 All right, I'll call the select board meeting for Monday, November 15, 2021 to order. First item of business, any agenda changes from staff? None from staff. Any changes from board members? Okay, we move on to public to be heard. Public to be heard is a time for the public to speak to the board on topics that are not on the agenda. If you'd like to speak to the board, you can either raise your hand. If you're online, raise your hand in the teams app or make a comment in the chat function. If you are on the phone, I will allow for you to interject your comments at some point or after we take other comments. If you're in the room, please just raise your hand. If you'd like to speak to the board, please be brief, please be civil, please refrain from using inappropriate language. Please address your remarks to me as a select board chair. Please do not attack members of the public or town staff. If you are attending remotely, please keep your microphone muted and your camera off to avoid distraction during discussion. And I think that's it. So let's see, is there anybody in the room who'd like to speak during public to be heard? Irene, come on up. Good evening, everyone. Irene Renner, I had the privilege of sitting through the budget workshop last week with all of you. I heard things from the fire chief that I've heard for many years, but I think the need is even more dire than ever for people, for apparatus. So Irene, we are gonna be talking about the budget time. Yeah, okay. I didn't know if you'd be taking comments because I know you did not take comments on the budget last time. So if you're gonna allow comments. Yeah, we will allow comments. That would be great. You're also talking about MOUs, I believe at some point, but I don't know if the senior center is MOUs in there and I urge you to reexamine that as well. Thanks. There's an MOU for the senior center when the senior group's merged. And I don't know if that's something that's on your agenda, but I would urge you to have a look at that. We likely won't be talking about the senior center this evening in regard to an MOU. So then that is relevant to this public to be heard. Okay. Correct? Good. I agree. I mean, even though you're just across the table from ma'am having a hard time hearing you. Huh, wonder why. I think it's interference maybe from online. Is that possible? I don't know. Okay. So I think you got the gist of it. I'll cut my ear. Thank you. So you're... It's about the senior center and it's original MOU when the senior groups first got together. They were among the original groups to merge as consolidation was about to happen. So I'd like to make sure that that gets revisited by the select board as well. Yes, we will definitely be revisiting the senior center, but we will not be discussing it. I don't think we'll be discussing it tonight unless it comes up. But for the future. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, any other comments from the room? Any comments from attendees online? Again, if you are attending online and would like to make comments during public to be heard, please raise your hand. I am not seeing any hands. So let's move on to the first item of business, the five A presentation from conservation and trials committee about budgeting for ash tree management. What up guys? Good evening. I'm Alan Botula, the chair of the conservation and trails committee. I'm Shannon Jackson, one of the newest members of the committee as well. So what we wanted to do tonight was take you through the situation with the ash trees. So this is kind of an update on the presentation that was provided to the select board two years ago. So fair warning, there's money involved. There always is. Okay, it's first slide please. So as I said, this is an update and a budget request, particularly for 2023, since we'll be putting that budget together shortly and then a projection of what goes out in the years going forward from 2023. Next slide. So we'll talk about tonight is where emerald ash borer is in its distribution in Vermont on how that affects us. The status and distribution of our own ash trees or ash trees that are owned by the town outside the village, what the select board saw in 2018, what was decided and where we are with that now. And then based on that, what we propose is the work that needs to be done when we think we should do it and about how much it's gonna cost. And at the end, please stop me if you have a question, but at the end we'll provide dedicated time if there's anything you wanna talk about in detail. Next slide. This is a map from the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources showing the current status of emerald ash borer. So you're looking at red and yellow, the yellow circles represent a 10 mile radius from where there's a known infestation. It's likely that the ash borer is present in much of the yellow area, even if it's unobserved. Where you have the red and you're seeing some red now starting up around our way or dark orange. These are higher severity infested areas. There's invisible signs of infestation and also symptoms of tree decline. There were two traps set in Essex in 2021. One in Indianbrook, one at Sandhill. We didn't catch any. Doesn't mean they're not here. We're trying to at least monitor for when we might be able to see them. But bottom line of the slide is they're here. Next slide. Three things on this chart. The first one in the upper, close to the title there, that's a pie chart showing the distribution of tree species of town trees. And it's really small, hard to see. But I'll tell you what's there. That sort of lavender one on the upper left there, that's other. That's a whole mixture of things. The biggest single pie slice is the dark blue at about the one o'clock position. Those are ash trees. So the majority of our urban trees in Essex are ash trees. It's the highest proportion. And unfortunately, when some of these neighborhoods were built, if you look in that map down below, these are the ash trees and where they are in the town. And you can see they're very, very clustered. Some neighborhoods and some streets are ash monocultures. We just completed a survey looking at all the ash trees in the town over the summer. And that pie chart on the bottom there shows you what kind of shape we're in. I can't read it from here. It's about, what, 13, 15% poor? About half okay and about a third good maybe. Thank you, better eyes than me. All right, this is what we said in 2018. This should be not be new news. There's discussion looking at options. What are we gonna do about ash trees? Ash trees, because when EAB arrives, the expectation was all trees are going to be killed by the ash borer. So a couple of options. One was a phase proactive removal has kind of obvious advantages and not having all the trees lost at once. Has maybe a non-obvious advantage of if you wait till the trees dead, it costs about two and a half times as much to remove it. That's why those numbers are really different. The 47 versus the 118. Another possibility to consider was insecticide treatment. That's an ongoing as opposed to one-time expense. I think this represented a, would be doing all the trees for, I think 10 years, I'm not sure about that. And then in addition to that was replanting and that was given a range there depending on the size of the tree, but it's a lot, pretty close to the 500 than it is to 100. So the decision was made at the time was to allocate capital to the natural resources management account to start a phase removal. There are 10,000 each in 2020, 2021, and then 12,000 appropriated in fiscal year 2022. And staff in the CTC were going to monitor the situation, start with the phase removals and then come back and report status. Next slide. Between then and now, we were able to get a 15K grant from the Vermont ANR. That was a joint award to the village in the town. Our part of it, we were able to get 10 unhealthy bashtrees removed. We replaced seven of them on public land and one of them on owner property. We're trying not to lose canopy. In one case, we didn't want to put it back because there really wasn't room for it. There was a utility conflict. The other thing that happened is, as a result of this grant, the cost estimates could be refined. Now we actually have some work that's done and have a better idea what the costs are gonna be. And then the other thing that has been done since then is we did a new survey and that was the town forester CTC and citizen volunteers went out with every single ashtray and ashtray and scored them, see what kind of shape they were in. Next slide. What we're proposing based on the survey and the situation we have now is we would like to ask the town to commit to a biennial insecticide treatment of 13 trees. And we picked out these trees as being the best examples of health, of being important to the canopy and not having utility conflicts. They're unlikely to cost the town more money because of their presence near utility lines. We'd also like to continue with this proactive removal and replacement program. If we're going to get them all out in the next seven years, we need to do about 20 to 30 trees annually. Now that we have all the trees scored, we can do these in a sane order. We just start by the worst condition and we'll just keep going through and replacing them as each year we'll look at the worst ones and replace them. If we're not gonna replace them, because there's no space in their utility conflicts, well, then they'll not be able to be replaced. We also, as a CTC, we wanna create an adopted tree program, citizen volunteer program. This is in the planning stages and this is to increase the survival rate in new planning. Basically get citizen volunteers to monitor these new planning and help the town make sure that the planning is successful. Next slide. This is a little bit busy, I apologize where I'll try to walk you through quickly. This is by year and the first column is how many trees need to go out per year. So you see it's running in the 20 to 30 trees per year have to be removed. Costs based on the most recent data that we have on the trees that we did two years ago is in the next column. And then in the next two columns there, there's the capital request and the NRM account balance. And what we're doing here is there's money in the NRM account that we'll be spending down, but we have to recharge that periodically each year with capital so that we don't run that all the way to zero while we're taking these trees out. So this is a proposal of how you would manage that account, feeding money into it yearly as you're taking money out of it to do the tree removals. And then the last column is what it costs to treat these 13 trees. And this is an annualized cost. The insecticide needs to happen every two years, either would do it every other year or you would do half the trees one and half the trees the other. We can leave that detail for when we actually get to do it. Now what we would also propose is that this town staff would engage contractors to do all this work. This would not be public works. The CTC would continue to inventory the situation, monitor the program and keep the select board up to speed on what's going on. And then we would also do the street adoption program. Next slide. So that's it for the money. Questions, comments? Any questions? Go ahead, Sue. This is more for the board. Do we know what was budgeted in the fiscal year 23 budget at this point? I don't remember getting into that detail. Yeah, I don't think we went anywhere near that detail in our budget discussions. It would come in that, because this is capital, we're talking about it would come in the capital plan if we were not going to see it until January. Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. Actually, two questions. One, a language one. When you say a model culture, I'm assuming that just means like that's the only tree that's planted along an entire stretch. Right. You can find trees, streets in the town where you just go down the street and it's just one ash tree right after another. That was a favorite tree in the 80s because it had no serious pest problems. And it was salt tolerant. And that was before the town got smarter about requiring a diversity of species in planning. We don't do that anymore. And when we replace the trees, we consult with the tree ward to make sure that the right species are going in that we have a good mix. The species selected based on the location. Got it. And the second question is probably more for Greg. I think you might be the most appropriate person. I know that the ARPA money that we are potentially going to be looking at is very limited in how it can be spent. But I'm wondering some of it, I thought was tapped for either like water projects or environmental ones. I'm wondering if there might be a possibility of looking into that. I know, again, it could be a stretch, but I did get the feeling that looking for environmental projects was supposed to be kind of part of the designation for those dollars. So it might be worth it. Yeah, I do not know offhand, but happy to look into it. Yeah, great. Go ahead, Sue. Just one other quick, so I know you put the traps this summer, I guess. And didn't actually catch them, but you've seen evidence on trees that have been removed within Essex. We, I'll speak for myself. And as far as I know, is we have not seen infested trees in the ones that we've removed. What we found though, is that there are a fair number of ash trees that really aren't thriving. Some of these trees, particularly as we go into the next couple of years, put some trees that really need to come out anyway. They're not emerald ash borer. They don't have the signs of having the bark penetration, but some of the ash trees are not in particularly good shape. Thank you. And as you saw from that second slide, we get that slide back and shows the state. There are places, you know, that's the state line study. And you can see all the basically all in County has evidence that it is in nearly every town and community. And for correct me if I'm wrong, but once you actually start seeing them, you've gotten to a point where it is really a problem. Yeah, you can see up in about our area that you've got some of that orange now getting close to us. It means that there are known infestations, not just an insect sighted, but trees are being damaged. Tracy, go ahead. So the insecticide treatments, those are more of preventative maintenance measure. Right, yeah. If you want to know more about that, I have a slide in the deck that I can speak to. Yeah, I just wanted to clarify since you haven't seen any actual infestations. Once the trees damage, it won't save the tree. And in fact, that's why for these 13 trees, I've really asked that if the select board could approve that money, we want to start next spring and get these trees protected before they get infested. The ones we selected are worth saving. Thank you. Oh, so where would this money be in our? Yeah, can you go back to the statement of work slide? It's the one with the busy table on it. This one? Yep, on the right hand column, you see the 13 trees. And it's about $1,000 a year on average to treat the 13 trees. If you remove them, it's about $11,000 to remove and replant. If you've 10 years of treating, it's about 12,000. So that's the balance that you've got. You've either got a $11,000 one time or you just say, well, we're just gonna treat them and over about 10 years, you're about break even. And so you're talking about doing a treatment that's coming spring, which is in the current fiscal year. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Do we need to approve anything to make this happen? Or what's the... I don't think so. We can work with Darren and myself and we can see if there's some money in the budget that we can use towards this. That $1,000 is less than the... The select board needs to weigh in. I think we can figure that out internally. Okay, great. I do think it's good to be proactive on this before we lose the trees. If the select board agrees that it's an important thing to do. I agree. And as far as the maintenance or the removal goes, my limited understanding is that it's a lot cheaper to remove a tree while it's still sort of healthy versus waiting until you know we're too fast to... It's about 40% the cost to remove it while it's healthy than before it's dead. That's true. So you don't wanna wait till it's dead and that's why we wanna do this kind of from the bottom up of condition. You know, start at the ones where we're already in trouble and work our way up and we'll keep you updated as to how that's going. But the intention is to get these all out while they're still alive. That's it. So we've obviously, the weather has been strange over the last couple of years and there's been a lot of trees that have come down in storms. Do we know have any of those been ash? No trees, no ash trees have come down there are a couple of them. I've seen some where limbs don't look particularly good and we pointed those out to public works. I'm not aware of any to have broken though. But that was something we did note when we did the survey, when we saw a tree that had a dangerous looking limb we let the public works down. All right, so I live in one of those neighborhoods that's highlighted there and actually there's the zoo. But in the overdrive, there's a long stretch of it that is completely ash trees. They're beautiful trees. And this year during when it was, they were all bright yellow all at the same time and then they all dropped their leaves on the same day too. But... They're wonderful street trees. That's one of the reasons we would like to treat some of them and hate to lose all the ash trees. Yeah, and I remember when I moved in I used to have to walk, when I walked down that sidewalk used to have to duck underneath the branches and now they're huge, huge trees. Yeah, the ones up in Meadows Edge too, there are some really big trees up there. Yes, that's what we're talking. Yeah, yeah. There was one that came down, that was taken down a couple of weeks ago, but it was right next to the pump station at the end of the neighborhood. So I suspect it came down because of the pump station. And isn't going back in because it was right there. All right, so I don't know that we actually have to take any action here or is it for information? I'd say no action at this point. Let's talk some more about what we can find for the current fiscal year and stuff for you to consider. Okay, it sounds more like once you get into the capital budding in January. Yeah, that was mostly what we wanted to do. We wanted to talk about the treatment and we wanted to give you guys the heads up when you're putting the budget together for 2023 that we would like to allocate money so we can keep going on this replacement program. Okay, anybody else have any questions? Because there's a couple of hands up from the public. Okay, Margaret Smith. Hi, can you hear me? Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, thanks. I was watching some PBS special and they were talking about replanting and considering their consideration in replanting was how much carbon the new trees would sequester and apparently there's a considerable difference among species about how much carbon they can sequester. So I was hoping that you would have the people advising you on what to replant to consider that as one of your criteria for choosing replanting trees. Thank you. Okay, thank you. I hadn't realized that there was that difference. So good to know. All right, thank you, Margaret. Harlan Smith. Yeah, three questions, I believe. One is the treatment 100% effective. Two would be, is the treatment only 10 years or does these trees need to be treated for their lifespan? And three, is there a resistant type of emerald or I'm sorry, not emerald. Is there a resistant type of ash tree, naturally resistant that can be replanted in place? Those would be my three questions. Okay, I'll tell you what I know. The description of the treatment that I saw said extremely effective. There were no numbers beside it. I take it from that adjective that if you're treating the tree there's an extremely good chance the tree is gonna be okay as long as you start treating before the emerald ash borer arrives. I don't have a numeric effectiveness. Once you start treating the tree unless something changes with emerald ash borer based on the experience in the Midwest you have to continue to treat it as long as there's an emerald ash borer threat. So you cannot stop. Now, I don't know what the situation's gonna be in 10 years, 20 years, I don't know but you should consider that once you treat it you will treat the tree to the end of its life. And finally, I'm not aware of any ash trees that has any resistance. There's been some discussion that rarely there may be a tree whose genetics allow it to be resistant but there's not any data on that. There's some discussion that when you look at wild areas that have a lot of ash trees there may be some trees in there that have some resistance and that might be a nice thing for horticulturists in the future to use but we should assume that it will kill every ash tree in the town. Great, thank you. Hey, Patty Davis. Yes, very interesting discussion. I don't know if you're a tree arborist or the person that's speaking but I just barely tuned in. And I know personally, you probably do too but I just wanna throw these names out there and have someone jot them down that Ann Hazel-Rigg is the pathologist at UVM and she's diagnosed some of my trees and I'm a master gardener so I know her personally. And then Leonard Perry is a very good person to contact. A professor at UVM that I also know. And then the state entomologist, I know that we're, I'm sure you're dealing with the Vermont state entomologist but I would reach out to the UVM Extension Service and just throw out these three names and I believe that you get a lot of support. I personally am a member of the Arbor Foundation and I was a member of the UVM Horticultural Society group and volunteered for many years at their perennial gardens and tree farm, crab apple trees. So I just wanna point out, I know you're talking about the ash trees but there is a dead red pine 60 feet or 50 feet high in Saxon Hollow that is gonna fall on somebody. This tree is already dead. I think we need to spread our wings somehow whether we reach out to UVM or the state natural resource department and get some money because this tree is gonna kill somebody. It's on, it's on the, on Sand Hill Road. If you're driving along Sand Hill Road you see Saxon Hollow Park on the left if you're coming up the hill from River Road and it's a red pine about five trees. It lost all its limbs, all its needles for about a couple of years now and every time I walk the corgis by I look up and say, oh it's still there but we've got to tell somebody. So I wanna tell the select board and the conservation committee. Thank you so much. Thanks Patty. It reminds me of a time that I was out in the Redwood Forest in California were driving along and there was a sign that said no stopping danger of tree falling. So I thought it was interesting that they're encouraging you to keep moving to reduce your chances of getting hit by the tree when it falls. Well timed, lower dwell time. Yeah, thank you Patty. I don't know if you have. My pleasure. You folks, you're connecting with other. I mostly work through the tree warden. Yeah. Tree warden. But it's good information and I'll add those names to mine. Oh sure. Because you'll get statistical information also especially from Ann Hazelrig and I just talked to her like a month ago. So she's available. Okay. Oh, thank you. That's great. Thanks Patty. Okay. Any other questions or comments from the public? I've not seen any hands up. No hands up in the room. Okay. Good to see you Alan. Good to see you. Yeah. Thank you for your time. Thanks for your time. Thanks for your time. Right. So let's move on to next business item. Potential action to compensate village of Essex Junction $97,003.85 for village manager recruitment and hiring process. So you want me to go through some background on this? I can kick it off though. You can either way. Go ahead. Sure. So as you're all aware, I guess formalizing later on tonight probably shared management is coming to an end between the town and the village. Both the town and the village will need to make a decision on hiring managers. The village is requesting $97,000 from the town to help that out. The staff is supportive of some transfer from the town to the village in order so that both municipalities can start planning for their future and not be beholden necessarily to what was budgeted in fiscal year 23 and trying to navigate who gets which manager and who's paying for which manager but this way it's for the remainder of the fiscal year. Town can choose its path. The village can choose its path and the manager will no longer be responsible for trying to navigate potentially competing interests. So the village has requested $97,000 so they can start their process where the town wants to, Slechport wants to honor that entire request, some portion of that request or up for discussion but that is the request before you that the trustees made at their meeting on November 9th. All right, thanks, Greg. I guess I'd like to add a little more clarity to where this is coming from with the shared management situation coming to an end. There ends up being a gap in the management coverage from the contract ends February 25th. So from February 26th until June 30th, the village is losing the support that it was expecting based on the budgets that both the town and the village passed for the current fiscal year. So those budgets both assume continuity of management or of joint management through the end of the fiscal year and with it being ending in February, there's a gap there. So the support that the village is asking for is for management plus other supporting staff, HR being one of those support positions and then some time from both the deputy manager and the assistant manager. And so looking at the cost of having that sort of replacing that support, it comes up in a range of 97. I'm a little surprised that it's such a specific amount but it comes up to 97.0385. If you look at percentages of the unified manager's time, the deputy manager, the assistant manager and the HR director. And so that's the intent. That's the the request, the basis for the request is to allow the village to have those, to support those functions that they will lose when the joint management situation comes to an end. In our discussions with them, I think we had set up to 97. I noted that I did watch the trustee meeting last week and the motion was initially made that way but then it was modified to ask for just the specific amount. So I think that's more of the background. Any other comments, background wise that we should make? Go ahead, Pat. I think you touched on it but that bears clarification that this is for the tax money that's currently being collected in this year that was in expectation of the payments that were going to happen for staff that the village will no longer be able to have access to. So I think certainly in effect, this is money that has already been paid into the town account for that purpose and it's no longer going to be available there. The fact that it is happening in the taxes we're collecting this year, I think is important to note. Any other clarifiers? Go ahead. Yeah, and thank you, Pat. I was also planning to clarify that. I'm a little confused as far as the purpose of recruiting and hiring a village manager. The expectation was not that this would be for that as Pat said, this was just money that was paid in that will no longer be used for that purpose. So I'm curious if that is in the motion, if that restricts the trustees ability to use that for something else, if it's only designated for one purpose. Well, the motion made by the trustees was to make the request of us. We can word our motion however we choose to. I don't know if that would be acceptable or is that how that works? We restrict how they based on our, it's an odd situation. Well, and I'm not arguing one way or another. I'm just, I see the proposed motion. So I just want to be clear as far as what ramifications that would have. Yeah, that motion was based on the trustee motion. Who has her hand up? That's right. I mean, that was my reaction in reading it too. I was actually a little confused by the motion because it wasn't how it was framed when it was discussed that that's what the, I mean, I understood the request for the money based on the dollars that had already been collected for the management and management staff that would no longer be accessed between the end of February and the end of June. The question I have is logistically, how does it, I mean, maybe it's a question for Greg. How does that work? Like you're just gonna like hold Turkey not provide any assistance or support? Cause I got a, I mean, it just feels like a little bit like operationally that's gonna be a little bit strange. And I guess I didn't look, I didn't see it as being like a complete, you know, stop for all of the staff, especially like, you know, the staff that will still be there and HR, which, you know, function. And I understand the villages looking to hire their own, but I don't know, I just, can you speak to that operationally? Sure. It's gonna be tough. And what we've said is staff and, you know, staff management staff, shared management can continue. It's just, we've talked to you about just competing interest and conflicting interests and, but we have said and we made it, we'll stick to it that I think on both sides, we will support our counterparts. We will support our colleagues. We will help show where the files are happy, you know, show where the policies are or answer questions about how we've operated in the past, try to explain what we can do, how we've done it. The difference is gonna be, trustees would no longer have a shared manager at their meetings. From an HR perspective, you know, Travis can help the new person on the village side or whoever that may be. Navigate bamboo in the HRIS system that we use, but, you know, not asking the town HR director to make decisions about what rate to hire somebody in the village that may be putting them at odds with the town, which when we were moving towards unification was always an interest that we had to keep in mind. Now that's no longer really the yet issue, but that'll be for new people to decide, you know, what's the proper pay rate? You know, what's the budget decisions that have to be made? Whereas the strategic hiring, the strategic planning, that's kind of where management will pull apart and take a step back. So starting to treat it like we do any other municipality of where they're, you know, phone's always there, email is always there and happy to help out. In this case it'd be, I think even more connected intertwined for at least those first four, six months, but starting to pull apart the strategic piece of it, the budgeting piece of it, the higher level stuff. That answer questions, yeah? Yeah, we're not gonna do any call blocking or anything like that, so yeah, definitely be correct. We both need to be successful in the end here. Okay. Don? So this is for IT and human resources and assistant manager services like Marguerite, is that what you're telling me? And what else? It's manager, deputy manager, assistant manager, and HR director. So it's not gonna be used for recruiting a new manager. The way it's worded here, is that what you're saying? That's the word. It says to recruit and hire a village manager. It doesn't say anything about sharing our services. That was the request from the trustees. I don't know if any of them are online or if they're able to speak to it. I wasn't at that meeting, but it's, to some extent, it's to help the trustees, help the village get its footing based on this time of transition and change. And I understood when we discussed it and we discussed the amount. My problem is we'd never discussed helping them hire a new manager and that's what this is telling me. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, it says to recruit and hire a village manager. And that wasn't part of what... Right, so I don't know, how do you have a... I'm having a hard time with that. That's all. I mean, I don't have a problem with helping them separate and have help IT and to help human resources and all that. But I can't agree to helping them hire a new manager. Because technically, that new manager has nothing to do with the town of Essex. It has to do with a new city of Essex, Junction. I was always under the impression that the money they were asking was going to be in part to recruit a new manager. The decision to end the MOU came from us. So that was, I think, a critical part of that. They need part of that money. The second thing is that, to be frank, I know they've phrased it as they have in this motion. I don't think we have any ability to restrict what they spend it on once we agree to send it over. Much like, I mean, we don't even have, as citizens, that ability in our old town meetings. We could say we want to put $100,000 in the budget for roads, but the reality is that that doesn't have to be spent on roads. It will increase the budget amount. And the idea has always been for the municipality to honor those requests, but they were never, I think once the money goes someplace, it shows we can't restrict how it's spent. So that's a different interpretation than I guess I had, which was that we would reimburse them for their actual expenses. That's why there was the up to 97 in there. That if they choose to have an interim manager that doesn't cost them any more than they're currently paying someone, then there's no cost there. So there would be no transfer is what the way I understood our discussion we had. Again, that's why I said up to. Mm-hmm. You're brought to justice. Okay, so that's the way I understood it. So it was a reimbursement, not a, here's a handful of cash, do what you want with it. And so, I do see, yes, Raj, thank you for attending, get a comment. I'm gonna give Village President Andrew Brown a second to log on. So I understand he's logging on, but my interpretation of our past discussions on this was more in line with what Pat was saying. This is to replace tax dollars that we're going towards shared management and to cover the replacement of management for the Village that from funds that have already been paid into that use between February 26th and June 30th so I feel comfortable that that amount was agreed to after a calculation of what that would cost the Village to and what basically a loss of service and what the Village was faced with. How the Village spends that money, in what positions and how they choose to deal with management from February 26th to June 30th was never part of a discussion as far as I can recall. I understand that there might be one or two other trustees that have logged on, but I can tell you that my recollection from our discussions on this was pretty much exactly that. This was something that we were going to need to replace that void in management services. So I'm getting a little uncomfortable here because I'm seeing as you said that the trustees are showing up here. We have a joint meeting next week or should we be having this discussion in a joint meeting rather than an impromptu? Well, I guess I'll volunteer to log off so there's not three of us here, but someone a few minutes ago did ask if there are any trustees that could clarify. So that prompted a bunch of us to log in to try to clarify. If you would like it to be less than three, I'm gonna log off and then you can have it. It's perfectly fine for you. There's no violation if you attend, if a board attends another board's meeting that the concern I have is that we haven't warned that we're gonna have a joint discussion. I don't know if that makes a difference, but. Well, I guess I'm gonna log off because I don't want that interpretation. I don't wanna make anybody uncomfortable. And I've said what I had to say, but I don't watch on YouTube, but I think it's valuable to get a clarification from at least perhaps one more because it was asked and there seems to be some confusion amongst your group as to what this was for. And I don't mean confusion in a negative way. Just some clarification might help. So I'm gonna log off and thanks very much. Thanks, Raj. See George Tyler. So we're kind of being awkward. Well, I guess we're going. Go ahead. Yeah, Andy, you know what? I'm gonna let Andrew, because I just noticed that he logged on and I think we're all at the same mind. I mean, the money was obviously, clearly obviously intended to pay for the loss of management services that's gonna happen with the termination of the contract, but I'm gonna log off and let Andrew speak. Okay, go ahead, Andrew. Hi, Andy, can you hear me okay? Yes, we can hear you. So I'm just getting on and what I think the question maybe is how the funds would be used? No. Right, yeah, how they would be used, correct. So the entire intention is to use these funds to replace the staff and the services that we would no longer have access to. So for management finance staff, that's the entire intent. There is no other intent. It is not at all to give back to village residents, to take a trip to Tahiti, nothing like that. Purely to be the good stewards of the public funds that we always are and to utilize those for the management services. So Andrew, to be clear, I don't think anyone accused you of having any, I don't even know what the right word is. Intent to use this in some other way. But it was some of the select board's understanding that this was an up to reimbursement, not a handing over of funds that you may or may not spend. I mean, if you don't need that, if you don't spend it, it becomes uncomfortable for some of us. So maybe we need to have, we the select board need to have more discussion about our understanding of what we thought we were agreeing to. Can I ask Andrew a question? Yeah, go ahead, Don. Andrew, you worded it so it says to recruit and hire a village manager. It says nothing about shared services or transfer of services. Is there a reason for wording it this way? The wording that we used is in all honesty, what was in the motion or what was in the memo that was suggested to us. So when we talked about or when we talked about this, it was to utilize the funds for a village manager, village interim manager and those management services, something related to that. Does that help to answer your question, Don? It's in this fiscal year, it's in the current year. So it's before any separation would... I understand that. My problem is the recruiting right now. When we are, nevermind. Andrew, how are you planning to cover the services that the HR director is providing currently? We would like to replace or we'd like to be able to have our own HR services, our own HR staff. Those decisions though would likely be made by the manager because we as a board don't have the ability to hire anybody except for the manager. So we would have to accept funds then have our interim manager hire staff. So until we have that, there's not much we can do. So I'll express my concern is that it's not gonna be a cliff that drops off at the end of February. My concern is that there's gonna be some period of time that the transition is to the new management or management staff. Yeah, it can't be a step function change and responsibility because of, right, just a knowledge base or a lot less, it depends on who would be in the real estate, right? That's what I'm saying. I mean, this has already been decided that is what's happening and it's happening because we have honored the request of our staff to cease the functioning of how we have had these two municipalities held together for the last however many years. It was a request that the select board made to end joint municipal services. Now we're bulking here over tax money that has already been collected from the village to pay for the services that we, the select board unilaterally said to the village, we are ending on February 25th. That has all already happened. So I mean, I think and I realize now back in the conversations that we use the word reimbursement and I think we were completely thinking of, I was thinking of tax reimbursement of all of the money that I as a villager paid towards joint municipal services that I later as a select person voted to pull away from the village. I also honestly completely understand now that I'm hearing it that reimbursement also means obviously, you know, if I'm have a project at work and I need to use my own funds, I'll go and I'll get a receipt and I'll come back to HR and they'll give me whatever I needed to spend. So I don't think that there's any maliciousness or intentional mouth fees. And I think that honestly we just took two completely different definitions of reimbursement and all kind of went with it in our heads. That said though, I honestly, I do not feel comfortable keeping tax money that was designated for a source that we as a board removed. Again, the term sounds harsh, but it is, it was unilateral on our end. We did not consult with the village trustees. It was a request that came and it was ending at that time. So we just said we are not going to continue to pursue it, but that tax money, half of it was already collected in September and the other half of it is going to be collected in March. That's what it was for. And it is only right that if the percentage numbers are correct, we give that back. And I don't have a problem with that, Patrick. It's just the way that this is worded because it's not saying it's to help with IT. It's not saying it's to help with human resources. And that's where my hangup is. I know we agreed on the number, but it wasn't specifically say to recruit and hire a village manager. If it's worded, we're to cover the cost of what have shared services until July for whatever. Do you understand what I'm saying? I don't have a problem with, because I know we had already discussed this and what the amount was. It's just, it feels to me like we're not covering everything we had agreed on to cover. Does that make sense? Okay, so it's a wording thing there. It's a wording thing. That's all. I don't have a problem with the 97 because we already had to figure that all out. You know, multiple times with pieces of paper up in that low row. And I'm just saying, I just don't like the way it's, this is specific to hiring a manager or looking for one and hiring one. I'd rather have it worded as shared services to cover management, IT and HF. It's not IT. There's no IT involved. Whoever it is. Yeah. Human resources, management, assistant management. However you want to work. I just, do you understand what I'm saying? Does it make sense? Yeah. It's replacing services that will no longer be provided because of the termination of the joint MOU. Right. Yes. Yeah. So to clarify a few things here for the public both boards jointly terminated the MOU. The MOU by not taking action on Evan's contract. The trustees were willing to negotiate an extension of that contract. The select board chose not to based on trying to protect the sanity of our current staff. So there's some nuance in there, right? That both boards terminated the MOU by not renewing Evan's contract jointly. That was a joint happening, I guess is the word I'll use. The trustees asked us to extend it and we said no. So that's part of where the select board now does feel obligated to provide support to the trustees or the village to provide to extend those services through the end of the fiscal year that they will no longer get because the MOU ends on the 25th. The choice that the select board vein was based on trying to keep our staff happy and intact and so we were looking out for the best interest of the town in that respect. And so yes, I agree the 97,000 was numbers I've been talked about, I've been agreed we've seen where the number comes from. The, and I think you're right, Pat, that there's potentially a misunderstanding among some of us about, we actually used the phrase up to 97 and that's where I really understood it as show us what you're gonna do and we'll pay those bills for you, the way I understood it. But I also understood that if there was no expenditure or an expenditure less than 97, that's what they would get. It would be a reimbursement from that perspective. So I don't know, I guess we've got to decide which way we wanna go with that. Go ahead, Pat. I apologize, this may be abrupt if there's more conversation, but I would actually, I would motion that we just table this until the joint meeting because I think that we need to get a feel for the trustees and I'm happy to have us talk but I think that no matter what, we're gonna need the full consent of both boards to make everyone feel comfortable or rather move forward that way. I think we need to have our own position in our own room here on space here before we go and do that though. Otherwise, we're not in the go. I don't know if we're, I think, I don't know. What do folks feel? Is it up too or is it a fixed amount? I think Pat, you're saying it's 97. That's how I feel. It actually says right in the memo that we have here, up too. Yeah, but the memo was written before the motion was modified on the floor, I think. I can't remember which time, but it was, the select board can honor the full request or it can honor an up too. So it originally said, and as I said, when the motion was made in the trustees meeting, the motion was made with the phrase up too. And then a friendly amendment was made to change it to a fixed amount. And then that's what was voted out. And so that's where, I don't know, Tracy, do you have a? The only concern I had was the wording about the purpose. I'm, we've discussed this, it's the right thing to do in my mind. We've been through the numbers. I'm fine today. I'm fine talking about it later. I'm fine talking about it in a joint meeting. But I mean, this isn't new. And if we're talking about up to $97,000, we're $3.85. I don't think that that's a substantial amount to be concerned about. Sue, up too, or a fixed amount? So operationally, how does the up to work? Or should we take, sorry, should we take public comment before we do this? I don't know. I'm sorry. Yes, operationally and up to would work such that the village, I mean, until the village has their own finance director, all the finance is managed out of the same department anyway. I think, I'm not sure how, we haven't gone through the details of how the finance is going to ship over. Which is the second part of this. So the trustees can commit to something, some contract with someone and then it gets paid by, I think that's how it would work up to an amount. And if they go over that amount then they pay for the rest of it. So, I guess the way it would work. So, Sue, do you have a reference whether we go with a fixed amount or up to? My gut tells me it would be right to do up to and actually track what it is, but then that actually is gonna cost our staff more time. And so, I think in the interest of, really the objective to actually offset some work from our staff and actually pull things apart that it would be better to just decide what that number is and move forward. Okay, Don, Diablo. I have no problem with the up to 97,000 as we agreed. Tracy said I just don't like the way it's worded. Okay, okay. But you just said up to. Up to 97,000. Yeah, yeah. What is the motion that's recommended say? It doesn't say up to, does it? No, specific amount 97,385. Okay. Probably should take comment from the public on this question as well. Raj, I'm seeing your hand up still. Is that a team's relic? Nope. Go ahead, Raj. But I may not be the first. You are. As far as the discussion on up to, and I guess as it relates to wording. You know, we're talking about five months of salary and benefits to try to get an interim manager in to do the work we discussed. As Andrew pointed out, we can't hire other people. The manager has to do that. I recall a calculation we all went through for people, it's rather elaborate, and a very fixed dollar amount at the end. I can't imagine that we went through that much trouble to come up with a calculation that specific that would have then been an up to. That was strictly a calculation on what the village portion of tax dollars paid into the town budget would need to be reimbursed and reimbursed not after they're spent, but simply because those services are no longer being provided by the town of the village. What the village does, what choices they make, how they hire that person, that's strictly a village discussion. And I'm sorry to be blunt about that, but we only really have one path. We cannot do anything until we hire an interim manager. That will cost money and it will cost money to pay and provide benefits for that person. And then that person will have to turn around and replace some other positions just to keep us going until June, July. This could never, I don't know if Don's concern is that we're gonna go hire a permanent manager with us and that's not really what was intended. We don't intend to do anything that rushed, but I think that the village would like to do what I think the town would like to do and have a thoughtful purposeful search that would be community centered and that could never be done with that kind of speed. So if that's the concern, then that's just not something we could accomplish in five months. So I'm just expressing how I recall our discussions going and how we came to this amount. Like I said, it was very specific and a very detailed calculation. And I don't recall we would have gone through that effort if the intention was to make it, we'd have to come back with receipts and justify the last $5,000 for instance. It will barely be enough. I fear to get us where we need to go. Thanks. So Raj, if you appoint one of your existing staff members, is it still expecting us to cost that much? It could, but we haven't even gotten that far yet because those other positions in the joint management have to then be hired and those can't be just shifting staff around. I don't know of any plan right now of moving forward with finding a department head that would take on part of these duties. Any reporting of that which has been done is vastly premature. The village runs efficiently but leanly and we really need someone that can come in and handle board management, budget season, the legislative process we have to go through and frankly hiring and figuring out HR and finance as we finish out our year. Not only that but come late spring we're gonna have to kick off some kind of search potentially for a permanent replacement that may have to wait. But like I said earlier, these are monies that were collected for management of NHR and everything else. So since those services are no longer provided and the village is going to have to be doing them themselves for whatever reason, my belief from those discussions was that what we needed to do with it, we'd have to have options. All right, thanks, Raj. I see Harlan Smith. Yeah, I think Raj touched on a little bit but I'm still slightly confused. So I mean, I would hope that everybody that's in the meeting both online and in the room and sitting at the boards understands that if you're a village resident that you're paying taxes to municipalities. So this $97,000 that we're talking about is money that was collected only by village residents and because the management was a town position that money was transferred into the town budget to cover that cost. And again, it was strictly village tax raise money, not the entire town raise money. And it was for a contracted service. And that contracted service is not going to go to the end of the year, which is what the money was collected for. So literally is $97,000 of village taxpayer money and the select board is trying to figure out what it's going to be used for, which would kind of be the select board making decisions for the village. It's a little weird what's going on, but my question is that $97,000 that we're discussing is truly only tax money that came from the village residents for services that are not going to be rendered. Is that a correct statement? I don't know. I'd have to go back and look at those numbers. Yeah, I think I'm, go ahead, Greg. My recollection of how the numbers were presented and Andrew jump in if I'm misspeaking. So thank you to the calculation, but it was looking at the amount of service dollars-wise that the village would be losing by the end of shared management, looking at Evan, myself, Marguerite, the assistant manager, and Travis, the HR director. The village money coming from the village municipality paid into the village organization covers 50% of Evan's salary, not benefits, and it covers 30% of Travis's salary, not benefits. The rest of that money is paid into the town municipality, including by village voters, but to the town municipality, that covers 100% of Marguerite's salary and benefits, 100% of my benefits. And I think about 75% of my salary with the remaining 25% of me coming from Water Sewer Billing. So that's the breakdown of where the money is coming from, but Andrew, if I remember correctly, your calculation was looking at the amount of dollars that the village would be losing out of those four positions for the remaining four months after shared management comes to an end. I have this spreadsheet. Sarah's got, Sarah, you got your hand up. Go ahead, Sarah. Hi, Rudy. I do believe that the money that Harlan is referring to is that 50% of Evan and 30% of Travis that Greg just referenced as being a transfer from the village to the town, and that will end when shared management ends. So even though these numbers happen to be similar, they are not the same dollars. So we're, and I just really, I feel like that's an important clarifying point. So yeah, my understanding was that, right, the 97 came up, came from an estimate of how much time Evan, Greg, and Marguerite put into providing support to the village, and it wasn't straight 42% of their costs. It was, I couldn't tell you what it was. For three months, however many months it was. So it was a little more, there were a little more nuance in there, but we all went through the numbers and all that, and I guess it's a, it's not the exact, it's not the 42% of, because there's some English supply put on there regarding how much time each of those individuals puts in each of those, in each of the municipalities. So. Okay, I understand that that piece of it is complicated, but by putting stipulations on it, aren't we still getting really close to the select board making decisions for the village? No, no, I don't think so, because it's only a, it's just an up to, it's a dollar amount with no stipulations to how it's, how it's spent. It's more a question if you only spend 80,000 of it, then that's all it's gonna cost, not, you know, there's no leftover in your pocket kind of thing. But if there's not a stipulation to it, and we decided to take the remainder, let's say there was $8,000 left over and fill potholes, then we spent $8,000 and we spent the whole 97. And Don's concern seemed to be that there was a stipulation that it was used for management, and that was a concern for her. Don's concern was that it didn't say assistant manager, HR and deputy manager services that it was only specific to one individual position, not just to provide. And... Okay, but then again, we're putting stipulations on it, which is a select board making... Can I try to clarify? Yeah, go ahead, Tracy. The confusion around the stipulation stems from how the motion came to us from the trustees. My question was, should there be a specific use because I don't think we can bind another board as to how to spend that money. So I don't think anybody here is wanting to tie the hands or say it's only for a specific purpose. Go ahead, Sue. Yeah, I feel like there's a little bit of a transparency issue. If we support the motion as it is here, and someone who isn't in this meeting and getting all the background looks at it, it looks like the decision was that we were going to just provide that money so that the trustees could specifically recruit and hire a replacement manager. And that wasn't, at least my understanding of the intent, which was to enable the village to provide the services to their constituents that they're not getting because we're not continuing to continue with the shared management services. So should the motion say, to the effect, the purpose of it, get my tongue out of the way, to replace services that will be lost due to discontinuance of the shared service MOU. Something like that. Something like that. So that makes it cleaner from the perspective of not being so specific that it could be questioned. Okay, I'm seeing other hands coming up. And so, Don, if we change the wording to what I suggested, replace services so that it's not specific to any positions. I'm fine with that. I just think they're tying their own hands by making it that specific. Okay, I hear you. And then, so I'm inclined to also go along with that. I'm also, I see George's, Andrew's hands up and Eddie Davis's hand just went up again. Also, I don't wanna go in circles saying things that have already been said. I don't know, George, do you have any new comments? Yes, my comment is this, since there's uncertainty about what the trustees intended, and I am sure that the trustees could clarify all this in a heartbeat if we could just meet with you, but we can't meet with you right now, I would urge you to maybe consider, give serious consideration to Pat's suggestion for tabling this until we have a joint meeting. Thank you. Or we could vote on it and have it done with. Andrew? Not to disagree with George publicly. I would say that you all know what the intent of the funding is. We've, I believe made that pretty clear in our meetings, unfortunately not in the motion. So I'll take ownership and apologize for that. I would also request not delaying for the simple fact of the delay that we, or that any delay that comes with us having a promise to be able to show to candidates that we have the funding for this delays any hiring. And honestly, I'm already concerned enough about how fast time is going by at this point. So I would urge you to please not delay. All right, thanks Andrew. Patty Davis? Documentation is the name of the game. And what you just said, Andrew and Tracy and Dawn put it in writing as you were just doing before you took the last three or two persons opinions. I feel that in at least an ophthalmology document, document, document, or it's not fact. Thank you. All right, thanks Patty. All right, so I didn't hear any public comments saying don't do this, but now I see a hand up here in the room. Come on Irene, come on up. Thank you, Irene Runner. Are you able to hear me? Yep. Okay. I wasn't in the executive session that you all were. So I'm coming to this as a member of the public who is just trying to catch up. But I was at the trustee meeting and I did hear the trustees last week talk about a 30 hour interim manager. And I don't know if a 30 hour interim manager cost $97,000 for four months. I just don't know. But it was discussed. So for people that it wasn't discussed, it was discussed. I mean, I typed that in my notes. It was said by Andrew Brown on November 9th. I'm curious as to Rasha's comment just a little bit earlier today that we only have one path. Is it true that you did not offer as a select board to allow these four, three, however many people are still with us come the end of February to continue to work and help the village transition into a separate entity, whether or not the legislature passes it? Is that not on the table? Why does it have to come down to a financial transaction? Can we not work with the village, our nearest nested and dearest municipality to help them with this transition and not make it all about dollars and cents? Because I do think there will be and I don't wanna have to nitpick and have people record fractions of hours but can we not have our HR person work with their new HR person whenever they come on board to make this happen and there will be the sharing that we've been doing so well for so long, helping this along. It just, somebody mentioned a cliff earlier. It feels like we're asking you to go down a cliff and yet we are still being expected to help transition and therefore there should be some recognition whether it's monetary or not of this help that the town will be giving the village to transition. I like the idea of up to $97,000. Different understandings do not mean there's a misunderstanding. I heard that at the beginning of this whole conversation. It's okay for everyone to have different understandings. The select board is not making decisions for the village by giving them a whole lot of money, I don't think. I think it gives the village a whole lot of freedom they wouldn't have otherwise. The contract I signed as a select board member with Evan said that if one municipality didn't renew his contract then he was out of a job. There was no stipulation that anybody would owe anybody anything, so I'm really kind of gobsmacked that there's some insinuation that there's money owed to people. I mean, that just really bothers me as a taxpayer. Does this, someone said earlier the select board can't bind another board. Well then how can the trustees bind the select board? How come it doesn't work both ways on this street of binding ourselves and each other to monetary expenditures for certain things? There's just so much here. Someone said earlier that tax money collected for certain line items has to be considered for what it was allocated for. No, it doesn't, otherwise you would never have a fund balance. Money's given to the town for all kinds of things in a budgeted scenario where you allocate so much for fire and so much for something else. But we're always told you're only approving the whole and therefore those individual budget items really are not for individual things. And therefore you are justified at the end of the year when you have, woo, this year a $1.65 million fund balance, you have the privilege as a select board of using that money for whatever you want. Money is never assigned to line items so I don't know where this comes from but it's really creative and I compliment folks on that but I don't think it's right. And I hear once again the word village used to cover inside the village residents as well as their village stature. And I ask you, as I've been asking you for many years now, stop doing it. It just confuses everything and maybe that's your intention. But village money was not spent on these things except in those instances that Greg allowed and I'm hearing other people take that word village and use it too broadly because this is money spent by town inside the village residents to pay for town taxes. Thanks. Thanks Irene. All right, do we wanna make a motion or do we wanna table this with the trustees in the room? I think they appreciate the additional week potentially to get started on this. Do we wanna make a motion? Are you ready for the motion? I would wanna freeze it. I will make a motion that the select board provide the village of Essex Junction $97,003.85 for the village's transitional municipal services. Is that broad enough? Or I just wanna make sure everyone's comfortable with it. I think it needs to reference that we're replacing services that will not be lost due to discontinuance of the shared manager MOU. I have the wording so I'm not. It's in my head so I'm sorry, I thought you would. I wrote down the first clues to the first. I'm gonna dry my motion. It's Andy's got it. So yeah, I might as well make the motion. Yeah, go for it. I move that the select board provide the village of Essex Junction with $97,003.85 to replace services that will be lost due to discontinuance of the shared manager MOU. Second. Thank you, Pat. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes 5-0. Thank you. Now we're under the next complication. Potential action to compensate village of Essex Junction $60,000 for finance director recruitment and hiring process. This is once again tied to the ending of shared management. As you all know, I believe at this point we are unfortunately losing Sarah Macy as our finance director. She's moving on to a different opportunity which we're happy for her, sad for us. As a result of that, looking at separating the finance department into two teams sooner rather than later, it's just not really a feasible expectation for a higher or a shared finance director not knowing what the future brings. That's a lot to ask of somebody, whether internally or somebody coming in new. Sarah was somehow able to keep it together and patch it together, but I don't think we can expect that or nor should we ask that of somebody else coming in. So this is another instance where by the town moving forward to the finance director and the village moving forward with its own finance director, the two municipalities can focus more on their own needs, their individual needs. Building and stabilizing the finance teams for each municipality. So similar concept to before. The $60,000 is based on the village hiring a finance director around January 1st. That's six months of salary and benefits is what that number is based on for the rest of the fiscal year. But the idea once again being that each municipality can go its separate way and this is again tied into the ending of the shared manager, MOU. Happy to try to take any questions or explain that better if I wasn't clear. I'll answer questions. Is finance part of the manager MOU? I didn't think it was. It's not. The separate one, isn't it? The separate MOU for finance? There's a, we'll get the title of it, but several years ago, there was an MOU that was tied into combining the finance departments. The town finance director, Doug Fisher at the time, became the director of administrative services, which is a predecessor to my job. Lauren Moriso, who was a finance director from the village, came over, became a town employee, but was directing as a shared finance director. When Lauren retired, Sarah replaced Lauren as the shared finance director. So it's all tied in together. It's not specifically part of the shared manager MOU, but it's absolutely part of shared management. And again, having one finance director report to two managers, just not a feasible long-term solution. So this is allowing, again, allowing each municipality to hire in its own best interests and move forward with the ending of shared management. This is potentially coming sooner because Sarah's last day is sooner than Evan's last day. Sue, go ahead. So when we went through and reviewed the budget last Tuesday, one of the things I asked was for us to flag separation-driven charges. To me, the way that you just described this, Greg, this is separation-driven charges. This isn't a, sorry. I mean, if we remove the fact that unfortunately, Sarah is leaving, I mean, and Sarah was able to keep it together, but I think really the need is, because it's separating, there's a need to have an individual focused at each of the municipality levels on finance. And I just, I struggle with something that's being driven outside, or maybe not outside, but within the village, within our town, why that is something that the town should be funding. I don't know if I said that clearly enough, but basically the driver in this case should be funding. That's not, and I get that we wanna all make sure that everyone is gonna be successful and work together to the best of our abilities, but I also think the fact that this is a request and I think we need to discuss that, Greg. And this is another situation and Sarah's there, so she probably has more specifics, but there's five people in the finance department right now, plus some money aside for consulting and intern help. Three of those positions are paid primarily through the town budget, still providing services for the village. There's one position that is paid for through water sewer funds, and there's another position that's paid for through the village. So this is a shared service that the organization, the town organization municipality is picking up most of the cost, but to provide services to the town and the village. So it's wrapped up into those shared services and pulling it apart before the end of the fiscal year, where there has been money budgeted for the service for the town and for the village to provide that service to both. So in this pretty much this eliminates the need for a shared finances MOU or agreement. No, no, sorry. I'm jumping in. Sorry, Craig, I know I'm like to your side. Is it okay if I talk now? Yes, go ahead, Sarah. Thank you. A couple of things. While this transition to two finance directors and two finance teams is inevitable in the separation initiative and the dissolution of shared management and the two entities reverting back to having their own individual staffs, it has been sped up with my resignation. I don't think we would be having this conversation right now if I weren't leaving. The reality is this, imagine we don't change the funding and we don't change the structure. Right now we would be going out to market for a joint finance director to find someone to come in to learn the ropes on both the town and the village side so that then they could turn around in one to four years and dissolve it and then pick a side. That doesn't make any sense to me. If anyone thinks that that is a logical way forward, I'd love to hear why you think that. It's a lot to get onboarded on just to turn around and undo it. And so in thinking through that, it seems more logical at this juncture to move in the direction of having split finance leadership with one person being focused on the town side of things and one person being focused on the village side of things that helps us hire, it helps us cast a wider net for people who are not insane like I am, who love, give me another one, it's wonderful. And I think that's gonna be very important to try to fill the seats. And then the funding, how do we hire a village employee under the town EIN? I mean, really this funding component is some really complicated logistics about being employed by this community and in the transitional phase. And so I think that it's important for us to have our eye on the end goal, which is to have to split into two leadership roles in finance sooner rather than later. It helps us hire that fills the seats that we need. And then to decide how to pay for that, this seems like a reasonable method in the current fiscal year. And then in the next fiscal year that we're currently budgeting for, we have that split taken care of, we have that position in the village budget. I haven't provided, I don't make any clarity about the money, but I hope that I've given you a roadmap for what finance looks like now and how we can move best into the future from a staffing perspective. And Sarah, if I can follow up, Andy was asking about the shared financial services agreement, which there still needs to be something. It would look different, probably a little bit from what is out there now, but there's still gonna be a need to share resources going back and forth. It's still gonna take three, four or five years to pull apart the finance operations that we have, the accounts, the programs, everything else. So there still needs to be some sort of agreement in place probably consultant and it's an additional help to help those two directors and their teams pull things apart. Absolutely, that timeline, that financial services agreement and that transition period has nothing to do with the people who are here and it has everything to do with the way our databases and the finances are structured right now, which is that they're completely, they're almost fully consolidated in every, and we spend 110% of our available hours just running the show and keeping the two organizations operational in the finance world, getting payroll done, getting AP done, getting water bills out, tax bills out, billing, collecting two budgets, two audits, closing the month, closing the year, doing the bank statements, miscellaneous billings, questions, helping with cash receipts, et cetera. And we need to be strategic and methodical as we're pulling it back apart because it was not set up to just flip a switch and have it fall apart again. It was set up to be integrated. It was set up to be consolidated from here and on into the future. And in order to set both communities up for success in the long run, we need that breathing space to do it right. And I feel strongly that that is like a one to four, one to five year timeline because each thread that we pull is going to have some unintended consequences and we'll have to troubleshoot those along the way. Sarah, I fully understand that the work is no different, but how it gets paid for it will be dramatically different. Do you think it will be dramatically different? I mean, we're talking about two. Well, one of the reasons that we've been working on these agreements is to try to smooth out the tax rate increase that the town may experience with separation where the village will be paying 50% of a couple of headcount for a number of years so that the town wouldn't have to pay for it. So now what I said when it's out the door, this is a big change. We're each paying for our own. There's no transfer of money between anybody other than the $60,000 that we're being asked to give to the village here. So it's costing us instead of it being an advantage to the town to have this agreement where part of our headcount is paid for by the village for four or five years, that's gone away, right? Or am I totally misunderstanding something here? I'm not sure, I feel like you're asking me two different things, which is that the agreement was about sort of smoothing the cost. The original agreement was that four people would be town employees and two would be village employees, right, that we would hire. And there was a stipulation that 50% of the director and the assistant director would be paid for by the village. Gotcha, I guess I haven't read that the most recent agreement. So the town is in this scenario losing that funding for that four or five years. So this is a different scenario for us. That's why I was asking what happens to the finance agreement. And I think we need to think through that before we answer this question, that's my... True, but we also desperately need to hire someone in finance. And so what that looks like, we really need to get, I have 12 more days and we need to get the word out and start collecting resumes. And so I hope that, certainly there's more to talk about from a money perspective, but whether we hire that person as a town employee or a village employee is a critical piece of advertising and recruiting. And since ultimately the village will be hiring its own finance director to round out that team, the most logical approach is to advertise the position from that side. Right, but it's a big financial change for them to be doing that for us, for them to be doing that this year rather than five years from now. So. I don't think that five years was gonna be the timeline for hiring that position, but yeah. And I'd be certainly open to other suggestions on how to fund it. I think I've been clear about the need. Yeah, no, Sarah, I think you have. And I agree about the need for separate funding moving forward. I guess to be frank, I'm very uncomfortable with this number, 60,000 coming up when we do not have a shared financial agreement yet. So I don't know if in negotiations that two financial directors is ultimately how we end up and that's the recommendation you're giving us, but we as two boards have not sat down and agreed on the terms of financial agreement because it's in flux right now. You know, with your departure, we don't know necessarily, I think, what that and financial or shared financial service agreement looks like anymore. So it's really difficult for me to say 60,000 is the right number because we may negotiate and three weeks from now, come up with a shared financial agreement that potentially is radically different. So I know that the need is there and I understand that. I guess I'm not comfortable taking this number and going with it tonight without knowing what, or at least having a ballpark idea of what shared financial services looks like once the two boards actually get into the agreement and work out the details, because we cover a lot of ground as we're going through these agreements and they are certainly, you know, they have seen wholesale structural changes before and we're just not there with financial services yet. So I don't know that this number is right and that just puts the whole thing, like not tonight for me. Anything else? Yeah, just out of, Kerry, where did the $60,000 number come from? I haven't heard anybody mention. Yeah. I think Greg said that it was the approximate cost of salary and benefits for six months of a finance director. So assuming we can get someone hired and starting on January 1st to end out the fiscal year. Thank you. And sorry, just so I'm clear, is that person, because we're talking about two positions being filled, is that for, right? This is for the village person. We're talking about hiring one individual. The town has money in the budget this current fiscal year to replace Sarah or to keep a town finance department more or less intact. Village is not. And I understand the challenges of the money of trying to figure out how to transition into the shared finance or transition out of shared finance. The reality is that that draft was put together several months ago when Sarah was still here. We're in a different situation. We're in a different time. We're different scenario. We're trying to act and recommend on what we need to do now, which is move forward with two different finance teams that are gonna be working together closely over the next several years. And I think that's where the agreement gonna take a look at what that looks like. But we need to move forward with what finance looks like in the budget that both boards have seen. The finance department includes, I forget if it's called finance director, finance manager, about a high level finance position in the town and in the village. So as of fiscal year 23, so July 1st, 2022, assuming the budgets get passed by the voters, each municipality will have its own finance director. It's how do we get there in the next six months knowing that Sarah's gone in 12 days? And it's trying to figure out the best path forward. And this is our recommendation. It's a good discussion. It's a hard discussion, but it's trying to figure out the best path forward for both municipalities for the next six months, seven months. So we were also asked to approve funding for a transition project manager. What's the difference between that and hiring a new finance manager? Transition manager works for us, works for the town, this position we're talking about here works for the village. Okay, but what I'm saying is, so we're also going to have to look for a Sarah replacement. Are you telling us we need to look for two people or will the person that we hire to replace Sarah for the town be that transition project manager? The person replacing Sarah for the town will be the town finance director. There will be a transition manager who will be helping each side sort of as to go between and help them pull stuff apart. So with that transition manager, the village would still need their own finance director being there's no- Correct. All right. Sarah, I don't know if you want to elaborate if I can tell on Sarah. No, that's, you got it. That's the gist is that the staffing is needed just to run the two organizations. And so in order to be methodical and thoughtful about pulling it apart, the proposal is to have somebody on a limited basis help with those specific projects and retrain existing staff along different lines and set up the new databases and get them ready to go. You know, the town's paying for both of those positions. That's I think where some of the hard work is coming from. The request is that the town pay for both of those. Just struggle. Especially when it's driven by separation. Yeah. Yeah. It's a response to separation. That's a good way to say it. Why is the town being asked to pay for both of these positions? I understand they're in different physical years, but still the town's being asked to pay for both positions. I think we're going to need to have more discussion on that. I don't know. A couple of trustees have their hands up. Let them time in. Is there anybody else from the public? There's one member of the public too out there. Maybe even in the hand in the room. I don't know. I'm going to go. Yeah. All right. George. George Tyler is your hand up or is that a residual? Andy. It's a residual. I prefer not to speak at this time. All right. Okay. George. Joe Percy. Is it Joe Percy? Jay Percy. Yeah. You're muted. Joe. There. How's that? There we go. We can hear you now. I just have one like clarifying question. Did. Um, did the village contribute 40% of Sarah's salary in the 22 budget? The village residents pay taxes to the town. To the tune of 42% of the town's tax collections. Yeah. So that's okay. Where that 42% number. Applies. Yeah. That's why I was getting confused on the 50% on the 60,000. It wasn't for 50% of a position. And. Is that. Which is half a year. Oh, oh, oh, oh, sorry. The. Yeah. The 50% number that I mentioned before. Is that what you're questioning? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the 60,000 was for six months. It wasn't for 50% of a position. And. Yeah. That's what you're questioning. Yeah. The 60, well, the 60,000. Is for. I understood that to be 50% of the replacement costs. No, that's the replacement costs for. January 1st to June 30th. So it's a six month position. It's the full cost of that six month position. Yeah. But, and that's that. And that's 50%. Instead of 42. And it's a two month position. And they paid in, which they paid in. I'm following you. It's actually 100%. For a six month period. It's a hundred percent for six month period paid out of the 10. But, but yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's true that 42% of that. 60,000 came from village residents as they paid their town taxes. Yes. So. Would it make sense that that's that, that would be the ask. I don't know. That's that's a good that's an interesting suggestion. Thank you, Joe. All right. Yep. Yep. Got you. Thank you. All right. So I don't know. I get the sense that Patty Davis is your hand up. Yeah, I just wanted to agree with Sue cook. When she keeps reminding the board that, you know, who instigated the separation and all that, but with that aside, my thought is after listening to Sarah Macy, what about an accounting firm for six months? An accounting firm that would be unbiased wouldn't be able to take aside a professional accounting firm do the unraveling. And I'd have to agree with Sue that the money or a percentage of it for that 60,000 really should be coming from the village. Because why are we paying for all this? I really question that. Thank you. Thanks, Patty. Roger, your hand up. Sure. Yeah, just a couple of quick things. I don't think that there's any bias in accounting. Sarah can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe any of our employees pick favorites when they're. When they're working on our books, join or otherwise. So I'm confident in that. Thankfully, I'm hoping that select board is hearing what the staff is saying. And what the staff has continued to say and said tonight. And I hope that the board is then prepared with any delay to get a hire done that's going to handle finance jointly for six months or for a transition period as Sarah specified. She's already indicated twice tonight. She's out in 12 days. She's really sad. Sad to see her leave. So I'm concerned with that imminent departure that. That we may have a huge hole to fill in finance and not. Not a lot of direction to fill it for staff. And that whole will create more vacancies. And I just hope you're hearing what. What we've all heard from staff that they're in sort of a desperate situation right now. They came up with this proposal. They came up with what they consider to be a fair number. This is certainly a conversation we can have together next week. But I just wanted to put that out there that I think. I think what we're hearing is. Is is some pretty. Frank. Requests from staff to get some answers. Thanks. Yes, we certainly get that it's a it's a desperate situation. A difficult one. Lorraine's alone. Just a real quick question. Thank you, Andy. Is is the $60,000 if they don't if the village doesn't receive it does that stop them from being able to start the process of hiring a replacement. I don't know. I don't know what the village's financial situation is whether they have. Funds to support that or not. I have no idea. Go ahead, Sarah. I would just say that if this is unable to happen, then we're going to be forced to hire within the current structure, which is a joint finance director. And an assistant finance director who served both municipalities and bringing somebody on to learn the ropes of both. At the beginning of the separation. So, you know, that's. I think that's where we land. If we were unable to work this out. So, sorry. I'm sorry, Andy. So can, can that just be explained a little bit further because I think that's kind of the crux of it. I'm trying to understand why this $60,000 would necessarily hold up the hiring of an individual. Like, even if you didn't make a decision tonight, could that be moved ahead and then decided later? Or I don't understand the financial part. Sure. So that affects actually a lot of things. So it affects the job description. The job title. It also affects the benefit. So who are you paid by? Who is the new person paid by? Are they a town employee or they a village employee? And then how does that, and then looking down the road, if they're hired on the town side and then we come to the point in separation where we have to say, okay, we're about to split these teams. Who's going to stay with the town? Who's going to, you know, stay with the village? We, you know, there's, there's just, there's no clarity. It's really like who's EIN is on your W2. That's, that's the logistical challenge. And I don't think that's my question though. And maybe I'm not making my question clear. So because it seems to me like you've already both sides, the village and the town have determined and agree with your recommendation that at this point, the position should be split in two. That's not my question. My question is about the funding of it. So I don't understand why this $60,000 makes a difference in terms of that decision and moving forward in terms of how it's funded and to be able to move ahead with advertising because if the question is, are there going to be two positions? And I would think that's the question that's asked, not the $60,000 question. And I think the answer to your question is that there is no money for this position in the village budget in FY22 because village finance is supported overwhelmingly by the town funded finance department. And so the funding for this wouldn't be available in the village budget until July 1 of 2022. If the budget passed in April. Does that answer your question, Lorraine? Yeah, so in other words, there's no other places that you can reallocate funding from the village budget to cover that position or at least get it started and not have to rely on this decision being made tonight. That's correct. Greg, do you have more to add? Sarah covered most of what I was going to say. I'm debating if I have anything else to add. Yeah, I guess just to emphasize what Sarah said is that finance is primarily covered through the town budget. It's a shared service, but it's primarily covered through the town budget, which means the village did not budget for a finance director or any other high level position in finance. So by pulling it apart, it's taking a look at the money that is in the town budget and reallocating some of that to the village so that this split can take place. And Sarah, this is putting you on the spot, but maybe you and I in the next couple of few days can take a closer look at exactly what is in the town budget and do some prorating of what is left for the year and your position. And that 60,000 was based on what we think the village needs to hire a finance director for six months, but we can take a look and see if there's a number that makes a little bit more budgetary sense based on what was budgeted. And yeah. Can I also ask that you do look at whether there isn't another place that this money could be reallocated like Lorraine's question within the village budget. We can take another suit I can tell you that I'm intimately familiar with that budget and the employees and the structure, all of those positions are filled or or earmarked for other things. And I started Sarah knows the budgets better than I do I think it's conceptual it's a good question. I think conceptually though. The money's in the town budget for this function and yes we have a giant pool and things aren't necessarily only available in this line to that line it's it's the whole pot, but it helps to look at it as to this is this is where the money was going to go when we told the story of the budget back last March and April, this is where the money was going to be assigned now that that story is changing. Let's let's let's start with that money. Well and I mean, the reason the story is changing is because we're not merging but we're separating. And because Sarah's leaving. Can I add something Greg. I'm sorry, Andy. This is Raj. Yeah, go ahead, Raj. I'm going to come up a couple of times I think the other thing to keep in mind here and as Greg just said this is predicated on the loss of the finance director. But if this if it's decided that this isn't sure if you want to go back and take another look at a more appropriate number. No argument there. You know this came from our finance director and management so. If this doesn't happen, if then the village is simply going to expect 100% 100% service from the finance department as we have been doing for FY 22. So, you know, that conceivably will have a negative impact on the town finance department and on staff that in the management roles that are at the town. So that is certainly a path that we can follow. It's not one that I would think that any board member would really want to choose. If you really look at the ramifications on the people that are left behind and any kind of hire that we had to make. Because if if we can't figure out a way to get through this, then I then I think that the only thing left to do would be to rely, like I said 100% on the town finance department to provide the service they've already committed to for FY 22. I guess I'll just leave it there. Thanks, Raj. Arlen is your hand up. Yeah it is. I'm trying to figure out how to word the question so that I'm not getting into. I don't even know if it's considered personal but the question, Andy would be if the 60,000 isn't allocated to the village would the 60,000 be used. By the town to hire one finance director that would service both the town and the village. Right. I mean it's it's it's either 60,000 used by the town to hire one person and then divide it all up for five years down the road which we've already discovered is messy and it would be cleaner this way. So you reduce the town's cost by 60,000 and put it on the village to hire their director manager. Right. So the 60,000 is going to be used for this purpose regardless. It's a matter of who uses it and how cleanly we use it, or how we make it less messy for five years down the road. This way I'm posing that question to you Andy and if you need to get clarification from somebody else that'd be great. Thanks. So Harlan that $60,000 doesn't actually exist anywhere it's in it's part of our fund balance that the later question on the thing. Yeah, Sarah you're asking for it out of fund balance. Right but it's in the current budget. You're right and as soon as I shook my head no it's in the but like my salary is budgeted this year. So you're blowing my mind we don't know we don't know what we're doing here that's that's the problem I think we need more detail. I think we need to understand how this interlocks with what we thought was a shared finance thing agreement going forward. I'm not I you know I'll go back to what I think we said earlier is we're not we're not ready to talk about this to answer this tonight because and I'm I'm sorry but I'm getting a little frustrated here because it feels like we're talking in circles. And I'll try to be explicit in what my questions are so that we don't end up here again. Anybody have any other comments we want to move to the next business item or do we want to do something with us. You want to motion to table. Do you want to motion to table. There's no motion to table. Yeah I don't think we need to do that we just will bring it back up on another agenda. Sorry. No I just this is all just too confused you know what you show me where the $60,000 is is in the budget and if it's if it's a it was a reallocation of something that's already in our budget that's a different discussion then. I mean later later on we have an agenda item that talks about fund balance assignments and talks about this $60,000 that's where I'm. It's it's I don't get it. Apologies for not being as clear as we could have been. Tabling is fine I guess just if you have any questions thoughts. In addition to what you said tonight, please send it to Sarah Evan and I as soon as possible so we can try to be better prepared. Next week. So my my view of what the questions are is where is it $60,000 actually coming from. Is it the appropriate amount. Based on what we already may have budgeted that we're not going to anticipate I mean we, you know, with with Sarah leaving, we're not going to be paying her anymore. So there's is that we're you know it nobody ever said that's where it's coming from. If that's the case then then please explain it to us. The other question is whether there's any. Any, but the what the ramifications to the financial portion of the shared service, the shared finance agreement is I understand there's all kinds of work that needs to be done. I don't need to know the detail of all the the ins and outs of how the accounting is going to change. I mean how the process of the accounting, the business of the town changes. I just need to understand, you know, what what it does to the. The exchange of funds that we were that that we were anticipating was going to potentially benefit the town from the standpoint of art. The flow of the money. Yeah, I think that just goes away. This, but again, I wasn't clear to me from the explanation we got that that was the case. The other. Okay. I think enough. All right, let's move on. Okay, next item work session on fiscal year 2023 budget. Who's going to talk to this one. Sarah. Yeah. Okay, so last week we had budget day. We started at a pretty high increase on the tax levy in the overall budget. I took some of our conversation after the fact and I made a couple of adjustments to that budget based on some of the things we talked about. There are some other adjustments that could possibly may be made when we talk about fund balance as well, which is also on the agenda tonight. But I've listed them here in your memo. We did remove one position in the management budget with associated benefits training and travel that reduced things. Some revenues that came in from the village for the finance director assuming that the two will begin to split in FY 23. I did add some dollars in for fund balance to cover some of the additional costs of the transition project manager or transition project consultant. However, that ends up shaking out since that is going to be a limited item and I know there's been some. There's been an apple type to use one time to use fund balance for one time type things in the past. And so my suggestion would be that we that you consider that if you are willing to continue to leave that position in which is another topic that we can discuss. I did shuffle a few things in the finance department because the idea for the transition project manager is more of a consulting position as opposed to an employee. They updated a few things the Winooski Valley Park District to reflect their actual request, which was just about $1,300 more between budget day and now we got our request from the health officer to increase those stipends on an annual basis which I have included in here for discussion. I did also earmark some fund balance in here in police to pay for the third car replacement $70,000 because once again, that's the kind of thing I've seen us use fund balance for in the past when there's just like a one time it's not. necessarily one time it's like once every so many years when the replacement schedule has three instead of two for police department. And then I did end up reducing the capital transfer out of the fire department we have some other ideas internally about funding that that radio project, we are looking to get the police chief and the fire chief in to discuss with the select board the extent of the radio equipment and infrastructure in the town. Looking at maybe December 6 or 20 for that presentation, which will give some more information on that project and then possibly moving that to capital or looking at some costs in the FY the current year budget so I did reduce that line item. I reduced it only $90,000 because in looking at the truck replacement schedule, and that does need to go up a little bit, and then I added that fire daytime per DM hours in back to July 1, which is something I heard budget day as well. And so the end result is to bring the overall budget to a 4.6% increase with the tax levy at a 5.4% increase. So what I'm looking for from the board tonight is any questions that have come up between budget day and today, any additional areas that you would like to make alterations to the dollars. Or anything else you want to talk about related to the budget and we can also have the fund balance conversation in conjunction with the workshop as the two tend to be related. Questions to not a question and I did send this to Greg. I asked that the big increase for Essex rescue I think needs to be, you know, on on the radar and I think you said they're coming on December 6 so we can have that conversation with them and understand, you know, if there are options what those options are. Yes. I know. Excuse me Don had brought this up during budget day but I'm curious and this may be more a question for fire chief, but if the issue is attracting and retaining staff volunteers is a per diem position going to change the underlying cause of that. There was discussion about what the village is doing with sort of a staged approach to sort of more of a career ladder, so to speak. Based on actual duties rather than just adding one per diem position. So has there been any discussion about that sort of approach. Not to my knowledge although I had a different meeting about fire stuff today and it sort of came up tangentially. A lot of the challenges are tied to housing costs and people being able to be here and you know if they're here, renting with them they find a place and Fairfax or somewhere else that's a little bit more affordable. They go there or if they have kids at home and they're working 4050 60 hours a week. Family or volunteer you know paid. So I think it's part of a bigger conversation back to the per diem I think that it's part of the solution to per diem and it's to make sure that there is somebody at the station who can respond to calls. While also working on this the recruitment retention other aspect of it but it's to just to have the bodies in the station now underneath. Okay. Go ahead. And I'm still waiting for an update on why the health officer requested increased. I can. I'm working on that. Thank you. Thank you. I had sent the question asking why the cost of cleaning the library tripled and I got a response from Caitlin saying that she doesn't think it should be three acts either so. But then we got a response from Sarah. Right. I actually think that so it costs $715 a month to clean Essex free library so 12 months is about $8600 plus that contractual services line includes elevator maintenance and alarm testing once a year, which is about I think another five to $700. So I do think that the $9500 is an accurate representation of what needs to be in the contractual services line and possibly that the 3000 last year was a fluke or a mistake. I don't there had been in this particular building some shuffling not shuffling but things had been expense to repairs and maintenance that were that have been changed now to be in contracted services in particular the cleaning contract. And just looking at it quickly this afternoon, the 9500 is a justifiable number, even though that that jump does look, look odd. Okay. All right. Thank you. Sue. Just a quick Greg you had put together a list how does your list. Drive with this discussion like there were some other follow on things from your list. Oh, geez, I hit send and that one forgot about it. Gosh, I really don't remember and I don't have it in front of me. I mean, that's expressed as a topic. I am working on getting info from health officers basically they're seeing way more calls and spending more time on stuff but that's the really simplistic version of it. Very happy about it, sir. So, Sue, we had your request to call out separate separation related items. I frankly just haven't had an opportunity to come back through the document since budget day last week. You, there was a request to look at the Essex free transfer to Brown now to look at the Essex free cleaning costs. So we've got that one. So, I think that are considered the possibility and legality of reinstituting the town that's at the village highway tax. We just, again, we haven't had an opportunity to, to get very far into looking into that. So, we've had requests about specific object codes for certain items in the account number structure. That's simple enough to change though it hasn't been changed in this document. We, we got the decision from the board about removing the third position in the management budget and that's been reflected here. There's a note here about the request from chief Cole about the per diem back up to 80 hours that is back up to 40 for a full year in this current proposal if we were interested in doing another 40 hours a week for that that would be an additional $45,000 just for discussion purposes. And then we have talked about how to leverage fund balance assignments to offset costs in a sustainable way. There are a couple of those items here currently with the one time or non repeating costs in finance and police. We are interested to know if the select board prefers to just give us a percentage that they wish the budget to fall in and us take it back and change it appropriately. There's a question about ARPA again we have no new information from last week about ARPA, considering the local option tax to cover some of the capital that's more of a long term solution, but definitely as we've talked about before something that we are pursuing for the spring vote that's going to be an additional $45,000 and then potentially looking at impact fees for emergency services, which is a much larger discussion and project so I do think that for the for the most part, we've hit on some of the some of the separation related items, and then restituting the highway tax, we just haven't had a chance. Just to respond to one of those questions is do we want to give staff a specific increase target, or where are we at now here it's five. We're currently at an overall. Oh, I lost it 4.6% with a 5.4% tax levy increases results of loss revenues and other places. I know I know in the past, the board has often said three or three percent three and a half percent kind of range. You want to do that or do we want to be comfortable going forward the 5.4 number that might get tweaked as we look at things a little more. I kind of felt that I heard throughout the budget session that we have held back or avoided increasing costs for a number of years now, avoided staff positions and that I think that there was a general tenor. Correct me if I'm wrong that, you know, we needed to kind of accept that these costs were going to come home to roost at some point, I kind of feel like this might be the start of that. But it is definitely higher than I'd like to see, but I think the understanding is that I think we would probably be doing a disservice to the community to make it much lower than this, given the stressors that were brought to us during budget session day. Other comments. There is the Essex rescue piece too, which is, yeah, there's a couple of things we still want to look at. I have some concern. I just want to make sure that we don't eliminate the radio request from the fire chief that we'll find some other way to do it. I have some concern on that dropped off, but thank you for the explanation, Sarah. So, Sarah, I think they're, they're, well, we will take some comment from the public here, but it sounds like the consensus of the boards that we're not going to arbitrarily enforce a breach on you. But we do have a couple of follow ons and we do need to hear from public there next. Right. Lorraine is your hand up or as my computer lying to me Lorraine are you there. Anybody else see Lorraine sorry sorry about that again he was no it was me. Sorry. I'm not asking you a question. Okay, all right. I just saw the other hand that was up down as well. I read I know you had some comments you wanted to make to make those now. Thank you. I'm very concerned about the fire department they've asked and asked and asked for years for better equipment, better building and ways to support their personnel. As I mentioned on the budget workday it's really important that we keep wages in sync with the village for DM rate for the firefighters and I'm not sure that that's being done. I've highlighted in the village budget session that they're going from 1550 to 1750 an hour for paid on call. I've heard nothing to that degree at this table and in this room so I'm very concerned. We want to lose our firefighters from the town to the village because I think it's a pretty obvious thing to keep those on par. We've always done that in the past. There was a 2% increase that the voters more than 2% increase the voters past in March of 2020 that the select board did not pass on to the voters because of COVID last year. So I would say you have at least that extra 2% to play with that you can readily justify to the voters that you put it off, but you do need to charge it now. I am not in favor of a regressive local option tax and neither were the town voters in 2009, neither were the village voters in 2010. Please, please, please, no matter what staff tells you they weren't here then. Listen to your voters as with merger. We've had 65 years of fighting over merger. We're not going to merge. We should have never consolidated as many things as we consolidated before we had a successful merger vote. So we need to listen to the voters. They said no to a local option tax. If you need to do something related to cannabis, then let's look into a luxury tax and perhaps we don't charge a sales tax adder, but we do consider adding 1% to alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, rooms, meals, things like that, more of a luxury type of item, but not the everyday things that people buy that they have already said emphatically no on. Please listen and let's not keep reinventing the wheel. Thanks. Thanks, Irene. Patty Davis. Yeah, I'm just concerned about the list that Sarah Macy just read about all the things that really need to be paid attention to in the town. And especially I just heard our Irene the fire department's a great example things that we need to function. And a lot of time and money is just spent on this separation. And frankly, I feel like we need to watch out for ourselves. We need to get our own finance person. We need to get an accounting firm to do the unraveling. And if it's at a consultant type of accounting firm, but something, and if there's any way that Sarah the next 12 days can help us point us to some resources like when we were discussing the conservation committee, I would just keep throwing out the names of people that you might use as a resource and and I'm sure there's finance people in the public or or somewhere that that that Sarah Macy knows that she can put us in contact with and get the ball rolling so we can start focusing on our own issues. And they need to be dealt with before Sarah leaves. We need to have some direction please. Thank you. Thanks, Betty. Lorraine. I'm putting my hand up. You know hearing Irene. Was there any discussion about making some parody in between the village in the town in their fire department pay because that is very concerning to me as well after listening to Charlie speak. He seems pretty stressed out so we weren't we weren't asked to do that we were asked to reinstate per diem on call. Sarah you get your hand up and you look at urgent. You can see me do it with making the face that means I want to speak. Yes, so I just a couple quick things. Chief Cole and Chief Gaborio are both in communication with the way that they pay their teams and they have. So Chief Cole is aware of and knows the system that Chief Gaborio put into place in the village and he has chosen to take a different direction so this per diem as opposed to keeping pace with what the village is doing was Chief Cole's recommendation to management which has come up through the board. I think that answers that question. And I would also like to just make a quick note that I without getting into too much detail but the role that I will be assuming after this will allow me to participate in professional services contracting. I'm hopeful that the team won't say don't let the door hit you on the way out and will allow me to continue to help guide the transition so that so Patty that gives you any peace of mind. Thank you. And the select board doesn't have a say in that hiring it's the manager with will do that so we just right approve the funds. Yes. I don't see any other hands up. Any other board member comments. Sarah Greg are you looking for anything from us today on this. Yeah anything else you'd like to see changed or adjusted otherwise. You know Greg, I heard, you know Tracy you asked the question about will per diem help with the issue of recruiting and retaining and we'll pass it along to Chief Cole. Don you had reminded us about the update on the health officer and we're working on that we know Essex rescue is coming is it the 6th Greg. Yes. On the 6th. And then I also believe that the radio equipment project will be brought back hopefully on the 6th with a more with an overview I do feel like I have a more appropriate plan for that which is why I feel comfortable pulling it out of the operating budget. And if there's anything else the board wants, you know, looked at or changed. It would be great to know that. The other thing that was asked about is the calendar. When do we need to warn and so forth. Which isn't an isn't a budget question but it's a procedure question. We don't because we need we also need to have. I think we, we need to have at least one public hearing last year we had to because it was the first time we were having a Australian ballot vote. We haven't had that discussion about whether they have one or two. Or whether there's room for them or whatever, but so be good to see the calendar. Anything else. Let's move on to fund balance Sarah. Let's move on to fund balance. So the first thing I want to say about fund balance is that I really thought FY 21 was going to be a bad year. I thought, you know, when we set the tax rate. At the same level of FY 20 that we were at least going to have a deficit of that dollar amount. Of course. It was a global pandemic working in local government. I think it was all of ours. And FY 21. Just. It did not end up that way. For a number of reasons and so in this memo I've listed out the big ones. The first. I would you know, a lot of it is on the revenue side. My tax revenue is recognized and modified accrual accounting is you recognize the revenue. That you collect within the year and within the 60 days after the year. So unlike full accrual accounting where you would recognize the revenue 100% of the revenue offset by any allowance for doubtful accounts during the year that you build it for the period for which the service relates. So in a year where it's modified accrual we're looking at really it's like a modified cash basis so we have 14 months of collections that ends up being the revenue. So in a year where delinquencies are rising. You may very well have tax revenue lower than budgeted. Even though you budgeted an amount you set a tax rate on that amount and you build 100% of that amount. What happened during COVID with the decreasing interest rate environment is was there were lots of refinances. The housing market is on fire. We've had lots of transfers in our delinquencies have decreased significantly. So even though we ultimately build about 300 or $350,000 less than we budgeted for for property taxes and FY 21 as a result of the board setting the deliberately setting the tax rate lower. When the delinquencies fell we pulled those unavailable funds off of the balance sheet we recognize them as as revenue was about $140,000 that was recognized as revenue and FY 21 that had previously been deferred and sitting on the balance sheet. The delinquencies are currently as low as I've seen them here in Essex the tax rolls are in a really a real and really good shape. We ended up with about $70,000 and FEMA revenue that came in from grants that had happened in prior years the offsetting expenses aren't in this year with the recording fees. We had about $113,000 and recording fee revenue and excess of budgeting it's a combination of the housing market the refinancing and the increase in the per page fee that the state implemented a year or so ago, we ended up getting $74,000 and additional highway money directly instead of having to apply for grants. And then we ended up with about $350,000 in COVID relief funds through the local government expense reimbursement grant. That covered staff time when staff were put on administrative leave to keep staff separate and to keep different departments rotating shifts. So those were items that you know that we had budgeted for staff and then because they were redirected as a result of COVID, we were able to secure grant funds to pay for them. Our unanticipated revenues are about $750,000. And then we continue to see the vacancies in the police department. It was about $600,000 in FY 21. We did talk on budget day about establishing a contract expenditure account in the police department so that we can be more methodical and deliberate about budgeting for vacancies in police. And so in the FY 23 proposal, the police salaries and benefits are at about 94%. That we had previously been doing like one or 2% feeling like, well, do we really want to do this? What if we hire a full roster? But the trend continues. And so police is budgeted at about 94% in the upcoming year FY 23. There are multiple different categories of fund balance. There's non-spendable fund balance, which is items in non-spendable form. So inventories and prepaid expenses. Those change annually on their own. And then there's restricted fund balance, where the source of funds levies a restriction on the dollars from an external source, such as the state or grantor or a bond, covenants, something of that nature. And in that category, we have the reappraisal funds listed. So each year the town receives just short of about $70,000 towards reappraisal. We've heard the assessor talking about the reappraisal on the horizon. And at the end of FY 21, we have about $883,000 set aside from those state funds to go toward the reappraisal. So there is a category of fund balance that we don't have any of, which is committed fund balance. So we're not going to spend too much time talking about it. But we do have assignments and we do have then unassigned fund balance. The board has the assignments in this category existing from prior years. Economic development, planning, accrued for retirement benefits, all the way down to canine supplies assigned for specific costs and various budgets, reduction of property taxes. This second table is designed to give you an idea of what is already out there, how it changed during the year, and any notes. I do want to recognize that this memo is a little bit is confusing. There's a lot of stuff going on. I tried to highlight anything that was going to require action or was a new item in here. So some of these assignments, for example, records preservation. This is assigned money that is going to be in that's going to increase by the records preservation dollars collected during the year to a new balance. This the action requested of the select board is to approve that new balance that change in the assignment. I've done a similar thing here in the planning reserve, which has been professional services, professional services fees for planning that haven't been spent over time in the setting aside the amount under in years they're not spent in the amount and then pulling the amount over in years that it's over spent allows us to smooth out the impact of some of the large planning items that happen in community development. Each year, the town sets aside a dollar amount equal to, sorry, my highlighter is not working very well, a dollar amount equal to the accrued retirement benefits of employees who are costed in the general fund. So another thing with modified accrual accounting is we don't, we don't include these long term liabilities on the balance sheet. They're expense in the year that they're paid. So if somebody who has a large vacation bank who then retires, that is would be unbudgeted unexpected expense. So the town has done a really, really good job of setting money aside and fund balance for this each year. During the year there were some changes to the personnel manuals and to the to the policies of what can be cashed out and so that's causing that's causing the reduction and the amount needed. What we do is we take this dollar amount from the audit audit work papers and we put it in here and this covers the dollar value of accrued benefits plus the taxes that would have to be paid on them and required retirement. We did, I feel like I'm jumping around a little bit, but we do have a couple lines in here to be assigned for future tax reduction. We used that in FY21, the $100,000 that we had budgeted. In FY22 we had budgeted $402,500 out of this item and we had some other, I think the total amount had been 409 and there was $5,000 out of another assignment category 207 or something like that that has fallen off now, but that will be used in the current fiscal year. Anything that we assign for use in FY21, there are a couple of them here that's already been used. Earlier this year the select board approved a memo from Dennis Lutz asking to assign the residual balance in the stormwater funds from the general fund toward a slip lining project that was going to be over $100,000. And so that dollar amount is listed here to show the additional amount to be transferred to capital. We do have, I feel like, okay I'm going to do the last few and then I'm going to take a couple of questions. We had a few years ago as part of union negotiations anticipated some cost overruns. Those did not materialize so we've had this $200,000 assigned for personnel costs. Andy I know this is what you're referring to that I made this note over here about using it for what we were just talking about. I think this, you know, we'll take another look at this in my haste to get everything done in a timely manner. I just have it in a bunch of different places. So Greg and I'll take another look here. And this is also not ultimate, bless you, ultimately not the right number I pulled into the budget $56,000, not 64. But my note here is essentially, okay, we've assigned this in prior years for personnel costs for personnel overages. Now we have some personnel things happening. And so I would suggest that the board consider this a source of funds to address some of the items. We also had previously accumulated merger related costs that have been used to pay legal fees related to the run up to the merger vote. At the end of FY 21 that has about a $90,000 balance in it. I just would ask that the board maybe consider repurposing that I don't see any reason to leave it there for merger related costs. I don't see anything else if the board wanted to. And then we have finished up using the assignment that we had set aside for canine supplies with the canine expenses in FY 21. I still leaves almost $1.3 million to be assigned in order to fall within the policy of keeping unassigned fund balance capped at 15%. I did pull in the $70,000 already. Sorry guys my highlighter is all over the place but the $70,000 for the three vehicle replacement here in police. I do think that capital is a very sound use of these types of funds. I know we had heard from Charlie or from Chief Cole about the radio issue so you know this is really where I'm thinking that that should live is in capital and I don't think that we necessarily should be need to be raising additional dollars in his operating budget to transfer over when we have the opportunity to make a decision on these funds to transfer to capital. And then I've left the balance to go toward future tax reduction or tax smoothing in the event that the town may lose 42% of the grand list. Also allows us so the current year budget right now or the FY 23 budget has $300,000 of fund balance offset taxes that would use up this. Some of this out that would use up this balance the balance and assign for future tax reduction and then some. And so this additional money to that purpose would pull that up to 3000 and would give us a buffer to continue to step back down from that. I'm sorry, we pull us up to 300,000 and give us a buffer to continue to step back down from that 300,000 because of the mathematical mechanics of using a one time sourced offset on going costs. Anyone have any questions. Questions. Oh, I do Sarah. That's okay. So the, the page before the, the, I'm just trying to understand what the columns are. So the FY 20 amount is an amount that we approved at some point in the past, right. That's correct and that ties to the FY 20 audited financial statements fund balance footnote. Okay, then they have the FY 21 changes are things that we, we either are now are some of these things you're asking us to increase, or some of these things we've already approved to increase. And some of these things are things that we've spent, right. Correct. So the general just the general idea is that once you've assigned it for a specific purpose. Then when we're using it for that purpose, those funds are released and so we go through an audit process of showing here was assigned here it was released. That applies here the approved retirement benefits. That's released because we, we don't need as much that applies here we we assigned costs for FY 21 that's released we used it. We assigned this for property taxes 21 that's released we used it same thing here same thing here so we spent it on those assigned specific purposes same same. This one, the transfer to capital. Just a quick side note normally once it's assigned I make a transfer and move it to capital. For whatever reason I just didn't do that FY 21 so that still needs to be moved. This 84,000 this is related to the memo that Dennis had presented to the board earlier in the year and the board approved doing that so that's included in there. Um, records preservation grows by the pages that come in and so each year. This memo will say partially assigned assigned new balance this year I've just called it out because I felt like there was a lot of things going on I really wanted to make sure. Just calling your attention to these changes. And same with this planning reserve it's partially assigned. And then suggesting that we assigned the new balance. So, and then these are my notes for your consideration down here about how to possibly repurpose these funds, although you're certainly welcome to just leave them as is just does that help answer your question and there is there's a lot of movement. Then, so then the, the, the, the recommendation says to approve the amounts as indicated above so in that case we would be approving. You've moved off the page. Sorry, 1.94 and 1.286. The total of those. You would be a year approval. So if you were to say, we approve this as is. Would each of the this would this column here for FY 21. These would be the new ending balances in these categories in the footnote. So that would cover the planning reserve. It would cover the records. And then it would also add these items down here are the additional transfer to capital, the funding for future tax reduction or tax smoothing, and then some FY 23 costs. So that's what that quick recommendation would do. So yes, so this. And so that would correct. Did I answer your question. Yeah, I just want to make sure I understood that the, the answer is there's has both charts have implications to the request. Yes. And so I would hope, you know, I think that there's some discussion to be had these are just sort of broad stroke suggestions that we've made here and including do we want to, you know, re categorize the merger related costs items. And I feel like this personnel costs doesn't need to be re categorized to be spent on personnel costs as we go through some of the other discussions, but it could be. Yeah, so happy to. So that so there's the many of the entries are blank on the final, the third chart there. I was just, I just wanted to call right calling out here. I just wanted to call out some things that I think the board may want to consider, which is the repurposing of the merger related costs and just let you know, hey, hey guys, you still have $200,000 here for personnel costs. This is something that could go towards some of the personnel challenges or, you know, or something else, or you could leave it there for that. Any questions thoughts. So it is possible to take the assigned merger related costs and change it to separation related. You can do that. And if I'm understanding this Sarah, from what we voted on earlier this evening on the final page that personnel costs should include at minimum the 97,000. Is that what you're suggesting. And then I'm going to admit that I'm a little bit confused as well because I think that night because back to this question I think that 97,000 is in the FY 22 budget. Right, Greg. Greg, help me. I need you to do numbers real quick. Part of it is I mean Evans 50% of Evans salary and 30% of Travis's salary would be the revenue coming from the village for those positions is in the budget. I'm sorry actually I'm realizing that this is actually ground that Andy covered about an hour ago. You were mentioning seeing it in different places. Exactly. I was just like, Oh, these are some things, you know, because it's that's my bad it's it's late and I didn't realize that this was the connection back to in the earlier which yeah, okay. Yeah, I mean just in there's there's a lot of moving parts. We also have a severance we have to pay to that isn't mentioned anywhere yet. I was, I was going to write it know whether we could bring that up or whether that's an executive. It's it should be public. We're gonna have to pay a severance. Yeah. Yeah. And I was going to bring that up before because when we talk with these there was some something that was offsetting that I think we have to have a discussion you know that. Yeah, I don't know if that needs to be an executive session or we need to have right. Our part needs to be on here. Right. Tracy. So it's in the FY 23 budget I believe Sarah please correct me if I'm wrong for an executive assistant because Linda left and so will we need to hire someone before July 1 to fill that need and is that something that could be pulled from the personnel. I'll defer. Sorry. I'll defer to Greg about the first part but the person that the assigned for personnel costs and fund balance. The board is can use for anything personnel cost related. Thank you. Or we can reassign it to some other category. I'd say potentially need to take a look at the budget and what we have available for the rest of the year and then figure out how to. Fill that or get that work. Yeah. Good question. Yeah. So, so Sarah, given these couple of questions, are you wanting us to take action tonight or. Do we. I would I would, you know, I would like an action tonight. I think that just amending the recommendation to add in, you know, repurposing the merger related costs to be separation related costs between that personnel category as it already stands that gives you flexibility to then just make the other decisions as you'll, as you'll note my note here is to consider using it doesn't it's not locking you in. And so I would appreciate that that'll allow me to wrap up the audit. Yeah. Okay, so we're we're we're just moving around. We're not specifically earmarking that for anything explicitly explicit. That's the way you can say that. The one question I have, then is your assigned for future tax reduction doesn't match the 300,000 that's in the budget. It doesn't. However, if you are going to take my recommendation and add an additional 666,500 and $12 to that category, we will have sufficient funds to cover the flat 300. All right, right, right. Yeah, that's where this gets a little confusing is right is you're we're actually adding to some of these but on a different page. Yeah, believe it or not. I feel like I've made it less confusing and I know that it's still very hard to follow. Right. Okay, okay. So that would just come out of there. All right. I guess then the the other, the other consideration is. So, sir, we can always change these again, right? If we want to. Absolutely. So this is this is kind of like we tell employees you can change your W for every week if you want to. It's under the the purview of the slack board to change the as you see that. Yeah. Yep. So, so if we go further down the. Path of discussing the budget and we have some things that we desperately want to put in. But don't want to impact the tax rate. We could get back into this again. That's correct. Yes. And that would, you know, so your decision here tonight would be plenty sufficient for me to issue the financial statements as of June 30th. And then those alterations finance tracks during the year. And so, yeah, as we continue down the budget. Road. We can certainly do that. And this helps you close out your, your budget, your, your audit tasks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that last year. So you brought the severance. Is there a category that that does that fit into a personal cost? Or does it fit into the personnel? Yeah. But I don't know if it fits numerically. But we could both. Maybe it's a separation issue. Or we can just define a new category. We have the power to do that. We assign whatever we want whenever we want. Well, we can do it if we want. People may not like it. Any other comments or questions? Any comments from the public? And in the room, I don't see any hands up. I will. Motion that the select board. Assign the fund balance and the amounts indicated above. And in addition, change the category for merger related costs to separation related costs. Second. Thank you, Pat. Thank you, Tracy. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay. Motion passes five zero. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, everybody. Okay. What's next? Potential action to end memorandum of understanding regarding unified manager. Yes, this is, this is putting the official bow on. Something that's already been announced and we've already done a fair amount of work on. It's explicitly on the agenda to allow. Public comment. Should there be any before we go there? Any, any board member comments or staff comments? Okay. Any, any comments from the public? I see no hands in the room. Anybody online wishing to speak? I don't see any hands. Somebody have the motion up. Three people. I want to go ahead soon. I move that the select board end the memorandum of understanding regarding the unified manager when the MOU expires after February 26, 2022. Thank you, Sue. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Tracy. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed. Any motion passes five zero. Thank you for that. And then here we are discussion of potential action on tentative agreements about shared services between town of Essex and independent city of Essex junction. I'm back at this again. Let me see. I need to go get the link to bill. So you get started. I'm going to run upstairs do that. Okay. Okay. Okay. So there's four agreements that were included in the document. What was the. The MOU. Oh boy, did I. Not open them. The MOU. The delinquent tax agreement. Information to the IT agreement and then the police service. Okay, so in the. MOU. Anybody have any. Let me look through here. He's going to. Join Bill into the proper. Yeah, he's going to get the, send the link to bill. So the one question I had on the. The MOU is one of the things that we had included as part of the second tier was a timeline of. Changes. And it looks like it's been crossed out here. It says there was a section that said administration. Transition. And I said manager HR, et cetera. I know that with. Shared management changing. That's, that's pretty clear how that. Well, it's actually not totally clear how that's going to work. We've never talked about clerk and or treasurer. So I think I still strongly feel we need to have a timeline so we know. When responsibilities change. And when, you know, who's paying for what, when kind of things. Oh, the other thing, sorry, I wanted to. Want to back up just a second. Pat and I met with. Mary Beth. Redmond. Tonya by off ski and. Alyssa black. This was a follow on to a meeting we wanted to have previously to talk about the three plus three charter change, but given where we are, that's. Pretty, pretty moot. You know, it may come back that the discussion about districts within the town may come back, but. We met with them. Two weeks, almost two weeks ago. Before last Thursday before last and, and. They were, they were. Pretty clear on a couple of things there. They said that the legislature, they expect the legislation to be very tied up with reapportionment. And the state pension. Situation. And they are, they, Mary Beth was saying she has spoken with. Sarah Copeland Hansis about this. The likelihood of a certainty now that a bill will be introduced to change the. For the charter for a city of Essex Junction. And their position, their, their feeling or their understanding is that it will not be looked at if it comes to the legislature. With any questions included in it. We've had discussions that we were we've explicitly said, well, we don't know what the legislature is going to allow. Around tax delinquencies and who's collecting taxes and those sorts of things. And I think those were the two big ones that that we kind of kicked around in a meeting fairly recently. And so their recommendation is that we pick one and go with it and then let the legislature decide whether or not they want to investigate whether something's constitutional or not. There's a couple of. I guess realities that all surround some of those questions one is the who's going to collect taxes from former village residents in that year after they've approved a town budget. But they want to be declared a city on that July one. The trustees have already written their charter such that they will be the ones collecting the taxes. So if we go in there insisting that it be us that collect those taxes. Then there's a there's a conflict. The legislature is likely to say you guys go figure it out and come back. Another time. So I think that's writings on the wall there we pretty much. If we want to have that goes smoothly. Allow the city to do that. I think we I don't know if we want to establish terms around that. We can have that discussion. The other one is the question of whether or not the city is would be required to purchase all of their tax delinquencies when they become a city and then collect their own tax. The reality is they don't have the cash to do that. You know as you've have you've you know discussion we've had tonight around the $60,000 they don't know where that's going to that might come from if we tell them they got to hire their own finance director right. So that you know it's it last time the last report I looked at said it was that the village delinquencies around the order of $240,000. I don't know if with what Sarah said earlier that those delinquencies delinquencies in general have gone down whether that's a different number I don't know what it is and I'll think I'll ask her for a new report just to see what we can figure that out. But so anyway, so I think for those two, two questions I think we we allow this in order to make this go more smoothly we allow the city to collect those taxes and we continue to hold the delinquent taxes on village properties and we you know that we the a future board whichever you know whoever's in these seats in the future can decide how to how and when to to collect those. I guess those are two things that they brought up that were the fact that you got to go hand in hand and say this is the answer not we have this conflict please resolve it for us because it'll stay on the wall. If we want it to go forward I think we need to go forward with a complete answer. No, I hit the big point. That was a big thing that I took away to we just they, they don't have the time or the capacity to answer the questions for us, they would prefer we get it worked out and then they will make it work at that point. Mm hmm. It's good. I mean it gives us direction. We can start trying to answer some of the talking talking circles. Those two things work for me. All right, so anyway, so having said that going coming back to the documents here the the. The only thing that I that's jumped out to me on the MOU is that the administration transition was crossed off and again I think I really like to see a timeline. Especially around, you know, things that we haven't talked about like click and treasure. I'm not sure who's handling it first. On the on the MOU or on MOU. I just was, I have that note that you had sent Andy after you met with the representatives and one of the things that I wanted to get more clarity on was about the annexation. Yeah, yeah, I debated whether to bring it up and I probably should. You're right that there's the 1st section, the very 1st section of the town charter says that no. No. Properties are within the defined boundaries of the town shall become part of another municipality without going through the annexation process. I've brought that language up to to Andrew and they then just put it in their own charter as well. So it's in both it's in their their charter that they approved and. And Andrew's response as well that ours will supersede yours because we. If they approve ours, then we're we're all set, but I, the all 3 of the legislators that were in the meeting ago said that they believe that they need to go through the annexation process. Tonya was going to go talk to Tucker to try to get an answer on that ahead of time so that we're not again at the finish line and then find out there's another group to run to jump through. The other thing now that you brought that up is they also believe that there may need to be a townwide vote. Because of what happened in Winooski that the precedence that that's been quoted is that Winooski. Only only Winooski voted the only the village voted to separate and. The comments from especially I think was Mary Beth was very focused or forceful on this saying that. Either rules or laws have changed since then because of what happened in Winooski to prevent that from happening again so although it's maybe looked at as a precedence she she they believe that the legislators that were in their meeting believe that there's a. Have been changes that may require. The timeline vote but when when asked that when when Tucker was asked that explicit question he shrugged his shoulders so we don't know we don't know the answer to that one yet so there is still a. That question is swirling around as well. That. And unfortunately it may not come back until they have the bill in front of them. I don't know. Is that true with the annexation process to or is it. I'm hoping that since it's already part of law since it's in our charter that they will get an answer from that that because it's already an existing piece of statute. The annexation process I don't know if you we've talked about it a couple times in here it's an independent. Three panel or three person panel is put together to decide whether it's in the best interest of both parties for an annexation to happen. It would be like county judges that get appointed to that. That's my. I don't know who that would be. And I don't know. I don't know if there's a hearings associated with that I would imagine that we would get asked to come. Present something. All right. So that was my question so you had a question. Yeah, and I am number one. We have the second tier of agreements and I notice that there was a change. Working in good faith shall attempt to reach agreement. And I'm just concerned that that completely. Weakens that entire section and just wanting to point out that the language as it was previously must reach agreement we can agree to not enter into agreement that's still an agreement. True. I would really prefer that the must stay there. Yeah, that's right. The condition precedent got taken out, which we had a lot of discussion around it. And then yeah, I. Yeah, this is just just just totally nullifies all of those that they don't have to do any of the get there so I agree. Bill, are you there. I don't know if I have us. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. All right. For some reason I can't see my microphone or my camera so I'm not sure if I'm on or not. We can't see you but we can hear you. We don't need to see you. What's the what's the question we're talking about the MOU. So yeah, and the MOU in the section that where the secondary agreements are defined, the language has been weakened to say shall attempt to rather than must. Right. They removed the condition precedent requirement. All they're required to do is make good faith efforts to try to reach agreement on tier two. But if they don't, if they've made those good faith efforts, then that's all they need to do. And we cannot, we don't necessarily have to reach agreement on tier two, but the town is committing to sign all the tier one agreements, as long as there's good faith efforts made. Regardless whether you reach agreement on tier two or not, you're committing to execute the tier one agreements, which is something that I raised in the first meeting. When we start talking about this is that there's got to be an all or nothing deal here. But that's your, that's your call. Not mine. How do we feel about that. That's why we said must. That's why we had as a condition precedent. Yeah, I see has not, I had see has nodding here so we want to go back to must. Yeah. Well, and don't we want to go back to as a condition precedent instead of just prior. So bill is the is the as a condition preceding language needed as well. You can say shall you shall reach agreement, but I mean the condition precedent is that you're committing to execute the tier one agreements in the form that are going to be attached as exhibits to this MOU. But without that condition precedent language. You don't necessarily have to reach agreement on tier two. You could say, you know, you could take out the condition precedent. You could say. We must. Or we shall reach agreement on the tier two agreements before the town is committed to signing the tier one. Same difference as a condition precedent. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't think the hang up is the words condition precedent. I think the hang up is that they don't want to sink the tier one agreements by not reaching agreement on the tier two agreement. Yeah. They better start negotiating. So I think I saw everybody the consensus is that we want to stay with must. So. And consider changing to the wording that bill just had. Yeah, whichever, whichever wording is appropriate. Bill, but we want to make it more as as you recommend. Make it an all or nothing. And then Andy, I don't know whether bill was on but also discussed. Putting the administration transition piece back in. Yeah, I think we need to have a timeline to that shows when things transition. I mean, we haven't talked about clerk or treasurer. We haven't talked about. I don't know what. Andy. Yeah, I apologize. I have a chronic kidney stone. And I started getting some pretty serious back pains the last hour and a half. So I think that's probably what it is. I apologize for leaving the middle of a meeting, but I'm going to drive myself to the art. You're going to be okay to get there. Yeah, I'll be okay. We'll absolutely do that. Thank you guys all for understanding. Do you want to tap your cabin or anything? No, I think I'll be okay. You get a call for me in like 30 seconds. All right. On that last point, Andy. Yeah. I noticed. Yeah, they took out the. Any transition for administration and I. I see that as an acknowledgement by both sides that you're going in different directions, but you need to draw a line in the sand somewhere as to when no more services from town administration. Right. Right. And what the transition looks like and every, you know, well, not. It doesn't have to be at every place, but they, you know, we haven't talked about clerk or treasurer or, you know. I don't want to come in one day and find out we don't no longer have a clerk. Right. I guess just to raise the question for. Manager and HR with the ending of the joint MOU. Is that seen as a non issue because by the start of. Potentially July one. Shouldn't those be separate? They should be right. And so when this was right, when this was discussion was originated. We weren't in a position that we weren't separating early. Right. We're not separating early. We weren't ending the shared management early, but they're. And I don't know. And I don't, I don't think we want to necessarily put conditions around, you know, how long an overlap would be and I don't want to micromanage that. But yeah, I think, you know. Some of this right has been has been mitigated by the fact that, well, we now have a different. Scenario with the finance director, we have a difference for scenario with the management. Yes. But from what I'm what I'm looking for is things. Yeah. Now I'm struggling because right the whole, the whole scene has changed. And maybe this is mostly around the clerk and the treasurer, unless they're just tied into finance as well, but there's none that's not even mentioned anywhere. Well, the trustees have said they're going in a separate direction, whether or not separation gets approved or not. Evan's contract ends on February 25, 2022. That seems like a logical time following up on what Tracy just said as to that should be when they're taking over the admin. Yep. Oh yeah. Okay, I get it. Okay. I understand. I understand. I was I guess I was hearing you differently. You're just saying that the document should say on this date, you're going to have your own manager. Oh, I'm just, I mean, basically, as far as I'm concerned on February, whenever the next day following the ending of the contract, I mean, that's, that's, that's the date. Which I think is, you know, it's kind of a moot point, but an MOU because it would have already happened, likely by the time the legislature even makes a decision before they see it. Yeah. Yeah. The thing that the thing that triggered this question for me was when was the realization that they expected the it transferred to occur before they stopped paying taxes to the town that it was in that year. And so, you know, I've said this many times where I'm trying to figure out a way to share services for some amount of time so that they're paying some of the town expenses so that our ramp rate of our taxes dump them. And when it suddenly realized that there's no it revenue to be had, if it happens all in the first year. And maybe that was explained to me before. I didn't, I didn't get it, but I'm just trying to, I'm just concerned that there might be other places where I'm not getting it. Didn't they say after the change that they would still be paying the, they would be willing to pay for the I see. Yeah, if it goes over if it goes over. It was beyond that first year. Yeah, so that that's, that's, that's, you know, that's, you know, thousands of dollars not. Okay. You know, half a year or a year's worth of half of somebody's salary got numbers. But there's been there's things like, okay, when are, when is the village going to start and the city going to start issuing marriage licenses, dog licenses, those kind of responsibilities, day to day activities that that the services that the town provides for them. And I believe they are expecting us to continue providing them during their so called transition year after they become a city that have are still paying taxes to the town. Is that the expectation that we will continue providing? I assume it is, but I think we should be explicit about it. And, and, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm seeing less and less value in some of these agreements because there's no, there's no financial. We're losing financial benefit to the town on any of these. The clerk services, treasurer services as far as because she's treasurer for the school district and all that. And that's going to be different. So, yeah, so the assessor we have an agreement on that they're going to continue paying right part of the assessor until assessment reassessment. Your health officer. We haven't talked about that. I know. Yeah, yeah. The things they haven't talked about yet. I need to have a date. I start and end date. So clerk, treasurer, health officer. What was the other one you mentioned? Assessor. Assessor we have an agreement on. And they have their own planning. What about zoning? What about. I'm missing somebody like. The engineer that for the. Public works that. They outsourced their engineering. If that's what they did before we had any consolidation. And what about water bills? Is that finance or is that something different? A combination of the clerks and the finance. And I think we need to at least have a timeline of understanding when all these things happen. We may not just, we may decide not to have an agreement around who, who, who puts out the water bills and let the. The people who do that work figure it out. But I just want to understand. I just want to make sure there's no surprises of, oh, you expected us to do that. Well, then you also need to know when they're going to elect a board of civil authority. A board of civil authority. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. He's not necessarily transfer over. Yeah. Which is, which is not. They're going to click their own taxes. There can't be any abatement without abort. Right. So that maybe comes into the delinquency agreement. Right. I saw an email from Evan. Within the last week and it was something to the effect about the bulletin and. board of civil authority and it suggested to me that the city or village believes they already have one. Yeah, the village does. They use their trustees and the town JPs that live in the village. Susan shared the statute language with us to clarify that. But the question is when they become a city, do they automatically become city justices of the piece? That's not anywhere in their charter. Right, because they're elected town JPs because they're elected town JPs. Do they I don't think they automatically become city justices of the piece. But yes, the village as long as they're a village has a board of civil authority, but when they become a city, it's not clear that they do. It's not necessarily our problem. It's going to be the legislature's problem. They're gonna wish that. Yeah, but now, Bill, you might have missed the earlier just the earlier discussion I had is passing that with I think I think I sent you this an email about this met with Marybeth Redbin, Tanya Vajhovsky and Alyssa Black or the three state reps for outside the village. And they were they were saying that if we want this to even be considered it needs to go with everything, every with a proposal for everything with no questions in it. Because if they say that if they need to answer a question for us, they're going to just leave it on the wall and not touch it. And that the statement that I got was that that's what happened to three plus three because it wasn't seen as a complete proposal. And so so it's my understanding that we need to go with it with a you know, soup to nuts proposal for how things are going to work. And not ask the legislature to resolve any conflicts or answering legal questions for us. Or you know, they said they said make a proposal they may change it based on an assessment of what they think is legal or not. But they don't they don't want us. The recommendation is that we not go explicitly asking a question. But you can go and ask a question and say we're willing to do x as long as you say it's okay. Yep. Yep. So that's what you have to reach agreement on whatever x is going to be. Yep. Yeah. And the question of the city having a board of civil authority isn't really a town problem. No, I just but if but I don't know if to think about whether it plays into the delinquent tax collection, just their problem. It's not our we still will still have our own BCA and we can we can nominate and I'll reelect you know, like a full slate. Okay, if you're if you're comfortable, it's going to be just like the trustees right now have said they will become the city counselors, the sitting trustees, I believe that's in their charter. So part of this special session law could be the existing, yeah, BCA in the village, which consists of the trustees and just JPs will will become the BCA for the new city. Yep. If everyone's in agreement with that. I'm okay with that. And the legislature says that's fine. Right. Okay. Okay. Anything else on the MLU? Sue? Just under item number three, the I assume that this was just crossed out the provided the condition precedents at fourth and section one above is satisfied. Right. They had taken out the condition precedent. So in section one, so that's why they removed it in section three. That's at least the way I interpret it. Yeah. So they also also in section two, remove the ability to oppose separation at the legislature, which was in from very early on, but and then removed until this most recent round. But again, that's a decision. Select board needs to make retain the ability to oppose. I think so. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, my question was more around. Does that mean we simply can't say I oppose separation or would raising questions be seen as opposition? Oh, you know, it gets into a little bit of a gray area. Right. They still have the ability, Tracy, to, to make suggestions as to the transition. I forget the exact language. I don't have it right in front of me here. But, but but now, since it was in there, and then it was removed, you will face an argument that, oh, you agreed that you would not oppose this separation because an early draft said you had that right. And then you agreed to take it out. So just a statutory or contract interpretation issue. Yeah, I think that needs to stay in there too. Because the question is, right, what do you what is what can be interpreted as opposing? Because if we hold fast on some point that we want, they could accuse us of opposing separation. Exactly. When it's just negotiation. No little concern because there's a lot of slashing in all of these. And they, they're, they're like, gotchas like if we didn't, it's 10 o'clock at night, and we got this on Friday and looked at it, you know, we all did weekend. Yeah, we missed something. It could be a big gotcha. And yeah, well, and these are, I mean, these are agreements we've been through time and time and time again. Right. And without a rationale, as far as why these changes were made, it's hard to, to respond to those changes. Yeah. But that's all I had in the MOU. Alright, so Bill, I think the right, we want to make these things make it go back to being an all or nothing deal. We want to retain the ability to oppose and I think we need to have a defined timeline so that we're not missing anything. But I, I don't know, I have to think maybe I'm need to think about that one some more. Anybody else think of a feel for any thoughts about whether a timeline is appropriate or whether because the other changes that we've been through the last couple weeks, it's kind of moot. I'm being over sensitive. But we can still ask. You can still ask Greg. I'm wondering if it's worth to have a timeline mostly as draft or a roadmap to talk today about how some things have changed that we hadn't foreseen and there's more. And so I'd hate to be held into a timeline or something changes. That's either an opportunity or the opposite of an opportunity that you have, but something that you have to react to and have to have to deal with. So I think it'd be helpful to see a timeline, but to make it part of an agreement and not be a fixed thing. Yeah, it makes sense. Even just in a form of like a draft burn down chart that we can, you know, adjust as we go. It's trying to keep all the moving parts here and sometimes up here fails me. Right. And that's the only way you're going to see where there's dependencies as well. Relationships. If Andy, if I'll be the devil's advocate here for a second, the village is going to say a so long as we are paying taxes to the town as town residents, we should get the services that title to. Yep, that makes sense. But if they choose to hire another manager or new HR or both, then the question is, is the town going to be required to pay for two managers for the rest of the fiscal year? So we're struggling with right now. Just want to make sure I came to the party a little late tonight, although I had been sitting around for several hours waiting. All right, so we move on. All right, so let's see what was next in the pile. The link with tax agreement. The link with tax agreement. So, Bill, you might have missed the discussion we had before on this as well, where with regard to the going to the legislature with an answer, not a question. The trustees wrote their charter to say that they will collect taxes for the town from village properties during their so-called transition year. And so if we go in there insisting on doing it, then that's a conflict that we may be told to go home and resolve by the legislature. So we're I was posing that we'd have to cede to that request. They're the way they wrote their charter. The other thing is on the delinquent taxes, they don't have the funds. I guess they could borrow money if they had to buy out. We do have the language in there to say if lawful, you know, including all taxes on delinquencies beyond the effective date of the city charter, if lawful, and then says in the event the town cannot lawfully pursue, then the city left the volume out. It doesn't hurt anything to leave that language in there, right? But isn't that ambiguity that we were getting guidance on? But we state that the upfront is that the the town will continue to collect. I have a question on, well, the last whereas is struck. Oh, yeah, the last remaining whereas. I just want to make sure that I'm getting my years correct. Prior to the end of the last fiscal year in which the village voters were allowed to vote on the town budget. So that would be FY 23. Yes, the city shall pay the town in full for the town portion of those taxes. So does that mean that taxes that say July 1 2022 for the start date taxes that are actually owed in August would not be paid to the town until the end of June 2023? Am I correct in that timeline? Oh, right. That's the way that is the way that is worded, isn't it? They could wait until the absolute end of that year to give us that money. Right. That's how I interpreted it. I have a couple of things to if I if I may. I mean, the concept I was trying to work with was the town collects all the taxes during the last fiscal year in which the village voters were allowed to vote on the town budget. Now it's being changed. The concept is the city collects following the effective date of the charter and doesn't pay their share until the prior of the end of the fiscal year. As you just pointed out, Tracy, so you're right. We could they could benefit from that float for several months of having what is town outside the village dollars being in their coffers and collecting interests where they should be collecting interests where it's owed. So and I want to also point out that the city charter provisions that they have voted on, it's not controlling and so you can't you shouldn't feel hamstrung by that language because I've seen charters changed dramatically from what was voted on by the voters and what gets approved by the legislature. So that position that, well, it's in our proposed charter therefore it's controlling. But that is that's not good. OK, yeah, so they could they could ask the they're sponsoring legislators to change the wording before it's submitted to the legislature. Correct. Or yeah, very good point. And this is this is this is actually something this is this goes into the timeline question of how quickly does does somebody need to put together a billing process to bill. Village residents for town taxes and is that even practical to expect somebody to put together that. You know, such a new a new system in that time frame because they become a city on July 1st and first taxes are due or first tax bills have to go out in August. They've got less than six weeks to put together a new billing process. Oh, I see. OK. Thank you for that bill. That's very helpful. Like I agree with you wholeheartedly and I also agree from this from the standpoint of. Well, I guess if they have their own finance department. But if they screw up, we don't get to get our money. Yeah, so right. Yeah, that's a very good point. This goes beyond just a wordsmithing. This is this is a business deal. This is conceptual. Yeah, yeah. The only other point I would make on the delinquent tax agreement is that. You know, the the extra territorial collection issue that we've flagged all along about if lawful. Yeah. Why don't we just say, all right, village, you purchase one once you start that fiscal year, you purchase the delinquent taxes for village properties, period. And you pursue the collection. Instead of this, well, we'll keep billing. But then when when it's over, we'll we'll the town will now chase delinquencies in the new city. It seems like again, if it's lawful, fine. But if it's not or if there's an issue and that's a disagreement and we're supposed to be all in agreement down in Montpelier, say, how about this city, you just purchased those delinquent taxes from us as of the fiscal year start where you become a city. The two hundred and forty thousand bucks. It's cleaner. Yeah, it is cleaner. We're not making progress here. Well, there's also the third. Go ahead. At the end of number one, there's also similar language. City shall purchase those delinquent accounts from the town at the end of the fiscal year in which the village voters were allowed to vote on the town budget. So that's the same as in the whereas we talked about before. Right, they're changing that concept. Assuming that these are on the agenda for next week's joint meeting, we can get some of these. OK, one thing I noticed is the top of the second page where it says the city will pay the town the town's share of property taxes. I don't know what they mean by town's share. Top of the second page, the first line says. Yeah, so you pay the town share. They're paying. After after all the stuff crossed out, right, right? Yes, following the effective data, the city charger, all property taxes due and delinquencies incurred for properties located in the former village will be collected by and able to the city. We'll keep going. Then it says the city will pay the town. The town share of property taxes, regardless of delinquencies. It all got reversed. Yeah, so instead of the town collecting 100 percent and paying the school district and the village their respective shares, regardless of delinquencies, they're saying we'll collect the town outside the village, the school districts and the cities, taxes and we will pay you town at the end of the next fiscal year or whenever your share without regard to delinquencies. So they would be assessing those properties with a town tax. What is the town share? I guess it would again, the transition is make sure pair her whatever have left of it. Right. Right. Yeah. But this is right. So this is that other thing that I think the timeline would highlight is how much time you actually have put together this billing process and figure figure that all out. All right. So I guess I guess then the question is the select board, do we have a preferred position to take on this? Do we want to? I mean, what I said early on was no, thank you. We'll collect our own taxes and I could go either way on the delinquent taxes because delinquent taxes are an asset in one sense, but cash is better than money owed, I guess. So I saw now is about we'll collect our own taxes. We want to go in that direction. With the liquid taxes, we could set up our own repayment plans with people that are delinquent. Yeah. Yes. What I'm saying is you wouldn't be able to you wouldn't be able to do that with the city ones. All right. If we're only going to collect town. Well, if we're there's there's existing debt now, there's existing paid taxes now. And those are the ones that so there's there's two pieces of this. There's there's collect there's there's taxes that haven't been paid in the past, which are the delinquent ones. But we've also got tied into here was collecting taxes during that transition year that's complicated into this one. And I think any any delinquencies that occur in that transition year in the village would be held by the village. It's all the prior ones that like the ones they're holding right now, the ones that we're holding right now. They're proposing we keep those and we continue to collect on those. They haven't said anything about restricting how we choose to go after them. We could say, you know, a futures like board could say, we're going to focus on city properties to get them off our books and we're going to do tax sales in the city every month for the next till they're till they're all gone. But do. Probably won't but. So, Andy, are you saying that that worked into this now is not just delinquent taxes, but also just the collection of taxes during that during that what they're calling the transition year. So so they're this again, the timeline, right? They're going to vote on a town budget this coming March. They're going to vote on a village budget in April. They want to be a city on July 1st. But during that so-called transition year, the town will continue providing services to them as if they were still a village. But they would collect their own taxes and town taxes for village properties. And then somewhere in here at reading this right by the end of the year, they send them send us the money. There's no there's no timeline for them to give us the money. I mean, at the end of the year, which is my point and mentioning that this is labeled the delinquent tax agreement. It's not just a delinquent tax agreement. It's not just a delinquent tax agreement. It's a transition tax agreement as well. Yeah. Yeah. And I was going to say the same thing. I think we need to revisit what the scope of this actual agreement is. Yeah. And because it's not it's it's crept. Yeah. And I what I really don't understand is why collecting taxes, why add more on to your plate? In that first year, you're going to have staff to hire. You're going to have processes and procedures to work out. You're going to need to, you know, develop all of these things. Why not stick to what works? Why reinvent the wheel? Your finance systems may not even be in a position to. But I think that's a discussion that we should be having next week with with the trustees at the table to really get toward. What problem are we trying to solve? What are we trying to put in place? Is it about delinquent taxes? Is about taxes as a whole? I think clerk very much needs to be included in this conversation. Because that's another staff member that's going to have to be on board and ready to go on day 1 and back to the billing question. So, I guess to get back to the fundamental questions in here that I see are, do we want to press the village, the city to buy the delinquent taxes or are we OK with holding? That's one question. We have a. I'm OK with holding them because they're technically paid stuff. They'll be collected eventually. Right. And they're still payable to the town. And I believe that that was Sarah's recommendation. Right. Correct. I think so. I have to double check. Yeah. Yes. I mean, I guess I'm trying to say I deferred or whatever. And then there's a nuance. There's a nuance to that recommendation because there was a question of, OK, well, you have to separate out which taxes are school delinquent taxes or school taxes, which delinquent taxes are town taxes, which delinquent taxes are village taxes. And I wrote back to her after I saw her saying we would be too complicated to sort all that out. But you just we've we've made the village in the in the school district whole. So it's all the same to us. Right. And then she said, oh, well, that's that's another way to look at it. That that that that's an easier way to look at it. So I think her first impression was it would be too painful to separate them out. When I pose the question of when it's a scenario of saying, well, it's just all it's all funged together. From our perspective, it's just it's just property tax owed to us. Nothing's owed to the school district. Nothing's owed to the village is all owed to the town. She said, yeah, that's much simpler and it works that way, too. She made she made she made, yeah. They make sense to ask her again. And I mean, any of these of recommendation from staff. It would be helpful, because a lot of a lot of this has been built on. Discussions, Brad had with with staff includes his interpretations. It includes potentially older information. I don't know. Yep. And it goes back to a comment. I mean, previously that let's not ask staff twice for the same interpretation. Let's just get everyone on the same page and get the same answer to the same questions. Because I mean, we can't ask staff twice for every single question. There's a there's a complication that our charter doesn't allow us to talk directly to staff, but Brad isn't constrained by that. You can go talk to anybody staff. And so we don't have the same access. Right. But we can still coordinate to make that happen. Be helpful, right, rather than I'm the same question from two different places. It's just frustrating. Yeah. And if it's frustrating for us. Yeah. So I guess my impression is that we're OK with with holding the delinquent taxes if it's legal. But we we we'd like to to see more in more. Around how collecting taxes for the town would work from the standpoint of. Is there really enough time to put together a billing process and. We need to have timely terms terms for paying it. It can't be by the end of the fiscal year. And why does it why would that function move to the village? So the reason why was an interpretation that Brad made when I said, well, if you become a city on July 1st, can we really tax you? And what I was saying is, well, they shouldn't become the residents shouldn't become. Residents of the city until the end of the last fiscal year that they voted on a town budget for. And they took very strong exception to that. They want to be a city as soon as possible. They want to be able to call themselves the city as soon as possible. And they saw pushing it out to the end as a as a an affront to their independence or something. And I'm I'm I'm I'm a hope I'm not mischaracterizing that. That that's and so when I said when I my argument was, well, you shouldn't become city residents until the end of that year. Instead, they came back with what will collect those taxes for you since you don't think you can legally collect them. With no discussion, they just went there and put in their charter. But we just learned that the fact that it's in their charter doesn't bind us. So, so we propose what we think is the right proposal. But I, but I don't know if the fact that we're going to have two separate finance departments now whether that changes things. And but nobody's talked to the clerk about how the clerk's going to manage it either right so I don't know how it fits together. So it's so it's so again, it sounds like our our position. Tell me otherwise, what we can do to hold the only one taxes it was legal. But we prefer to collect our own taxes. Thank you. And unless you can show us that it's going to work. And that we have excellent, you know, appropriate terms for when you're going to have the money over, because we have, we have. You know, there's a certain amount of time after, you know, that we have to provide the, we have to pay the school based. And we provide the village is similar terms. So we need to have bill read. He's still on so I want to make sure. So what's the question. Bill have to do have to redo part of this then. Yeah. But I'm not sure exactly how you want me to read if you understood right. I was crossing things out and going back to the way they were. Okay. It's, it's a redacting the redactions. We've got a, we've got a fundamental. I'm just making sure Bill needs to hear because you're looking at us and I didn't know if he understood what we were asking him. Your preference is the town will continue to collect if legal. Instead of having them purchase and the town will prefer to collect its own taxes. You have the most eloquent respond. I mean, position is that if you voted on a town budget, the town's going to collect those taxes. Right. Regardless of where you live and you can call yourself a city all you want, but yeah, that that transition year the town will collect. Yeah. That's I mean, it seems to be a reasonable position. Yep. Yep. And, and they can write in regards to what their, their approved charter says they can change the language before it goes to the legislation to reflect that. Yep. All right. So it's 1030. We've been at this for four hours, do we? We still got ITG due. And police. Oh, right. So the, the 11 o'clock is the reaching hour. We have to vote whether or not to continue. I wasn't aware of that. It was a long day and it's going to be a long day. So let's see, should we move on? What's the next one? ITG? Police. Which one was next? Actually, like, not too bad. Where is it? I did have something in the ITG. So why is there is whereas in there that says that we expect things to be not expected to be negligible. Exactly. That was my. Okay. That's because we expect. I like that one too. This is one where staff did weigh in on this, Rob Paluba. Sit down with Brad and Evan and myself and we went through and. Conceptually, we agree with what's in here. IT doesn't think it's going to be very time consuming or much of a lift to do this stuff. They are working. Now they've gotten the village a list of the contracts that IT manages. And when it comes to actually transferring this stuff out. IT thinks it can wrap it into its normal workload without too much difficulty. The heavy lift is going to be more on the village side and setting the stuff up. That doesn't sound like it's going to be that time consuming for the town IT department to turn that over. Keep going back to the separating of the data and the and the trans transfer of that data. Just having been involved in IT separations. That's where things are difficult. And I know that there was a reference to, you know, it may, I think brought Rob mentioned this when we were talking with him on the budget. That it may end up being that that data doesn't get separated out. I think that needs to be represented here. I mean, we may just allow them to access it from our servers. They were that the village was not going to have the historical data. Oh, all right. The historical data will stay on ours. Right, right. Do we need, right. That's a good question. Do we need to specify that somehow and have some sort of mechanism for them to access it. Right. I don't think that's quite what Rob's comment was the comment was around that they would take a snapshot right and basically stand that up on their own server set up a historical and access that data on their own server for historical data. But my question after thinking about that is what actually does that data entail. And is that data that we want to live. Until records retention schedules say it can be removed. In another municipality. Yeah, and how do you cleanse that data so it doesn't contain town outside the village there. Yeah, I don't recall how they were. I don't think they were going to I think they were just going to. You'd have incomplete the accounting records if you took it out. So how does that I mean, a snapshot. There is, and then we have these other clauses about holding harmless or whatever. And one of those other ones was, I'll let Don comment on this, but I had a question in three. No, I just on to it says it'll work with the town's IT director to prepare a written plan for the migration of the former village IT infrastructure data and resources. That not cover what you're asking. Yeah. The plan. I don't think we want to make. I mean, if the town IT director is going to have the final say and whatever gets sent. So maybe not. I'm sorry, Tracy, go ahead. And I can't I was, I was going to make a point, but I can't actually find it. I'm assuming that I see termination. But is there the ability to amend the agreement thinking if there are problems encountered. And it takes more time during that 1st year or any other unintended consequences. How do we amend this agreement to reflect that I don't see a clause for that. There have been most of the agreements that I reviewed have language about. You can agree you have to have mutual agreement to amend. Yeah, you're right. There's no amendment clause in here. There's only a termination terms. There's no amendment. There's also no end date. This is an event the of migration is not complete. It just means it's going to continue on and on and on. It's the number six. Oh, yeah, when it's complete sir. Yeah, can we is there a ability for us to say enough is enough and stop. It looks like it was when the village determined it was done. Bill, do we need something in there that says we can stop with that we want to stop at some point because we're I mean this this has no end date really only the village can terminate. We can propose one for sure. What is this is going to be negligible. As far as cost easy easy PZ so we should have it done by the time their fiscal year starts. Inside your cheek. So we need so we need an amendment clause that we need the town needs to be able to have the ability to terminate this thing somehow to or it needs to have an end date because it can't just go on forever because they could they could maintain us as consultants forever the way this is worded. Just say well we're not done yet. Sure. So go ahead. Yeah, so I have a number of things I so I don't really understand why we added this added this clause about that it's going to be negligible. I mean, that's an opinion at this point that's not completely understood and I don't think it belongs in the. It's aware as so it's an expectation. Not binding. It's not binding. But it was added in is it necessary to be edited. It's not necessary. Yeah, but we asked it for their opinion. That's why it's there. Um, I think an item number three, it was struck. And shall to the fullest extent, and demnify and hold harmless the town against any claims and penalties resulting from such access. I think we discussed that. And that was an issue that was brought up by the attorneys for the village. I understand their argument is that somehow having indemnification language in a contract with a municipality amounts to indebtedness without a boat of your electorate. Didn't seem to bother him with a 10 year commitment on a police agreement, but I added in language to the fullest extent permitted by law, which should address their issue. If it is in fact illegal for a municipality to indemnify another municipality, then there's no indemnification obligation. It's harmless. It's struck your fullest extent permitted by law. Well, they they struck the whole indemnification clause, which included my language that was meant to soften the blow that that they see from that original language. So they want they had a problem with the indemnification language. My response to that was to the fullest extent permitted by law. And their response was take it all out. I'm going to keep going or I see Tracy's got her hand up. Yeah, the first number three, the first orange line that's not struck in the process of the migration, the city shall not violate any violation of state or federal regs concerning protected data. I specifically asked around, you know, any ramifications of breaches for regulated information. That wasn't a problem, but there's nothing in here concerning, you know, if there are. If there are ramifications from the feds, who's on the hook for those. And so should not violate any violation. My view is the city should be on the hook for that. It didn't seem to be any opposition to that specifically. It was more about the indemnification. But I don't even see the session access and never mind. It's my eyes are crossing. New teaser dining. So I just had a couple like there's some things that are that were added that were kind of vague. Also in item number three, the town and city shall maintain the contract through its expiration date and the city shall reimburse the town for its share of the amount do. But these are contracts that were written. Not dividing the village and town share right these are contracts that were the town for the whole town. The question right I wrote down here is what is considered the city share. Right. Yeah, I don't know how you would know that. And then in item number five, there's a reference to at a reasonable hourly rate. Reasonable is a very subjective term. I think that that's like, you know, an appropriate agreed to rate, possibly. And then at the bottom of number three where it has the town shall allow the city to negotiate with those vendors on any claim penalties. I think it's a shared negotiate. I mean, you know, yes, the town will include the city and any participation on any negotiations with the vendors. I don't think the town is that that infers of the town's removing themselves from those negate those negotiations. Confused. I'm lost. Which section? I'm at the bottom of that's the bottom number three. Oh, okay, so right the contracts are with the so what this is saying, I believe is that all of the contracts are with the town at this point. And the city wants the opportunity to negotiate those. Any penalties. Even though the, because we're saying that the city has to pay the penalties. And they want to, they want to have the right to negotiate those penalties. Is that, is that a viable position bill. Actually, the way I was looking at this was if separation causes a penalty, be it with a third party vendor or a violation of some federal regulation, it's on the city's nickel. And that's what I would suggest be the select board's position here and to make it as clear as possible. What Sue was your questioning is the city is asking for the right to negotiate those penalties away or negotiate them somehow. And I don't see a problem with that because you know, if you want to have them negotiate with a vendor and say, you know, if you chop that penalty in half, we will hire you to do our next upgrade in the city. And there may be a negotiation there for them. I mean, it's not going to be a negotiation for the town, the town has its contracts. The town isn't going to play pay the penalties so it doesn't have any real dog in that fight that I was just thinking relationship wise, you know, then we're, you know, the town still needs to have a relationship with that vendor and it isn't involved in whatever negotiation is and that could potentially have a downside impact on the relationship with the town. Then I agree we should the town should have a seat at the table with it and then negotiation. Bill, can you figure out some language to put in there to give us the right to participate in those negotiating or be a. Yep. Interested party or terms are. Thanks to that was good. You're on the table, you're on the menu. Yeah. Bill, the underlying stuff where it says that a reasonable hour early rate you put those words in right. I believe so I was tracking. Yeah, you're blue, the assessor agreement. But I, what, what, what's. Bob, or whoever the it director is what's his all any hourly rate we could put that in. The salary and benefit cost of the staff doing the work something like that. Yeah, something more objective explicit. Yeah. Right. Somebody could argue as well $17 an hour. That's what I may. Great. Great. His hand up first. Oh, no, I'm done. Oh, because I tasted my eyes are like swimming at these colors. Is there anywhere in here that covers what happens there is a security breach during transfer and who's responsible. That's what trace you I think was trying to get at. And that should be on the city. Okay, but that should that should be in print somewhere. There's no language in there. And we have some language about violation of federal regulations regarding federal or state regulations regarding protected data, protected data. All right. Anything else on this one. The police agreement. The only thing I know a couple of things I noticed is. I thought you would raise the question of automatic renewal. Still says automatic renewal. I think I raised that at the last thing I wasn't comfortable with it. Yeah, automatically terminate. Oh, the automatically terminate. This is automatic renewal. I brought up the automatically terminate. And automatically terminate is still here. Under 11. They put in in section 11. The creation of a new police force. Being. Triggering the automatic termination language, but then they tempered it by saying with two years notice. So it's really not an automatic. It's a two year notice termination. Doesn't make sense. Oh, okay. Automatically and terminate in two years. I thought that sort of made more sense above rather than the automatically, but. And a six or one half dozen of the other in there. Should we take out the automatic just take out automatically the word automatically does apply to. Oh, it comes in solvent. And C and C, I guess. Question I has in section four in the last paragraph is there's a phrase added that says, and any refund for services not provided or reduced shall be paid to the city. So this is a kind of. Could they claim while you didn't provide us those services so we want some money back regardless of whether. Is that what this clause allows them to do. And they've got a failed budget. Yeah, it's written in the context and they're written in the context of a failed budget that if we change. If we change services, we're not going to build them for those services, but this is this is saying and any refund for services not provided, we're not going to change services in arrears. We can only change future services. But they're asking for a refund for services not provided. Could they say, well. You didn't provide any, any. Parking tickets on this place. I'm just making up a dumb example. You know, could they come back to us with that language in there to say, you know, you didn't provide it provide us that service so we don't want to pay for it. For something that was in the past, and this paragraph is intended to talk about a future budget, not a. It seems like it's written like a catch off. Yeah, I, I, I scratched my head on that one as well, Andy, and I was like, should we have a reciprocal provision with. I was having trouble trying to come up with. And if we provide, if we provide the services that we don't collect in our budget, are they going to. They're going to pay that extra amount. The budget is reduced than there is, they're going to be charged. Right. Whatever the metric is. Population or per capita. Well, if the budget's reduced, their, their costs are going to be reduced if their services are reduced as a result. What's the refund? I don't think it needs to be in there, frankly. Yeah. Yeah, because we can't change services in the past. And I don't want them to have the ability to claim that they did that we didn't provide them a service. And therefore they're do a refund. Right. And I think a refund assumes that you've paid for something. First, where if the budget is reduced, they wouldn't have paid for it yet. They wouldn't have paid for it. Right. They'll get, they'll be credited in the credit is because they're per capita costs are going to go down. As a result of the reduced budget. Yeah. So that was the only, that was that particular clause there was the only thing that I. I got confused on the automatic renewal and automatic termination. There's only only two that I had flagged as well. Any other police comments? You've got me thinking I forgot about something with automatic renewal. I don't think I did though. So I don't think we resolved anything. We made some progress on some things, but. So be. Oh, we're closer. Well, I feel like we had made edits and there was a lot of striking of. Yeah. That we had. So I think there's a discussion that needs to take place. Okay, so Bill, we don't need any executive session discussion tonight. Okay. Good. I said that as a question, but I meant it as a statement. All right. Should we anything else? Anything else you want to bring up bill? No, we hit all the points that I had flagged. Okay. We need to ask the public. Oh yeah. Any, I've gone away from the meeting here. Any public comments on this question. Or the discussion we had. Irene. Seeing the changes that were made in the strikeouts. I just wonder when we determine that this is not good faith negotiation. Thanks. Thank you. Any comments online? Patty. You guys are doing a great job. And Bill Ellis is he's real cracker jack. I think it's great. He's we're lucky to have him. Thank you, Patty. All right, we got four minutes before we have to have a vote to decide whether to stay or not. I don't see any other hands up. Let's move on to consent agenda. I make the motion we accept the consent agenda. Thank you, Don. Thank you, Sue. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes four zero. Reading file. Any board member comments? Tracy. I just want to make mention of my email that's included in there. More than happy to have. Further conversation on that. If I don't want to step on Rob's toes, but if it's okay with Rob. I am more than happy to set it up and maintain. Do whatever, but we can definitely have that conversation at another time. So this is, this is a application where the select board members could potentially set up discussions with the public. One-on-one kind of thing so that the, you know, outside of public meeting information sharing question answering those kind of things. Or have office hours. Essentially, it would allow a member of the public to go to a website and basically say, I want to meet with Andy and pick a time that you have set your quote unquote office hours for and automatically reserves time on your calendar, follows up with the participant with how to contact if there are instructions, all of it is pretty customizable. And it's, it's, it's pretty user friendly. Any other member comments? I have to confess that I lied in a prior select board meeting. There, I always, I said, I probably said it in a couple of select board meetings that there's no recall provision in the, in the state of Vermont. And then last month under Hiller recalled one of their select board members. So I did more investigation and there are in fact 11 towns in, in the state that have charter provisions that allow them to recall elected officials. And I also, I'm partly bringing this up and I'm partly bringing us to clear the record that and correct and correct statement I previously made. But I also am aware that there's an individual who is working on a language for a proposed charger change for the town of Essex to allow recall of voters. So that may be coming. I don't know if it'll come as a petition or whether we'll be asked to do it. But in Hiller Hill's case, they did not. It was a petition driven. The select board didn't want to, didn't want to. Well, it was, it was directed toward a specific individual on that point. So they didn't want to be in a position of promoting a, a change so they get rid of one of their own members. But so anyway, it's, it's potentially coming. See if, if where it goes, the again with 11 cases, there's proven language that could be used. The, we have a resignation from the conservation trails committee. We may want to have a discussion at some point about whether to there's, there were two candidates that we did not select the last round of interviews. So the question may come back as to how we want to handle that whether we want to re-interview, re-advertise what we want to do. But it's not on the agenda side, but that's potentially coming. I think we've said enough. Maybe. Anything else? Go ahead, Tracy. I was just going to say with no other business, I move we adjourn. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you, Don. Motions to adjourn and non-divatable all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed. Hey, thank you.