 All right, I'd call the select board meeting for April 17th, 2023 to order for the town of Essex. First thing on the agenda is are there any attention additions or changes from staff? None from staff. None from staff? Any from board members? I'd like to change 70 to 60 to allow for public comment and discussion. 70 to 60, so we've already approved that, and this would be our plan to, or I expect they should just adopt it, so do you want to move that up and have a discussion? Just to add a lot of discussion and public comment. Okay. Just because we changed some things, we don't have a chance to stay tonight. I don't know if there's any people. Great. Do you want to click the okay on that so people are not covered up for it? No. Sorry. Any other requested changes? Okay. I will make the motion that we amend the agenda to move Consent Item 7E up to the business item, make it 6E. Thank you, Ethan. Is there any further discussion? All those in favor of amending the agenda, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Say nay. Okay. Motion passes 5-0. We will open that, we'll have a discussion about that at the appropriate time. Okay. Moving on to public to be heard, public to be heard is a time on the agenda when attendees can address the select board on town business that is not on the agenda. If you'd like to speak during public to be heard, you can either raise your hand in the room or use the raise hand feature in the Zoom application to find the raise hand button. If you click, if you move your cursor to the bottom of your screen and click on reactions, it will offer you the button that says raise hand. If you raise your hand, then I will recognize you and allow you to speak. If you don't have access to that button, I'll give you an opportunity to speak as well after others have spoken. So I am not seeing, I do see a hand in the room, come on up, introduce yourself and have your say. Hello. My name is Ken Signorello. Just want to remind folks on your driving home tonight, tonight is probably going to be a peak migration night for salamanders and amphibians. So put your, especially on dirt roads and neighboring wetlands, put your high beams on, watch for the little glimmer, drive a little slower than you might otherwise, and give the little guys a chance to make it across. Great night to maybe catch a spot, a yellow spotted salamander, which would be kind of a fun thing to do. But just watch out for that on your driving home tonight. That's all. Thanks, Ken. Okay. Betsy Dunn. Oh, great. Oh, you can hear me. Hi. Thank you. I just want to notify you that the Conservation and Trails Committee has been awarded for the Essex Town Tree USA status. So just want to let you all know that in the public. No. Thank you. Thank you, Betsy. And Patty Davis. Yes. I just wondered if you all have a pen. If you could jot this down. A couple on HGTV, their millennials that I follow. It's a, it's Channel 768. This coming Sunday, a town was picked. In Colorado with 11,000 people, they, they picked this town and they are traveling around the country to redo and to revitalize towns. And anyway, it's called hometown takeover. It's this Sunday at 8 p.m. on Channel 768 HGTV. They inspired us so much, this young millennial couple. We remodeled our entire house because I was so hooked on this show. So I wanted to share it with you because if, if you guys are ever interested, I would be more than happy to enter Essex. And they, they, they do a drawing and they pick a town. And the next group they're going to pick, they were, they're going to try to pick someone from the Northeast, a town about that size. So wouldn't that be cool to have free money, huh? Anyway. Food for thought. Thank you. Thank you, Patty. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak? Betsy, is your hand back up or is that a. Yes, it is. I forgot to add another thing. That we've also got a greening school application grant that we received. And that means a tree will be planted for Arbor Day. And so we will have, um, this will happen on May 16th. We don't have a time yet. And Chuck vile, who is our, um, town, um, tree warden, will do a little bit of education for the kids. And we'll do a little bit of, um, the tree will be planted at the elementary school. Thank you. Sorry. Thank you, Betsy. Anyone else. I don't see any other hands. I'm not hearing anyone else speak. Um, So let's move on to, uh, business sign five a, which actually is a public hearing. Um, open the public hearing for the fiscal year of 2024 capital budget and for the fiscal year of 2024. Um, open the public hearing for the fiscal year of 2024 capital budget and five year plan. Are there any, uh, comments from the public? Betsy. Yes. Thank you. I'm sorry. So I'm wondering in this, um, five year plan, if you would consider, um, talking with the people that in Pinewood first and seeing if they're amenable to it, but I would really like to see us connect the two sides of Essex. And we could put a bridge in similar to what the, um, South Brillington did, but this is just connect Essex to Essex and go from the lower part of, um, Perry fields behind the middle school and go over to the trails that on the other side of 289 and have a, um, arching, um, bridge, a walking bridge over it, a big bridge is that for, you know, uh, motorcycles or anything like that. So it's for bicycles and people to walk. And the kids on the other side of town can walk over to the school or ride to go to school or ride to go to the, um, play the playground and or the pool. I think we need to think about how to connect them so that they don't have to use the route 15 and way around because that's a lot more dangerous. Thank you. I think our money would be available for that. Thank you. Thank you, Betsy. Any other public comments? I don't see any hands in the room. I'm not seeing any hand, additional hands online. Anyone who doesn't have the ability to raise their hand want to speak. Seeing any, so let's make a motion to close. Move to close. Thank you. Oh, a hand just came up. Okay, Patty. Eddie Davis, your hand is up. I'm sorry. Is it too late? I, you just made a motion and I, I think I was, I'm late. I was just going to mention, um, on to tag team with Betsy that, um, I've already spoken to, um, uh, well known, um, um, another innovator of towns, Jeff spec. He's an architect. And but he, he would cost us $12,000 to get us here. Get him here. But he would be. I've been communicating with him. And, um, if, if that's something like a bridge or whatever, you all want to do. Um, his name is Jeff spec. and want to develop these great ideas like Betsy just said. Thank you. All right, thanks Patty. Any other comments on the capital plan, the capital budget five-year plan? Move to close the public hearing. Thank you, Tracy. Do I have a second? Thank you, Ethan. Further discussion from the select board will actually have a discussion about it after this, I guess. All those in favor of closing the public hearing, please say aye. Aye. Both say nay. Any motion passes five-zero. Public hearing is closed. We move on to the business item six-a, consider approval of fiscal year 2024 capital budget five-year plan. Any select board member comments or questions or reactions to what we heard in the public hearing? I have a bunch, but let the other folks go first. I have nothing. I have a small one, but you start and then you can take a break. I have just a general question that is applicable to the capital budget as well as the budget. Do all of the highway funds stay in the highway department? Even if you have an overage and you don't spend all of them? If it's an operating budget, if they have a surplus at the end of the year, it gets rolled into the overall fund balance. Okay, I want to make a note at this point that you might want to check that because I believe there is a statute that all highway money has to stay with the highway department. Has to either go into a highway account or a highway capital that you can't transfer highway money that you raise through taxes to the general fund. I'm not positive of that, but I would like that checked, please. I can check that. And if you're able to, if you have any research or anything on hand, if you can point us in the right direction, that would be great too. I believe there's a statute in the transportation. Okay, transportation. About highway funds specifically. Continuing along on that, I was given this by Don. Thank you very much. The Public Works Department Management Audit. There's a tremendous amount of information in there. Once again, Dennis, super impressed. We have consistently for years been underfunding our paving and road reconstruction, specifically by his management audit that he does in here. Well, I would like to increase the highway paving capital by 60,000 to get us to the minimum number that Dennis recommends for here that we should be just, that we should be at just to keep even with our required maintenance and replacement of roads. Road team budget. Where do you propose that comes from? I do have a couple of places that you might be able to take it from. I'll get to that after I make my proposal. The other one that is very clear looking at this, again, from Dennis's information, is that stormwater is substantially underfunded. And that one really struck me because those are mandates and requirements that the town will have to spend. Period, we don't have any option to move it from someplace else. You will have to do that spending. Stormwater from 150 to 180. Again, to that number that's specified in the public works department management audit. The other thing that I think we should look at potentially increasing the capital set aside for is the salt shed. Because there's a significant amount of savings both in staff time and effort that you could realize in the short term as well as actual purchasing of the salt that they move because they spend a lot of time now storing salt all over the town to get as much as they can in the summer. So I assume they have to move all that salt back and forth to use it in the winter. So you've got a lot of staff time that the department is doing a lot of extra work that's money. So I would consider increasing that by 20,000. The other thing I was wondering if you could do is the police capital. I find very confusing in the capital budget because it's split between the city and the town. Would there be any way to actually pull all of the police capital out of the capital budget and have it a standalone item kind of like the water and sewer budget so that you could see, you could look and see what the actual cost for the police department both in capital and operating is and split between the city and the town in one place versus having to look at, I think there's only a couple line items in the actual budget for the police department. And then as far as possible shifts go, the dam at Indian Brook. You've been saving a significant amount of money to replace that dam. And there was a dam that needed to be replaced in another town that was going to be a significant cost. And they did a massive grassroots effort of fundraising and grant procurement and donors and everything. And they ended up getting a lot of money from outside of the town to do the dam, to replace the dam. So you've got 170,000 that you're setting aside every year in your capital budget for that dam work at some point in time. I think that you could probably move some of that to highway and stormwater, which are pressing needs coming up in the short term and reduce that potentially. Continuing along the Indian Brook path, you also have 93,000, I believe, that you're putting in there for mill foil. And the state is in the process of evaluating whether that is going to be a program they're going to continue or allow based on the toxic pesticides they used to do that. So you could potentially pull some money out of that 93,000 line item to put it towards highway or stormwater. Sorry, I'm looking at the Indian Brook. I don't see any money going into this year. Balance, the whole thing. I could say I don't see anything going in either. This is estimated to spend the future year 25. The grade, line item. So there's no money. That's future year 25 balance. That's where we're projected to be balanced out for this year. Right, I understand you're going in. There's money there, but we're not putting, like this capital plan doesn't have any money heading towards there. The money that's in that account is just currently in that account. Okay. That account's not a locked account though, right? You could move money out of that account. If there's another priority, yeah. So that would be my suggestion. Move some money out of that account. Forge your yearly expenses that you've had. Did I catch the millfoil, right? No, there's no money there either. No money there either. Just 93,000. 94,000, 303 is the projected balance for future year 25. Yeah. As of six. The other thing I wondered about, said there is a undesignated capital funds available. So you could move some of those towards these lands as well. And again, I only bring this up because Dennis's audit is very clear and his numbers back it up that for years and years, you've been short changing. You've increased the operating budget for paving, but you haven't increased any of the capital spending. So you're really not spending enough. It's very clear. And I would just say that when you drive around Essex and you look at some of the paved roads, it's pretty clear that there, he looks for a 15 to 20 year life. And I bet that some of those are right there. Does that make a difference? Yeah. I would just like to touch on the fact that after the separation, we had, I believe it was, sorry, my mind fails me here, $280,000, right? What we were collecting before the capital tax increase. It would have been 322 or 2%. So we just raised the capital tax. This would be the first year coming that we're going to receive any of that money. So really, and we used un-designated capital to cover the deficit for last year. That was part of the thing that we, you were actually pushing for when we were first. We used fund balance. We transferred fund balance into, into, no, just fund balance. There is no capital. I mean, there's money that's out there that's cap, that designated as capital funds. So that doesn't add to- We used fund balance. Fund balance is this money from the general fund that wasn't spent. We took $200,000 from that and put it into un-designated capital. Cover a deficit we might have if something arose. And we did that to allow for flexibility, perhaps for what? Kendall was talking about, you know, if, and I don't know. I mean, I'm, look, like Greg or Dan comment about the grants that might be associated with any of these things, you know, paving or, you know, stormwater and so forth. And I don't know if that is taken into account with regard to your suggestions about- He says it's possible that you might be able to get some grant money, but the numbers that he has for this are based on to make sure that you have match money for those grants because you have some major projects for stormwater and roads coming up. So that's what he emphasized, was that this was the minimum amount that you should look at budgeting so that you have enough grant money so that you can make a match. Like if you get a $10 million grant, you need a match for that $10 million itself. So I guess I want to comment that we've already approved a capital budget and a five-year plan that didn't include the extra penny. So the recommendation we're getting from staff is where to put that extra penny. So if things that you're talking about are things that we've already approved, you're bringing the, you know- Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's possible this may be redundant and it's possible that it may be covered, but these are the items that are very important that is clear. I mean- We meet his funding goals because he made a good argument in there for years that you haven't been putting enough money in your paving budget for the operating and the capital just to keep up with your rows that need to be paved. I believe he says you need like 630,000 a year just to maintain a status quo, not including any additions or anything. And the town has consistently been down to 500, 550. So his recommendation is that you fund it at least at that level just to maintain because the cost of going like this and the town is doing this. And stormwater is the other one too. There's significant cost coming up for that. And we're underfunded. This is the chance that we have to talk about it is the capital. Your areas of concern are spot on. That's, you know, I don't think anyone's arguing that. I think the challenge is that we do have a finite amount of money and everything on this list is important to some extent. And the longer we delay it, the more expensive it gets in many cases. I think what we did this year, also knowing that we were in a year of transition and coming out of separation with the village, let's take a look at the money that we had and how to best spread it across the board. And there were some things that got cut. There were some things that didn't get funded as much as we would have liked to. Paving and stormwater are, yeah, those are two big ones that are gonna get more expensive the longer we go. I'm just gonna go through the list here. Stormwater paving. The salt shed, we added that in. We put some money in there. Aaron is and Annie are somewhat confident that we can get a grant, or at least cautiously optimistic that we might have some success in getting a grant that will help us with the salt shed funding. So I think that that's okay where it is. If we don't get the grant this year, we put some money up again next year, we try again until we absolutely need to do it and we fund it or we get the grant. I think it's a good idea in the police capital and we can talk about that if the best way to show that, Dan's already started to do some work about how to present the capital budget in a different way, a better way next year. I think that's good positive feedback. The dam at Indianbrook, questions have been answered about what we're funding or not funding this year. We also have that dam study that's coming up pretty soon, which will hopefully give us a better sense of what exactly is needed, how imminent is it, how much money should be setting aside. For right now, this year, no money set aside also would recommend against taking money out of that in case we have an opportunity to leverage that for additional grant funding or somebody comes back, whoever does the study comes back and says, you have to make this a priority because it's a health and safety issue too. As for the undesignated capital, yes, there's some money in there. Yes, we put more money in there from fund balance. That money is available for the things that I think you mentioned. If we get a great opportunity to pursue a grant to leverage some of that money and we get more paving grants than we expected or something like that, that's where that money is there. That's where we can go back and say, let's, staff recommends we take from undesignated or if we really need to, that we take from one line item here, that's in capital where we say, okay, we can really probably push that off for a year or two. Let's take it back to the select board and say that we got to take some of this money to put it towards this really, whether it's an opportunity or an emergency, but some money's there. Overall, the total fund balance that we expect to have at the end of this current fiscal year is just over $3 million. So there's roughly $3 million of capital money that's available. We have a whole bunch of projects. It is, I don't want to say it's completely fluid, but yeah, if something comes up or we absolutely need to make a change or we absolutely need some money, we'll come back to the select board and say, here's why, here's what a recommendation is for where you take from X to put towards Z kind of thing. I hope that answers your questions, but... That does, and I appreciate that greatly, but I will note that based on the history that's in here, I'm sure that this is a conversation that's happened at the board within the last 10 years, possibly every year, in that if the funds aren't designated in here every year, it's easy, not easy, but it's hard to get the money in here when you need it. We're proof sitting here today because you are this short right now. So obviously this conversation has been happened before. So that's why I think you're better off in the long run if you designate the fund specifically for these items, stormwater and highway maintenance, roads. So that it's there, as opposed to if the need arises, trying to find it in the undesignated funds, when undesignated funds could come up for anything, for a building, a forced main replacement, an unexpected capital expense, I would just speak to that. How do you pay for an unexpected amount? You still have money left in your capital. So we also have the 15% unbalance that we can choose to use. And that's what that's for, is for emergency. That's not part of the capital tax. We don't plan for contingency. I know, but... That's why we have that 15% available for emergency situations, like when there was all the flooding from the hurricane Irene, we paid for stuff ourselves and then got reimbursed for it because we had the cash on hand, we don't have to borrow anything. That's an example. I mean, the right thing to do would be to raise the capital tax again next year, if we need to fund it that much. But I mean, until Aaron comes and says that there's six more roads and dire need to repair that aren't being repaired because we can't fund them. I don't, I mean, I'm not saying that there's not roads out there that are bad. No. But our public works record isn't telling us that there's more work that needs to be done that it's not being funded. I would actually say that his audit specifies that clearly, that there's more work that not being done that should be funded. I mean, he specifically says in this document a number of times that the board should really fund this because you're lacking this much year after year after year after year, which of course then you lose because it's 60,000 this year and it's 120 next year, you're way behind. So I'm just looking to stop the fall. I mean, at least start us catching up so that we know that's what we have to say. And if we have to raise the capital tax specifically for this, I mean, you're not going to be able to avoid the stormwater expenses. You can hope for grants and stuff, but he specifies clearly in here that you're gonna need to match money for any grants that you get. You're gonna need money to replace things that may not get grants. And I know that everything on the capital is important, but we have lost ground because we don't have as much funding as we did. So if we need more, I think it's pretty straightforward to ask the voters based on the information that we have on hand, we should be funding what we need, our essential infrastructure. Thank you. Thanks, Kendall. At this point, are we actually able to change the amount that we've? We can't, we, without another vote of the public, we can't change the tax rate. No. What Kendall's suggesting is that we shift money around. Right. But can we do that without another public hearing is what I'm saying. You could, I think it would probably be wise if you're gonna make any significant changes to warrant it again, especially if it's significant changes coming from the board. It's just a question. Go ahead, Ethan, you had questions. I'm just trying to understand better where you wanna take the money from. From undesignated? Yeah, I mean, that's my only question is where, because I mean, if we have 3 million undesignated, then I would suggest that you take the money from that undesignated and increase these two line items. There's only 483,000 and undesignated, 3 million total balance for all of our accounts. Yeah. There's 483,000 dollars of water main break bonus. Next one here for $150,000. Two of them could run us for 300, we could be, you know, but find mold in the fire station. Yeah. Where can the one that date the $60,000 from? But you could reduce that by the 90,000, so that you had 393,000 in your undesignated fund and increase these two line items to the amount specified by the public works. So I wonder if we're getting a little bit tangled up. So we have $3 million in expected total capital fund balance expected for the end of fiscal year 23. Of that money, about 729,000 is projected to be undesignated. Within the confines of the 3%, 483,000, there is no unrestricted money portion in that amount. That's where this sheet comes in, where, you know, we're assigning that 483,000, representing the 3% in the taxpayers. But none of that is considered undesignated. We're assigning it to specific areas of need so that's not, you know, that's not a portion that's undesignated within that area. It's anticipated in the future by the end of fiscal year 23. Obviously, there's still a balance there currently at the end of fiscal 22, that is there, but that's not within the capital tax number per se. So the undesignated shown as designated per se? The undesignated unbalance is a portion of the $3 million balance. I mean, I see your point about the roads, but I'm a little bit more concerned about the fact that there's only $20,000 for your salt shed if I was going to move anything. And again, the salt shed, that wasn't even listed at two cents, even that we put that in the proposal for the three cents with the understanding that we might have an opportunity to get some grant money. We want to put something in there so it's on our capital plan. Right. And then as we go back to dirt roads, if we don't have a salt shed, it's easier to spread on dirt and pavement. I don't know, I think this brings a good point to a good conversation about for yearly planning about capital plan for next year, capital tax for next year. I don't know that there's a lot in my opinion that we can do this year to change. I mean, we made the change when we did our budgeting process. Now, I mean, you brought the point to bring in the two, I think I forget what it was, it was 280,000 roughly from fund balance that we transferred over to meet the 200,000. So we made it to three, or five, yeah, five or 20,000. Is that number listed in here? I mean, there is a column for operating transfers on an annual basis, fiscal year 24. Spreadsheet, I'm looking at doesn't have that because it's a past action, it's assigning fiscal year 22 items essentially. So it kind of, that's more looking backward from where this document. I would just note that the other option that is equally unpopular is you've reserved a certain amount of the fund balance to reduce the tax burden in the upcoming budget is that you could take some of that expected money that you were planning on using and put that into the capital budget to fund these ongoing expenses. I was struck by a quote that said, using one time money for ongoing financial obligations is how you fall off the cliff eventually. And right now I believe that Essex is headed that way if you need to spend this much money to maintain your stormwater and roads and you're only spending this much money and you've been doing it for years. And again, I would like to hear from Aaron as well that if he has, you can rework this and he's comfortable then I'm just bringing it forward because it has been an ongoing thing for years that the select board has consistently underfunded when it's been requested. So I think to respond a little bit to that the select board has not taken money away from any of these. The select board has reacted to recommendations of staff. We haven't said no, we're not gonna fund. I mean, I've been on the board for nine years I never remember anybody saying no, we're not gonna pay, we're not gonna fund paving at the level you're asking for. If we're underfunding is because we've been asked to underfund. I don't think the select board has been, I don't ever recall the select board saying, no, you can't have that capital. We wanna spend it somewhere else. It's always like, this is what we could use but this is what I can get by with. Yeah. And it's also, this is what we can accomplish in a year. And yeah, that often happens right because the paving construction season is through the summer and it's split by a fiscal year. And so, if you don't spend all of your funds that you planned your operating budget you expected to spend before the end of June, that money suddenly gets swept into fund balance and it's no longer available to you unless the select board acts. We have done that for Dennis. He's come several times and said, we weren't able to complete our paving budget. I would like you to designate these funds for paving capital and we have done that. We've taken specific pieces of money that was going to become fund balance and designated it for paving. And so, I fully agree with you that, yeah, Dennis has been saying for years that the whole thing is underfunded but it hasn't been the select board saying pull more money out. It's been, it's recommended, recommendation of staff. I'm not trying to, I hope I'm not throwing you under the bus saying that but. No, no, and I'll respond to that too. And first of all, apologies for not having Aaron here. I frankly wasn't expecting this level of discussion and so I told him to take the night off. But Aaron, Dan, Catherine and I were very involved with putting this capital plan together. All department heads were but the four of us in particular really were the ones who went through, made the recommendations, made the allocations. So Aaron has had a lot of influence and input as to what you're seeing tonight and what you saw with the two cents. As far as how the funding goes and what's there, I think it's kind of a combination of what Andy has said and what Don has said of we try to make do with the amount of money we have, which we consider each year between the operating budget and the operating tax rate and the capital tax. For years we've had two cents on the capital tax rate and that's the money we get. That's a finite fixed amount of money within a few thousand dollars of an estimate each year that's where we assign that. And so we know how that's how much money that is. We know all the capital needs we have. And we have to make those hard decisions and hard recommendations as to where to put that money and where to allocate that money across buildings, stormwater, streets, equipment, on and on and on, IT, everything that's in this list. The other component of it is we present the operating budget and that has a lot of capital transfers in that as well. And we do, we try to present what we need that'll get us by while also understanding that there's a limit as to what the select board will support what the residents will support. And so we try to present something, propose something that is acceptable enough to then put your fingerprints on it and make your adjustments to it. I think Ethan's right as far as when we get into this next year of planning and work to take a look at that. And that's on our radar or something we wanna do with the capital plan to really bolster that. Take that five year plan, build that out and sort of see where we're going and how we're gonna be able to fund it to get there and what that means if we fund certain things at a higher level where we make from and where we cut from or where we ask for more and see how it lands. So I think it's a combination of all those things that we'll be having tonight and throughout the next several months as we get into fiscal 25 planning already. Yes. And my comments aren't meant to put anybody in any position other than you've been doing the very best that you could do both on the board and the staff. But when you look at a five year capital plan and it has 150, 150, 150, 150, 150, when you can look at the information that you have in your budget, when you know the costs are going up, I just would like to put forth that we should put some more effort into funding it at a level that will keep up with inflation and increasing costs. And maybe the board that you have now is in a position to look at that is the new town and start the town off at the right because we're kind of behind the eight ball. That's all. Ethan. I have a curiosity question because you mentioned about being on bar for nine years and you're not as restrictive as I thought in my head. And when did the change the reserve, unbalanced reserve from 10% to 15%? Oh, that was just like board policy. That's a policy. It was probably seven or eight years ago. Six, seven, eight years ago. Because I was definitely on the board when that happened. Used to be there was no policy, and that 15% is based on GFOA, which I looked at Dan for the, what that acronym stands for, General Finance. Governmental Financial Officers Association, I believe. So yeah, that's the kind of a standard guideline for general fund. Right. So that's a recommendation from best accounting practices and from our auditors and to have that. Most towns don't have. That's a different kind of recommendation that most towns don't have. That's a different conversation for a different day. But I just wanted to throw that to Kendall that there's plenty of things to look at as we move forward. And there's certainly things we can, I mean, the policy currently says that undesignated funds need to be given back to, undesignated fund balance needs to be given back to the taxpayers. So that's what we're doing. That's what that, right. We're hoping to not continue that forever. Those, that's not, you shouldn't plan on leftover money. But we can certainly have a discussion. I know there are some, I know the, other municipalities will have a policy that says they got swept into capital. You could do that. You could make that a policy or we could make that choice. And we did make that choice this year to sweep some of it over there. So there's, there's, but there are, there are other, I guess I'm going off to- Yeah, I was just throwing it out there as more than my idea that I was saying before is, and I don't say this, I'm about to say it, but this is pretty much set in stone. And I mean, we did what we did with what we had to me and my eyes when I was looking over this, like the things I'd asked questions about before is I can now understand better and plan for how I want to see it next year. But we're at the point now where this has to, you know, that we have what we have this year. I wasn't a fan of the $20,000 of the Soul Shed, but I understood that it's possibly a couple of years out. We may have the opportunity to even be elected for the grant in the first year or the second year. We have the ability to transfer money from fund balance to match. I think come to us and say, we need $85,000 to build the Soul Shed. Greg's gonna write up a proposal and come to us and say we need $65,000 to secure this grant to build a Soul Shed by 2025 or whatever. And we'll do that. And that's kind of where I'm like, I support what you're saying because I'm all about investing. I think we're gonna have to really plan harder this coming year for future year 26 or 25 year what year it is. Okay. Unless there's others on the table. Don or Tracy, any comments? Yeah, I'm good. Make it on your list and we do planning. You gotta get it all covered. Next Monday, right? No, no, next Monday. So, yeah. Strategic planning. May 8th is our strategic planning meeting. Yeah, four meetings in a row. Right, so we've already approved a version of this that didn't include the additional penny town staff put effort into setting their priorities to where that they think that extra penny should be distributed. We could tonight have a discussion or ask for a different recommendation from staff per Kendall's suggestion or we could approve this and ask for a strategic plan. And I think it's already, we've talked about this a number of times to flesh out the five year plan, figure out how we move forward with capital going forward. And I could say I'm not a big fan of operating transfers. I think we should be more transparent and rather than having operating transfers have higher capital tax kind of thing. So there's several ways to look at this going forward. So I guess, I don't know what, what are, do folks want to change things around in this plan, prove it as it is? Your thoughts? I'd like to see it approved as it is. And then during planning take up, you know, a future plan for how we're going to do this. A good block of time in for a bigger priority. Likewise, I'm comfortable with what staff has put forward. And I'm also comfortable with the 729,000 and undesignated capital that we can use for things that arise and move as needed. Yeah, I'm in favor of the flexibility that it allows without having to come to us to change the plan. And also talking about next year. So how does that work? What do you use undesignated? You have to come out to ask, I believe that's what we've done in the past. And yeah, that's what I would plan to do. Yeah, yeah. So, right. So I guess it's flexible from the start, but they still have to use it. Then we have to use undesignated for the breaks last year. For the water, storm water breaks? Yeah, I thought they came to us. I'd have to check with Aaron and Annie on Heather Bush. They came out of the Enterprise. Well, the water, yeah, the water line breaks came out of the water sewer fund. I'm thinking of the storm water breaks on Heather Bush and I'm forgetting the other one right now. Oh, so they did it sometimes. Yeah, that's right. Do you remember, Dan? I mean, you're right, it was the Enterprise funds for the water. I don't remember the other break. They might have been before you were here, actually. Okay, yeah. So I'm not really familiar with that. So at this time, I'd like to make the motion that we approve the fiscal year budget, capital budget of 2024. And now, sorry, I'm not sure if I need to include this five-year plan in case we're gonna revisit it. Yes, you want to include the five-year plan. To include the five-year plan. Thank you. Thank you, Don. Thank you, Ethan. Any further discussion? All those in favor of approving the budget and five-year plan as presented, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Oppose, say nay. Nay. The motion passes for one. We'll have much more discussion. Thank you for bringing that up. Good discussion. Thank you all. Okay, let's see. Let's move on to business item 6B, consider approval of conflict of interest policy. There was, there were a couple of questions that we brought up the last time we discussed this. And I believe Marguerite is here and she can speak to those. Thanks, Dan. I am and I can, I think. If I have the screen, please correct. Okay, so yes, essentially, let me see if I can get my video. I'm sorry, I'm in a little bit of a different place tonight. So, set up is a little different. But essentially, as we discussed at your reorganization meeting two weeks ago, there was just discussion around not necessarily wanting to approve this, or sign this policy just yet or approve it for this year, due to the fact of the, it not being explicitly stated in there that you could be employed and be on a board in a position of power being elected. So looking through this all and working with Travis on it, it seemed like actually the better place for that would be where we put our employment sort of guidelines and where those policies lie, which is actually the employee, the personnel guidelines. But then after sort of discussing that, it was brought forward that actually another place you could go is putting it in the charter. So you could put that before the like, once it's approved also in the charter, that means the legislation has approved it, the legislative body has, which one of the main things that we've talked about here that might be an issue is can you actually rightfully say someone can't run for an office? So that's kind of what we're grappling with a little bit. And so we were thinking we could update the personnel guidelines to some extent and have legal review it so that we could get wording that would work. It might not be quite as specific as what the select were discussed two weeks ago or potentially a better option might be to go through the charter, a charter update or change because that specifically then would be voted through the legislative body as well. So it just might be a little bit more specific to the select board which is kind of what we discussed I think two weeks ago mostly is that kind of position of power and being employed. So that's why it's on here again tonight. You can vote to approve it but if you'd rather wait, that's fine too. I just wanted to make sure it was on here so that if you so choose to approve the conflict of interest tonight knowing that really our recommendation is to either go the charter route or the personnel guideline route for this verbiage then you can pass the conflict of interest policy but if you would prefer not to and wait that is fine too. I think that's all I have. Any comments or thoughts, comments, questions or? I like the way it's written now. You have to go through a charter change. You have no idea when that's gonna happen because you have no idea when it ever be taken up. And if it doesn't make it through this next half session it's gonna be another two years before you can go. Any else any thoughts? I have no problem with the conflict of interest policy now. You can see in Vermont that some towns are here and some towns are here. So I think our policy is good for now. Yeah, I think the same. I was just a little more curious to know about guess what would be the hiring policy What was the personnel guidelines? Is that something that probably hasn't been revisited in a long time? We did an update. My great remember was it last year? Maybe we had some... It was last, yeah, exactly. It was last year. Essentially for that I think it comes almost every year you can correct me if I'm wrong, Greg but we kind of wait for two or three items and then kind of clump them all together and put it before you at that point but if this was important we could push it up basically. Yeah, I mean, we can talk about that at the planning too but the only thing that I'm okay with this the only thing that I would recommend or offer I guess my opinion on would be to just have the cause of one year. So that way there's no influential accusations or vice versa. So if you're serving on a board for the town you cannot serve on that board for a year before you're employed by the town. So the legislature has this table of incompatible offices. So it says you cannot be... On stable co-actors taxes, town treasurer, assistant town treasurer, auditor, town agent as a select board member. Town manager cannot be a select person. So yeah. Well, the only thing is... So the other select board members would have to agree to hire one of its members to be the manager and be able to justify it to the public, right? So that's a, you know, it may look awkward but it's an acceptable, I think it's an acceptable thing to do if that's, you know. But do you think it's appropriate for, let's just use this as an example. I don't know if it's actually ever, it has happened or it would happen but would it be appropriate if I suddenly resigned and became the public works director? Because I'm, you know what I mean? Yeah. There's four people that don't apply for the job or whatever. Yeah, no, so Ethan, a couple of thoughts. So to respond first to one of the comments you said earlier about being on a board then being employed with the town and having a one year break. I don't know if you meant any board or if you really were speaking to the select board but we have had an instance in the past several years Darren Shibbler was on a conservation and trails committee. He applied for a planning position that we had open. He went through the process. He was the candidate that the selection team thought was the best candidate and he offered him a job. He took it and I'd say he was a good hire and worked out well for the town for many years. So I'd hate to lose out on an opportunity like that. I guess I'm speaking selfishly as the manager who's hiring these people and I wanna get the best employees I can get. I think if they select, but this is me speaking as your current manager. I think if one of you applied for a job that we had open and you'd probably have a conversation pretty early on to make sure you understood that you can't, I'm not gonna hire you if you're on the select board. I think that's gonna be a conflict of interest or even the perception of because you have so much influence over ratifying contracts, approving the budget, stuff like that. But if one of you is willing to step down if you're hired and you go through the process and we have a pretty comprehensive process with numerous people doing interviews, giving interviews and hiring team thinks you're the best person, I'm gonna strongly consider offering you the job. And now I have to live with the perception of did you get the job because you're a select board member, were you the best person? I'm gonna hope that and I'm gonna hope I'm gonna take that into consideration and I'm gonna hope that you prove yourself over the course of working that you are the best employee. You also have to make that determination for yourselves or any future board members of, do you want to live with that perception or possibility? Yeah, I think I just lean more towards the side of unpre dissented bias. And it's not that I think you're biased or I think the hiring team is biased or I think anybody's biased. I know in a specific situation, I just think that human nature tells you that if you've been on the select board for nine years, and you've made a relationship with somebody, and I don't know how many people applied when Darren was hired or the details on any of that, but there's just that, there's a bias there that you have a relationship with the town, let alone the staff that another person applying for the same job doesn't have and may be favorite. How'd you? So, I mean, it's not the one that thinks this, and that's I'm okay to be quiet and move on, but I just wanted to speak my piece because I brought it up last week, or two weeks ago. And I would speak to that in that I respect Greg immensely. It speaks well to his character and the current board that we have, but I'm comfortable that is the procedure that would be followed. But as we have seen in Vermont, that's not always the procedure that's followed, and we don't know what's gonna happen in the future. So that's why the question came up was that there should be some kind of blanket policy that goes forward when it comes to conflict of interest, because there is that perception. I don't like, in the example he used, he said, you know, if you're on the select board, you might be able to be a town employee because there'd be a conflict, it'd be the same exact thing. If you were on a board and you left the board and then was in the interview process, you still, you have that same exact conflict because the correlation between the job position and the board that you serve on is the same exact correlation no matter which side you're on. No. So he said you can't be on them simultaneously, one following the other. I mean, and actually the saying can't is, is a, I don't think we can legally, we tell people that they can't accept a job. Then it's job discrimination at that point, you can't do that. I don't think we can say you cannot work for the town. Just like we can't say that somebody who works for the town can't run for the select board. They can, they absolutely can, or they can serve on any and any volunteer committee that they have. They won the election? No, that would be, I think that would be illegal. Yeah. They would have to judge for themselves whenever they're sitting at this table, whether or not they have a conflict of interest with what's being discussed. And that's how you recuse yourself. Then they would have to, they could choose to, they recuse themselves. But I'm concerned about the legality of the five of us telling people who they can and can't be employed by or whether or not somebody can run for a public office. I mean, it's defined for certain things in the statute. It's defined in statute. We can't set statute. Well, I understand that. That's why Marguerite brought up the charter question. You put it in your charter and then it will be, I mean, if the legislature approves it, then it becomes law and you can do it. So that's where I have concerns about putting any restrictions on people's employment or ability to run for public office in a policy. But we're not writing that policy tonight. It's just asking them to look into it and find out the legality and contact their time attorney and give us the answers. It's just a question. Can it be put in the personnel policy? I asked, I didn't say change this. I just asked a question about moving forward. Hope it can be done and that's fine. So the, I'm sorry, I'm never. I just don't think that, I don't know if that's, especially myself, I don't have any law experience. So I don't know if there is or isn't. So one other comment I want to make about that, we used the word guidelines, we used the personnel guidelines. The many of our employees work with a contract. So the guideline is not the guiding, is not the final say, right, it's the contract. We don't have anything in anybody's contract. This is, they can't run for public office, right? I think if I'm the only person who has an actual contract, we contract out. Well, there's, I'm sorry, there's an employment agreement. Union employees have an employment agreement. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, yes, I'm sorry. I have a joint individuals. Yeah. And so, right, so you're the only management level person who has a contract. Correct, right, right, right. So, okay, these depends on which level you're talking about, right, right, right. So I don't know. That was all, here you go. All right, so are you suggesting that we change the policy? No, I said that I like the policy. Okay. I just asked that we'd, Okay. I was just asking town staff to look at our, Okay. Or I can't say it the right way because I've tried three times now and said it different each time, but the personnel. Guidelines, you're good, I don't know what you mean. Okay, maybe I was confused when you started talking about the one year clause about us not being able to, you know, you put that in like, okay, but that question. You're just a question, that's what I raised last time and that's why I just clarified to Mark Reid that this is just the guideline that we use. And then, you know, looking at, you know. Okay. If I may, I think this is a good discussion to put on for May 8th. Yeah, exactly. How much time do you want to spend on this? I'll be quiet. We're trying to change guidelines. Yeah, where does it fit else in the work plan? Where else does it fit in the work plan? Make the motion and we approve the conflict of interest policy. Do we have a, yeah. We can't. There's got public to be heard first. I'm sitting on my hands being good here, Ethan. All right. It's not. Where did you go there? I know, I was learning my lesson. I was just being really good here. Betsy Dunn has her hand up. Thank you. So, can I think that when Marguerite said, put it into the HR area, I think you lose those of us that aren't hired by the town to be on the committees. And we should have that ethical conflict of interest as well when it comes to things that we're doing. And I especially mean that when it comes to planning, because they have got millions of people that come through there that they're looking at and they're a best friend. Are they going to stand opposed to them? And if they are, they don't think they can do that. With clear head, they should refuse themselves as well. And having it in the charter takes it out of that. And the other thing I just want to say in passing is that our committees are your proving grounds for people who might become part of the select board or a part of the town management because you're growing leadership in those committees. And those committees are really integral to the flow of power within the town. That's all I want to say. Thank you. All right, thank you, Betsy. Just to comment on one thing that you said there, the statute allows the planning commission to set their own conflict of interest policy. So this conflict of interest policy does not cover the planning commission. They have their own group by step. That's a huge issue. So, sorry, I might have misunderstood your comment and gone off on a long tangent there and I'm sorry for that. Okay. Any other comments on any from the public or from? Hearing none. I make the motion that the select board approve the town of Essex Conference of Interest Policy. Second. Thank you, Ethan. Thank you, Tracy. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those say nay. Game motion passes 5-0. Thank you. More discussion to be had there as well. Okay, moving on to the next two items are executive session topics and then, but Ethan asked that we move the 6-7-E up there. Is there more? Well, on the 6-C, there is some public information in the packet. I don't know if you want to review that at all. I do recommend that we go into executive session before taking any action, but do you think it's worth just talking briefly about what the topic is? I don't know if you want to take it or I can take it. Go for it. So I know that Select Board knows, but just for the public, last year when you did your strategic planning session, one of the topics that came up and one of the goals for the Select Board was to explore a site where we could put up a new municipal facility, whether it's a new town offices, future buildings, fire station comes to mind as being a need in the somewhat near future. Or other opportunities or needs that might arise. Right now, this building is in the city of Essex Junction. There's talk about finding a location within the town of Essex to host municipal sites. We've been working on that over the past year, identifying some sites. We've talked about using some ARPA money to acquire property if something becomes available. We're at the point now where we do have an opportunity to purchase a property. It's in the Route 15 corridor, which is what we had talked about as being that area as being kind of central to town and being a prime location. If we enter the purchase and sale agreement, we'd have about seven months to investigate the site, make sure it's developable, make sure it's... Well, mostly that's developable. Then we'd be able to close on that and take the next steps towards developing the site. As I mentioned, do you think we should go into executive session to talk a bit more about it? The proposed purchase price for the property, it's $3 million, it requires $150,000 deposit that would be paid within, I think, two weeks of signing the purchase and sale agreement. There'd also be a site investigation fees, permitting fees, consulting fees. Robbie's gonna eat up most of, if not all of the ARPA money, the town is $3.3 million in ARPA money. But we do have an opportunity to enter a purchase and sale agreement and that's what's before you tonight as to whether or not you wanna authorize a manager to execute that. Great, thanks Greg. Any comments or questions we'll make at this point? We entertain questions from the public. Any comments or questions from the public? Eddie Davis. Great, my comment, and you didn't call on me because you guys were so busy discussing. I don't know if I can ask you about what you previously talked about with Erin Martin explicitly stating that a minimum of 3.5 cent capital investment is what is needed to maintain the status quo. And you already voted and everything. So I can't really say anything, but my question was that there was 300,000 somewhere. And I just, because we only voted on the one cent increase, I understand because we had two cents for over 10 years and with inflation and everything to take care of our stormwater and roads and everything. I want this to go through what you guys are just talking about with this big purchase, but I wanted to throw that out. Erin Martin did specifically request and say the minimum we would need is three and a half cents and we have three cents. So I know you already voted and I just wanted to say that, but you didn't call on me because you guys were busy voting and I just wanted to just throw that out. That, yeah, we need that extra half a cent maybe next year. So thank you. Yeah, so Patty had to just to clarify that. One of the reasons we didn't vote for the larger increase was that reassessment is coming up. And so that will, as it's expected that most property values will go up, the assessment, the amount of revenue that's generated by the three cents will go up and we wanted to wait until after we knew how much that was gonna go up or had other discussion rather than ask for the larger increase. But that was, yeah, that's water over the dam awhile ago. I understand, but I just wanted to say that I believed Erin when he said, this is what we need because of the long discussion that you had, all of you were discussing, you were listening to Ethan and Kendall talk about this. And I just, he was very, very explicit saying, this is what we need. Heather Bush and Cindy Lane, I think were the two streets. So thank you that we spent like 249,000 on broken pipes, stormwater pipes that Greg Dugan was trying to think of the streets. So thank you. Thanks, Penny. Lorraine, I see your hand up. In terms of purchasing the land for the ARPA funds, at what point I know it has to be private for in terms of being able to better negotiate, but I would love to know at some point what the property is so we can look at the market rates and understand the process and how it was negotiated. And so when that decision is made, how transparent will you be, how the negotiations were handled and was involved and how it was determined to pay that amount? Thanks. Are you on this front? Our legal counsel has advised us not to reveal the specific property until after we have an assigned agreement to protect both us and the seller. Yeah, yeah. No, I understand that, Andy. I don't have an issue with that. There's no, I get that conflict and so on and so forth. And it certainly impacts negotiating ability. I just want to know after that decision is made, like what's made tonight, at some point, as a member of the public, I would love to understand the process and have the post once it's decided to have it transparent how it was decided, how you guys determined the rate, how you picked that spot, what were the other ones you looked at. I'd love to have a little bit more information about how that was arrived at. Thank you. I think of like a legal opinion on that. I think the purchase and sale agreement once made public will answer decent number of those questions. I appreciate that, Greg. Thanks. Thanks for the question, Lorraine. Anybody else? All right, so no action at this point. We'll go into executive session and potentially come up later to talk about that. So, and then Ethan, you had asked for 7E to be brought up, consider adoption of facilities use policy. There were some edits that were made to that based on our discussion last time. Okay, how was that made by? Should I go first? I can run through the quick change that you want. I'm trying to bring it up so I can... It's only after the minutes. Mostly minor changes. In the purpose section of the first paragraph, we added facilities for organizational or business types of events can be used. That's for your political or religious organizations. We put in occupancy limits for the town offices and the police department. Those are partially based on fire code and in the case of the police department, it's below fire code, but based on the number of chairs that they think they can actually accommodate. We changed marijuana to cannabis and the alcohol, tobacco, gambling and drug section and also included a note that the use of vaping devices is not permitted. That's in our personnel guidelines as well and just figured not knowing what might be in a vaping device. We wanted to cover ourselves there a little bit, make sure that there's no tobacco or cannabis in a vaping device. Kendall, I know you had a question about the liability and the signature form there and whether or not we should put in another clause about the liability issues. I was looking at it as when they're signing that, they're signing the entire application form. It talks about liability indemnification within that. They're signing off on that. I'm comfortable with it the way it is, but certainly if the board wants to strengthen that, we can do that and that was it for the changes. Yeah, sorry, I can't seem to pull up, silly clerks blank on me. Mine just went blank, but it just came back. So I used the website. Couple of questions. My one question, well, the first question. Stand Hill Park. Shelter, Chicago. Is it free to have 30 people there? Let me see the attached. No, there's a charge to use it. No, that's 31 to 60 people. That's the limit, depending on how many tables you have. So if I go over there with 30 people, I can use the tables for free. No, that means you're not restricted by fire code. Oh, yeah. I think the use of that pavilion has to be reserved under a recreation policy. Correct, I think if you absolutely want to make sure it's yours and you have it for X number of hours on such and such day, you're gonna have to reserve it, whether it's for one person or for 60 people. Right, if you don't want to share it with anybody, you have to reserve it and pay the fee. Yeah, you can show up and use it anytime you want. All right, but it says 31 to 60 people. There's a rate. No, that's the fire. No, the fire limit is 60 people. I think the thing that... Under rates, it says tables, 31 to 60 people, three hours of use includes six tables, $45. I think they're saying that the tables would cover 31 to 60 people. All right. They'll accommodate that. But it wouldn't be a different rate for 30 people than 60 people. No, it's hourly. Yeah, we'd probably take a look. Somebody says we would need one table as opposed to... Well, they had 10 people with, you know, three moms, a couple of four-year-olds. If they wanted it reserved and they wanted the table, they'd be $45, yeah. Or they could just show up and use it and share it with other people at the same time. And not pay anything. Okay. And then why I picked Sand Hill to talk about first was because last week it was brought up that, or last week, two weeks ago, it was brought up that we don't charge for the town offices or the police department because it's the taxpayers already paid for it. Well, the taxpayers pay for everything in the town, but we don't pay for one sole person to use something. Right? We all pay for the same. We all have the ability to use something. If we take one thing and use it for ourselves, one could say that the other taxpayers are paying for that person to use something. So my question is, why are we charging for Sand Hill when they're already paying for it in the Parks and Racks budget? And we're not charging for the town offices or the police department. My second question is, especially being... So Ethan, when we talked about this two weeks ago, I thought we had agreed that we would talk about fees at some other time. Yeah, we will. Because we're gonna talk about fees in general. But I just wanted to bring it back up for the public to hear it again. In the fact that we're not charging non-residents who don't pay any taxes in this town to use the town offices or the police department. It seems so silly to me. Can I make a comment? Ethan, in this coming summer, my church has rented that part for three different Sundays. The outdoor services. The fees that we're paying, and not everybody that goes to my church is a town resident. The fees that we pay are paying for if somebody left the mess and gets cleaned up, the trash gets taken out, and I believe the restrooms get cleaned. And that's part of what that fee is used for. It has nothing to do with... Agreed. So if you were going to go rent something somewhere, you're gonna have to pay for cleanup. Right. But for $45, you can't drive a diesel pickup truck over there, pay somebody $30 an hour to clean the bathroom for two hours, and then pay $5 a bag of trash to clean it up. I'm just saying that that's probably why they have fees. I get it fully, but I think it's way off-spectrum. And the fact that 31 to 60 people is grossly listed, and anything under 31 is the same price doesn't make any sense. I mean, the amount of trash that 60 people are gonna produce compared to 20 people or 10 people or 15 people is just totally... Especially at an outdoor shelter where they're permit... I don't know what the rules are over there if you're gonna have a barbecue over there. You're not allowed to have an open fire drill. Yeah, I'm not sure about barbecue. I did ask Allie about... Parks Director, director about the fees for Memorial Hall, Sand Hill. She said that they haven't been updated in years, and it may be even going back to her predecessor. So the point was that, yeah, I think we can take a look at them. Wasn't in time to do a full in-depth discussion for this policy. I think we stick with what we have. It's been that way for a number of years, but I think going forward, we talk about which fees we wanna take a look at across the board, like Andy just mentioned. Does this have to be approved last year? No, we're already doing what this says. Exactly, so why approve this right now? Well, we're gonna be going right into planning, and we can take this, fix it, and approve a proper policy. Why approve something just because it's the way we've always done it? And we can look at it next year. So if we do that, then no political or religious organization can rent this room. If we approve this policy, they're allowed to not rent, reserve this room. If we approve it, then they're allowed to. And that's the thing that triggered this, is the political parties were looking for places to do their organizational meetings, and we told them that they couldn't, because that was our practice. Now we wanna have a policy that we can point to that says that this is, so it's clear to everybody what is allowed and what isn't. It was confusion about coming out of COVID. It was new management. There were things that happened that caused us to allow one group and not another, and then it became a problem. We just wanna have a policy that covers that. Question about fees. Yeah, if you wanna hold it up for that, you can vote no. So there's no policy in place right now? There is not. So the fees have not changed. That's the one that we haven't changed. The policy itself does not exist, so that's a new thing. Okay, I was gonna make my point. It's valid. I like the policy, don't get me wrong. Okay. Neither. I got with what I was mad on the policy. Yeah, any organizational and business. Any other board member comments and we'll vote in public? No, sir. Hey, Patty Davis. I'm sorry, I wanna make a correction. I said that 249,000, I'm hung up on money. Patty, I know it was Lilac Lane, not Cindy Lane, but I know you're on another topic, and I think it's a great topic because the bottom of Sand Hill road twice had huge sinkholes, and we all use that road. So there you go. We're on a different topic, please. Thank you. At this time, I make the motion that we have to build a new policy. So you said accept. What's the word? Adopt. Sorry, that didn't sound right when it came out of an adopt. Thank you, Don. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Tracy. Any further discussion? All those in favor of adopting the policy, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Both say nay. Nay. I didn't, I didn't, no, I heard you. I said aye. Okay, okay. Motion passes for one, and okay, thank you. Thank you for putting it together. Thanks for the feedback. At this time, I make the motion we accept the consent agenda. Thank you, Don. Second. Thank you, Ethan. Any further discussion on the consent? Hearing none, all those in favor of approving the consent agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Both say nay. Okay, consent is approved. Five, zero. Reading file. Board member comments. I'm just curious if there was an update on where the town news is being distributed. Paper copies. We have not been doing paper copies at this point. We've just been doing electronic. Timmy and I had talked about wanting to do that. It's one of those things that the amount of time to put into producing a paper copy and then distributing it is more than we can take on right now, basically. Thanks for that. One question I have is we have a joint meeting with the Planning Commission next week. Yes, the 27th, the Thursday. The 27th. The 27th, yeah, Thursday. It says 6 p.m. Correct. They start at 6 o'clock. Jack, would you finish your question? The there's there's two pieces to it. One was there was a suggestion that we might need to approve additional liquor licenses before they expire at the end of the month. At 5.30. So will we be convening before 5.30 or 6? Yes, so I haven't had confirmation on that. Or if I did, I didn't have it in time to update the agenda and packet. But yes, the Planning Commission starts their meetings at 6. So that's when they will start. And I have heard from enough of you, I think about all of you that we can do a 5.30 meeting right here before the Planning Commission meeting just to approve any additional liquor licenses. And I'll also confirm that we have additional liquor licenses to approve. Okay. And then the other part of my question is because we've we've called it a joint meeting. Is this a Planning Commission meeting that the select board is attending? Or is it actually a joint meeting that will have its own agenda in minutes? No minutes, we're going to, well, we're not going to be approving any minutes. We'll have the Planning Commission, Sharon Kelly, zoning administrator does minutes for the Planning Commission. So that's what we should do for both. I believe the Planning Commission is going to have additional business after the meeting with you. We're still going to warn it as a select board meeting. You are meeting your convening, you're discussing like for business. So we're going to warn it. Is that answering your question? So I'll have to call it to call the select board order. Yes. All the usual things, okay. And then we will adjourn at the appropriate time and then either stay or go if we choose to. Correct. Residents? Yes. Okay. All right. All right, so I know Don and Gracie, did you say you were 530 available? Mm-hmm. I don't know. I can do 530. Okay, okay. All right. Because it was problematic, I only needed three. That's just from the point. We'd have to be you now on this. So, okay. All right, any other? Thank you for including information, looking forward to looking at the future agenda topics, the items that are on there for that. Okay. I did have a couple of comments. But you have comments, go ahead. I was just going to note that I did send an email to Greg about the water and sewer budget, both budgets that will get back to me at some point, trying to get ahead of the curve so I don't take up a lot of time in the meeting. I did want to ask why Essex hasn't adopted a declaration of inclusion, and then modify it after the fact, as opposed to waiting until whatever happens to adopt it. Because there's more than 100 towns that have adopted the language that's in there and they don't really see any controversy in that language. Just thought I'd ask that question. You're not going to make it. I would turn to Marguerite or you, and I can chime in if I feel there's anything else to say. Marguerite, you want to comment? Sure. Yeah, I think it was just at the time that was sort of the recommendation we got from the committee, Essex Best. And so we were going off of that as that's what the committee put forward. And at that time, of course, 100 towns have not signed this declaration of inclusion and it kind of, there wasn't necessarily a thought that it would just kind of be, that there would be a lot of buy-in necessarily. So I think now maybe that's changed a little bit but that's why then it was delayed because then also Essex Best decided to look at what it is as a committee. So it got kind of put down lower on the list but it's now kind of as they turn into a cab, this would be the last thing that they kind of will do or help us do. Thank you. The other thing I wanted to bring up and I forgot to, I'm glad. I don't know, something triggered me is the our charter updates, the five articles that were approved by the voters. I've been working with Leonora Dodge to have the bill introduced. She had asked that Greg and I look at the draft of the bill to make sure that it contained everything that it should and discover that it inadvertently deleted our planning commission altogether. And so that's being fixed, it was probably fixed this afternoon. I think it'll probably be introduced here pretty soon to the legislature at which point, I don't know if we'll be invited to testify or not. I don't know how those things go. In the charter that was sent to all of us or in the way it was presented to the state? So the documents were sent to the state by the town clerk explained to them what changes were approved by the town voters. And so they just wanted to make sure that everything that was asked for was actually in there. Just wanted us to have our eyes on it rather than just introducing it as it was. The way it's written is, it took me a couple of hours because it's a lot of cross-referencing. They don't actually do a document markup, they just say this section moves to this section and there's a list of numbers, which section goes to which and they're in sequence. So it was a right up my alley for things I like to do with regard to cross-checking, that sort of thing. And but yeah, found out that they inadvertently deleted the section that establishes our planning commission. It was the only thing they got around. If you'd like, I could share out the bill as well. I'll read it in my free time. Apologies to the planning commission. Mr. Chairman, there's a person with their hand up. So we're in reading file, board member comments at this point, right? So. Okay. The only final comment I would have is that the town meeting exit survey results were very interesting. I'm hoping we can continue that. I thought that was great. Yeah, we used to do that on paper and we'd get like three responses. And this was, yeah, a much better approach to that. Yeah. That was Dennis's idea last year and Tammy made it happen the last two years. Yeah, it's nice. Good stuff. All right. So we have executive session. Yes. I have the second one. Okay. I got the first one. I moved that the Slack board enter executive session to discuss the negotiating or securing of real estate purchase or lease options in accordance with one VSA section 313A2 and include the town manager and deputy town manager. Thank you, Ethan. I have a second. I second. Thank you, Tracy. Any further discussion? Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those say nay. Any motion passes 5-0. And there's a Slack board enter into executive session to discuss the appointment or employment or evaluation of a public officer or employee in accordance with one VSA section 313A3 to include the town manager and deputy manager. Thank you, Don. Do I have a second? Second. I heard Ethan for that one. There you go. Any further discussion? We will likely, we may be coming back to make a motion on the purchase and sale agreement, but Scott, you don't have to stay, but we'll come back to this room at this time. I can't come to executive session. We can go over to the clerk's office. Okay. The elevator doesn't work. Ooh. Okay. We'll have another location. So we'll come back here. We'll rejoin the online meeting to make a motion if we choose to and then adjourn. So that was discussion. So all those in favor of the second executive session motion there, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Say nay. Any motion passes 5-0. We will go into executive session and we'll move on.