 I will go ahead and call the village of Essex Junction Board of Trustees meeting to order for Tuesday, November 10th. And do we have any agenda additions or changes tonight? No. Oh, you have been rehearsing those lines, Evan. At trustees, any other agenda additions or changes? Hearing none, there is no need to amend the agenda or approve the agenda to be as amended. As such, we can move on to public to be heard. So this is a portion of the meeting in which if there is somebody who would like to speak to the board about something that is not on the agenda, now is the time to do so. And to make sure there is ample opportunity, we will take a brief 30 second pause for those who would like to speak to raise your hand if you are using Microsoft Teams, if you are calling in to please state that you would like to speak. And the time will start now. Alright, so nobody has raised their hand, nobody has spoken. And just as a reminder, if you are not speaking, please do make sure your microphone is on mute. The background noise can get quite distracting at times. So please again, if you're not speaking, please mute yourself so that that way we don't have any cross conversations. As nobody from the public wished to speak, we will go ahead and move on to the first business item for tonight, which is a presentation of the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission or CCRPC's annual report. And I believe we have Mr. Charlie Baker here with us tonight. And Charlie, we appreciate you being here. Yeah, thank you very much. And thank you for putting me so early on your agenda. I really do appreciate that. And you got our report in your packet. And this is a really a customer service call for us. For those of you not too familiar with the Regional Planning Commission, we are an organization created by the municipalities enabled by state law to serve the municipalities in Chittenden County. So this is really my opportunity to count a report of what we did with the village and see what feedback you have for me to improve our services to the village or to the county in general. I'll review the report real briefly. The first page gives you some background just kind of about what the Regional Planning Commission is, the board makeup. Oh, thank you, whoever's sharing that. And then the third paragraph talks a little bit about real generally how we leverage your municipal dues to bring in state and federal dollars to the county. And then at the bottom, we have your representatives on our board. Thank you, Dan, who's a very active member. And we do appreciate Dan's service on the board and Robin and Chelsea on our committees are always active and helpful. So thank you for the appointees there. On the second page of the report, we start talking more about things that we specifically did with the village in the last fiscal year, a lot around water quality, emergency management, brownfields, and a lot of data collection is pretty typical for us at the bottom. You see traffic counts and things like that. Any questions on the specific services or comments, feedback for me on the specific services that we provided to the village? Since I do have a couple of questions. Yeah, yeah. One of the things that I'm curious on the stormwater CCTV project, is there an impossible timeline at this point as to when we may get results? That is probably a question that Chelsea can probably answer better than I can. Yeah, I'm not sure of the exact status of it. So I think, yeah, you may have results around now, but I haven't heard, I have not heard specifically about that one recently, Andrew. Okay, I'll follow back up with them. And then another question on the the traffic counts. Is there like a rotating schedule as to when those are going to be redone? And I only asked because I noticed that there were some from the 1990s and early 2000s, which has been a little housing change a couple of times around the village. Some things have changed in the last 30 years. Yeah. So a large part of those are kind of on demand. So when we get asked to do traffic counts, we'll update them. There are some things that we work to be transit around more of a cycle. So yeah, if you have a specific location that you're hoping to get updated, let us know. You know, let let the staff know too, so that we're all on the same page about what we should do. But yeah, so we kind of really try to be responsive to what the municipality asks for. Great. And sometimes it also it also goes around if we're doing a like a study of a particular intersection or something, then we'll do counts at that location, right? So it also depends what studies are in the pipeline. And this this year was a little bit of a weird year. We didn't quite get as many asks something about some virus I've heard about kind of really impacted a lot of things, including not that we couldn't do counts, but the counts aren't really may not be useful, right? Like traffic was so different this year. So, you know, we kind of have a lot of questions about the value of what we're doing with counts this year. And we'll see, I guess, after was it today or yesterday's announcement of a vaccine, maybe things will be a little bit more normal next season. So yeah, any other questions or feedback for me on this work? Not for me. I'd rather trust these do in the first page. Feel free. Okay. But I'll flip the page to the third page. There's just a little section that talks about what is in the really the VTrans Capital Program and in our Transportation Improvement Program, you've got the One Wetlands Project and the Crossing Connector, which at least we're hoping starts construction next year. And you guys may have more updated information than I do on that. But really, we'll be glad to see that move forward finally. And then the next section, you see what's in your in our work program this year, which is that Land Development Code rewrite. We're not actually working on that yet. We kind of ran out of staff resources. When we were looking at this in the spring, we're going to relook at this in January. And if we can fit it in this fiscal year, we will get to work with your staff on that. And then the last section, which goes on for a few pages, has a lot of different things that we're involved with countywide, things like the legislative forum, which actually I'd appreciate some feedback. We've been trying to do that early December, every year. We're having some conversation with our executive committee and board that maybe there are not a lot of topics for FY21, or I'm sorry, in 2021 for the legislature in terms of agenda items that we necessarily have. So I'm kind of curious about feedback. And we're almost thinking that maybe we don't have one. We're obviously not going to get together in person the way we always have. And maybe we try to create a couple other opportunities for some more focused discussions. We're always interested in Act 250 getting improved and certainly affordable housing issues. And I'm not saying there are issues, but the last legislature actually checked off a lot of things on this list that we have last year. So I'm sorry, was there a question there, Raj? Yeah, I guess I don't mean to interrupt you. I just wanted to be curious, going through this section with all of these regional activities, how is it, how do you go, I think you were starting to get to that. How do you come to these specific projects under these headings? And it sounded like you were describing that, so I think I might have raised my hand prematurely. No, no, that's all right. Actually, I probably wasn't going to cover that specific question. So I think a lot of these come about, well, let me say the bureaucratic answer is we kind of decide every spring what's going to be in our work program for the following year. And a lot of that is based upon what municipalities ask us to work on. And that ask is probably going to go out in the next two weeks. And you'll see, we refer to it as our UPWP, our Unified Planning Work Program. You may hear that acronym thrown around. So if there is an issue that you'd like us to look at or get involved in or more involved in or less involved in, that formal requesting period is a good time to ask us. And then there are other things that you raise a good question. How do we get involved? Like racial equity is the next one. We've had something in our regional plan for a number of years saying that it's actually one of our eight key strategies to achieving the goals of our regional plan is to improve equity in our region, which we added in 2013. But to be honest with you, it has not been a focus area. This year, you can, what's going on nationally and in our community. And I know you guys are also having conversation in Essex and the village around this topic. I think we're feeling, well, I guess, let me back up. In 2013, we started working on this in 2014, 2015. And it felt very lonely. So we did not have a lot of partners working on this. And so kind of faded. Now it does feel like there's a lot more momentum and a lot more partners involved in this work. So I'm a lot more optimistic that we can make some more progress in this area. But Raj, to answer your question, most of almost everything is somehow rooted in our regional plan, town plans. Sometimes there's topics that the state interjects onto us. That was a case a couple years ago when they asked every regional planning commission to do a regional energy plan. Yeah, that was something that the legislature voted on. And, you know, at that point, we are, you know, we're a political subdivision of the state. So when the legislature says to do something, we typically say yes. Thank you. We will do that. So anyway, but I am curious about feedback on the racial equity topic. And then the only other topic I was probably going to touch on this on the these last few pages was just the building homes together campaign, which is something that we partnered up with the Champlain Housing Trust and Housing Vermont a few years ago, actually over four years ago now to do a five year campaign to build more housing and affordable housing in Chittany County. We set out a target of 3,500 in five years, 700 a year. We're at about 3,200 right now. So we're actually made decent progress in terms of the number of new housing units that got created. However, the bad news is on two fronts. One is we were really hoping to impact the vacancy rate in a significant way if we built 3,500 homes. But we really haven't. We went from maybe we're like 1.8% when we started vacancy rate, which is very low amount. Maybe now we're like 2.4, 2.5. A healthy vacancy rate would be closer to 5%, but at least over 3%. So in the big picture, we still there's still a lot more housing or demand for housing than we are supplying as as a county as a as our community. So I encourage you to continue to do what you've been doing to supply more housing units. And the second piece of bad news was that we wanted 20% of those housing units to be affordable. We're only at 13% affordable. And that's even with the housing bond that the state did a few years ago. Most of those houses get built in 18, 19. And and so that really needs more investment to get to those affordable housing numbers. So anyway, there's a lot more, a lot of other topics in these last few pages that we could talk about and happy to take questions on anything I mentioned or anything that you read that you have a question or comment on. Evan, why don't you go ahead? I'll wait if trustees want to go first. You had your hand up first. Go ahead. Charlie, it first I'll do a statement. It's a pleasure working with you and your staff. I can't think of an instance state legislature or municipal manager where we haven't come up with a thought or a request where you've said no. So thank you for being there for us. For the people at home, CCRPC ends up being an extension of just knowledge that each community then doesn't have to hire or do it alone. You could do it as a county, which is nice. So thank you for that. In racial justice and equity, maybe you could touch on some of the things that you would be reviewing in terms of land use plans that are maybe when you look at them saying, boy, what could change that would really start to help racial equity inclusion and maybe not even just racial equity, but economic inclusion as well because that's also a problem. So maybe you can touch on what you guys would look at and maybe some of the areas municipalities could look at in their own codes. Yeah. And I'll say we're at the early stages. So I don't want anybody to take my comments as thinking that we've figured this out, nor are we either preaching or telling anyone what to do. But at the same time, we know that housing policy broadly has been not equitable over the decades. And there's a lot of players in housing policy, national regulation, banks, realtors, municipalities, builders, landlords, and planners. I'll point the finger at us as well. And so I think I have an early sense in these conversations that housing policy is one area to really focus on because it's also the area where wealth is created for families. Your parents buy a house, they hold on to it for 30 years, they retire, they've acquired some wealth. If you're renting that entire time, you're contributing to someone else's wealth and not your family, right? And I think one of the really surprising statistics I saw this summer was the homeownership rate for black residents of Burlington is 4%, not 40, 4. 4%. Nationally, the homeownership rate is closer to 70%. And so there's a lot to address there. And I think, Evan, to try to answer your question a little bit more directly, I do think that looking at our local housing policies, really our plans, our town plans, and our zoning is something that would have some value to see like, are we creating enough opportunities for all the members of all the households in our community to actually own property and gain wealth through that system that worked for a lot of America, but not all of America. Sorry, Andrew, you probably have some good thoughts to add on there. Evan, do you mind if I just ask a quick question on that? I'm done. So in particular, with what you were just talking about, what can we as the Village of Essex Junction expect to receive from the CCRPC in terms of guidance, documentation, model policies, what have you, so that we can help to ensure our level of inclusivity and equity within our community? That is a good question and definitely a work in progress. We have an RFQ out right now for a consulting partner. And I think we're also trying to work in tandem with our municipalities and with the state to look at all the ways that we can help. I think some of the more basic ways, and I think you guys have already started, I think, asking residents what issues they have. But I think we would look at education and training, for staff, for policy boards, for our volunteer boards. And then I do think I'm hopeful that we'll get into some more of those substantive policy recommendations. Andrew, I don't know what those are yet, but I think it's going to be a collaborative effort. Again, we are not the experts on this and we're in no position to preach or dictate what should happen to anyone. I think it's going to be more of a collaborative effort to figure out what works best for us and how we can be most inclusive and inviting. Because really our community is getting more diverse. Whether you want it to or not, that is what's happening. And we need to be open to that. That's also the opportunity for Vermont. We're one of the whitest states. And we have to find ways to become more open and inclusive if we're going to have any economic success in the future. So as a follow-up, whether we in the Village of Essex Junction are updating our land development code or any other municipality within the county, when it goes to the CCRPC then after our initial approval, is there either at that point in time or before then going to be some level of identification that, hey, something you've written in whatever section isn't as inclusive as it could be here or some recommendations? Again, we're still early in this, but I'd like for us to be working on equity impact assessments while things are being drafted. And so that's what I'm really hoping that we can grab those tools, which are really a series of questions, right? Kind of asking yourselves and the community questions and then making changes to make sure you're not doing anything negative, and then hopefully you're doing something positive in terms of equity. So I'm really hopeful that we start to build an equity impact assessments earlier in our development work, whether it's a plan or a policy in a bylaw, or maybe even procurement or hiring policies, right? I think that's some work to be doing, and that's part of why we're looking for a consulting partner to kind of help us learn how best to do that, and then I'm hoping that we can share that knowledge out with municipalities until we all get better at doing that and being better in those policy changes. Thank you, Charlie. Rock for a hand. Thanks Andrew. So this is a pretty wide scope, this pretty wide area of interest here for your organization. Are there any topics that are being batted around that kind of aren't on this list, maybe they're on the radar that might be of interest to our community that you're all discussing or on the wish list to get to? I think a lot of them are on this list. You can see a heavy emphasis on transportation, because two-thirds of our money comes through VTRANS, so there's a lot of transportation emphasis. But coming with that also means what can we do to provide more transportation options for people and what's the role of transportation in addressing climate and energy goals of the state? So that's one big area that's out in front of us. Racial equity is definitely in front of us. You see a lot of things on water quality, and then I think housing, also the affordable housing. And what doesn't come out in this probably is also the role that all that works in place in supporting a healthy economy, a healthy and inclusive economy. And we're not GBIC, we're not the Regional Development Corporation, but we do work hand in hand with them. We're actually partnering this coming year on a comprehensive economic development strategy for the region. So I guess just kind of heads up on that. That is a topic that is on the radar coming in the next calendar year probably. And there's more, you just have to ask. Public health issues I think are always on the radar too. Well, I mean, the public health, the equity, all of it, it's nice to see them pulled out here, but there are obviously elements of all of these topics, almost all of them, right? And I think it's great that the scope here is so wide. It's great that they're pulled out specifically. And I really am happy to hear that there's a lot of awareness that they are intertwined. And that's great to know that the organization is on that. Yeah, and like when we did our regional plan eight or nine years ago, we did a really deep dive. And we came up, right? You do your plan, you get all these specific goals. But they're all separated, right? We got a housing goal, we got an economic goal, we got an natural resources goal. One of the things that we did in that plan was realize, yeah, we have all these separate goals and all these separate topic areas. But the strategies to make positive change towards achieving those goals are really related. So I can't remember how many goals we had might have been 20 or 30 goals. But we came up with eight key strategies that if we make progress in these eight areas, they have positive impacts in all these goal areas. So your comments just kind of hit me like, yeah, we really are trying to think more holistically and how things work together so that we don't focus on one goal at the expense of other goals in our community. Right. So sorry, that was a little deeper dive. Thank you guys for asking good, hard questions that I've done in most of our municipalities. But any other questions or comments, feedback for me? Well, the other thing I want to say, Charlie, just how much I do appreciate the CCRPC's work and that you guys are much more than just a typical partner. You're much more than that 11 to one match that I think I saw quoted in your reports. You really are a knowledge base. So we appreciate you're a good partner that I know we've benefited from significantly. So I appreciate you and your stuff. We also appreciate the partnership and thank you to all the work that you folks do and your staff does. We really appreciate working with all of them. Thank you as always, Charlie. And maybe next year when we do this, it doesn't have to be VZoom. That's my finger to cross. We'll see you next time. Thank you. Always a pleasure, Charlie. Take care. Okay. And that brings us on to the Densmore Drive Culvert Replacement Construction Bid Award. Jim, you're covering this one? Yes, sir. Good evening, everybody. Hello, Jim. Thanks for being here. My pleasure. We are still working hard to implement the Densmore Drive Culvert Failure Replacement. The culvert failed back a year ago on the October 31st Halloween storm. Since then, we've been working hard to secure easements. We had a bid package go out where we had a total of six bids received ranging from $829,000 to $1.274 million for the project. The engineers on the project, oil tanner and associates, went through a complete conformance review for all the bids and evaluation of them for fairness and equity and insurance that they've covered all of the requirements of the bid and the FEMA requirements as well. The most responsive lowest bidder was Estee Ireland of Williston at $829,215 and the bid was found to be completely in order. So with that, the engineer's recommendation and our recommendation as well is to award the project to the lowest responsive bidder and that was Estee Ireland of Williston. With the award, work is anticipated to start next Monday with the pre-construction meeting and then immediately follow with site work to stabilize that channel for the winter and to prevent any potential flooding if we should get heavy rains. Phase two will be the actual installation of the culvert. The box culvert will be manufactured over the winter time and when the spring flows recede, they will do the installation and then reopen Densmore Drive at the earliest time that they can. So overall, the bidding process was tight. It went fairly well. The spread of the bids was in the normal range you would anticipate for such a project and we support the engineer's recommendation as well to award the bid to lowest bid to Estee Ireland at $829,215. Thank you, Jim. One question that I had is, Carrie Colfield was at our last meeting or a previous meeting but where we had talked about combining the two culverts or having two culverts on Densmore via one project, am I reading that this is for both of those culverts or is this the culvert closest to the Sherwood condo complex? This is the closest to Main Street and Sherwood Square. Both projects were designed or at least hydraulically designed at the same time as part of this FEMA project but this award is strictly the fast track one for the FEMA replacement to the failed culvert. Okay, I got you. Trustee, is there any other questions? And I'd just like to add to a reminder that this project has been following a FEMA guidelines very closely to ensure that we're eligible for the 75% reimbursement of the total cost. So that's a significant savings to the community. Absolutely. We appreciate the work that has gone into making sure that we have remained compliant with that from my understanding because it's not an insignificant lift so it's greatly appreciated. You're right, it's not. Yeah, I was going to add Jim, you know, I know we throw about terms FEMA. Could you explain a little bit of just some of the guidelines that we have to stay within to get federal funding? Obviously we're talking about $829,000 of a project which basically would take over two years of our street funding of our entire capital budget to do this project which was a washout due to a storm but maybe you can talk a little bit about how narrow the scope has to be to be within the FEMA project. It has to be directly related to the replacement with cause for any variation from it and to show how detail oriented they are. We couldn't even have discussions. We proceeded with design with a little bit of risk because we couldn't have the initial meetings with FEMA. They were on hold from the federal government due to COVID where all federal emergency management staff and personnel were clearly directed to put their focus and emphasis towards the COVID response and not any other projects. So, you know, that even took a narrow line and made it even more narrow because we couldn't proceed with solving this problem and working towards a resolution or even do any temporary work without fear that we would step outside the boundaries of the mandate not to do anything but COVID related work. So trying to juggle those balls and keep the project moving in a positive direction for quick response was really difficult let alone the layers of criteria that they have for who communicates to whom first when the project number is assigned and then you get into the details of fair wage whether the work being requested is related to the failure or related to other things in the area of the failure. Utility relocation we even have a private sewer line that's going to be impacted by the redesign of that stream. We also have a lot of state permits that we have to jump through hoops to gain and the engineer has done that. He's gained all of the permits so we're ready to proceed even though this seems like a year is a long time we only had less than six months to pull some of this stuff together. So they did a phenomenal job to stay within the guidelines that we had that we're allowed to discuss without any commitment at all from FEMA until maybe three and a half months ago. So I don't know if I answered the question but it's been a complicated process. You did and I know it's frustrating for the residents on Densmore. I know it's frustrating for the business the medical offices next on Densmore but this is a huge intricate project and you know it is it's a stream there's rules there's federal guidelines there's state guidelines and you throw COVID on top it's I'm glad that you were the man on on on point for this one because you are that detail oriented. I'm sorry there's a lot of other people involved in it as well and luckily we selected an engineer that's been through this multiple times and they did a great job with it. Yeah so I'll leave it at that thank you. Trustee is there any other questions for Jim? Nope. Any other questions that someone wanted to make a motion? I'll make a motion that the trustees award the bid for the Densmore Drive Culver replacement to the low bidder at Sea Ireland for the amount of eight hundred and twenty nine thousand two hundred and fifteen dollars. Thank you Dan is there a second? I'll second. I think Roch out that. Any further discussion on the motion? Hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Okay so that is passed unanimously. Jim thank you and thank your staff as well we appreciate it. Thank you all very much for your support and we're working hard to get this thing implemented so we're right on it. And that will bring us into the sidewalk the sidewalk machine bid. Is Mr. Jones taking this? Say that again? Oh I just didn't know if Rikki was taking this or Rikki? You there? Can now. Can't hear you now though. The internet's not the greatest sorry. How about now? There we go. Anything? Yeah I can hear you. We're asking you guys to approve this sidewalk bid that we put out to replace our cold sew machine trying to get this moving. You guys still heard me? Rikki you're cutting it out a little bit. We do have the memo here in front of us. I'm not sure really how much there is to say beyond what's in front of us here. If you can hear us is there anything else you'd want to add beyond that? I do not. This is pretty much the basic information if you have any questions. If you need me to call in I could do that if that's better for you folks. I don't have any questions. Other trustees do you have any questions about this? I don't. I do not. Oh one question. Quick Andrew. Yeah go ahead Dan. I noticed that part of the bid was to include a five-year warranty. I think it's $6,809 for the five-year warranty and I mean it's not a huge amount of money. Well it depends on how you look at things I guess but it's five almost six percent of the cost of the unit itself and it's not say I don't you know think it's needed necessarily but I don't buy a warranty on a lot of things I get. I'm just curious you really think that we're really going to need that spend that much money just in case I guess maybe he can use connections. Sorry can you guys hear me? Yes go ahead we got you. Yeah and that's that total bid that total price is for that machine is $169,490 that gave us $45,000 for a trade-in so it's probably a little less than that percentage that you're talking and yes I believe with travel time and everything else these folks are out of New Hampshire so that covers travel time and anything we need and yes I agree with you I'm not a big extended warranty guy but for that kind of money I think it's totally worth it. Did that come through? Yep okay I just was curious I mean I mean have you had other problems and other units in the past that you've turned to men but if you're confident with that I'm good with it I guess. Yes I personally believe it's worth it for that amount of money for that machine for five years. Again if you guys need me to call in for any other questions if I'm not coming through I will do that if you. I think we're okay right now Ricky trustees were there any other questions? If there are no other questions if somebody wants to make a motion I'll jump it once. I move that we award the bid for the sidewalk plow to Chadwick boroughs for a price not to exceed $131,339. Second. Thank you. Thank you Raj I think Amber Beach Dan for that second so any further debate on the motion hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody oppose? All right passed unanimously. Ricky we really appreciate you introducing this and enjoy your night. Thank you sorry about the internet connection. It's from on. All right and that's brings us to an update on the racial equity work in appointment of a trustee to a planning team. So this one's mine. You have the memo for people attending. Several months back we started the work of hosting listening sessions with the members of our community and our broader community. We really wanted to focus on the having BIPOC as you can see black indigenous people of color and other citizens and people who work in the community to tell us about our community and how they feel about our community to help inform the process of what Essex and Essex Junction or my way of thinking just the greater Essex community should be looking at is the term in terms of not only racial equity but equity in general. So I have so we we have these listening sessions we had three of them. They were hosted by our consultant and I only attended one while I was on standby for two of them. They let the participants decide whether they wanted myself the deputy manager and or the police chief to attend. So only in one group did they want me to attend but I did get to do one which is very enlightening. We have a report due from our consultants in the next couple of weeks. We've also conducted a survey that's been out there and translated into a couple of different languages and getting the results compiled of that survey. And so one of the things that we would like to do is take this and start planning for the next steps of taking those listening sessions and working on the final report and doing more planning with a team of volunteers including a member from the village trustees and a member from the select board along with the manager and others to start formulating that plan for the future to include what we might do with whether there's a citizen board involved in the police affairs. Is there a committee that would work on helping the community do a better job of reaching out to people of color when we do job recruitments and find and building relationships with agencies and non-for-profits on policy and practice and you name it to help people who well to help build Essex as a safe inclusive place to live and work. So tonight's action for you one I will answer any questions and two I'd like to see if one of the village trustees would like to serve on this committee that is being done in my direction. We are not asking the village board to create the committee I'm not asking the select board to do the committee it's a committee that I'm putting together to help me direct the work. Thank you Evan and when you say direct the work do you mean to create recommendations to the two boards? Yes okay okay trustee is any questions about this? I mean I don't have any questions um I'd be willing to throw my hat in I don't know if anybody else is interested though. Well we can certainly see who who is interested. Let me rephrase the question who is interested and should be able to meet a few Wednesdays coming up. So I know that I'm interested at the same time got my finger in a few things Raj I am more than happy to have you take this on. I appreciate you being willing to do so. I don't uh I don't want to stir your thunder Andrew. I will not know no hurt feelings no harm no foul um it's all good. I should ask Evan I didn't I wasn't clear on this though before I commit um when what kind of time commitment uh specifically what you're talking Wednesdays is this during the day is this in the evening? Yeah we're looking at two Wednesdays in December they would be from 6 to 8 p.m. Okay and it'll be virtual so we will not be serving you any meals that's an inside joke sorry. So we got no meals for budget day and now we're basically down three meals that's what you're saying well you're also missing out on the cookies we used to get but we still need your sir no not really though I'm sadly but we still need your serves sure I mean if if nobody else wants to do it I'll do it yeah well I think that it's not nobody else if nobody else wants to so we have uh we have Raj who's willing and able are there other trustees who would like to or are we ready to nominate that Raj be the representative? I nominate Raj. Oh second all right and if you don't mind Andrew if you're willing to be an alternate I don't mind uh Raj if you can't make a meeting let me know. Okay. So we have a I'll call the nomination we have the nomination from Amber and a second from uh from Dan with nobody else is there any other comments before we vote on it? Hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying hi. Hi. Hi. Anybody opposed? All right Raj you are it. Thank you Raj. Appreciate you doing it. Sure great. We will see. We'll be in contact. Awesome and Raj appreciate a 48 hour turnaround on detailed minutes from each meeting pictures charts all of it. No boy I'm kidding. I'm kidding. All right and so that moves us into the special village meeting results for merger. Mr. President this is sort of we just figured maybe you might want to go over it just you know if there needed any discussion so we threw it on and let you take take it over. Yeah I really appreciate it. I had already been quoted a little bit in the Essex reporter about my thoughts on this so I'll keep them fairly brief as there's other thoughts there but I'm just frankly blown away at that almost three to one results of those voting for merger as opposed to against as well as those who overwhelmingly voted for moving our annual budget to the Australian ballot process. I think that we had a voting by mail appears to be a fantastic way to engage individuals in this process. I'm very thankful to all the volunteers the staff the Board of Civil Authority who really made this happen. There was no no small feats with a significant amount of work that was necessary to make this happen. I appreciate that and also appreciate the the staff and the work of other volunteers to help make sure that the villagers were informed on this matter. Really appreciative of it and I it's clear we've been going down the right path come to the right path. Evan go right ahead. Yeah great job and nice turnout. One thing that I would mention to you is more than a half dozen people have since come up to me and said so now we're merged and I said well the village has voted the town's vote is yet to come so you will be asked to come out again this March but just so you know as we would imagine it is very confusing at times what the process is so it just is and I believe the select board is having its last listening session this next week on the 16th and one could be hopeful that either that night or at their following meeting they will take action as well to hopefully put this item on the March ballot. And Evan you brought up a really good point just to make sure in case there are no other questions that while yes the village has voted to emerge the town wide vote still needs to happen until that point in time no the community is not merged. We still need a result from that a positive result from that for merger to move forward to the legislature so until this point in time we sit back and we wait for the select board to finish up their work. And I'm happy to take any questions and I do want to thank before those questions you met you may mention we we can't do this alone. Susan McNamara Hill her staff at the town offices the board of civil authority all her poll volunteers so if you could think about it the polls opened at 7 I believe everybody was there at 6 30 the polls closed at 7 p.m. I don't believe many people left until about 7 45 8 p.m. okay that was both at the high school and S6 middle school. It is an extremely long process not only prior to the election but post election and generally went off without a hitch. It's amazing and a job well done by a lot of dedicated people. Any other questions or comments I just echo everything you all said I don't need to repeat it phenomenal job to all the volunteers I'm curious this is basically 60 turnout in this particular village vote wondering how that compares if anybody knows up the top of their head I haven't had a chance to look but I was just looking at the totals of just above article one and just I know that the community as a whole on the town ballot came in at just about 81 percent for turnout which I think might be a record I'm not a hundred percent sure but love them love the mail-in ballot just gets confusing in our community I guess with the back and forth of it's a duplicate ballot no it's a different ballot but I did ask Susan for some for some a little bit of historical data to see how this compares the previous presidential elections to try to get some ideas to you know is this more is this less and how that may have this compared to those those elections and I I have yet to get it I've also said to Susan she's been a little busy and I'm not personally in a rush yeah I tried looking on the secretary state's office but you can't break the village down there right so yeah so as soon as I get that I'm happy to to share that with the rest of the board so any other questions or comments all right if not then we can our next business item is a discussion of an evaluation of public employees which we will do an executive session so that will move us into the consent agenda and if somebody wanted to make a motion to approve the consent agenda I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda second thank you thank you Amber for the motion thank you Dan for the second any further discussion on the consent agenda hearing done all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye anybody opposed okay so pass unanimously and as we go into the into the reading file are there any board member comments for tonight um no never mind nope you sure it's only 724 one one quick note did you all hear that the governor has come out with new travel restrictions yes we're going to talk about it then go ahead Raj no it's on that note I was going to save it for another time but um it's kind of related to your memo for employees you know there's the press conference was pretty eye-opening today the last couple have been pretty stark there's now no safe place theoretically to travel without a quarantine and I had no foreknowledge of his press conference no of course not um that's that's for sure um just you know in the back of my head is the briefing from Dennis about public works in the winter and our staffing and travel and quarantine and you know all of that just kind of goes together I don't I don't necessarily envy your management position right now um but um it is a little concerning um you know having staff and people wanting to travel for the holidays and then having to by the very nature um sort of be out of work for a minimum of a week as a result these two the way things are now so I don't know you know how that could impact us um and if we have there's much anybody can really do about it on top of it so it's you know we are you know we're people's employer yeah um we're we're not we're not at liberty to tell them what they can and cannot do off hours yeah we hope that they are following guidelines uh we have several people who love uh and an annual tradition of going hunting um and it's not necessarily in the state um I'm not sure it's any you know we we have been doing a great job statewide until recent uh days but there are some counties in Vermont that whose numbers are scary um or just as scary as other places outside of the state um so we are concerned we have been talking with our employees about wearing a mask keeping social distancing both at work and home and that the public needs them to be vigilant over these winter months and while I probably enjoyed this nice weather as much if not more as anybody I know that this is a mirage and it probably doesn't help um because people want to be outside they want to be together they want to do those things so we are like what we did at the beginning of of COVID we're looking at split shifts we're looking at different starting times for different crews so that they're not in the same um break room or the same lunch room at the same time um we are trying to make sure that um our equipment is wiped down fogged um with our fogging machines and our our goal is like anything to keep keep our people safe but keep the operations going and we need everybody to buy into that system we also need the public to understand that we would absolutely love to be perfect this winter that we'd be right on time like we always have been but that's not going to be the reality in all cases this winter and while we will take calls and and take complaints um it is going to be very hard to communicate what status we're in on a given day um because we may not know until 3 a.m what status we're in which is our normal call out time um we will also be in communication with the school district as to what our status is as well because what our status affects their status which affects the bus status um and it's it's daunting and that's not even to say what we're going to be able to do with the police department or the fire departments um we rely on paid on call firefighters who have families um who have jobs uh outside of ours um we have police officers who do not get to pick and choose what calls they go on and where they're going to go um so those are the types of things that we are very concerned with and we want to keep rotations so that if should one of our officers become uh COVID positive that person is not quarantining a entire shift um so those are the things we work on we discuss we plan for um but it it's not in our control all the time and as you guys know I do like control so um it it's problematic um but we do the best we can by the way and I'm sorry I forget our libraries we want our libraries open we this goes all it goes into our libraries we are limiting access to our libraries because people in tight spaces touching things breathing on things coughing um we want to be open but we want to be open safely not only for our employees but especially for the public that goes into our buildings and um it's not a happy time sorry Raj did I cover some of what you're thinking and um yeah now it's it's it's going to be difficult um like I said I don't envy your management position on this and um I say this and I say this the the thing that I'm proud of the work of our entire organization both the village and the town think about this eight months eight months we've been at this not one positive COVID test for an employee of the villager of the town now that'll change someday I'm sure of it but for eight months we have been vigilant we have done what we can knock on wood no positive test yet so testament to the department heads and the employees so thank you for your patience so the only thing I want to only thing I want to add to that is we certainly do appreciate the efforts of the municipality we also really need to have the same level of appreciation for our residents as well as the same level of expectations and so my ask my personal ask is really for all residents please listen to the public health experts please listen to the guidance from Dr. Levine from our from our governor the most recent ask of don't travel out of state without quarantining don't have people come don't have to come to Vermont uh unless they're quarantining and similarly to limit the personal gatherings to no more than 10 people uh and above all else wear your mask if you're going out wear the mask we really all need to to do what we can to stop the thing from spreading the thing that I found interesting in looking at that cross-day travel map is if you were to look at the state of Vermont and if we were not blue because Governor Scott said we can travel along the state as much as we want the overwhelming majority of our state would be either red or yellow right now that includes the northeast kingdom that includes Chittenden County as a bright red it includes all of the 89 corridor uh counties as yellow so Vermont isn't immune and our numbers certainly are going up so we need to be vigilant sorry for that little rant Amber go right ahead I had a non-covid uh comment so I'll wait for you guys to finish non-covid what is that I know there's let's talk about something else please go ahead yeah so before we got on camera we were talking briefly about budget day and so I think we have one meeting before we get to one it's trustee meeting before we have the budget day so I just wanted to touch upon it and make sure I kind of understood are we still kind of planning to do what we did last year but zoom wise or anybody have any thoughts on that I have a whole host of thoughts um Evan or Sarah I assume though you guys are coordinating I admit we haven't had this conversation yet Sarah do you want to jump in yeah so we're planning pretty much the same thing that we do every year but just on teams where all the department has come in and give you a rundown and then we sort of chat and go from there I hope to have the budget document or I will have the budget document to you before Thanksgiving so instead of traveling to see family you all can study it over the long weekend is it possible to get the budget dock in a hard like a hard copy if we pick it up or whatnot that would be great I can print you a copy to paper and you can schedule a time to pick it up from 81 Main Street okay thanks Sarah you too Ross me too please if that's okay yes anybody who would like that should email me and then we'll schedule a day in time to pick it up sounds like it's going to be fun I'm still disappointed about the lunch piece of it but I'm going to let it go for now you are gracious thank you all right board members any other comments okay so now of course to get into executive session I need to find the motion unless somebody already has it so I got it here I'll move this trustees enter into executive session to discuss the evaluation of public employees in accordance with one vsa section 313a3 and to include the unified manager director best extension recreation parks and human resources director I think Dan had that one is there any further discussion my only question that I have is how do we know which teams to get into because we have to leave this one I wonder now I'm wondering if we sent an executive session let me let me send you a meeting notice okay it's coming right at you great so the motions on the table any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying hi hi hi anybody anybody opposed all right pass unanimously uh to members of the public we will be back moment I don't know how long it's going to take us we'll be back at some point in time and then we'll conclude the meeting after that and thank you Evan do you want to just shoot me an email later with results from our executive session yes ma'am thank you so much have a good evening everybody as well thank you so in your email you should have just received the executive session great so I will jump in first seeing the field Evan to join us just want to point out that it's not quite 857 see the picture there we go right we have exited executive session and so I will call us back into regular session would one of the trustees like to make a motion I will make a motion that the trustees that the village award a one-time bonus to Maureen to the Maureen Gillard Alyssa Callan and Rosie Gallo in the amount of five percent of their salary second and Evan is that an accurate recapture yep great trustees any further discussion on that motion really appreciate the efforts they put into it and I really appreciate all that they had done to help make this possible for our community all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye anybody opposed passing unanimously and would someone like to make a motion to adjourn second thank you Dan thank you Amber any further discussion hearing none all in favor signify by saying aye aye anybody opposed all right we are adjourned 759 one minute before each all right good night all be healthy guys say healthy wear your mask thank you