecologists. And I don't know if you guys know Ann Hazelrig, but she's my hero. She's a pathologist in the plant soil science at UVM, knows a lot about sustainability with wetlands. Anyway, if you're ever interested in more volunteers, because you guys are awesome about that, I would be glad and willing to run a little task force once you get going. And the other thing I wanted to say is a lot of the construction materials because sustainability is such a future thing for us. Building materials can be used for flower boxes and tiles and that from buildings and old pieces of wood, so you can make wooden walkways above the wetlands, stuff like that. So I know a lot about that too. That's it. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Sharon, did you have something you want to add? Yes, I just see that there's a telephone number 1-607-435-0623 if I could have a name associated with that telephone number for attendance. Yes, indeed, Sharon. Again, it's Jim Berniger. Oh, Jim, I should learn your number. Thank you. Okay, thanks much. All right. Thank you all. So with that, we're gonna move on to the discussion of the select board on the ETC Next plan. The way that I'd like to approach this to begin with is I'd like staff has a small presentation to give to the select board, the overview and the public. And then I'm gonna go to the planning commissioners for any commentary they would like to add to the discussion this evening. And then we're gonna be looking to you the select board to give us some questions and help us understand what you might wanna know more about with this plan. Excuse me, Dusty. Yes. You are going to do the minutes and other business first before the evening. Thank you very much, Sharon. I do appreciate that. I'm looking at the old minutes right in front of me. So I will not say what my mind is doing tonight. So I would take a motion for a minute. The minutes of February 11th. So moved. I'll second that. John Mangan. Moved by Josh, seconded by John. Any one wanna offer any commentary on the minutes as presented? Are there any amendments that they would like to introduce? Hearing none. All those in favor of the minutes as it's presented? Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Minutes carry seven zero. Sharon, Darren or Oviso, do we have additional business to review before we get into the discussion? None for me. None for me. Okay. Darren. None for me. That's a perfect answer. Okay. So now back to what we were starting, what I was starting to go down the road. So for this, I'm gonna ask the staff to do a short presentation on the intent of the plan. And then I'm gonna reach out to the planning commissioners to provide some of their own personal feedback. And then I would like select board members to be able to engage with us and drive us, drive some of the questions. And eventually towards when we run out of select board issues, then we'll open this up to the public as well. So, Oviso, would you like to hit this ball rolling? Yes, Darren, would you put up the outline, the PowerPoint presentation that we've prepared? So we're going to start with our overview and Darren is going to begin that portion of the presentation. All right, thank you, Oviso and thank you, Dusty. So as you know, we're here to discuss the Essex Town Center Master Plan, also called ETC Next. This is an update to the 1991 master plan that was put in place for this area. And there's a lot to talk about, so let me get started. So I'll start with a bit of the process because this project has a pretty long history going back all the way to 1991. But more recently, this initiative started around 2017 with the goal of basically updating our existing design control standards and sort of taking another look at the master plan that was in place and making it relevant for the future because it was already almost 30 years old. So there was a steering committee that was put together with members of the planning commission, members of the public and other board and committees from the town. There was also a focus group conducted in May 2017 to sort of start to explore some of the issues that were going to come up in the master planning process. And that steering committee met both before and during the, before the focus group and throughout the process. Over that summer, there was a survey online which had 424 respondents. It reflected the questions asked of the focus group. And we think that was really fantastic. That's probably the most public input we've ever gotten on a plan like this in Essex. So we really had a lot of extensive community input both from the public, from appointed boards and commissions, from staff and from the consultants that were hired to oversee this process. We had an open house in October, 2017. That was just an opportunity to pull everybody together in the same room with a bunch of information and just sort of have an open discussion. Since that time, a lot of the work has happened at the planning commission table and sort of behind the scenes with staff, but a lot of back and forth about all the details in the plan, all of the concepts, all of the explorations of what was possible and starting with some zoning regulation ideas. But we really tried to shift from a prescriptive plan that had a lot of specific ideas for zoning and it's now become much more of a visionary document. We think that's a really great approach. And in general, there's a broad consensus that the goals of the plan are good. We took a lot of time to fine tune the document itself to make sure it really represented all the work that went into this. So in general, what people said is mostly common sense. We wanna look at a town center, an Essex town center that is better connected, has a lot more to offer for bike and pedestrian options within the ETC because right now it's fairly car oriented and people don't really really stick around in the area very much. And I should say the Essex town center covers an area from Vermont 289 at Route 15, where the Maple Fields is and all the way out to the historic Essex center and everything in between. So we're looking to make sure that you can get within the ETC more easily, get from point A to point B and also get to the ETC from elsewhere and vice versa. So that was a big theme is connectivity. We also wanted to make the ETC experience more cohesive. That includes enhancing the commercial retail options beyond the typical outlet mall options that were currently available and really looking at a more sort of vibrant downtown kind of feel. We all wanted to offer, folks wanted more diverse and affordable housing options. So not just high rise or mid rise or low rise and not just single unit dwellings, but some of the missing middle housing that tends to be more affordable and just offers more options for folks who want different living circumstances. So townhouses, smaller residential apartment buildings and most importantly, mixed use development which is a mix of housing and commercial uses in the same building that really provides folks a chance to live and work and shop and do whatever all in the same spot without having to drive and go to a different community or a different part of the community to meet their needs. And the last theme was improving the aesthetic of the built environment, really trying to make sure that when you're in the town center, you feel like it's a place that has an identity, that has consistency in the visual appearance of buildings and of the streetscape. And we're not necessarily trying to prescribe a specific architectural style or a specific standard to how things have to be built exactly, but we wanted to make sense in context and don't want buildings to feel out of place and have there be gaps in a pedestrian and sidewalk network. The last thing that folks also highlighted sort of outside of making it more cohesive was protecting natural and scenic resources. There was a lot of concern about building height, frankly. And we understood that and took it to heart and tried to see how can we work with this and meet the needs of a town center that wants to support more development in a way that meets our growth needs but also protects some of the things that we find really unique about Essex. So we're trying to focus growth within a small area. The original master plan had a large area called the Golden Triangle that was north of route 15, bounded by a towers road and old stage road. We've taken a large chunk of that out of the study area because we don't know that it's totally appropriate for extensive development. Not to say that nothing can happen there but it's certainly not going to be a high density area. And that's a very scenic area. It's very rural right now. So we're trying to keep it that way to the extent possible and to the extent that makes sense. And definitely trying to incorporate wetlands and other sensitive natural resources into plans for development so that they are not destroyed or impacted but integrated within the plan so that folks can enjoy them, folks can appreciate them while also having the benefits of the development that we're looking to see. At this point, I'll pass it over to Ariso. Ariso, I think you're still on mute. Shoot. I started off with a bang. You all missed it. Apologies for that. So what the plan says. The plan emphasizes a more cohesive and better connected Essex Town Center. The new vision for the ETC includes interconnected but distinct neighborhoods. Neighborhoods are broken out as mixed use north, mixed use south, neighborhood commercial, historic center, conservation and recreation each with its own character and its own balance of needs. More open space in one, more density in another. Maybe there's an opportunity for commercial development. Maybe there's not. We're looking at each individual area as having distinct needs, not a cookie cutter, one size fits all approach. Cohesive architectural character, respectful of settings. The plan provides a thousand foot view of guidelines that will translate into zoning regulations and other relevant regulatory structure, describing everything from articulation on building facades to the building's relationship to the street. This will help the developer in proposing development that the planning commission and residents find acceptable and help the planning commission in interpreting what they have in front of them for review. Wider variety of land uses. Uses will be determined in a review of the zoning ordinance, but these approaches to development might allow us to say yes to hotel, no to a drive-through in the ETC, yes to an convenience store, likely of a certain size with no gas pumps. Multimodal transportation. In addition to parking requirement, these guidelines give us opportunities to develop multimodal standards and options beyond the single occupancy car, such as car sharing and bike sharing, carpool or vanpool spots, entering into discussions with Green Mountain Transit about increasing bus service, enhancing or better defining bus routes and so on. Who knows, hoverboards. Besides Route 15 and town streets, multi-use paths, sidewalks and trails interconnect various portions of the town center. Common pallet of streetscape elements supporting activity and commerce. This addresses anything from benches and sitting wells as stopping or pause points and acknowledging the multi-generational population of the area to street lights, bike racks, bus shelters and other similar elements that will facilitate movement through the streetscape. I'm gonna let Darren address the next bullet point because I've noticed from working with him that he has a lot of passion that he brings to the ecology and natural aspects of the ETC, which I believe you will also see reflected in future revisions that are based on this document. Thanks, Louise. So, and very briefly, as Patty highlighted at the beginning of the meeting, there are some sensitive resources within the Essex Town Center, what runs some wildlife habitat areas, as well as areas that we might wanna consider for recreation, not for building. The other thing that we've learned from talking with the Public Works Director Dennis Lutz is that a lot of the soils in this area are very tight. They don't permeate water very well and that will be a concern when it comes to addressing stormwater. And we wanna make sure that there is space for that because we don't want the development that is proposed here to have a negative impact on streams and Lake Champlain. So, one of the things we'll look at is green stormwater infrastructure, slowing the flow of water, trying to reduce nutrient pollution into our water, and really putting a fine eye on development plans that need to have a stormwater impact. And ecologically in general, we think that having this concentrated development area and this compact center will preserve a lot of the ecology outside that we find so valuable and so important to the town, but that doesn't mean that we won't try to incorporate ecology within the plan, within the planning area. For instance, we've got a plan for a green belt that on the other side of Route 15, from where one already exists, along Cody's and the jewels on the green, there's great ways to sort of make sure that there's tree canopy cover and places for the natural world to sort of show through even within the built environment. So what this all means, there'll be new opportunities for increased residential density and diversity, and we've thrown out a number in the past that's, I believe it's 1272, and that's a density resulting in 800 units more than the 478 units that exist today. But to be clear about this, that's about 300 more across the district than what is allowed today. What is allowed today is actually about 970 units, where we'll be considering a variety of housing types and building forms that will hash out as we hash out the zoning regulations. Mixed use development and economic vitality is very much about creating, it has a lot of emphasis on creating a neighborhood feel. A mix of commercial and residential uses means that people can get their needs met closer to home by walking or biking. So there will be more people on sidewalks, less traffic on roadways, people moving about creates vibrancy, sort of like how you're more likely to go into a restaurant if you're not the only people there. And people are more likely to go into a store if they're walking as opposed to driving. Infill growth and adaptive reuse of buildings and land. The plan focuses on an area that was slated for development in the 1991 town plan. Infill growth allows phenomenal cost of infrastructure as opposed to expanding beyond the sewer core because developers can tap into existing sewer, water, utility lines and pipes. Street lights exist. If sidewalks don't exist adjacent to a new building, the developer will be expected to connect to the nearest sidewalks, which is a requirement that we have right now. Through infill and adaptive reuse, we can lower carbon footprints as existing infrastructure is used with an extra bonus for adaptive reuse of any existing building because that means less waste added to Vermont landfills and less new materials need to be used. Visual and physical connections between open space nature and the built environment. This plan reflects an understanding of the balance between the built environment and open space. They're complementary and should be considered as a cohesive whole, not wholly independent of each other. We've talked about literal path, sidewalk and trail connections. But also if there are significant views, we will have the tools to make developers frame the views rather than block them from public ways with large monolithic buildings. From the street, even a one-story building can block views. So the ability to dictate the massing in a way that allows developers to receive the economic value of the land and protect desirable views equals a win-win for town residents and the developer. So next steps. Darren, do you wanna go through these? Sure. So as we talked about, this plan will guide future zoning and planning documents. We're gonna dive into zoning as soon as we get consensus that this is the vision of the town and that starts here. And this will be really a high-level way to guide what we do in the future. We've already been able to use the plan in its draft form to engage with developers and stakeholders and say, hey, here's what we're looking to do in the future. We'd love to see that reflected in your plans for development and some of the initiatives that are happening outside of new development, such as stormwater and bike and pet connections. We also need to establish the right infrastructure policies and regulations. So that's gonna be a lot of work and it's not gonna happen overnight. And I wanna make very clear that this is a long-term plan. It's at least 10 years, but probably more like 20 or 30 years, just like the last town center master plan. So we're going to be setting the stage with new sewer infrastructure and water lines, some of which are already in design and construction and adding new sidewalks, et cetera. We'll also need to look at some of our policies, like the sewer allocation policy and map to make sure that these are fine tuned to allow development where we want it to and not where we don't. And we've already done a lot of collaboration with our other municipal partners, as community development and planning commission, Public Works Department, Fire, Parks and Rec, and police have done a great job of giving us feedback on this and making sure it fits with their strategic goals. We've had input from all of the committees that are listed here, Economic Development, Housing Commission, Energy Committee and Conservation and Trails, as well as others. So we're really excited about this and looking forward to diving into implementation. We welcome any questions that you may have and any input. In a bit. In a bit. We'll get to this when we open things up. Thank you, Darren, and Elisa. The overview was great. Before I get to the rest of the commissioners, I would like to note that in our audience and I have two village PC members, Diane Clemens and Steve Shaw, and sort of by default, John Alden, but I would like to welcome note that they're here and I wish we were having regular applications tonight because I pull you in a little more to actively into the discussions, but thank you for showing up and I do appreciate you being here. Commissioners, at this point, I'd like to go around and have folks throw in any sort of commentary that you'd like to do before we open this up for Q&A. David, any thoughts that you'd like to share? Just that I've been thrilled with the process. I, as it was mentioned earlier, we had a huge amount of public input and this is really a visioning document and it's taking an area of town that we haven't addressed in a long time and it's building a nice vision and we now have the opportunity to kind of step back, adopt that and then get into the weeds down the road. So it'll be easy to start throwing darts at this and getting deep into it, but I think we run a risk if we do that. I think we have to get buy-in at a real high level and I think everybody did a real nice job at doing that and we had such a great amount of public input that I feel like this is where the people of Essex wanna see us take this. So I'm thrilled with it and I think we're headed in the right direction. So thanks. Thank you. I'm gonna go down my list in the order that I wrote folks down. Josh, would you like to jump in on this? I mean, I'm gonna say a lot of what's been said already but I really think we have to stress the visionary character of the document. That was something I really felt strongly about when we were first looking at this in the process and I'm glad that's sort of where we landed because the vision of better connected, more cohesive permeates this whole thing and excuse me. As David said, this hasn't been done in, as everyone said, this hasn't been done in 30 years and it sets a tone and makes it clear that we know what we want in this part of town and it was a massive collaborative process with input from everyone and we can rest assure that this is the vision that people want and for that reason, the important thing is to say, okay, this is a vision, this is what we want and not get bogged down in policies and regulations and such right now. That isn't, this isn't the time for it right now is acknowledging the vision of better connected and more cohesive. And I think this document is perfect for that. Thank you, Josh. John Mangan, you're next on my list. Yep, I really don't have anything additional to add. I would second what both Josh and Dave said but I don't wanna just repeat it, I'm good. Thank you. Tom. I think this was a good process to discuss infrastructure issues that came up and other than that, it's, I think it's important to have a area of town that's more dense and more walkable where a lot of the growth can concentrate. Excellent, thank you. John Alden. I was a little late to this party. I've been working in and around the Essex Town Center for 20 years as an architect and it was very frustrating actually to go through the old regulations and try and figure out what was appropriate and it didn't seem to match with what the rules were and what was happening on the ground. And so I was ecstatic when I got a chance to participate in this for the town. And I thought the consultants did a great job but what they originally produced was maybe a little dense, just too much information and I was subsequently very pleased that the Planning Commission was able to kind of direct them to pull out all the unnecessary details, put that in an appendix and deliver a document that was much more readable and hopefully will serve all of us for many years as the vision for what we feel is important for this area of the town. And I'm very pleased with the result. Everybody's been great. The process has been arduous and lengthy but it's worth it. This is a great document. Thanks John. Shoe, I didn't forget you today. Yeah, I appreciate you not forgetting me. I'm a little disappointed I'm so low on your list. It's hard to find your name sometimes there. Maybe it's the yes. I mean, I'm always late in the list like Darren probably knows too. You get enough Johns in front of you and it's hard to tell if you got three or four of them and it sounds awesome. Well, anyway, I just wanna say a ditto to what David and Josh said for sure and Tom's nod to the infrastructure requirements or it's time to really think about that and really try to make changes where they need to be made and acknowledge that some of the older plans really don't fit with the way the town is built out. So that's, I agree with that. Maybe I'm getting in your way Tom a little bit on that but that's kind of what I think you were saying. And I agree with John all of it. It's time for an update here. I wanna give a nod to community development and planning staff for staying on track through staff changes. It's been a long road. It's been a lot of information. It's great that this plan has really integrated the concerns of all the stakeholders that have been involved, the public staff, the public works and especially the planning commission and the consulting team working together. I've enjoyed watching as this input has been integrated into the plan. So I would also like to just say that I think it's a good plan. It's been very well considered and contemplated by a lot of really good minds. And I'd really like to see, I'd like to see it move forward and I'd really like to see the regulations and the pieces and parts that need to be built into it come to pass. I'm excited about it. Thanks, John. And my two cents is basically echoing what the commission has said. I mean, we went through this and we started with the technical document from coming back from the consultants and we revised and changed our direction so that we made this a vision statement. And just like the town plan, you need that vision statement in order to guide the regulation changes and where can we fit things and so forth. And we didn't do this on our own. We had public works was engaged and things that were completely, completely unachievable were removed from this document. So I mean, it's been a long work, a long term of work, but I think it's at a good point. So with that, I would like to open this up to the select board for engaging with the planning commission and staff and let's see what you guys think. Ultimately, we want to get this to the point where you can endorse it and adopt it and we can start doing some heavy lifting. Not that this hasn't been heavy lifting, but we can get into the granular work. Well, Dustin, I'd like to thank you and Oviso and Darren and Sharon and the entire planning commission for the enormous amount of work that you've put into this plan. It's beautiful. It's a really great vision for the town center that has been long overdue and you've really rose to the occasion. It's awesome. I would love to hear from Vince and Dawn and Pat thoughts, questions for the planning commission on this plan. Yeah, I just want to say that I really appreciated all the work that was put into this and making it a vision statement was really nice for me because I like to play in the more abstract vision-oriented space and look at the possibilities of what could be and that was really cool to not have it be like, this is how everything shall be, but this is what we want our town to grow into and that was really nice. It was real, really cool. Not everybody at once. Take your turns. Pat, go ahead. Again, apologies for no camera tonight. It's not the first time seeing this plan for us, but I mean, two things that I want to comment on less questions, but really that I'm incredibly appreciative for are two things that you highlighted in here. First is the expansion of housing, which we know is such a critical issue in our community. So hearing that you, we're looking at getting additional numbers of units in there is really comforting to hear. And then the second is especially for a plan that's stretching out 20 or 30 years, anything green, anything that's going to have any sort of impact on climate change and how quickly that's progressing into the future. I think really needs to be incorporated into this in a very critical way. And it does seem like you guys took those two points that are really key and concerning for me and added them into this plan, which I really appreciate and like. So great job overall. Dolan, any thoughts or questions? I'd like to thank everyone for their hard work. And I just, as I had expressed earlier when we saw another presentation, I'm just concerned about the protection of the wetlands because there is a lot of wetlands in that area. And I was curious to know if it had any, if you currently have any developers interested in investing in this town plan, if anyone has seen it. Mm-hmm. Don, when you say investing, you mean folks... Or interested in it, yes, Dan. Yeah, so one great example that's already come to, you know, getting approval by the Planning Commission is the Bob Arusa project, which is part of the old Essex Outlets, now known as the Essex Experience. It's not into construction yet, but my understanding is that they'll be looking to do that relatively soon. And we worked with Peter Edelman, the developer on the design of that. It took a couple of iterations to get it to where we felt it fit within the context of the master plan. And it was a really great process to be able to point to, hey, here's what we're looking to do. It's out there in the plan, even though that's not adopted yet. So, and it just is stuff that makes sense. We've had a few other folks express interest in doing some smaller projects than that, but still really in line with what the vision lays out. So we're excited. Thank you. I am too. I think it's a great plan. Well, I thank you all for your appreciation. It's richly deserved. The Planning Commission did a great job. I have a couple of questions and thoughts, so I saved mine for last. First of all, I wanna just thank you for focusing so much on walkability and accessibility. That's one thing that we have heard a lot about, safety of walking on the shoulder of the road, sidewalks not quite accessible enough. So, bringing connectivity of that kind to the town center is really important. And I think it will make it a much more interesting place to visit as a non-resident and it will be much more accessible and pleasant, just frankly, pleasant for residents to be able to walk through their small village center. I also really appreciate that you emphasize that this is a vision and it is not necessarily a cut and dry plan. This is something that we can use going forward that the select board will really appreciate having as we plan capital projects and budgeting for those purposes. And I'm assuming that this grant, excuse me, this plan will help you with future grants that you've got something really specific now of really good vision and has lots of different directions you can go in. And so that can be part of a grant application for any number of projects. So it's a lot of forward thinking in that. I'm curious about a couple of things. In terms of going forward, you're going to be translating this vision into land development code and zoning language. How are you going to partner with the housing commission, the EDC on implementing some of these visions? And what do you see is that partnership going forward? I can speak to that. I mean, well, I can start to speak to that. I can picture that we will, we can bring the general sort of broad concepts to these boards and commissions for input on a really high level, craft it into the language and then bring that language back to them and get feedback from them about whether or not they think this is actually meeting the goals as set forth by the commission or the board. And that sort of back and forth, I think, is will be really useful for us before we bring things to the planning commission. And then, of course, we'll get feedback. I think we'll get feedback from a lot of different venues. And I think just sort of crafting that process for feedback will be really important. And one thing I'll add is that a lot of these boards and commissions have expressed a lot of interest in doing more collaboration with each other and meeting jointly to talk about the issues where they overlap. So there's already conversations already happening and some rough plans are in the works to get those folks in the same room virtually for now to talk about some of these issues and sort of lay out some priorities. And I think for the planning commission, I don't want to speak for them, but they'd like to invite all of those folks to participate in their process as well as think about how they can be helpful to their other boards and committees goals. Absolutely. I think just to remember as well, this is not a new concept. Anytime we've done zoning subdivision, town plan, we've always reached out to the other commissions. They haven't necessarily had this level of a document in order for them to work off from. So that's a little bit of a concept, but we have quite religiously or faithfully reached out to zoning, to economic development and the other commissions energy as well to get feedback on town plan changes, zoning subdivision. So I see this more as a continuance of past practice, but working off from a document that we hadn't had before is what our hope is. That's what our goal. I think all of those committees and commissions you mentioned, Dustin, will all benefit from the development of this plan. And in fact, the EDC in particular, it would be useful for them to get a, for lack of a better phrase, a marketing piece that is based on this vision that they can go out to potential businesses and say, look what we're planning to do in this neighborhood. Don't you wanna be here? Don't you want your business to be here? I'm sure they're gonna wanna work with you on that kind of thing. I think even from a granular perspective on the energy, we've had a lot of discussions on various developments about how we can make things more energy efficient and what can we do for this. And again, having a good goal-minded vision, we can get projections from the Energy Committee about what type of electric vehicle stations are required. Or what I mean, right now it's a sort of a, I don't know how they chose which ones we got, but anyways, there's a lot of opportunities for everybody to engage on this. Yeah. And it's something that everyone can own because it's not prescriptive. Yes, definitely. So I attended a meeting recently with Pat Murray. We attended a school district meeting, EWSD board. And it was just a joint meeting for the select board and the EWSD board to just have a conversation. And some of the members asked me about projected growth in terms of housing and what that might mean for a future student population. And so I'm wondering if you have any forecasting built in there or planning to do any based on what the town plan could hold. I know it's not, if that's progressed, not using the right words. I know that's future growth and you can't really predict it accurately, but the school district is interested in learning what the town's vision might bring in terms of future students. It's a great question to ask. And I think in terms of predicting growth, as you say, it's difficult, but as planners, we do try to do that. We often draw our growth projections for the town plan from the Chippin County Regional Planning Commission, which hires a group to make those growth projections based on sort of what we've seen and what market forces might be out there. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but essentially we're still looking at sustained growth within Chippin County over the long term and that roughly the pace that it has been. So we'll continue to see what we've been seeing, but another trend that may emerge is that household size is going down. So rather than the larger household where you've got maybe one or two parents and several kids, you might have fewer kids or folks not having kids. So that might affect how the schools play a look at their future, but really it's hard to tell and we're sort of keeping our finger on the pulse with that as things move forward. But I'd also direct you to the housing needs assessment that tries to look at that in another context as well, because we're also looking at some demographic shifts both in terms of aging population as well as changing socioeconomic and racial profiles as well. I was going to underscore the same points that Darren just made. There's a cultural shift in demographics and what a household looks like today that's different from what was projected in 1991. We might get some sense also from not only the CCRPC but from developers who kind of keep their finger on the pulse of what's being developed and what the demand actually is in the marketplace. And so I think some of these things will figure out going forward but it's certainly worth keeping in mind. But again, allowing people the flexibility to live in a place and not own a car or live in a place where their kids can walk to school because there are paths and sidewalks, you know, that all makes a difference and who will choose to live here. Yes, yes it will. Sharon. I just wanted to point out that the Planning Commission tracks our number of bedrooms with a phasing policy that's something we could share with the school district yearly as we do with the Planning Commission usually in the month of January. And that phasing policy, we haven't hit our target for many, many years which shows it is on the downside as everyone's saying. So we also have something in our regulations that I think it's 10 units that we have to notify the school district of that development that comes forward. So that will help them maybe in the moment not so much for projection but thank you. Those are things I didn't know. Thank you Sharon. And I'm not sure that the school district, that the board and its current configuration is aware of that. That's great. I just have one or two other. All right, when you're done, we'll open it up to the public. Okay. Right now you guys are, you guys have the chalkboard. In terms of additional projections and that kind of thing. Does the plan or does the Planning Commission have any ideas about data collection about our community in terms of development that we could create or could become part of the vision of creating some kind of dashboard that just shares with the public based on metrics about what's happening in the community development wise, like simple pieces of information like mileage of roads and types of roads but also single family homes, apartments, warehouses, like just providing like a snapshot of what development looks like in our community at any given time. So that folks have some sense of, they could just come to our website and look this stuff up. Has there ever been talk about doing some kind of dashboard for transparency's sake to show folks what's going on in the community? No, Daren, Nuiso, you guys might or Sharon, you might have heard more but I'm not sure if we've had a specific request like that. It's a very, it's a good idea and it shouldn't be too challenging to work on providing that. So it's an updated document. It doesn't have a whole lot of value if something is static and doesn't get updated on a regular basis but I would think that would be something we could adapt to pretty well. Daren, you could just nod at this point. You'd want to show trends also. Yeah, so we do have, we've started to try to make some of the data tracking that we do less in the paper oriented sphere and more on an electronic format. So we do have our annual report in the town report which talks about the number of permits that were issued, the number of major developments and what those involve but that's a fairly static point in time and that's only in that print format which you can find online but you have to wade through a lot of information to get there. So we can definitely try to put that information out more visibly to the community about here's what's going on in your town and what's changing and how. Yeah, I think people are interested in just having a snapshot. Even if it is like a once a year update doesn't know, I say the word dashboard that implies that it's always moving which is not how fast development happens but I think people are interested in being able to find that information out. So, and the last thing I wanted to ask about was just in general for the, especially for the sake of the folks in the audience can you talk about the vision specifically for residential density around the Essex Experience area? Can you talk about things like what you expect might go there? What are potential building heights that might happen there and what are some potential challenges to, and we know that there's water capacity issues in that area. So can you just briefly talk about what we can expect to see over the next five to 10 years in that region? Darren, you want to wing that? Sure, I'll give it a shot. I would love to have others chime in as well. So, and before you get in too much lane those are all valid questions and so forth but quite frankly I think we want to remember that that those would be details that even though it's a potential could getting into what buildings are going to go in and so forth that comes when we start getting into the zoning and subdivision. So I think if we go back and I'll be quiet in a second Darren and talk about the plan, start setting the stages of really for more of continuity within the area. Some of the building designs it's to give developers tools to come in the door. John could speak to that. John Alden could speak to that clearly because it a lot of input and validation or validated input on that. But I think we want it to try to avoid saying there will be X story buildings here or there will be nothing. That's what we start getting into trouble with. That's what we started. That's what we work to take out of the original draft of the document. So now I'm going to turn it over to John and then to Darren, how's that? However, the vision does include targets for the mix of how many total square feet, how many units, what's the balance between commercial and housing and other things. So it would be important to recognize that. And I think those are real metrics that could be tracked. You could say, well, our total vision for this area this neighborhood was such and such square feet in the plan and we're at a quarter of that now or we're at a half of that now. And we can track our progress as the community builds itself out. And why don't we take a look at the, what is that, the mixed development north or south or something, what's the Essex experience in the south neighborhood? Next to south. Darren, you're up now. This time, I won't interrupt you. Sure. Go feel free if you need to. Were you finished, John? Yeah, I'm finished, sorry. Okay, great. So to answer Elaine's question, as Dusty said, we can't necessarily predict exactly what will happen. And really our job as planners and administrators in the town is to enables the right things to happen. And we can't tell a developer you must build. I mean, we theoretically could but we don't like to be in the business and telling them exactly how to make their developments feasible. So we're enabling new residential growth in these areas. And we would love to see that because we think that makes for the vibrant environment that we're looking to create. It's up to the developer exactly how they want to achieve that. And we hope they'll do it within the parameters that we've laid out. So, but another thing I've seen is, particularly with the outlets and Peter Edelman, he's looking to do a different approach to the commercial side of things and really focusing on that and trying to make sure that that's set. And maybe in the future, there could be residential. But either way, we're looking to have the controls and guidance in place to make sure that whatever does go in there, whatever scale it ends up being is a livable place that people want to be in and that provides all their needs. So yeah, and in terms of infrastructure, we absolutely will be working with developers on some of those details. A lot of, and I don't want to put Dennis on the spot, but I know he's here, he could probably talk more to that better than I could. But there are plans to look at sewer infrastructure and water infrastructure to enable higher buildings that would be limited by water pressure right now because of the current infrastructure we have. And that's an investment that the town can make and that's already budgeted for in a sense or at least we have the funding available. And it's those sorts of actions that the town can put forth and say, we're gonna meet you here and do what we can to enable this. And it's up to you to sort of work with us on how that actually gets done. And you mentioned grants earlier, Elaine. We have, we're working jointly with Public Works on a grant that for money to study the Route 15 corridor and think about what upgrades can or should be made. Awesome. Thank you all. That was one of the reasons I asked that question was sort of to get that from you, that I knew people were thinking about that kind of like what's gonna go there and how many people hear and how tall are those buildings gonna be? And this is not the document that's gonna really say that. But nonetheless, we all think it. And so I just wanted to give you all an opportunity to emphasize that that comes down the road. Nonetheless, I can't help thinking about it. So I figured I asked. This empowers us to have the discussion in a better way. And I think, Darren touched on it, you touched on it. We're gonna be looking to collaborate, collaborate, good word, very closely with Dennis and Public Works for all of these, you know, the infrastructure. I mean, we can say what we want and then we're gonna be trying to find out what there can be and what would it take to get to what we want. And that'll all facilitate discussions with developers and Public Works. So again, it's a vision and it's gonna help us drive, it's gonna help drive us to the next few decades of development. Yes, and we do really realize what a resource we have in our Public Works department. Oh my goodness, yes. Oh, we're really fortunate. Yeah, absolutely. Well, oh, yeah. No, I was just gonna say, I was gonna, if your folks don't have any additional questions, I would like to open this up for a few moments to the public. And if you're agreeable with that, then I'll look to the commission to give me a motion to open a public hearing. And even though it's not a true public hearing, but let's do it that way. So move. Second, move by Shoe, seconded by Tom, all those in favor of opening a public hearing. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Carry seven zero. Folks in the audience, we have a few minutes. I'd love to hear questions or comments and you again, use the hand raising feature and they're all going up. So I see Patty, Bob, Lorraine, and then Annie. That's the order that we're gonna go. So Patty. Yes. Jeff Carr is a good resource person to talk to and follows the economic economists trend being economists of the state of Vermont when it comes to the data that Elaine is looking for. But on another note, I think- That's Patty Duke, I think. Hi. Well, anyway, I just wanted to say, Dennis, that- That's my brother. Oh yeah. I just wanted to say that because millennials are worth like $1 trillion and what they're attracted to, if we could tap into that, because there's so many older folks in the 35% or something in the town outside the village at this point in time, they're gonna carry us and they're gonna demand not using a car as much like Alviso said, they wanna walk and bike and all that, but they wanna use their apps and they're not interested in the product that they can buy at the ETC. They're interested in what the service the product provides. That's the difference. And if we build and they're gonna tell you, I don't mean to just say this demographic, but if we attract them, my daughter's one of the millennials, she works at Dealer, and this is what they're telling her, a dealer between 20 and 35 years old, they wanna live in a biodiverse, green, alternative transportation environment where their social values are valued. Okay. And that's all I wanna say. Thank you. Bob, you were next. Yes. Oh, there he is, okay. Hi, just a little background about myself, I'm a civil engineer, so this plan drew my attention and I live on London Dairy Lane. I've owned my house here with my wife for 10 years, so I have quite a bit of experience getting around this area. And I think the plan was, yeah, well done. And I guess from my perspective, what I would like to see is the bike pad stuff prioritized here over, really over, in my opinion, this area is already pretty dense. I don't think adding additional housing is really a problem, but there's a lot of people that live in this area and getting around is really pretty clunky. I have a young son and going for bike rides with him is honestly scary anywhere near Route 15 at the end of our road or trying to cross that and get through some of these areas. So one question I had that caught my attention is extending the old rail bed, which would be awesome if that could be done. And probably relatively easy since the assuming most of the infrastructure is still there. But just curious, has that been vetted at all? Does the town have any rights to that or is that all private property that would take years to acquire easements or right away to make that happen? Just curious. Darren or Sharon, do you have any familiarity with that? I'm not immediately grasping before that is. Well, it's right where it crosses at the end of Seabrook. So there's the rail trail that goes from Essex Way to Route 15, which, you know, just ends. And this plan shows continuing that rail bed out behind Price Chopper and then crossing Towers Road and then connecting back over to 128. So I just don't know if that's the total wish or if there's actually some way to make that happen in the near future. So I can speak to that, Dusty. Unless Sharon, did you want to go? No, go ahead. So it's shown as a concept on the plan and some of the maps that are in the end of each chapter as it would be great if we could make this off-road connection outside of Route 15. And it does follow the old rail bed sort of runs, like you said, from the other side of Seabrook Road out to tour behind Price Chopper and over to the old railroad station and beyond around to the elementary school. It is not something that we own any rates or easements to at this point. It is something that would allow us to maybe have a conversation with the developer and say, hey, this is in our plan as a thing we'd love to see. Can we make that happen? Whether it's in pieces or as a whole unit, we can maybe apply for some grants to scope that out and figure out what it would cost and whether we could work with the landowners to make that happen. So we can't promise that it will but it's highlighted as a possibility just like the rest of the document. It's a vision. It's something we want to try and work towards and we'll see where we can get with it. And the fact that it's noted in the plan means that we can actually use that. We can use the plan as a solid basis for grant funding for something like that. So just literally even just mentioning it in the plan gives it a lot of status. Okay, yeah, thank you. I think that would be really great for a lot of people I think and would be something that would probably take years to get right away or purchase land for that. But I think from living here for 10 years I do think biking and walking around this part of town is very challenging and hopefully could become a priority. But thank you. Thank you very much. Next was Lorraine. Can you hear me? Yes. Hopefully there's no feedback. Hi, I was just curious about I love the plan. I think it's great. So good job. I was just curious if there was discussion in the vision to include health equity for people who are gonna live along Route 15. I do live on Route 15 right now. And one of the major issues for us is the pollution as well as light and the sound that the noise has been getting worse and worse. And so I was wondering if that was something that was discussed as part of this vision. I think it was discussed. Oh, sorry, go ahead. No, please, please jump in. I was gonna say that I think that it was discussed in the context of giving people alternative routes. I mean, it clearly doesn't address whether you live there, although you bring up a point like that means that when we talk about development, future residential development along Route 15, that we can make developers think about what additional safeguards they might include in their development to protect future residents again, which doesn't help you, but we did think about how we might form, we might create alternative routes and other ways for people to move around that at least would get you off of 15. I mean, it's clearly a main corridor, but I guess I just, I will thank you for the question because it is something that we can think about further and figure out ways to make it. Yeah, you mentioned you brought up sound and quite frankly, I would actually have to kick this over to Elaine because sound has been brought up before sound in order to put sound in any sort of a regulation or zoning, you need to have a sound ordinance. And I know that that's been a topic in the past and it has not been able to effectively been dealt with or addressed both from, I believe, from the enforcement side of things and just regulating it. So I would say that sound as a single entity probably has not been included in this other than mitigation of traffic flow and so forth. So how's that Darren? Is shaking, does that get it right? Yes, I was just gonna chime in and say, as we talked about, a lot of the plan is focused on giving alternatives and not necessarily taking 15 out of the picture and trying to, but trying to make the emphasis on development outside of that context while still connected to it, pulling the center of where we're putting the attention on not being right on 15 and making everything directly connected to that. And that's already in our her in zoning. We recognize it's a state corridor with a lot of traffic and we need to limit the curb cuts and that sort of thing. So sound is definitely something we can look at in terms of screening and landscaping and putting in other site design as well as just when a new development goes in or something redevelops, this will apply to that as well. Being able to think about how it's connected or how it's impacted by route 15. So thank you, Lorraine. Justin, just to touch on your comment about the sound ordinance. We have not had a chance to talk about that at the select board. I do know that Chief Hogue is working on one because the village has one. And so he's working on making one for the entire town but we haven't had a chance to talk about that at the board yet. And once that exists, then we have the potential ability to utilize that in regulations and actual development concerns. Annie Cooper was next. Hi, thank you, Dustin. Please tell Dennis hi. I'm such a fan. I'm so excited about this conversation. The level of connectivity happening amongst so many conversations within Essex is just thrilling, especially with the upcoming merger vote. I'm hopeful that the outcome is positive for merger. Aside from or along with that, the Essex Economic Development Commission, which I'm currently the chair of, had a meeting last week that involved a bike discussion about bike path connectivity with the chair of the energy committee, the chair of the bike walk advisory committee and the vice chair of conservation and trails. And I was a little shy to invite you, Dustin, to it because I thought maybe it was maybe too many things happening was eight o'clock in the morning, but now I'm mad at myself for not because I think that larger conversation has so much value in relation to both what Patty Davis was saying and that Lorraine was saying that younger people and for health reasons and for so many reasons, establishing connectivity within our entire town has so much value for biking and walking and transportation that doesn't involve vehicles. And so I'm so excited about the work that you're doing and it's so hopeful and so positive, especially as we ride our way out to the other end of this pandemic. And I'm just really wanting to express my gratitude to your commission for your hard work and that you're inviting us here to speak about it. And I just wanna let you know that if I can be of any help in any way, I would like to do so as a resident and as a member of the economic development commission and as a member of the bike walk advisory committee. Also to the sound ordinance idea, yes, I was at the trustee meeting and they were talking about that too. And the connectivity is beautiful and I can't be any more excited about the future of Essex. Thank you all so much. Thank you. John Egan, you're next. Great, can you hear me okay? Yes. Oh, good, good. Well, I appreciate Dustin for this opportunity to speak even though I think you mentioned it wasn't an open hearing. But I'm a little disappointed when we talked about 10, 20, 30 years out. So it means like guys like me and maybe half the people here won't be involved or appreciating or enjoying the plan. So, you know, I'd love for it to move a little bit quicker from the vision to the implementation. The another comment I wanted to make was like, you know, when I drive into a new ski and see those high rise buildings on the left and the right and I say, wow, this is already a high density area and they're moving in all these people into this congested area. And where's the parking going to be? Where's all the traffic going to be? And just doesn't seem to make too much sense. Maybe it does for developers, you know, and for the town plan that might say, let's do high density and different levels of rental ability. But it doesn't seem to make sense I think for aesthetics as well as the, it's too congested. It's almost a little bit like down at the five corners, let's put off a high rise building down there where five corners is already crazy for traffic. So I hope we don't get into any of that around this plan. Thank you. Thank you. In the line, I'm going to go to Sharon Zuckowski next and then Patty you'll be after that. Sharon, your hand is up and your mute is on. Sorry about that blind and deaf. I was looking at the key elements of the vision and I'm a little concerned that to me it seems like one of the main goals is to increase residential density and to provide critical mass as if that's a given that we just have to have that. And my biggest worry is we have really limited sewer capacity, a lot of traffic, water pressure is really going down with each development that goes in. And I see on page 11, it says something about redistribution of capacity within the existing sewer core will be needed as if that would add to the capacity. Because as you probably know, we really don't have enough capacity for the whole sewer core because we did a study in 2004 and parts of the sewer core were never meant to have sewer because they're sandy. So I'm just worried that we're striving for these goals and we might not have enough sewer capacity for the people that are here. We're going to have too much traffic, not enough water pressure. And one other thing, the two to five story buildings that were mentioned, I know that zoning, but if you have that in the plan, if a developer comes in and wants a five story building, he has this to rely on if he appeals a decision that you only want three or five. It's an added, I mean, I hope we stick to four stories. And that's all for me. Thank you, Sharon. I think your comments about the sewer and the water and so forth, those are the restrictions, limitations, concerns about the current capacity and so forth. They've been there from the beginning and we've engaged with Public Works right pretty much from the beginning of this process. Right. So it's, our heads aren't buried in the sand so to speak. Oh, good. While I have you, can I ask you another? Gotcha. Please change your mind on this. Conservation committee, if they changed to a commission, they would not add an extra layer to the PC. They still are advisory, but they could apply for their own grants without making the select board work and going and having to wait two months to get an okay for the select board and make the select board do the work, plus commissions get more grants from the state than does a committee. So I never talked about this before. I think Sharon, that might, if you want to bring that to the select board who would make those calls, that would maybe stick around for the next meeting. Well, I was just saying that because we're talking about, oh, great. This plan is so great because you can get grants with it. You can get grants with the commission too. Okay, fair enough. I'll let you go. Thank you. Let's see, Patty, you hit your hand up again. Yes, I just wanted to comment on a lot of what a lot of people just said. First and foremost, Dustin, I get you and Dennis because I talked to Dennis Lutz so much and I read everything that he writes. Dennis Lutz is very knowledgeable with the whole sewer core thing and any question you have, he's great. We are so lucky to have him just as a resource, just if you have more questions about sewer core. But Dustin and I wanted to mention that the few things you talked about, let's see, John E was talking about, oh, I know, traffic calming. So also Dennis Lutz knows a lot about and is looking into and it won't be 30 years down the road because we're already demanding traffic calming on route 15, which would help mitigate the noise issues, help mitigate the alternative transportation issues and the green space. And also the public realm between the route 15 and the buildings that we're gonna build. And the other thing I wanted to comment on was somebody else's question about building height and sitting through three and a half years of all the planning commission meetings, which I loved, the lower areas of the planning commission of our area in Essex town will have higher buildings. No building will ever block Mount Mansfield or Camels hump again, never. Because our planning commission is gonna put in their regulations. This is what we want. This is how many lanes we want in this bank. This is the kind of architecture we want. And if they don't want it and they wanna do just boulders and no green space and seven stories high, the planning commission is gonna say no, that's what's so great about them. Let's see, there was one other thing that somebody was mentioning about the railroad bed. So again, when we're talking about wetlands and the biodiversity stuff, that's what I'm really into by looking at wetlands and our native plants, animals, fungi, microorganisms, everything we've got. We don't wanna be damming up our natural streams, which will affect our habitat because we need them to continue to thrive. That is one of our main goals with this ETC plant. So nothing will be built to block our views anywhere. Nothing will ruin our wetlands because we will build above them even if we don't have to, even if we don't build basements, it's gonna be up to the planning commission zoning and regulations and they have the ball and they have it right on the money. Thank you. That's my two cents. Okay, let's move on. I'm gonna just to let folks know, John and Sharon, your hands are both raised. If you have more questions, I'll come back to you. But if you're not, if you could just click your hands down. We're gonna wrap this up in a few minutes and turn this over to the select board. I see Tracy still has her hand raised. So Tracy, you're up. Yeah, thank you. To echo other comments, the focus on connectivity and multimodal transportation is really great to see. Placemaking is such an important aspect of connecting people to their community and it's part of what keeps people here. So thank you again. I'm very excited to see this vision be codified into the regulations. That's where the community, the planning commission, the committees really get to dive into those details of exactly what we want, where we want it and ultimately how we achieve it. So just kudos to staff, the planning commission and everyone involved, really great work. Thank you. Let's see, John, your hands raised. Did you have another comment you wanted to add to us? John Egan? Okay. Bob, go ahead. Yeah, just one follow up to what was just mentioned. Again, I was talking about the existing rail bed. I think that provides a great opportunity to not make any further impacts to wetlands because it's already impacted, right? So a railroad existed there and for the most part is still intact from what I've seen. So I think that's a good opportunity to use land that has already been impacted and likely has the infrastructure in place. So I'm not sure how utilizing existing land like that would be a negative thing. So anyway, just wanted to share my opinion on that. Thank you. Thank you very much. I wanted to just sort of throw out to folks that anytime we start doing regulation changes and so forth, those are all public hearings. So I would encourage folks who are interested to attend the planning commission meetings when we start doing zoning and subdivision regulation workshops and so forth. So that's where a lot of the actual changes are going to take place and that's where we need your input there as well. I don't see any other hands raised at this point. So Elaine, do you have any final questions or any of the select board members of anything else they want to push to us at this moment? Hearing none. Elaine's on mute. Elaine's on mute. That's a good way to keep getting questions. Sorry about that. I do not have further questions. Pat needs to depart. He's actually at work. So unless Dawn and Vince have other questions or comments, I think we're good. Okay. Thank you. With that, planning commissioners, we're now at a point where we can close our meeting and go have dinner and we'll turn this over to the select board. So I would look for a motion from the planning commission to close our meeting. Do you have to close the public hearing first? Yes. Thank you, Tom. Keep in track of the point. I'll second it. Moved by Tom, seconded by Shu. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Public hearing is closed. Now we'll take a motion to close the planning commission meeting. So moved. Moved by Josh. Second. Seconded by Tom. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Planning commission meeting is over. Elaine, the gavel is yours. We're going to sign off now. Dustin, thank you. Thank you all planning commissioners. Have a great evening. Thanks for your hard work. Thank you, Darren, Oviso, and Sharon. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Good night, everyone. Thank you. Thank you for meeting adjourned at seven to eight. Thanks. And Greg, real quick, we've stopped our recording. So if you want to pick up for the rest of the select board, that would be a good time. We'll do. And the select board's going to wrap up. We have an executive session. They're going to have to potentially come back in here to wrap up their business. So if we could just make sure that this heating stage is open there, that'd be great. Yep, I'll leave you in control. Awesome, thank you. No problem. Thanks, Darren. All right, that was excellent. Thank you, Greg, and Evan, for facilitating that for us so that we could join the planning commission for this discussion. Thank you. You're welcome. And yeah, thanks to the PC for inviting us to work. Yeah, we're very lucky. They're a great group. So we're going to pick up right where we left off. We approved the agenda. So now we will move into public to be heard on items that are not on the agenda. If anyone wishes to speak to the board on items that are not on the agenda, now is the time. I'm not seeing any hands. So we will move on to business item 5A, excuse me, 5B discussion of a public. Do you want to have, Greg, I'm sorry, agenda question. Do you want us to move down to the consent agenda and do that first before we go into the executive session? That's usually what we do. Yes, the next two business items are recommended for executive session. Okay, thanks. Sorry for the brief pause there. So we do have an executive session to go into, but before we do that, we will move on to our consent agenda. Would anybody like to move to approve the consent agenda? Madam Chair, can I ask a question first? Absolutely. Do we need to take any action on this ETC plan tonight? So they can move forward. It is not on the agenda for us to approve tonight, but Greg, do we do a formal approval? I believe that is the case. You will be asked to approve it. The plan is to bring it to the select board at your meeting on March 15th for approval. Thank you. Consideration of approval. All right. I make the motion we accept the consent agenda as presented. Thank you, John. Vince, would you like to second since it's just us three? Sure, I guess so. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. And the reading file, any comments or other items? Okay. Oh, Evan? Just a reminder that town meeting Monday is informational only, it's virtual. Greg, I'm gonna ask you to maybe give a little update on the virtual part since it's a little in flux. Sure, it's been a work in progress as we figure out the technology to host potentially hundreds of people. So we're going to be using Zoom as of about four hours ago, we made that decision. The select board, it was invited to do a little training session tomorrow, just to run through to make sure they're comfortable with the technology. Unfortunately, the teams that we've been using has a limit of 250 people and wanted to play it safe. We want to quite possibly expect more than that. So there's an option through Teams called Teams Live, that's up to 1,000 people, but it was proving a little bit difficult for us to get a grasp on the technology. So we have a Zoom account, we'll be doing Zoom. We'll update the warnings accordingly, no change to the agenda or the materials on the agenda, just an update to the links. We will still have the Teams link that was warned up and ready and we'll have somebody there who can direct any phone calls or help people out who might still go to that link for any reason, but we will be using Teams. So we started at 7.30, always good to be there a few minutes early. Sadly, we do not have a community dinner this year. So make your own meal. I think pasta was on the menu the past few years. So anybody who wants to keep up that tradition, a little bit of pasta, some roasted vegetables, bread, and maybe some cookies I think was typically good. Beyond that, you should be ready. Chocolate milk, yeah, can't forget the chocolate milk at high school. So hopefully people can still attend. Should be some good discussion, just a reminder to everybody. It is simply an informational town meeting this year. There'll be discussion, presentations will be similar in that sense to normal town meeting, but all voting is happening by Australian ballot. All residents should have received a ballot in the mail, which needs to be either delivered back to town offices by March 1st, Monday, or you can vote in person at your polling location on March 2nd. And Evan or Greg, do you want to share the good news about our guest? I'll be happy to do that. We were contacted this week that congressman Welch would like to join us. He's asked for 10 to 15 minutes to give an update of what's going on in Washington, DC, and we'll take a couple. And I'm told literally one or two questions. So when I say a couple, that's what I believe he means from the audience. So I don't know the last time you guys had a congressman at your annual meeting, but there you have it. So we are working in this virtual world of doing town meeting virtually. So it is again, an informational meeting. The voting is Tuesday. And I just thought we'd use this opportunity to get that word out again. So thank you. Thanks, Evan. Well, if there aren't any further comments from the board or about the reading file, we'll get ready to go into executive session. I have a question for you, Greg. There are two motions in the packet. One is for evaluation of a public official and one is for employment of a public official. Which one would you like us to make? Both. I believe going in to discuss employment of a public official. That's the item 5C that we added to ratify a decision that was made last year. As far as extending the manager's contracts. And the second one is to discuss the evaluation of a public official. So it actually happens that they both happen to be the same statute, one VSA, section 313A3, but to be safe since there's two items and they're slightly different, I would make both motions. Okay, thank you for that. And it says to include the HR director. And I know that Travis is not present at the meeting, but he is on call in case we need him. So he, I have his phone and I'll text him if we need to bring him in. So. I'm not part of the motion. So I certainly would not stay in executive session, but if you want me there for the first couple minutes, just to show you the materials and make sure you have them all. I'm happy to do that and then head off. But that's up to you if you want me there or not. Or you can just add me to the motion and make it, make it simpler that way too. If I'm wanting. You're always wanting Greg. And then one last thing, make sure you please forward me the motions for the records. Yup. And the times. And I wish you a lovely evening. Thank you, Evan. All right. Here, Annie Cooper has her hand up on my screen. Is that ongoing or? Yes, I'm gonna get to that, Dawn, actually. Yeah. So unless everybody has, thank you. Unless anybody has any other comments about the reading file or the comments in general, I'll open it back up, Annie. Did you have a comment? I did. Thank you so much. I know it's not normal to be saying something at this stage of the meeting. I have three questions though, please, Elaine. One is, may we just start telling the public about the Zoom for Monday? Yes. And then two, confirm please that the entire meeting is going to be live on town TV's YouTube channel regardless of whether you can go to Zoom or not. Yes. And then thirdly, will there be a phone number next to any one person so that anyone that's watching the YouTube channel that had a question during the informational town meeting could phone and be capable to speak to a staff member to communicate that into the meeting? We will have a call in information for the Zoom meeting so people can call in directly into the meeting. Okay. So then if they don't have Zoom, please forgive the back and forth, Elaine, if I may. If they don't have Zoom, they can do the call in and the caller ID number to transport themselves into the Zoom via their phone as though they were on a phone call and then they will be in the meeting and they could also watch it if they choose on YouTube. Yes. But there will be a delay. Knowing that there's a delay. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Thank you so much for all this information and thanks for working so hard. Thank you. That's fine, thanks. Okay, so we have two motions to make Vence and Dawn. Do you, do either of you have both of the motions in front of you? I have no motion in front of me. I have neither one. Okay. If you put them up on the screen, you should be able to see them if you momentarily, if you can't already. Okay. Yeah. Why don't we just do them right from the screen? Dawn, would you like to make the motions? I'm looking for them, Elaine. Oh, it's on. Are you? I've got one, I've got one I can see. I move the select board, enter the executive session to discuss the evaluation of a public official in accordance with one VSA section 313A3 to include the HR director. That's the only one I have showing. Okay. I'll bring up the next one after this. And can, Dawn, can you add Greg to that? And Greg. Seconded. Down manager. Vince is seconded in. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. And now the next one. I still have nothing. Oh, wait. I can do it if you want, Dawn. Go ahead, Vince. I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss the employment of a public employee in accordance with one VSA section 313A3 to include the HR director and possibly the assistant tone manager. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. So we will enter executive session at 8.13 p.m. So we're gonna hop over to the other link. Dawn, did you receive the other link? Is it on? No, I did not. Okay. If you would like to send it to me, that would be great. I will forward it to you, Dawn. Okay. And then we're gonna come back to this meeting to do our business. Correct. Okay. It was Dawn moved and Vince seconded. Cool. Go ahead. So Greg, if you'll put that motion up on the screen, we will take care of that and then we'll be done. All right, I'll take a crack at it. Thank you. I move that the select board ratifies and reaffirms the decision made in executive session to extend the contract of the unified manager, Evan Teach, with the town of Essex and the village of Essex Junction from February 26, 2021 to February 25, 2022 to authorize a $3,000 bonus to be paid on February 6, 2020 to authorize a 3% pay increase effect on February 26, 2020 and to amend the language in section 3E of the unified manager's contract to require 180 days, six months notice of non-renewal made at the joint meeting of the town of Essex Select Board in the village of Essex Junction Board of Trustees on February 3rd, 2020. Second. Thank you, Vince. Thank you, Dawn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Thank you. And hopefully Greg, this will set Travis's mind at ease. I believe so. Thank you. Thank you for, please thank him for us for catching that oversight and helping us repair it. And we are ratifying, there's a question from the audience. We are ratifying the contract that was approved last year. That's why it says 2020. So any further discussion, without any further discussion, we will adjourn. Can I take a motion to adjourn? So moved. All right, I'll take you both as a motion and a second. Sorry, Dawn can have it. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay, thank you both very much. Thank you, Greg. And we'll see you next time at town meeting on Monday, March 1st. Now we should say tomorrow if you're gonna practice. Well, that's right. We're gonna practice hard tomorrow. All right, thanks so much, everyone.