 I do have it, I just don't. Welcome to the Monday, April 15th Town of Essex Select Board meeting. Would you please join me in the – reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Do we have any agenda additions or changes this evening, Greg? We'll have a couple of items. First to go with 5F, Elaine had submitted some comments for consideration for the communications policy, and a new item that would be 5J, it's a letter to Green Mountain Transit about some of the proposed changes, and Paul is asked for bringing this now, but it is for a meeting tomorrow, so looking to have a review – a review tonight. Okay. Anything else? So that was time-sensitive. Yeah. So if there aren't any further additions to the agenda, I – I move the select board amend the agenda to add items to 5F and 5J. A motion to amend the agenda. Do we have a second? Second. Thank you. All in favor of amending the agenda as presented, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? The agenda has been amended. At this point in time, we have public to be heard. This is for folks who are in the audience that have something to share with the board that is not on the agenda. Is there anyone here tonight who wants to speak on something that's not already scheduled? Irene. January 7th, that the select board has not yet approved, and I'm hoping to see those on a future agenda, and I just wanted to make that public statement. Oh. Okay. Thank you. January 7th, budget minutes. Any other public to be heard? Margaret? Yes. I was at the meeting a couple of meetings ago, and it would be so nice if at some point they would say yes, get the children in the parks, but make them really aware of the lime problem and the tick problem so that if they're out in the woods or they're out in the fields and they're out in the bushes, they come home and do a tick check. So it would be so nice to see those two things merged somehow. Yes, get them out in the parks, but make them aware because it's a big problem. Thank you. I'm sure our parks departments can make sure that they increase their awareness of that in the criminal arts. Thank you. Any other public to be heard? All right. Hearing none, we're going to move on. Our first business item is first class liquor license renewals. So we have three different establishments. Greg, do you want to walk us through? Just a standard liquor license approval for first class, Max noticed there were a few dates that were off in terms of the enforcement seminar, just in terms of latest dates, they're all still in compliance. So did not have a chance to check with the clerk's office today, but can do so tomorrow. Shouldn't hold up the approval process if everything else is okay, but we can correct the days before they are sent to the state. Apart from that, just your standard process. Okay. And I understand we have someone in the audience this afternoon from one of our applicants. So before we, we'd like to invite you up to just chat with us about your business, but before we do that, do any of the board members have any questions or comments about these applications? Annie. I noticed, I don't know a lot about this, but it seems to me that railroad and main probably needs the outside permit as well, because I see they have a patio. I wonder how that works. Have they submitted an outside permit? I'm not aware of them submitting one, but we can check and see if they plan to serve outside. Thank you. That's good. And they have till April 30th to submit that and have it approved by this board. Is that right? In fact, this is your last meeting of the month, I suppose you could, if you make a motion to approve, include a condition that if railroad and main requires an outdoor consumption permit that you are okay with that and approve that if necessary. I guess depending on whether it gets warm, they may not need it before the end of the month. Is that, does it make, is it just not a, not okay for them to come back in May so that they can serve outside in June? They could. If they were serving outside in May and they haven't received their permit yet, it might delay that a little bit, but otherwise that's the only thing I can think of. There's no, there's no hard and fast if they don't get it in that, if we don't do it today, they'll never. Not for outdoor. If it was the first class liquor license, if they didn't have that, they wouldn't be able to serve. Right, this will delay their outdoor consumption if that's the case, but that's it. We can certainly remind them that there's a time lag from them applying and them receiving. So. There's no real downside to putting a conditional one on there because the review has been done for their first class and that came through clean and the outdoor one, as long as it's just confined to their front deck, and also since these are renewals, we usually don't invite people up to talk about it. So we have a guest who has to come, so. Okay, but we only do that for new establishments in the past, I wanted you to know. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. And if you could also remind me of practice, shall we have our guests come forward now or after we approve? Well, since these are renewals. When they're new, we ask them after it's done, after the admonition. Okay, thank you. So if there aren't any, that was a good catch, Annie. Thank you. I just, the first meeting I attended, one of the businesses had come in and sat down and there was a discussion about it. Definitely a good catch. So if there aren't any other further questions or discussion about the first class liquor licenses, would any of you like to make a motion to approve? Sure, I'd make a motion to approve first class liquor license for Euro West Inns, Incorporated, doing business as the Essex to include an outside consumption permit. Kevin Cody, Incorporated, doing business as Cody's Irish Pub and Grill with outside consumption permit. HPRLLC, doing business as railroad and main with a conditional outside consumption should they come forward with one that is confined by the front patio. Thanks, Max, for the motion. Would anyone like to second it? Second. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, we're all set with the first class liquor licenses. So Sharon and Doria, you're in the audience. It's not required that you come on up and chat with us, but if you wanted to just come talk about the Essex spa and that's up to you. I know it's not required, but I want to see what went on and make sure everything went smoothly. Thank you. I'm the control over there. Okay. We normally, well, a new procedure for us is to not have renewals that have no issues with them come to the meeting. It makes it easier for the, for the establishments, but we figured since you were here, you're welcome to have some words. And we often, we usually do it in admonition to all of our applicants that the select board takes the issuance of liquor licenses very seriously and should the area establish, as should the area establishments who serve alcohol. We expect you not to serve alcohol to minors nor to anyone who is obviously inebriated. And we thank you for doing business in Essex and wish you a very successful year. So, thank you. So moving on to second class liquor license renewal for Euro West Inns. Can I receive a motion for that? Sure. And move we approve the second class liquor license for Euro West Inns doing business as the Essex. Okay. Second. Second up. Any discussion? All right. Didn't see any issues with the second class permit. Okay. Anybody else? All right. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. So our liquor licenses are taken care of and I think that's everybody for the year, right, Craig? For the most part. Okay. All right. Next item, 5C, approve the creation of the U.S. Census Complete Count Committee. Bob Stock of the U.S. Census is going to come talk to us about this. Thank you. Pardon me. And Jill, will you be joining us as well? Welcome to come up to the table. Okay. Great. Leave it there. Thanks. Elaine Devin, Greg, members, citizens, thank you. Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you about the very important thing that we do every 10 years. For those of you that are not familiar with it, it is under Article 1, Section 2 of the United States Constitution. And it requires us to count everybody, count them once, only once, count them in the right place. And that's what we're here to do. Myself, I'm a partnership specialist with the United States Census Bureau and I'm responsible for the state of Vermont. Jill is my partner, a teammate. She is with Census recruiting. So there are two critical components to this, which is one of the reasons we've been discussing with the town about the forming of what we call a complete count committee, which I'll explain in just a minute. But one of the things that we found, because we are a statistic agency, we're able to pinpoint where we think if we were to turn the census on today, where would we have a problem with counting? And we identified in Essex, probably we would get about a 14% undercount if we did nothing. That works out to be, if you do the math, the state of Vermont gets about $2.5 billion in federal funding every year. We have a population of about $623,000 at the moment. If you do the math, it works out to about $4,000 per person. So most of the programs that we look at, such as Medicaid, SNAP, Student Lunches, Section 8 Housing, those that impact the most vulnerable of our population are based, 55 of them, based on the 10-year census. So you get one opportunity to get it right in 10 years, and then you live with it until you take another shot at it. So if we were to do nothing and we got the 14% undercount here, it would work out to be about a little over almost $12 million a year. And then we would lose that times 10. So the way the U.S. Census Bureau addresses these is we work with the trusted members of the community, which are you all? People that are known in the community that can help us with what we consider the traditional hard-to-count populations. And that's what we've been talking to the town about. So in order to do this, in addition to having the cooperation, we need to have a number of enough people to be able to conduct the census. So nationally, we'll be hiring 355,000 people. It's the second largest thing the United States does other than preparing for war. Thank God that's not what we're doing. But in Vermont, 2,000. So we're not going to get there with a 2.4% unemployment rate, which is below structure, by the way, traditional structure, and 1.5% in Chittenden County. So we're going to need your help with that, too. And that's part of what Jill does. There's some material that we left over there that you can take a look at on the way out. These are pretty good-paying jobs. And it's an opportunity to get the federal government on your resume. So with that, if I think I've covered it, I hope. If there's any questions or, yeah? You stated explicitly on your page three that the Census Bureau is required to keep the respondent information confidential, and you will not share it with the respondent's personal information with immigration enforcement agencies, like ICE, law enforcement agencies, like the FBI or police, or allowed to be used for other things. So I'm glad to see that's in there, because otherwise, people who need to be counted, you're not going to want to step forward and be counted. So. Agreed. And some of you may be aware that the citizenship question is currently on the United States Census 4, 2020. A number of the states, those that, one thing I probably should have mentioned that I didn't, because it's not a factor in Vermont, but the United States' 10-year census also determines a number of representatives that a state has. The threshold is 750,000. As I mentioned, our population is 623, so we're not going to get there anytime soon. But states like New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, a couple of others, California, are very concerned because they're losing population. So they want to make sure they do count everybody. So lower courts, three of them so far, have said that it should not be on. The Department of Commerce, the United States Census Bureau is an agency of the Department of Commerce. We are not policymakers. We're primarily, with the exception of a few folks like Jill and myself, statisticians and scientists. So what is on the census is determined by the Department of Commerce, the Secretary of Commerce. So the current place where it sits right now is the United States Supreme Court has agreed to an expedited hearing that's currently scheduled for a week from tomorrow. We have to know because we have to go to print by June 1st. And what a lot of people don't realize is not a lot of questions on the 10-year census. If you've been fortunate enough to get the American Community Survey, which is done as a sample in every census tract every year, you've got about 70 questions. But the U.S. 10-year census, well, it's eight now. They may be seven by the time we get finished. So we'll see. But you're right. It has been tested in court where some of these agencies have come after the data. But it's under Title XIII. They don't get it. Never have, never will. Can you just describe briefly what the makeup of the complete count committee is? Who are the recommended people from the town that might be on it? People that are trusted in the community, particularly the leadership of the community, and those that represent the traditional hard-to-count populations. Homeless, single mothers or single parents, I should say, with children under six or five. Recent immigrants. English is a second language primarily. And it goes on a little bit from there. We have that type of data. And I've shared some of it with the town. We can go deeper as we get further on, assuming you approve the complete count committee, which I hope you do. I work as a liaison, as does Jill, to the committee. And it is not an onerous sort of thing. And I want to make sure that we're clear with that. Because once we establish it, and once people understand the purpose of it, I work pretty much directly with the individuals that are on the committee with their particular constituents. So we may meet between now and April 1st, 2020, when the census officially starts, three times, maybe four, depending. But it really becomes more of a one-on-one at some point in time. And in the real bringing together, everybody is more to share information, make sure everybody understands what the rollout looks like and how we're doing with it. I noticed when I was going through that there was some mention about the highest elected official appointing and chair of this committee. Is that what we're looking to do tonight as well, or just to prove the formation itself? Just wanted to get some clarification. Just the formation, giving the manager the authority to do the formation. Thanks. Anything else? All right, so Bob, thank you. Jill, thank you for coming. And thanks for leaving the information at the table about jobs that people can get being census takers. That's it. Thank you. And if you do ever have any additional questions, you can reach me through the folks in town. They have all my contact information. I actually have one more question. Have we done these committees for prior counts? I don't recall. I mean, last one was 10 years ago. I wasn't with the US Census Bureau then, so I'm not sure. We have a number of them in the state right now. Yeah? I don't know if you've done them in the past for those at home. This is my third census in local government. I've heard Bob's appeal a couple of different times. And he is absolutely correct. The census does not give out your information to any other federal agency. They are statisticians. It is very important for states and municipalities, especially when you apply for grants. So much of the information that we apply for grants is embedded into federal agencies, just not the specifics of the people or person in a residence. But if you're going for any federal monies that have to do with, say, emergency response, there is some federal data in that review. So it's really important. So I've got that experience. I know what happens when people are undercounted and you try to get federal funds or other funds for programs. It may not be there when you need it. So that's why when I came to see us, I wanted to make sure that, and the fact that they're projecting a 14% undercount that tells you there is some populations within the entirety of the town of Essex that has got the Census Bureau a little worried, because that does seem a little higher than average. Maybe, Bob, you could touch on what the normality seems to be. We had referenced earlier the American Community Survey, which is done in every census tract in the United States every year. And it's a sampling within each one of the tracts. No census tract, by the way, ever exceeds 7,000 people. So if you ever look at a census tract map of the Bronx, it's dense. Vermont, maybe not. But we do sample every single tract. And we're able to tell from that because the American Community Survey is a five-year rolling average. So we're able to get a pretty good sense with our experience in terms of what we feel the undercount is going to be. And we can even predict it, to a certain extent, by the folks that I was mentioning earlier, the traditional heart accounts. But we have good data on that. I mean, I'm happy, well, I'm not happy with it, but I'm solid with it, that 14%. I mean, we obviously like to see 0%, but. If you have that good data, why don't you, couldn't you just trust that data then and add to the 14% on there? Say that again, I'm sorry. If the data is good, that you're confident that it's 14%, just curious about why not just use that data as opposed to trying to form this committee and have others go out and just confirm what it sounds like you're very confident exists. Well, we can't because we're required to, by the US Constitution, to count everybody. So even with that data, it suggests that, but you have to go confirm that. We have to go confirm it. OK. We have to go count everybody. So you mentioned that we shouldn't anticipate that it would be an onerous duty to be on this committee, but what are the expectations? What would an individual on such a committee do? Well, once we start the committee, one of the things that I would be doing is something similar to what I'm doing tonight from the standpoint of giving a little bit of the background, the sense in the town, and then maybe going a little bit deeper into it in terms of the hard to count where they are, which sense of strata, things like that. And then working with, let's say, for example, if you had someone from refugee resettlement on the committee, I'd be working with them specifically, maybe helping them or them helping me and Jill find Bantu speakers that we could hire as enumerators that could speak to that community. So it's different in terms of whoever is on that everyone is approached differently based on who they represent. Did I ask you a question? I'm not sure I did. Well, I'm getting the impression that the five of us would be expected to be on this committee. Am I wrong? OK. OK. I misunderstood when I said community leaders. I guess I'm not. That's fine. If that's not the same, I should write it down. The expanded definition of community leaders could be churches, synagogues. OK. Thanks for that clarification. I'm fine. Housing authority people that have some connection to maybe these populations. We have a large Somali refugee, someone who speaks Somali, and I believe there are several dialects of Somali. So it's not just one who's somebody who can speak to them and get them where they live and get them comfortable with answering the census, because the Census Bureau actually has to count them and they have to actually fill out the form to be counted, if I understand the law from. Exactly. This is one of the advantages we do have this year is it's the first one where people will be able to respond via the internet, via telephone, via paper, or hopefully we don't have to send an enumerator. But if we do, we will. 12 languages on internet and on the phone and our enumer. Everybody, an enumerator, when people usually think of the census, they think of somebody walking around with a clipboard. Well, now they walk around with an iPad. It's got 59 different languages on it. So hopefully we've got it covered. We'll see. But that's part of what we do with the complete count committee, too. Because as Evan mentioned, the Somalis, for example, with all of the different languages, we need people working for us to speak those languages. So that's part of the jobs that we bring. And on page 16 of Bob's packet, there's a sample makeup of a committee. And it's a whole bunch of different kinds of folks from different organizations. So all right. Any further questions for Bob? All right, Bob, thank you so much. Thank you for your time. We have to make the recommendation on forming the committee. So would someone like to make a motion? I know that the select board approved the creation of a complete count committee and authorized staff to form said committee. We have a motion. Can there be a second, please? Second. Any second? Any discussion? All right, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, we're good to go with that. Thank you. Thanks again, Bob and Jill. All right, now we're on to item 5D, warning the public hearing for FYE 2020 water, sewer, budget, and rates. Erin, would you please join us? Is this Sarah's seat? Yeah, that's my water. I won't touch the water. Before you tonight to present the fiscal year 2020 water and sewer budget, I'm going to start off by kind of explaining where we're going to go tonight. We've got three things we're going to want to do. We wanted to discuss the proposed budgets for both the water and sewer and what their impacts are. And then we're going to briefly discuss the proposed rates and how these budgets we're proposing this year are going to reflect in those rates. And the board will warn a public hearing for May 6 for a presentation to the public of the budget. And hopefully, you folks will approve it thereafter. We want to start right in. Go to page one of your memo. This year, the water budget has an overall 1.1% increase in budgeted line items, which results in a 2.6% increase in the rate. This year, staff is also proposing to increase the minimum water charge from $170 a year to $180. Proposed 2020 sewer budget has an overall 2.2% increase in budgeted line items, resulting in a 2.9% increase in the rates. Both proposed rates rate increases for water and sewer are below the five-year average for rate increases that we've had in the past, so this is a pretty good budget. Page two kind of goes over some of the major impacts to the budget. We're continuing on completing the water meter installations throughout the community. We're almost there. System stabilization, setting aside money for future costs, and reduction of unaccounted for water in the system. If you head to page four, actually, once you head to page 44 of the budget, I put a list spreadsheet in there for you folks. Basically kind of goes over all the meters we've completed to date and the meters remaining. We have one development in town remaining to get switched over. That's a Meadows Edge development. I've started to send out letters to these folks. We'll likely have about 100 to 150 additional meters installed by mid-summer, which leaves us about 100, 150 meters left to install. And that gives us a 92%. What kind of savings is that going to do? Do you expect that to bring in water savings for inaccurate reading? Savings for whom? Well, I guess for accounting for water loss. How much of a reduction of water loss do you think that will account for? Well, as meters get old, they usually read in the favor of the resident or the customer. These newer meters, I don't know how much water savings or accountability we're going to realize from this. They read what they read. I think the big motivation behind this upgrade was, at first, for ease of reading these meters. We've taken what once took us about 2 and 1 half, three weeks to read meters. And it's down to about three, four days. And this project started, as you know, max, about 2010. We've budgeted well over $1 million investing into this project. And that kind of segues into something else I wanted to discuss here tonight. In addition to the meter upgrades, we're looking to purchase a software system called WaterSmart. This software is a cloud-based software that acts as a portal for our customers. Gives them the opportunity to do online billing. We can push notifications out through these folks. It kind of gives the customers the ability to realize some of these benefits from the new technology we put in rather than just us reading meters and decreasing the amount of time it takes us. Being that one of the major impacts, I think we've raised the budgets about $7,000, $8,000 to sort of the meter replacement line item this year to account for some of those costs. And to finish up purchasing the additional meters we need to finish up this year. Briefly discussed system stabilization. If you look on there, it's a line item we used to call depreciation. We're looking at a 5.3% increase here from $150,000 to $158,000 for both water and sewer. We'll be back on page four now. Yeah, well, that was page three. I kind of jumped in back and forth. Thank you. Apologize for that. Let's go to page four. Water loss. This is a pretty important topic. If you look at the table there on page four, you can see the losses over the past 15, 16 years here. There's quite a fluctuation there. A lot of that is due to leaks and breaks within our system. Any type of water loss starts out as a leak. And it eventually turns to a break. Breaks are we're able to find them. We see the water. We get the phone call. We can do something about it. We can go in, shut valves, do a repair, turn the water back on, and everything is great. Water leaks are a little bit harder to track down. They start out small and out big and sometimes don't surface. Actually, I got a prop for you guys too. This right here is a corporation for a water service. And that one was found on a break in forestail development. Tons of sand in this development. This started off life probably with a real small leak. To be conservative, I did a quick calculation. An eighth inch diameter hole in this pipe with the pressures in that area could realize a leak of about 4,000 gallons a day. That's 1.5 million gallons a year, which constitutes about at current rates for purchase of water from Champlain Water. You're looking at $3,500. It's substantial. We don't know how many of these we have. We hope we don't have very many. But the one single break we had this past winter was a total disconnection of a service. That's a 3 quarter inch pipe blowing out into the surrounding soil. That's an extreme amount of water. That's half a million gallons a day. So when you see this rate jump up and down like that, it's usually due to these leaks becoming breaks and new leaks starting. Moving on, sewer is the opposite problem. We worry about water going into the pipes versus going out of the pipes. Sewer, we're sitting pretty good. If you look at the long-term average, 14%, we've gotten better. We've done a lot of TVing of our sewer lines. We have addressed a lot of leaks and infiltration in our sewer system, some of our older parts of the system in the fort. In the past five years, the average was 4.6, and this year we're at 4.8. So we're doing pretty good on the sewer side of things. It's now we're going to concentrate some of our efforts on the water side. Page six has a budget analysis. Table one here, looking for a 1.1% increase in the overall budget for this year. And if you look at this top line item here where it says water, parentheses all but CWD, we're looking to decrease this portion of the budget by 1.7%. These include all the line items associated with maintenance, all other line items other than the actual purchase of Champlain water. We're decreasing it. I think there's a testament to us working smarter, working doing more with less, and our guys working efficiently. The sewer, we're looking for an overall eight budget increase of 2.2%. Again, same method. That top line there shows all the line items associated with maintenance of the system. And we're looking at an increase of about 1%. Erin, can you remind us what the plus Bradford part is? Because every year that's something that I always have a question on. The Bradford loan was a bond purchased to help pay an offset and defer some of the costs associated with the treatment plan upgrade a few years back. It was this additional bonding funding that came along and helped us out. All three communities do pay for that. It's just the cost of doing business. Proposed rates this year for the water side, we're looking to increase the water rate from $5.42 up to $5.56 per 1,000 gallons. Staff is proposing to increase the minimum charge from $170 to $180 for the minimum charge for water, the annual fee. Sour, we're looking to increase from $9.27 up to $9.54 per 1,000 gallons. And we're proposing not to increase the current connection fees for water or sewer. We feel that they're sufficient where they are. There's no real need. Page 7 of the shared account, we have a history of shared cost splits. Over the past four years, we've been going with a $58.42 cost sharing split between water and sewer. This year, we adjusted it slightly to a $57.43. And we increased the sewer portion slightly due to treatment costs. They are going up. 60% of the sewer budget here in town is directly related to treatment costs and repayment of debt for some of the upgrades at the treatment plant over the past few years. Moving on, development of the water rate, pretty simple calculation. We take the overall proposed budget for the year. And then we take the estimated flow. This year, we're looking at about 655,000 gallons per day. We multiply that by 365, divide it into the budget, divide by 1,000 gallons. And we reached $5.56 per 1,000. Similar calculation with the sewer rate. Take the overall budget. The leave, we think we're using the same, yeah, using the same estimated flow rate, daily flow rate of 435,000 gallons a day. Come up with the $9.54 per 1,000. On page 9, we have the effect of the rate change on current users. This kind of brings it home for me. This is an important part right here. You look at our average residential home, uses about 200 gallons a day, 73,000 gallons a year. The way we bill, we bill twice a year. You look at the annual costs for the current rates. And there are $398.58 for water, $671 for sewer. And connected to both, you're paying 1,075. What I did as I went through the exercise, I pay my bills monthly. And it's much easier for people to see what these actual costs are for water and sewer. So I took the proposed rate, multiplied it by this average usage. And for water, I ended up with $38.82 per month, which is a 61-cent increase over the current rates. Sewer, I ended up with $58.04 per month, which is a $1.64 increase. If you're connected to both, you're going to be paying $96.86 per month. This is $2.25 increase. There's not much there. It's a reasonable increase at the rates. Moving on to page 10, we have a couple tables there. Kind of shows us where we are with the rest of this top table. Kind of shows us where we are with the rest of the communities in the Champlain Water District. We're about just shy north of middle there. And sewer, we're one of the higher ones in Chittenden County. But again, we have some high fixed costs that we're paying. So that definitely reflects in that rate. At this point, I'd like to address any questions you guys may have. I think it was page six or seven. You were showing the depreciation. It's up a tad for both water and sewer. In your opinion, is that enough to keep us from falling behind on infrastructure maintenance? It's not real. Anything people can see because it's blowing around and investing in it. System stabilization, I'd like to call it. Come on. She even has a tad. You knew you couldn't keep her back there. Well, as soon as you said depreciation, that was my cue. We don't want to fall behind on that. We at least stay even, hopefully gain a little. Exactly. So first of all, we're ahead of the game by including depreciation in the budget to begin with. What that does is that allows us, so depreciation is the systematic expenditure of the cost of an asset over its estimated useful life. So if you buy a $50,000 truck, it's going to last you 10 years. You buy that. It's on the balance sheet in each year. You expense $10,000 of depreciation to smooth out the cost of that asset over its life. What we're doing by including depreciation in the budget in the water and sewer funds is we're recouping those costs via the rate. So we're basically funding the cost of the assets we already have. And this might be news to some people here, but costs don't normally stay stable from the time you buy an asset to the time you have to replace it. So we're headed in the right direction, but two things are happening here. The cost of depreciation is actually going up because as we buy new assets in these systems and we include them in the pot of assets to be depreciated, that expense is higher year over year. So a new truck is a bad example because the stuff in these systems that we're replacing is millions of dollars over their lifetime. Just one pump is $15,000 to $20,000. Is it a control upgrade at the pump station that was closer to $75,000 to $80,000? Big bucks. So we're headed in the right direction. I really think that we need to take and I would like to do this internally. We started to talk about this. There's gotta be some place we go a little bit more than just depreciation. So talking about a capital improvement plan or we're starting to throw around the term system stabilization like a capital reserve. So how do we do capital reserves in the water and sewer fund so that when something major breaks we're not reliant just on debt which is the other way we fund major infrastructure upgrades in these funds because it's just so much money. And we also have to balance cost to, so who should be paying for this? Is it the current users who are using the system should be putting the cash aside now as we go or when we bond it's future users who are paying it? So we have to balance the burden. Who's getting the benefit? Who's using it? So there's more, this is really good accounting stuff but there's more work we have to do internally but to answer your question, frankly, Max, no, I do not believe we have enough in this line to really have a robust solid foundation for a capital plan going forward as the system's age. But we are in a better spot than others and we are headed in the right direction. Thanks for biting me up. No problem. Might as well hang out there, Sarah. Thank you, Sarah. That's a good one. More questions for her. Yeah, you said that the rate increases 2.6% for water. The rate, yes. Yeah, the rate. So except for anybody who's paying the minimum, it's almost 6% increase for them. Is it sort of justification for increasing the minimum at a higher, faster rate than the water rate? Well, right now, if you turn to page 8, we base that minimum off of 100 gallons per day. So if you multiply that by the current rate, that puts us up around 203. We set it at 180. It's kind of on the lower end of that. I think it's a fair representation of what a minimum user should be paying to the system, because there are a lot of fixed costs other than just drinking the water. You have fire protection. One of the things that we've talked about is not just the volume that people use. It's the availability. For us to get water from Lake Champlain brings it to us, but we pay for that. And for us to have it through the pipes to get it to each and every property that has a connection, plus fire, which is the hydrants, there's a fixed cost, whether you turn on the spigot or not. That cost has to be not only in our rates, but also our stability to be able to not only replace what is in the ground today, but be prepared to fix something in the ground tomorrow. So it's not just in the volume, it's in the availability. Andy? We left the minimum flat for five years, because back in 2014, we looked at the demographics of who pays the minimum. And it was a lot of individuals living by themselves, elderly, fixed income kind of folks. And in reality, the difference between changing it to $175 and $180 is probably a couple of thousand bucks altogether, right? There's a few people that are charged a minimum. About a third of that is what I understand is about a third of the people that are on the pay the minimum, right? Is that right? I thought it was higher than that. I don't have that number. But I know there was a substantial amount of people that do pay the minimum charge. Is it the right amount on that, I guess? That's for you to decide. Keeping it flat may not address the future needs that we have for the fixed costs. That's why we're proposing to raise it, because costs are only going up, something like that. We just can't keep flat or out of it. Try. Do we have information about who? I assume there are people who have delinquent water bills. Do we have any information about who isn't able to pay their water bill? I don't want specifics or anything like that, but is it do we see people that are paying the minimum not be able to pay it? Or I just spoke with staff today about that with your question. And we work with all kinds of people who go on to payment plans. Our goal is not to take every dollar that they may have, but we work with them. But ultimately, they're required to pay what they can, and they can run a deficit up to a point. But it does need to get paid. We don't track specific types of people or anything. We just have a balance sheet. And in the actual case, the village actually does their system differently than the town. They have very little on the debt owing side. But again, we don't know what the exact right amount is. That's a policy decision on the fixed charge. Alls we can tell you is that the cost to maintain the system and whether you take that money out of the rate charge or you take it out of the taxation in the rate of the total of the town to pay for that in the future, that's a policy decision. We can tell you that's probably not the right way it would be done in a utility enterprise fund versus a taxation model. Pat, I saw your hand up. I did. This is going to be a super newbie question. But I'm not fully appraised on the background. Can you give me a cliff notes version of why the Essex Junction specific is so much lower than the Essex in general that we're looking at here? Or I'm assuming Essex town outside the village had a seat to municipalities listed as separate for their sewer and water rates. And it's just background that I don't have. And I don't need to get out. Let me try to do this real quick before the engineer gets into all the things. Yes. When you let gravity do its work, it is a whole lot cheaper. So the town has to use pumps to pump its sewer into the villages system. Once it gets into the village system, it runs by gravity into the treatment plant. That's about the bare bones. Also, when you have to pump water uphill, it is a whole lot more expensive. All right. And the two municipalities for sewer and water are separate. Separate. Yeah. Separate until the town flows into the village, which then goes to the plant. OK. I believe the town has 14. 16. 16 pump stations to pump sewage into the village system into the treatment plant. OK. Awesome. Did I get that? Yeah, no, no. That's really all I needed. Just the cliff notes is fine. So years ago, we were dependent on users of water, for example, in order to sustain the budget. And in years when it was wet in the summer, then less water would be used. So less came into the budget. But there are a lot of fixed costs. And I think we've been shifting, right, to get it more of the fixed costs as part of this budget. And the user part is a smaller, I mean, that's a variable, but it's a smaller percent, I think. A smaller percentage. And I'm just going to speak, frankly, of my opinion. I think, eventually, we are going to be migrating to some sort of adjustment in our rates on how we budget. I do see that there is a lot of fixed costs. As Evan was saying earlier, the water needs to stay on. And that has a cost associated with it, not necessarily the volume, but the people there to maintain it and operate both systems, sewer and water here in town. So there is a fixed cost associated with this utility. So we're moving towards being able to have a budget that's less dependent on the variability of the users versus making sure we're getting at least our fixed costs covered. I would say you're also looking for less volatility. And there's a price sensitivity both in practice and at the board level. Nobody here wants to see rates rise for usage. But once you raise the rate on usage, you will see demand fall if you have the opportunity. I think you also see conservation. 10, 12 years ago, there was no such thing as a low-flow toilet. I believe it's 1.6 liters of flush. It used to be, I think, three gallons of flush. So you cannot buy a low-flow residential toilet in Lowe's or Home Depot. So you can't do that. So all that. Every hotel, the lady from the hotel left. I guarantee you every hotel in the United States in over the last 10 years has been working on water conservation. It is one of their higher costs. They will pay you not to use towels. We see it in all other things. So buy you a drink. They'll give you a discount. They'll thank you for not doing that. So that's the volatility of the rate. And that's why one of the measures of what we're looking to do is remove the volatility and stick with the availability and sustainability of being able to bring it to you and be consistent on a daily basis. Any other questions? Erin, did you have anything else that you wanted to share with us? No. I did. There was another memo that Greg had furnished you. That was item three. I told you what we would probably be doing here tonight. And this is to warn the public hearing. So there is a recommendation in there for you folks too. So hold on just a second. So if there are no further questions or Annie. I had one comment. Absolutely. I got to trust a person who throws a piece of a broken pipe in his pocket to show us. I enjoyed that immensely. That was great. Props are always helpful. That was fascinating. I'm serious. They're helpful. Yeah, thank you for telling us that. Kind of makes everyone realize exactly that's the whole. That's amazing. And thank you seriously for our thinking to bring that and be so real about it. No worries. Thanks, Annie. Wasn't as much fun as Dennis bringing a jar full of muddy water that, no, you know, the question of what do you got there, Dennis? What? I thought it was a suit of that night. He was. One other thing, one of the things we throw a lot, a lot, a lot of terms around infiltration is on the suicide. When you take rainwater, groundwater, and put it into a sewer pipe, it goes to the treatment plant. The treatment plant doesn't know it's rainwater. We have to treat it. And therefore, we are spending whatever it is per 1,000 gallons to treat it. So we're treating clean water. And so by reducing your infiltration, you reduce your costs of treating something at the plant. And so that's another reason why you do a lot of work on our pipes. And infiltration can be combated, I guess, with sleeving of pipes and making sure that you don't have openings in your pipe where you don't want them. Prepare manholes. I know there's a couple areas in town we actually had to raise manholes, because they kept on flooding over when the beavers would block a couple of the culverts. So I mean, it was draining whole water shit. Just raising that manhole cover, a foot, save us quite a bit of money for the frame. We're an S-4 district, meaning it's a separate sewer stormwater system. Unlike Burlington, I think. Burlington stormwater goes to the water treatment. Big rain overwhelms it. But our stormwater goes right into the river, or right into the creeks that go out to the lake. And that's why we have a separate stormwater plan to address that piece. But I just want to make sure it's clear to the folks that we don't treat stormwater in our water, in our sewer system. Not on purpose. Set by infiltration, which we're trying to reduce. And so for the select board, the staff takes a lot of pride and a lot of effort to try to keep these in a better balance. And so when you see water loss under 10%, you know your staff is trying to find leaks. You know they're trying to find places that, because we have to pay for the water to come here. And so buying water and then losing it before we sell it is a bad business practice. And then taking in more water than you sell to treat is also a bad practice. So we try to keep both of those ratios well under double digit. Bottled water contributes to that, too. Probably dies. Because you're thinking water that you didn't buy. Probably does. From C to SWD, down into years. But you have to drink a lot of 12 ounce bottles to get to 1,000. Careful, I should hide that right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Being the representative for Essex, I should probably hide it. All right. I'd like to move that select board warrant a public hearing for the FYE 2020 water sewer budget and rates for May 6, 2019 at 7.05 PM. Second. Any discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Erin, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. Sarah, thank you, too. Erin, would you like to stay for Sarah's presentation? The more the merrier. All right. Any props? I do. When you purchase a new pipe, you need to go through Sarah's equipment. I'm actually going to slip a few things. So this is our assistant finance director, Courtney Bush. She's going to join me up here. Hello, Courtney. Has been here almost six months now. It's hard to believe it's been that long and it's going by that fast. Courtney and I worked together in the city of St. Albans, where we were the first municipality in the state to implement this particular system. So the first municipality to move from a paper, a house payable invoice approval process to a paperless process. I'm going to say it again and she's going to cringe, but Courtney is a technical expert on this. I'm just a salesperson, but we both used it and we've enjoyed it very much. So what I would like to do is I'm just going to give you guys some of these invoices. It's so nice that we have them so you can see the stamp. Oh, and this department has their own stamp that's different from everyone else's, which makes it even more fun. I'm special. So you can see what I'm talking about. Thanks. Well, I'm talking. I'm good. I've seen them every day. Are you sure? Every day. Greg, you can use it. I'm going to steal this. Actually, for a few minutes as well, please. That's okay. So. There's a coup. She took the mouse. Sorry, but he still has the keyboard. Sorry. All right. So, good evening. So as you all know, finance is one of the departments that has been consolidated for a few years now, which really means we're just like smooshed all in one little space. But one of the processes that is truly consolidated is our accounts payable process. So we have one primary checking account. We have one NEMRIC module. So NEMRIC is our accounting software for people who haven't heard that acronym yet. And we have one process that everyone that all 17 or 18 department heads, if you want to include Evan, though I don't know if he stamps his own invoices, have to go through in order to get their invoices approved. This, if you couldn't tell him a little bit excited about this process because this is the quintessential lean process improvement that we're doing here. This is a process that is paper heavy. It's inefficient. It requires an exorbitant amount of resources to process right now. And we are going to trim it right down. Everyone, it's just so exciting. So just a little bit of background. We do a $35 million a year in expenses across all the funds, across the two organizations that does include payroll. That's 12,500 invoices a year to external vendors. So that doesn't include the invoices that the town produces for the village that then go into accounts payable that then get paid out of the checking account that they go to the clerk's office and get deposited back into. But that's another process we're going to be working on in the near future. 12,500 invoices a year at 2,080 working hours is six invoices an hour, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. Just to put that in perspective, this afternoon I processed four invoices. So I stamped them and I filled them out and it took me an hour. And I'm a little slower than surely is, but that is a lot of time to process an invoice. So this on your screen, is it all going to fit? Oh, it doesn't even fit. That's beautiful. Is the current process for getting an invoice paid? Oh, thank you, Greg, and a good team for getting an invoice paid here for the town of Essex or the village of Essex Junction. So I would like to pretend that we're going to pay an invoice for the wastewater treatment facility. This illustrates a lot of the hiccups along the way. So the invoice will arrive here. I'll try to slow down a little bit. Usually I just get louder and not slower, but the invoice arrives here at 81 Main Street addressed to accounts payable. It's opened by somebody who identifies it as a wastewater treatment facility invoice. It's then put in one of those yellow inter-office envelopes and put in the mailbox to go to two Lincoln Street. Somebody picks it up from up here and drives it over to two Lincoln or walks if it's nice and puts it in a mailbox there for the wastewater treatment facility. At that point, somebody has comes up from the wastewater treatment facility, Jim or Chelsea or Maddie or Joyce. They pick it up and they bring it back to the facility. They take that invoice out of the envelope and they stamp it with a stamp lock that you see on your sample invoice. And then they copy onto that stamp block a number of items that are already represented on the invoice, a vendor number, which is linked to the vendor name and everyone has a master list of vendor names and numbers. An invoice number, an invoice date and a total dollar amount and sometimes in a description which is sometimes right off of the invoice as well. What they then do is they assign an expense account to it and then they hand it to the person who would approve it. Our example that would be Jim who would sign off on it, hand it back. It goes back into one of those orange envelopes, goes back to two Lincoln Street to put in the mailbox for 81 Main Street, comes to 81 Main Street and then it goes to Shirley who opens it up and then Shirley manually keys in all this information into NEMRIC. There are some departments that do the manual and trade themselves. As I said, six invoices an hour per working hour at a full year work, no holidays or vacation is a lot. So we have more than just Shirley doing it. But at this point in the process, we've taken invoices, invoices information that already exists on the page and we've manually copied it two times. At that point, all the invoices are accumulated, they're alphabetized, they're put together for my final review or Courtney's most of the time. Thank you. So good job. And then every Friday, checks are cut, those checkstubs are stapled to all the invoices that have been paid and that packet goes into this basket and after you all approve the warrant, those all get filed in the filing cabinets, about two hours a week of filing. And then they get shifted around to different places as they get stored over time. So there are a few obvious inefficiencies in that process, not least of which are all the places where there could be human error. So we have this lovely stamp, we have the information already on the invoice but I have to tell you, there are a lot of people in this organization with terrible handwriting and you just gave yourself away because I was gonna pick on Travis. No, I just, the other, a few months ago I had an invoice from Travis and I said, Travis, is this a six or is this an eight? And he's like, oh yeah, that's a five. I was like, oh my goodness. So he already has to do his own special process work types on them but so here's what I'm proposing. So we have here, we're print, oh, I didn't even mention, if somebody emails us an invoice, we print it to pay for. I know, thank you. I'm not trying to make this more ludicrous than it really is. This is really what we're going through to get all of these invoices paid. There are just a number of inefficiencies in this process. So what we're proposing is an online system. So this is a cloud-based subscription software as a service product. It is billed based on number of invoices per year, not number of users, which is key because we have 25 to 30 users in this whole system. So if that were the price point, it would be probably priced out but this is based on number of invoices. Those get scanned in. The system uses OCR text recognition to recognize the supplier. It looks at the remittance address and it pulls that supplier number from a master list that we control. It populates the invoice date, the invoice number, the dollar amount, we will assign it a workflow which will be its approval flow. So remember that driving all around, it's now gonna happen up in the cloud. An electronic approval. So everyone has a username and a password. So there's an audit trail in the system. And there's also room to assign expense accounts. As many expense accounts as you want, those are also from a master data file that we control behind the scenes. That's gonna eliminate, here's the magic. Immediately. Leave it slide. This is my favorite ship. It's great. This many steps are just going to be gone from this process. These include the driving between sites, printing anything that comes via an already in electronic format, duplicating the efforts from copying the information over. The two hours of filing. The two hours of filing right there is worth the price. Stapling, alphabetizing, and miss filing. I mean, I can't tell you how many times that I've filed like the A's and the G's and I don't even know why, but it's hard for numbers people. We're not lottery people. That's great, so pardon me. So here's the new process. It might be a little, it was in your packet to review as well. I just wanna note that my flow chart skills might not be really 100% accurate, but these three boxes with the double bars on the sides, those are automatic processes that happen behind the scenes. So the new process, I walked you through a little bit of it. The invoices will be uploaded or emailed in. OCR text recognition will recognize a lot of the information on it. I've seen it work really well. I've seen it work with handwriting, which always surprises me. Probably not Travis's handwriting, but neat handwriting. It'll be able to recognize. It automatically, it accumulates all that information, all the data, and then it dumps the pertinent information right into NEMRIC. And so one of the key selling points of this particular system is that it already interfaces with NEMRIC because of the work that Courtney and I did in St. Albans. Creating that, working with NEMRIC and with ReadSoft to create that import routine, checking it, figuring out how we're gonna do error reporting, how we're gonna get back into it and fix any errors. Checks are still gonna be cut weekly and mailed out, but all of the extra stuff is eliminated. Yes, you'll still get a check warrant list and you will all have access to the system because there's also a document storage system. So if you have any questions, you can log on and you can review invoices. This, some of the other benefits. The auditors can do their invoice testing remotely. Every time anybody needs to pull an invoice for a grant error, and I don't know how many times you've had a grant that you've had to get the invoice from Chris and make a photocopy for yourself to then send in, or then you send it in and I say, hey, you forgot about these few legal invoices. But those are all gonna be right there. I don't have to go get them and photocopy them, dig them out of the vault or the tree farm before sending them in for requisition. Keyword searchable. So if there's a certain invoice for something or a certain vendor you want to look up, you can keyword search, and all the information is a network as well. So far, this has been rolled out. I let the trustees preview this a few weeks ago and now you guys are getting to see it. All the department heads have been, we've let them know a few months ago that this was happening. I've talked to the majority of them individually and it's been met with an overwhelmingly positive response. Do you have anything to add? For me, particularly coming from ReadSoft and then going back to paper, I remember how I used this term before, life changing just because I had to refile stuff that was pulled for the audit and just thinking I could be doing much better things with my time right now. So I just feel like this is a great move. This is a fantastic example of continuous improvement. Thank you so much, both of you. What's the downside? Is there any negative to do in this? You still get the tactile satisfaction, but besides that. I know, earlier today I had to stay up my hands. Dealing to paper. Your days are numbered. Literally. Literally. Yes, yes. The downside, the one thing that comes to mind is that when you see this stamp, you see different colors of chicken scratch and signatures. The electronic process has a very, not very technical, but a more technical looking audit trail. It has a time and a date stamp. As the users, it's a time and date stamp, as Macy approved today at 1800. So it's just a shift. I mean, that's official. I have my own username and password that I don't share with everyone else. There's a certain level of security. It just looks a little differently. So if you really like to see somebody's signature on something, that's not gonna be there, but the electronic signature's gonna be the background. The downside is probably the lack of phone calls to Sarah and having to go see Sarah or Courtney for something that has been misplaced or needed versus being able to just go look it up yourself. Right. The downside for who? How about the optical character recognition? Does that work well? And if it has an issue, does it alert you to say, hey, is this a six or an eight? No, it's a five. Yes, yes, Travis. Yes, so my experience with it, and I believe yours as well, is that it's very accurate. There's a first step, the invoice gets scanned in and there's a verification step. So the system goes through and it grabs. On the left-hand side, if you're looking at the screen, you have an image of your invoice here. You have your expense account numbers on the bottom and you have all of the data that it's pulling off to the right. And the first block is supplier information and it'll have these little symbols next to it. So if it has a green check mark, the computer has pulled that information and it's confident that that's correct. If it has a yellow caution triangle, it has pulled a piece of information and it thinks it might be okay, but you should probably look at it. And what you can do, it also learns your vendors. So you would say, well, you know, that's not quite the invoice number, but hey, I'm gonna click here and I'm gonna highlight where the invoice number is. And it's gonna learn that, hey, every time I ace hardware, the invoice number is actually one inch from the top right-hand corner, as opposed to the bottom left-hand corner. And over time it learns that and it remembers the expense accounts you used the last time, which will help. That would have helped me so much this afternoon. So that's really, those two things are fantastic. And that part, I've not had, I didn't have any problems with that part at all. So very impressed with it. So you actually gave me two and they're very different. They look very different. So you're saying that the system learns what a specific vendor's bill looks like in order to look? Yes. So somehow the robots in the background are look for keywords on an invoice or key like patterns that look like a remittance address. So it probably looks for words like mail to, remit to something with an address block. And what it does is it looks at that remittance address and it uses that address to pull from our supplier list. So if we have two suppliers, so for example, I see one of the ones you have is national business leasing, which is our new copier vendor. And we get two different invoices from them that payment has to go to two different places. So the system is gonna look at those remittance addresses and know that this is national business leasing vendor one and this is vendor two because it's looking for that remitt to block. Yeah. The word total appears on there seven times. That one might have to be taught the first few times that it goes through. Yes. But if you'd like to come in and use it and try it out, you're welcome to. It's so cool. Yeah. The base is the same. I was actually gonna ask about that. I'm assuming since you've already installed the system that there's a certain amount of familiarity that you have with it, obviously. Do you anticipate any problems getting people on board with using it, familiarizing themselves? Do you plan on doing like little like forum gatherings where you're showing all the department heads, hey, this is how the system is implemented. Go show it to everyone else or. We're really more baptism by fire as a general rule, but in this particular case. So, yeah, that was a joke. Was it though? Right. Really a joke. But we're gonna change that. So far, all of the department heads have been alerted to this. An email has gone out. An email went to both the boards prior to the election that had a couple YouTube videos showing the system operating, which I could certainly share with both of you, Pat and Annie, if you're interested in seeing that. The next phase of the process will be some background, some building, a little bit of tweaking to see what we need here for Essex that might be slightly different from the other municipalities that have implemented it. And then some, a training, a test site in which we're gonna pull in a handful of early implementers to try it, to look at it and to say, well, this, you know, to give a different perspective because, you know, we know what we need and we know how to make it do what we need it to do, but is it gonna do what everyone else needs it to do? So far, I've been soliciting feedback, concerns. I've been talking to people individually courting. I've been going around visiting all the departments and going over their budget. Now there were three quarters of the way through the year and asking them about any of their concerns leading up to that, if they're interested in helping us test and early implementing. And we've been able to address their questions as they've come up. I anticipate some group high-level training, but then honestly, a one-on-one, we're gonna come to your site and we're gonna sit down and we're gonna go through it. We have instruction manuals for different types of users and we're gonna walk you through some. We're gonna answer your questions there and then we're gonna be available to come back. It's gonna be labor-intensive up front, but that's the way we did it when we implemented in St. Albans and that was very successful because everybody learns differently. And if I just give some folks, I can just give you the user manual. They're not gonna look at it, they're gonna log on, they're gonna figure out how to use it. Others, we're gonna have to walk through it and they're gonna have to do it and so on and so forth. This is actually, this is one of the things I'm interested in Lauren coming back and helping with, which will just be her to come in and sort of help with the day-to-day operations while we're out and about getting everybody indoctrinated in the new process. So it'll be live for FY 2020. Well, the goal is to have no paper invoices for FY 2020. Pretty impressive goal. Remind me, the people who actually do approvals, you can do them remotely. Oh, there's an app for that. Yeah, so like what we do with some time sheets, I approve five. I don't have to be in the office to approve time sheets. It comes to me on my app. I can go in, log in as myself, see the people who have submitted time sheets. These, like we have the fire chiefs. They're part-time fire chiefs, right? So the village fire chief and the town fire chief are part-time. They no longer have to come into the firehouse and the people don't have to wait for the chief who's the final signature to come in. He or she could do them remotely. Because it's in the system, they log in, they see their invoices and they electronically stamp them. So if they're not in for the day, they can do those invoices and they get processed. That's all. All right, well, thank you. Does everybody, anyway, have any other questions, Max? So for clarifications, July 1, 2020 is when? Oh, no, July 1, 2019. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That's 2020 budget, I'm sorry. Yeah. Sarah, Courtney, thank you so much for putting an enormous amount of effort into this and for making us more efficient. Thank you all for your support. Great work. We're very excited to show it in action. Wonderful. Should we just pass over our invoices? Yeah, those all are going to need to make it back so maybe finalize. Passing down to Annie. Yeah, so give me the invoices. That's a great idea. No, I'll apologize to Heather that these ones hurt. Thanks again so much. This is great work. All right, moving on. Item 5F, adopt revisions to Town of Essex Communications Policy. And just to remember we have an agenda edition. One of our items is a document that refers to this agenda item. So Greg, do you want to open it up for us please? Sure. So there's been talk about the select board's communications policy, bringing that back to you. It's actually something the board had started to consider changes to back in 2017. And then for various reasons, they just never fully got implemented. So still been operating under the 2015 version for the past four years. The version of your packet had some of the proposed changes from some of the proposed packet, proposed changes in 2017, bringing them back to you tonight and looking to take any comments, feedback, discussion to see if this is sufficient or if there's other changes that are desired and go from there. So the document that we added to the agenda is revisions that I am suggesting. I read the packet and I looked at these additions to the policy. And I was not on the board when you made these recommended changes and then didn't adopt them. So as Greg said, we're still operating under the 2015. So what I did was I took the, in our packet, there's a red line version of the policy. And then there's a clean version of the policy that accepted all those changes, right, Greg? So I went, I took the clean copy and then I further edited it and that's what you're holding in your hands. And the blue text are my suggested edits. So we can go through the entire document, looking at the red line version, or we can go through it and look at this new edited version. It's up to you, but I wouldn't, I would like an opportunity to explain why I made the edits I made. Annie? I accidentally gave Sarah my paperwork. It's been filed. It's been filed a little way. I'm reluctant to really dig it here. Greg's going to go grab it. Would you give her yours? Did it have your notes on it or is it the black? Let's start with that. And then when Greg returns. It's halfway to St. Albans. You can have heads. OK. So the first, what is the board's preference? Would you like to look at the initial red lined version of the policy that's in the packet and go change by change? Or would we like to just acknowledge that we've received some additional edits and then table this conversation for the next meeting? I would propose we go through what was in our packet, because everybody's reviewed that, have that discussion, and then you could fill in maybe some additional comments after we kind of go through those. Absolutely. I bet that would be fine. Andy, would that work for you? Yes. OK. Great. So then let's all make sure we're on the red-lined copy of the policy in our packets. Does anybody have any comments or questions about, let's go like section by section, the first opening paragraphs, there's one at it. Andy? Yeah. One of the discussions that we had had previously was whether or not the Select Board can establish a policy that affects staff. Since there's an employment agreement that the staff are held to and contracts negotiated by unions and so forth, I'm not comfortable that we should have, especially the line item in here about possible termination. I'm just concerned about there's a couple of different, the first paragraph, there's a couple of sections that include stuff that affects staff. I'd like to strike all of those, but I'd like to suggest striking all of them. Evan? We agree. We think board policies should be separate from staff and employee policies. Policies that affect employees should be in the employee manual and should be also then in contract form, not in adopted policy that can change. So where I see that is in the first paragraph, it says as well as staff at the end of the first sentence. There's in the public communication section, there's a staff section again that the staff must provide accurate blah, blah, blah. I think that should be taken out. Can we go section by section and address that as we go? Would that be OK? I suppose we could do it that way too. Because I think there's some other changes you'll see in the edits that I submitted as an agenda addition that might impact that conversation a little bit. OK, so the first two paragraphs of the policy, Andy's suggesting that we strike the phrase as well as staff in the second line of the first paragraph. And then in the second paragraph, there's an addition on social media in the first line. Are we all good with that? Any other comments in that section? OK, so the second section, public communication. There are no edits to it until the fourth paragraph, which is entirely actually, excuse me, slow down. I would like to suggest an edit to the third paragraph of this section. If you look at the pages that I brought to the meeting, the last sentence of the third paragraph says, at no time should a majority, three or more, of select board members have a discussion via email regarding town business. I added to that, if you look on the second page of the agenda addition, I added a sentence in front of there, and then I added some details after. And the purpose for that is to explain the importance of not having a conversation of more than three members via email, but also to indicate that there are certain topics that that's allowable per Vermont statute. So is that up on the wall, Greg? Can you put up the agenda addition document? So I added a sentence, select board members and staff must be mindful to prevent email conversations from inadvertently violating open meeting law. And then there's the sentence in the text, at no time should a majority, three or more, of select board members have a discussion regarding town business. And then comma, with the following exceptions as set forth by one BSA section 312G. And then the bullet list items are all the times when you can have a conversation that's not considered violating open meeting law. I thought that would be more specific and provide more guidance for select board members. So I'd like to hear your thoughts about that. What if the one BSA section 312G changes? That's going to require us to go back and change this policy. Does it make sense to say including, but not limited to, or something like that? We could change, instead of saying the actual citation, we could say as set forth by Vermont statute. Well, I think pointing to the actual statute is good. I'm just saying that if the statute changes, we have no choice but to change with it. And that would require this to be updated. So I'm trying to see if there's a way to be able to make it so that as that changes, we're educated, but we don't have to necessarily update the policy. I'm not sure how to do that. Yeah, I don't know if we're probably on that, Annie. What have you said as set forth by one BSA as of then? But it, I stand. We do statutes all the time, in our contracts and other things. And when they change the statute, it changes the statute. We would have to review the policy and see what changes they made. First, you'd have to remember that it's in this policy. Well, that's right. Right. The chances that they will address this particular statute, this particular line, it's possible, but not an issue that we don't deal with all the time. And then we would come back to you and say, the state has changed one VS G. Here's the change. Please read out the policy with the change. I was trying to find less work for you. Right. Can the wording reflect, can the wording not reflect that we're basing this decision on the current, whatever, without marrying it to? I think you're better off listing the exceptions than having to try to find the exceptions in another document or in the state statute. I would put these in there and then deal with whether the state ever changes that statute. I think it's safe to say that when open meeting law is changed, we know about it because it's unusual. And it applies directly to us. And somebody like VLCT will totally let us know that that happened. Andy? Some of the items that are listed here, it's not clear to me how they relate to the select board. So I pulled these bullet lists from the Secretary of State's presentation on transparency that he did a statewide road show and he went to a bunch of select boards and did a presentation. That's where I just pulled it directly off of that. And so he was talking about open meeting law in general. So while I, are you referring to the last bullet? Well, I know what the last bullet is. I mean, that's dog bite hearings for us. But site inspections, would the select board go to a site inspection? What does clerical work mean? When would we be involved with a staff work assignment? So site inspections, I would, this would apply to all of our boards and commissions. So the planning commission would certainly do a site inspection. That's not unusual for them. So then we need, I think we need to look at the first three or four words of the sentence thing. Because it says select board members and staff. It doesn't say appointed committee members. OK, I see what you're saying. OK. That would clear that up for me if it didn't say. And again, we have the word staff in there. So we could change that to simply board members to be more all-encompassing. I would be fine with that. But I then have the question of why staff is included here. Well, they already have their own. Correct. In these bullet proof, bullet proof, in these bullet items, generally when there's an email conversation about clerical work, I might be emailing Evan and Greg and say, would you please ask Tammy to post this document, please? And then we go back and forth. Like, which version did you mean? So staff are involved in that conversation because I opened up the conversation. Yeah, but I don't need to hear that conversation. But there may be a time when there's more than one or two of us talking about a document that we want to see at a meeting. I'm just trying to accommodate all the different kinds of scenarios. I think we need to be a little more broad than focused in this, or maybe broad and focused at the same time, if that's possible. I've got 18 emails today related to the town. And most of them were reply-alls that I don't think I should have been replied on, necessarily should have been replied on. So I'm just trying to figure out how, you know, I don't want to, there's a couple of reasons to reduce the number of people that are copied so that I don't have to read through on top of my 100 emails I get from Mark, 18 more that. So you're proposing that we remove Ann's staff? Well, I don't know. Maybe it's appropriate. Maybe that, well, I don't think it is appropriate because we just said moments ago that we're going to take out all the staff stuff. They have their own, but I think also then if we're going to include all the possibilities for boards that we appoint, we need to make that more general. So we call it board members, not select board members. That's fine. But in the following sentence, so you're saying remove the word select board. I'm assuming you're implying that since this covers everybody that whenever we refer to the select board, we should not be referring to the select board. Is that what you're saying? Right, right, because you could also, right, it also refers to a quorum of the planning commission, or a quorum, you know. OK, that's an easily done change. So three or more also becomes an inappropriate phrase because some committees have more than five members. So in this section, we're changing, we're changing the word select board to board. We're removing the two words and staff and we're removing the parentheses three or more because quorums vary depending upon the committee you're discussing. We can say instead three or more, say quorum. Just take out majority, for majority to select board and say no time should a quorum of members, I don't know if I should leave in there, because it could be members of any board. So a quorum of board members. So take out majority and three or more, but in quorum, you know, take out the word select board. Got it. OK. OK. Is board general enough, or do you have to say board, committees, and commissions? I was changing at the top just to reference the same line that it starts, the whole policy starts with the elected and appointed board, committee, and commission members. Enemy, good, thank you. So is getting back to the overall addition of this paragraph. Are you OK with that whole thing, now that we've gone through it line by line? Yep. And striking the last four lines? OK, we didn't get to that yet. I'm going to lose the poll. So the next paragraph is entirely addition. So it's the red text that starts with when commenting and ends with entire board. I see no need for that paragraph at all. Andy? Oh, I absolutely do. OK. But at least for the second sentence, the first sentence I'm not so sure about. The second sentence we definitely need to have in there, because we've had issues with people saying it's the select board's position that's such and such when in fact we've never taken a position. OK. I sincerely believe that second sentence needs to be in there. Let's break it down one sentence at a time. So the first sentence, the reason I thought that should go is because section one paragraph one already tells us, already gives some guidance on that. Section one paragraph one, the last sentence says, for example, board members should consider utilizing the following phrase or a similar one. The select board has taken position X. My position is Y. And to me, that duplicates the first sentence that we're talking about in this paragraph. If I may. I can see where the concern that wants that first sentence to be in there. But I can give on that one. I don't know that if a decision has been made, it has to be clarified whether it was a unanimous decision or not when speaking about it. That would require you to say it's the select board's position, but it was only a 3 to 2 decision. I feel like that's very, very prescriptive. And in policy, we're trying to go for guidance and not the patient having to ask. Yeah, I would say that if the board made a decision and it passed, that means at least three and more did it, that's the board's position. The vote really is immaterial at that point. It is. You can assume that a majority of the board. This is the board's position. Right. Period. OK. Pat or Annie, do you have any thoughts on that? OK. Yeah, that's fine. I believe that it gets covered earlier. I honestly don't know that. I would necessarily even remember the results of every vote by specific number. There's a practical application there, yeah. Absolutely. Andy. I'm just going to ask for clarity before we move on what we've decided on that paragraph. So in the first sentence of that paragraph, we are not going to keep. So now the second sentence, in instances where no vote has been taken, no member of the board should express an opinion as if it were the opinion of the entire board. My question on that is, I guess your concern obviates my objection, because this seems common sense to me, that it's not OK to speak for the entire board unless you are the chair. And this doesn't mean to do it. This has to do with the fact that if a position has never been taken, you can't say that a position has been taken. I'm guessing that this sentence is born of experience. Yes. And so I don't know how rare or frequent that experience is. But it's an important issue. It's an important concern that these do not misrepresent the when there's been no position taken. So now that that sentence stands alone, if we want to keep it in, if the general consensus of the boards that we keep that sentence in, I would recommend we move it to the end of paragraph 1, section 1, if it stays. Yeah, I think it's the following. Are we OK with that change? OK, so we're going to move that second sentence to paragraph 1. I'm writing all this down, don't worry. Oh, cool. One thing at a time. That's right. And I hate to draw out the conversation, but this last section we're talking about, elected and appointed board, committee and commission members, this is underneath the next board section. Oh, good point, Greg. So that's specifically for the select board, that section, Andy. But the content should apply to everyone because it's open meeting law that we're discussing. Even though it's duplicative, I would rather do that. We'll paste that in the next section, too. Right. OK. Make in progress. Are we ready to, Andy, it looks like you have a question. I'm just wondering whether we need to have separate sections there. Because that, you know, that next section says it only applies to appointed. It doesn't apply to us. But that definitely does apply to us as well. So I wonder then, I think the select board section should remain as the select board section because there's some discussion about speaking on behalf of the select board. But then after that, perhaps if we just eliminated the appointed members of boards, committees, and commissions, just that bold phrase, that whole paragraph applies to both the select board and everyone. I was actually going to suggest that, too. OK. Does that make sense, Andy? It makes sense to me. I think I'm going to want to see the completed document. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of edits going on here. OK. There you see the file. So we're going to. We're eating jelly beans. We can totally hear it coming out of the microphone. We're going to hear it from the microphone. But Patrick wanted more. OK. So we're going to remove that bold print that says appointed members of boards, committees, or commissions because the following paragraph applies to everyone. Is that accurate? OK. Go with that. OK. So we have another. The remainder of the edits to the document that are in the packet are very small. They add a phrase. But one of the phrases added is in the staff paragraph. And we just talked about how the staff paragraph shouldn't apply. So are we saying we want to take that whole staff paragraph and move it to their personnel policies as the staff sees fit, as the manager sees fit? I just strike it from here. Strike it from here and let the manager handle it on the personnel side. Yeah. OK. Look at that. A whole paragraph. Gone. OK. Under responses to public comments, first paragraph, there's a phrase that says as well as staff. So we need to. Oh, sorry. Stop. Looking at the wrong page. That's the end of it. Yeah, that's the end of it. OK. Then on the second page, where it says hold on. So in section two responses to public comments, the second paragraph, we should strike any member of the staff. Yes, we should strike that. And then if you look at the addition to the agenda that I've submitted, I added a sentence after that. Because so there's a second sentence under responses to public comments says this policy is not intended to discourage. And it's just like the standalone sentence. If you look at the addition that I submitted, I added a sentence that reads, however, select board members must always keep in mind that due to the public nature of their roles, their personal online communications can be perceived as also official communications or positions of the select board and town. Therefore, members must practice discretion when communicating online. Andy, I added that because I was thinking about your comments at the last meeting about social media. And we're not making a social media policy here, but we are making a communications policy. And currently it does not address one's behavior online. So I'm wondering if you feel that this is a sufficient way to cover that concern, at least provide guidance. There's no teeth to it, but it's something that was missing in my opinion. Certainly a start. I did look at the social media policy we have. I didn't study it in detail, but, well, we don't have it. I'm sorry, that's been proposed. It's been discussed in the past, I guess is what should. But I think I fully support adding that. OK. Max? Yeah, on the. You added however select board members must always keep in mind that, due to the public nature of their roles, their personal online communications can inadvertently be perceived or mistakenly be perceived. Right? Is that? I don't know that it doesn't necessarily matter how it's perceived. It's just someone might intentionally say that falsely represent that you're speaking for the select board, or it might be inadvertent. I don't know that we need to qualify that any further. Well, because it appears official, but it's not, is all I'm trying to get at. It's that it would be mistakenly perceived as. I mean, you can leave it as is, but it seems like it could use some emphasis as well. I think perceived covers it. We might want to change the word select board to board members. Because this one also applies to everybody who's on a committee. A planning commissioner could go online and say something and be mistaken for official policy or something. So board members. OK. And the paragraph after that, there's as well as staff phrase that we're going to want to pull out. What line is it? It's the next paragraph after that addition, so third line down. And other than that, no further changes until the very bottom where we have another paragraph about the staff. So we're going to be taking that whole paragraph out, right? Yes, that happened. OK. And then the last change would be removing violations of policy the entire section because it applies to staff. Sound good? Question? Andy? It's just that there's another select board policy that says we generally, for substantive changes to policies, can't propose and approve in the same meeting. So I'm just fine with that. Should have the opportunity to see the completed edited document for we approve. But we can certainly, what are the stages here? Accept it tonight. We can accept it tonight. We'll talk to that the next week. I'd like to see it in its final revised form as well before signing off on it. So I've marked this up, Greg, if that's helpful. If you've been doing it as you're on the fly, OK. That's why we wanted it up there. Wicked good. OK. Eddie, Max? I would just say that I move the select board except there is a revised town of Essex communication policy as amended. Second? OK. Any further discussion? When it comes time to approve, can we just put it in consent so we don't have to have a big somebody really wants it? Well, we're going to talk about it later, maybe. Certainly ask that motion of the body. Change his motion to say. I'm just saying that when it comes time to adopt it, I don't think we need a whole lot of discussion. Open and move it to consent. I agree that you go on consent. But we're going to talk about the process for that later. Exactly, we're getting ahead of ourselves. OK, there's a motion on the table and a second. Anyone in favor of the motion signify by saying aye? Aye. Opposed? All right, thank you for walking through that. I know group editing can be tedious, so thanks for your indulgence there. All right, next agenda item 5G, approve extension of deadline for human services funding applications. Take it away, Evan. So new to the process, but on an annual basis, the town has 1% of its budget dedicated to health and human services. Historically, we have had a recent historical. Our deadline for applications is January 15th. We do that for probably some reasons of timing. That is about midway between the end of our budget, the staff budget portion. And it gives us time to look at it. This particular year, we have not really looked at any of the applications that told just recently. And we are looking to have this year's deadline extended because we have just looked through all the applications. About six or seven agencies that have historically applied to us have not. This year, we want to go back to them and ask what maybe there's a cross in our wires or maybe our email or our communication went to somebody no longer with them. So we have the time. So we figured we would give them a little bit more time to apply and accept for the fact that historically, January 15th has been the deadline. We're looking for an extension. Just for this particular year. And then in subsequent years, we're going to come back with an updated policy and procedure for this particular process, which will include how we review these establishing priorities of the funding into groups based upon need of the community as established by the select board through a process. Andy, we were in a meeting together. We had to catch that correctly because that was all of a week ago. And we actually found one of the applications in the spam filter today. Oh, wow. They actually sent it on time and it got sifted out. Our real goal is to make sure that the agencies that provide services to our residents and people of our community get an opportunity to at least apply, have a fair review of that request, and then balance that request against the needs of the rest and what we're trying to achieve in that given year. Is there a formatted reach out or just a waiting for applications each year? We do send out an email to the people that have applied before. We also do a general announcement. I believe it's on front page four, a porch forum. But that's one of the other reasons why we need to look at this because over the years, electronic media has gotten more prevalent. And again, there are a lot of agencies that serve our population that aren't local, but still serve our population. And it seems to be weighted to only the people that know this exist. So it was part of the plan to determine new ways to reach out and market this? Uh-huh. That'd be great. So this started for the new folks, 1988. 1988. The mid-80s after you got here. 87. So it was at the town meeting in 86 and started in the taxes of 87. So voters in the town directed the select board to take 1% of the total budget and grant that to human services organizations. And so it's been happening every year. I'm looking forward to seeing the recommendations that Andy and the staff are going to put together for how to smooth out the process, make it more transparent. And I'm looking forward to a conversation amongst us about the priorities for what we're going to do with that money because you'll see historically that it's gone to the same folks all the time, most of the time. And we just need a little bit more formal procedure around how it's done. And standards, the rubric that you came up with, Andy, with the ECOS plan and the UVM Medical Center Health Plan to help us make decisions based on what the community needs is really helpful. So I'd like to refine that further for what S6 needs. So I'm looking forward to that next. And just as a little piece of history too, back in 86, as soon as decided in the 87 budget, the V&A Vermont Nurses Association was on it. And they got about 50% of the funding. And if you look today, they're getting about a quarter of the funding. They're the most significant piece. But they were on it originally when it was voted in. And the actual, it's the manager's responsibility to bring a recommendation to the funding. What I'm trying to do is bring the board in earlier, set the priorities of the fund for the year, then have a committee of staff and at least one trustee who has some familiarity on that committee to bring back the recommendation to the board. And then you can have your discussion on whether you want to accept, amend, or change that recommendation. The other thing is those funds have to be distributed before June 30th, the end of our fiscal year. I think the creation of a committee with experts from the various populations that we might be serving with these funds is a really excellent addition. A lot of our departments deal with the same people that we're trying to grant funds, whether it be recreation, the police department, fire department, libraries, et cetera. Any further discussion or questions? I just wanted to be clear, it was noted by my involvement in this. That's a- My request. Yeah, Evan's request, right. So the process is that Evan makes a recommendation and he has chosen to ask specific individuals to add input to that. So that's how I ended up participating in this. It wasn't appointed by anybody I was invited. So just to make it clear and transparent. No, that's absolutely fine. And it's also indicative of your strong interest in this program. It makes perfect sense that you'd be involved in it. Does anybody have a problem with it? Everybody okay? Oh, God. All right, so our job is to approve this. So, Max, do you want to make a move? Yeah, I would move that. Select Board, extend the deadline for human services funding applications to Friday, April 19th, 2019. Can I have a second, please? Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. We are good to go on that. Thank you, Evan. You're welcome. Okay, next item. Point two, select board members to the joint governance subcommittee. Greg, will you get us started, please? Sure. So the select board and the trustees met last week, decided to have this governance subcommittee continue doing its work. At the very least, it's gonna, sounds like it's gonna be the steering committee for the professional who's gonna be hired to work on the public engagement, public outreach piece moving towards November, 2020. Also to continue to do work with Dan Richardson, the attorney specializing in governance. So at the very least, those are some of the responsibilities that the governance subcommittee will have. The membership is changing partially due to, largely due to board changes on the boards. And the trustees and the select board are both being asked to appoint two members to the governance subcommittee. Right. Matt. I was a member since its inception, and if the board would have it, I'd love to continue. Just wanted to get that out there. Thank you. So we have one other vacancy to fill on this committee. Well, the select board has one other vacancy to fill for the select board's part of the committee. The trustees have to do two as well, and they're taking care of that separately. So as Greg said, there's two definite jobs for this committee at the moment, serving as the committee of consultation for whomever we hire to do the outreach with us, and continuing to work with attorney Dan Richardson on answering questions. Dan, in our joint meeting packet, we receive questions from, a whole list of excellent questions from Dan Richardson that we absolutely have to start answering. So do you recall some of these questions, Andy? No. I'd be happy with it. So this was in our joint packet. So it was a memo from Dan, and it was what services are being kept separate, how many services are separate and ratio, da, da, da. So there are weedy kinds of questions, weedy and meedy. So the subcommittee definitely needs to do that work. I would like to know if anybody would like to step up to be on that committee, and join Max alongside Max. We already got you. Andy, are you interested in participating? I'm struggling with this, because I don't feel I have a clear definition of the scope. I was concerned when it seemed to me that George and Elaine gave different answers during the joint meeting the other day, and I, so I, different answers regarding what? What the, you know, if I join this committee, what's the work that's gonna be done? I know you don't want me to go there, but the last iteration of this entity had, was supposed to come back to the boards with a summarized factual document and instead came back with a recommendation. And so I have concerns. That's why I really want to know exactly what the scope is. And so that, and that we all agree what the scope is so that we don't end up in a different place when we get to the other end and claim that it was the right thing to do. So that's, can I try to answer some of your concerns? Yes, please. So having been on that committee, we were able to work within a loose directive by saying, being told by both boards, explore the options and come back to us. And we did a great deal of research and exploration and came back with what we reported on last week, which was admittedly later than anticipated. This is a task oriented committee at this point. We have discrete tasks so far of working with the facilitator and working with the attorney, but what that work is is not necessarily clear and we sort of have to go with that. And then I anticipate some very significant research and discussion about the mechanics of how our future merger might occur. We're gonna have to talk about water rates. As we heard from Erin, the town and the village do it differently. We have to talk about how that's gonna work as a unified community. We have to talk about taxation. We have to talk about impact fees and how we build a budget for capital, how we prioritize capital projects. And those are conversations that the subcommittee should have and call in whatever experts we need, whether it's Erin or Dennis or Dan and help you have those conversations and then distill that down for both boards so that we can have joint conversations and make decisions at the board level. So I really feel it's essential. Yeah, so I understand that we need to end up with a merger agreement, which is what gets voted. That becomes part of the town charter, the merger agreement gets an embedded rate in there and that those are all the nuts and bolts and nitty-nitty of how things are going to operate. Yes. That's some hard work. But I was told by George that that wasn't what the intent here was for this group, that the development of the merger agreement would be a different segment with potentially different appointed people. So I'm just trying to figure out where's the end. You know, how big of a commitment am I making? That's a good question. Yeah, right, because we just quadrupled the number of joint meetings we're having, right? And so then we've got all these meetings as well. I think that's a good example of what I just said earlier of some of it we're just gonna have to see. Because there's never gonna be a time at this point where that subcommittee is going to make decisions for any of the boards. They're gonna say, here's the research we're doing I'm expecting that the joint boards will come together and say, okay, it's probably time we start talking about X. Subcommittee, please do that research and come back to us. It may be that those discrete assignments happen over the course of time. And we could do this reappointment process every 12 months. It's probably gonna be 18 to 24 in total. And George is right, it might not be the same group of people next year who are tasked with writing that merger document. We may ask the attorney to write it, and then we edit it. I mean, we don't know how that's going to happen yet. So I guess I have to ask you to take it in faith that we'll know a little more the closer we get. I think it just depends on whether I get reelected next year. Well, we're not even gonna assume that that's not happening. The other aspect of this, Andy, is that I know you've been very interested in what the committee's been doing and have provided some really excellent research. And this is a way to continue that and ensure that it's brought to the table if you become a member of the subcommittee. Oh, I'm so sorry, Greg. Just a couple of ideas on deciding the mission or the purpose of the subcommittee is that the trustees will be appointing their two members on Tuesday the 23rd that's coming up. That's gonna be followed by a joint meeting. And it could be either both boards at that meeting, sort of defining the purpose and tasks of the subcommittee. Alternatively, the subcommittee could meet in late April, early May, and at the first meeting, that can be the first order of business to figure out what exactly the purpose is, the goals are, bring that back to the next available joint meeting, bring a report back to the joint boards and get their blessing to continue with that work. I wonder if we should, you said the opposite first, right? The first choice was that the joint boards tell the subcommittee what they're going to do. Just two thoughts? Yeah, I mean, that might be, would move things along. If we could, the joint boards could give a general sense of the direction that they want the subcommittee to go in for the next couple of weeks, and then you guys have your first meeting and talk about what that means. At any rate, the question on the table at the moment is, who would like to be the second member representing the select board on that committee? Annie, do you have a question? I'll say that I would think that Andy would be a great fit, because he has a lot of interest in ensuring that things are done to a certain degree with all the work we do here. It sounds like an exciting opportunity. So if you don't choose to, and I would be happy to join it, but I do think that you are the appropriate fit for this committee. There's also the elephant in the room that I live outside the village, right? I didn't think that was an elephant. I thought that was pretty. There are five town residents at this office. I know, I know, but there's optics, yeah. Annie. Happy to join the committee. I think it's a great opportunity. So, would you like to volunteer or may I nominate you? All right, I'll do it. Andy, thank you. It means a lot to have your institutional memory on that committee, and I know you will bring some strong research and some very informed opinions, so it means a lot to us that you're willing to do this. Committee does the grunt work, and the joint boards do the heavy lifting of making decisions. Exactly, exactly. I personally had a great time on that committee. That was, I really geeked out on this kind of stuff, and it was a really fascinating committee, so I appreciate everyone's hard work on it. So, I would accept a motion to approve our new members of the subcommittee. Annie, would you like to make that motion? I'm embarrassed to say that I'm not really clear on how to phrase a motion, and so I'd be nervous to do so. I'm gonna finish my jelly beans. That jelly beans. I mean, I can try. I would need a little help. It makes me nervous. I would say, I move that we appoint... Is it too ridiculous if I paired you? I'd like to try. Go ahead. I move that we appoint Andy Watts to the subcommittee. And Max Levy. And Max Levy to the subcommittee. Bingo, you did it. That's it? Your first motion. Congratulations. Here, if I have a second, please. Second. All those, any further discussion? Thank you for your confidence. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. All right, we're making so much progress. Last, or not the last item, I'm not close to the last, the penultimate item, discussion of select board procedures. And this is primarily because I jumped the gun at the last meeting, last regular meeting, and asked the staff to move our minutes to the consent agenda. And I should have asked y'all first. So I just wanted to quickly review the purpose of a consent agenda is to provide approval for a group of pieces of business items that don't necessarily need discussion. And we can vote on all of them at once to save time. And there's no time when we will never be able to talk about an individual item. My recommendation would be at the start of a meeting when we make changes to the agenda. If anybody wanted to take an item from the consent agenda out to talk about separately, that they ask to do that at that time. And then the board approves that and it gets added to the regular agenda. Otherwise, we vote on all those items in consent together. Max. But you're still welcome to ask questions and have comments about anything in consent agenda. We can chat about. Without pulling it out. Right, if you just want to make a comment or an announcement or just have a brief conversation about items, ask for an update, that's fine. But if we want to have a substantive conversation about an item in the consent agenda, you can always ask for that to get pulled out and we vote on it separately. So what I would like to ask all of you to do is be willing to move the minutes of our meetings to the consent agenda and then be willing to go through that process if we wanted to take something out of consent agenda. So any discussion or questions on that possibility? Annie, you look like you were going to ask a question. I was ready to make a motion. Oh, okay. She did it once, now she's all ready. Andy, did you have a question? Yeah, I guess the items that are put in consent, like for example, at the last joint meeting there was a memo from Dennis if one of us had decided that we wanted to have a discussion about that, is the intent that Dennis would be at the meeting just in case it got pulled out of consent or how would we, how would we see that's not just a certain way, how we would deal with it. Either myself or someone else, Greg, might have to address it. Or it gets, if it's not time sensitive, it may get tabled to a different agenda. I would rely on the staff's discretion to say, no, you really need Dennis to talk to you about this, or, yeah, we could put that on consent. I always enjoy hearing Dennis talk about it. Well, then there's that. I always learn something, I always learn something. That's very true. But yeah, Steph. That doesn't mean he should always be here for it. Not if you want to keep it. Because he doesn't, he's not. He's not, he'd like to keep Dennis. And he's not brief, either. So. I think it's a good idea personally to move it to. And if somebody has real issues, they can, we can bring them out. Or if you have a name change or something, or something that's not, I'm not a name change, or something that's not substantive, you can still send it on a soft copy, right? And not have it discussed as per our policy. Right, if you have changes to the minutes that are grammatical or spelling, you can just mark up a document and hand it to Greg, or you can email your changes, that's fine. But if there's a substantive change to the minutes that changes the meaning or the names, then yes, we should pull that out. You mentioned emailing, just to be clear, who should it be emailed to? Greg. Who should it be emailed to? Greg. Okay. Thank you for being willing to make that change. As we start having our joint meetings that are also with shorter, regular meetings, we're gonna be using the consent agenda a lot more. Because we're gonna need to get a lot of business done and within a short period of time. So I will hear a motion to make that change to our procedure. Oh, you're on. I move that we move the minutes to the consent agenda. I'll second that. Okay. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Okay, last business item. This is really information only, but since it's not happening till tomorrow, we thought that we should get it out in front of you. Green Mountain Transit is having a board meeting tomorrow at four o'clock in Berlin, which is not exactly the best time or place for residents of Chittenden County to come talk about the concerns with the bus route changes. So since I work in Montpelier, I offered to attend this meeting, it's at four o'clock. So I'm gonna go over there and I wrote up this letter as testimony to submit to the board while they consider their changes. And it basically repeats everything that Evan said in his letter, but I tried to be more strident about it. So this is primarily for information only. I just wanted you to know I was doing that. So just info. Yeah, it's important and it wouldn't hurt to have this other letter in there in addition to what Evan's letter was and all the great input that the public gave to. That was a great meeting. You don't often see such a wide variety of people coming by to make their comments about stuff like that. So there's no business to do on that item. I just wanted you to be aware, Annie. Thank you for offering to go. I saw you do that in an email. That's great. Yeah, I mean, I'm already down there. Still, that's it. That's a great thing. Thank you for doing that. Welcome. Shall we move to the consent agenda? I move approval of the consent agenda with select board comments. Second. And let's have comments if there are any. None at all. I already submitted some grammatical edits to the minutes to the clerk. So if there isn't any further discussion, all those in favor of approval. I'm sorry, Greg. I mean, like, can we like sit in a V? No, no, this is just me being too low. I didn't check that out. Actually, we are in a V. I just wanted to kind of, I checked with the police chief right before the meeting under the local emergency operations plan. Elaine is listed as the chair. The chief is pretty sure that whoever's signing that has to have taken the National Incident Management System protocol, which Max has done. Elaine has not. So I recommend that we change that to Max, assuming Max is okay with that. And I think Elaine is interested in getting that approval for future years, but for this year just to make sure we have the appropriate certifications. Yeah, and the document is here, so I'm not going to sign it. Is that? Oh, okay, okay, okay. For those that, and I am as National Incident Management System, it's a training for emergencies with our police and fire departments, and it is also part of grant funding. Okay. So when and if those trainings are available, there are stuff for elected officials that we will recommend that you take one day. I'll teach you what happens during an emergency, command structure, what's the role of elected board members, what's the role of the manager, what's the role of the finance department, what's the role of your chiefs out in the field. Yeah, I took that course through the Red Cross when I was a big train as a volunteer there. Sounds actually really, really interesting, so I'd be happy to do it whenever it comes out. And scary. Yeah. So I want to apologize for my phone. My wife had surgery on Friday, so I'm kind of on call. Just want to make sure nothing goes wrong, so. Hope she's okay. We'll let you do that. I love to do that. My harmonic text message is there. So we have a motion and a second for approving the consent agenda. Any further comments or questions? All right, all those in favor of approving the consent agenda, say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, or onto the reading file. Select board member comments. Anything to share? Andy? No, I'm just, when you say select board member comments related to the reading file or just in general? No, that's more of a like everybody can share whatever they have to say at this point. You were doing a 7A at that point. Pardon me? 7A, exactly. I would just like to note publicly to Jonathan Peach Kenworthy, who is resigning from the town of Essex Energy Committee to thank him for his service. And we really appreciate the time he put into being on the committee. And could you offer an exit interview? I'd be happy to do that, absolutely. I'll send you the questions. Thank you, okay. Anything else? Well? On the upcoming meeting schedule, it'd be great if we could get the rest of the year. In that same colored format, I found that to be quite useful. That was Tammy, right? Yeah. Thank you, Tammy. Actually, if I can just take a moment, you might have noticed the Saxon Hill Management Plan. Mm-hmm. The piece is coming up. I just want to call it the attention to anybody who's listening, watching on channel 17. That the town took over about 250 acres over in the Saxon Hill area a couple of years ago at this point. It was a big thing. We had talked about having the public get involved in creating a management plan for that. This is a kickoff to that. There'll be more information to come. But probably this spring, summer, fall, start to hear more about that. So just wanted to thank people over here. Thanks, Greg. Andy. So considering we're two hours and 20 minutes into a select board business meeting, I just want to express concern about the fact that our only meeting in July is also on the same day as a joint meeting, we're allotting 45 minutes for it. So I'm just concerned that, you know, that we're gonna just, I guess, we need to be careful that we don't shortchange some business in the summer, this summer. I feel confident that had we been pressed for time, we would have moved more fluidly through this meeting here today. We could also, after 45 minutes, do the joint meeting when that concludes. Right, reconvene. Yeah, we might need to consult you. Happy to do so. We can't go beyond 11 or 11.39. Our policy is 11 o'clock without unanimous consent. Right, right. Sorry. I thought it was 10. It used to be midnight. It used to be midnight. We moved it back to 11. When we started at 7.30. Is that Eastern? It's all relative. I'm sure that. Eastern daylight now, yeah, yeah. We may need to be flexible with that, Andy, but I'm sure that, you know, with the improved use of consent agendas and making sure that we put only the most relevant business on the agenda itself, I think we'll be okay. We'll know through May and June how it works. That's another way to look at it. Check and adjust. Exactly. Any other questions or comments? Andy? I have jury duty starting April 29th, so my availability may be limited. Just want to make that, is aware that life is completely answered. It's got you. Yeah. You're not a jury duty right now. Oh, wow, okay. Don't talk. We do not have a need for an executive session this evening, so I will hear a motion to adjourn. I move we adjourn. Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Aye. Thanks everyone. Who won?