 Are you ready? Let me know. We can wait another minute if you need more time. We're good? OK. Welcome, everybody, to the Essex Junction trustee's meeting. Please join me for 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. And we have a joint meeting with the Village Planning Commission. And we have some of the members here. And as they show up, it's not an usual night for them to be meeting Thursdays. You're normal. So we're not sure how many more members will be coming or when they'll be tripling in, but we'll seat them as they get here. Hi, sorry. Here comes the trustee. Laurie, if you want to sit over here, that would probably be OK. I think we're going to have a spare chair. OK. We'll fill in the gap. So everybody, and I don't know who. We also had invited some of the members of the Town Planning Commission. I'm not here who might be here from the Town Planning Commission. Anyone here from the Town PC? No, good. OK. So I want to just ask everybody, if you haven't signed in, can you please do so? We'd like to know who you are if that's OK with you for the minutes. First order of business, Evan, do we have any additions or changes to the agenda tonight? We do not. OK. So we'll proceed right ahead. First order of business before we get to the presentation is the audience who's been heard. Anyone in the audience have a question or comment about something that's not on the agenda tonight? Now is your time to be heard. Yes, sir. Please stay tuned, please. Good evening. My name's Ken Merritt. I'm the executive chairman and chief financial officer of Gornham Transport Medicine, which some of you may have seen some information about. My colleague, Ryan Ferris, founder and CEO. I met with Robin Pierce, whom I know from other activities. A week or so ago, he suggested we just stop in, say hello, so there's faces connected with it. I know you have a busy agenda, so I just wanted to. Could you tell us maybe just for some of us, just to enlighten us about what it is you're doing and why you're introducing what you wanted to talk to us. Sure. Gornham Transport Medicine is a non-emergency inter-facility ambulance transport to Global Families Campus, building 900. We will be providing, as indicated, inter-facility non-emergency transport, meaning transport between medical facilities, primarily the facilities of the University of Vermont Health Network. Fantastic, and so you're located at Global Boundaries? We've renovated building 900. We've taken delivery of three ambulances, which are housed at the facility on the campus, and we're actively recruiting for paramedics, EMTs, AMTs, communication specialists, and we'll be hiring something in the order of 20 to 24 professionals, combination of full-time and part-time, with market compensation benefits, et cetera. Okay, thank you for coming. Thank you for introducing yourself. Thank you. Anyone else in the audience have a question and comment? Okay. So, we are on to, we have a special presentation tonight, and this is the Du Bois and King presentation of the Design Five Corners update. And if I understand it, what we're really talking about, and I'm gonna introduce Lucy in a moment, but I wanna do a quick intro. This is the integration of the Design Five Corners concept into the Village Municipal Plan. Is that correctly stated there, Robin? Yeah. Okay, and this work was performed by the Regional Planning Commission, and Du Bois and King, they were the consulting engineers on the project. Am I having that right, Lucy? And if I, I'm gonna just do a quick for, we might have some, I'm sure some of you are tired of me proselytizing about this, so you probably don't, haven't heard of any, haven't heard about it. So if you won't mind, I'm gonna try to just read something very quickly. I won't go off script, take me about a minute or two, but this will give a kind of a general background of what this project is about and how it got to be where it is. The project Lucy is going to present tonight, which raises its roots to the early 2000s with the commitment to renovate and revitalize the Village Center. The first step was the renovation of the immediate five corners area with a federal earmark. Then from approximately 2009 to 2018, we extended the Village Center theme outward to give a sense of coherence. This was mostly on Pearl Street done in three phases with the conversion of the four lane road to a two lane road on Lower Pearl Street to the fairgrounds. And the major part of the project was the rebuild of the entry to the fairgrounds in that portion of Pearl Street. And then last year with the missing link project, which was Pearl Street from five corners to the fairgrounds. Other components of this overall part were the extension of the sidewalk bike lane theme down Route 2A Lincoln Street to the entry of CBE. They're rebuild of Railroad Avenue with widened sidewalks and ball belts. The multi-use path of which the most important component probably wasn't the design and build but was convincing NECR to give the Village A permanent easement on their property, something that Railroad seldom ever do. But the biggest challenge in all of this down through the years has been how to move traffic through the Village Center more efficiently, i.e. with less buildup, while also reducing its impact on pedestrians. This is not just in terms of decreasing wait times for pedestrians to cross the intersections. It's also about how pedestrians perceive the public space. Is it visually appealing? Does it look safe? Does the Village Center appear to be a pedestrian-oriented environment or to be a pedestrian-oriented environment? The solution we arrived at, and this was mostly Robin Pierce's original concept, was to build a linking road that followed the outer arc of the railroad tracks intersecting Park Street and Main Street, which we called the Crescent Connector. At about the same time, we began really studying this idea. Governor Shumlin announced that he was going to pursue, not going to pursue the CERC Highway program anymore, and he invited the four CERC communities, Williston, Colchester, Essex Town, and Essex Junction, to engage in a CERC alternative program coordinated by the CCRPC. So we submitted the Crescent Connector concept as our primary project in the CERC alternative program. It was scoped, analyzed, and approved for funding, and after multiple delays, we're hoping to get it underway this year. Shortly after we submitted it to the RPC, we began to look at the Crescent Connector in more detail and realize that it presented an opportunity not just to improve the efficiency of the five-way intersection, but to completely transforming it by allowing us to convert the intersection from an inefficient five-way light cycle to an efficient four-way intersection with a two-way light cycle. We studied this with some assistance from the RPC and it looked very promising. We then included this concept as an option in the Design Five Corners project, which was a community charrette for envisioning a redesign of the Village Center. Two years ago, the trustees accepted the Design Five Corners as a model for how we would embody the goals of the Essex Junction Municipal Plan into an actual physical design. The Village then took the next step in asking the CCRPC to include in their 2018 work plan the actual incorporation of Design Five Corners into the Village's Municipal Plan. This included a form of graphic study, conversion of the four-way intersection. This is the work that Lucy is gonna present to us tonight. I'll end on one final note. Just as the environmental phenomenon of climate change has often unfortunately been conflated with global warming, which is a collateral symptom of climate change and not an underlying cause. We unfortunately allowed the five-way to four-way conversion project to inaccurately be conflated with pedestrianizing Main Street. Pedestrianizing Main Street would be a collateral benefit of the traffic conversion, but not the primary reason for doing it. Just like the global warming climate change issue, this has allowed critics, some critics and end-outers of the project to mischaracterize things. And I wanna just make it clear. Our reason for converting the Five Corners intersection has always first and foremost been to come and moderate the flow of traffic through the Village Center, while also making it move more efficiently. The opportunity to expand the pedestrian accessible introduced Lucy Gibson. And Lucy, if you wanna take over and tell us what you're about. Sure. And this is for Sarke, and also for Du Bois and Panthers who worked on it with me. And we have, I think you probably have copies of the report, which is more in this format. And then I have a presentation that sort of the highlights that I'll go with. We'd be happy to take questions. I don't know if we'll save them till the end. Why don't you go through the presentation and take questions at the end? Told about 15 minutes. Yep, that's fine. I don't know if he loves them at the end. And I might come over here so I can use this. This will work. So, this is the project. We have Robin, what's our lead to the pedestrian junction. Peter Keating, who's also here from Chitton County. And Marshall is not here, but he's also in. And then Julie Camp Holy, who worked on the Design Five Corners, who many of you probably know. She's from California tonight, otherwise she'd be here. And then Chris and I, and we have some other help to Du Bois and Panthers. So, this is the team that worked on it. And then, really as George, I think summarized very well, we really want to get the Design Five Corners report worked into the village plan to make it really part of the DNA of the villages that goes forward. And so we have, and what our products are, we have the report here that describes the traffic study and a lot of the other pedestrian benefits of going to Four Corners, not that it'd be called Four Corners, but anyway, four-way intersection. And then we also have actual recommended edits to the municipal plan language, which I don't know if you've all looked at that, but that's getting more, probably the planning aspect. Those are the two products that we worked on. And then again, this is just a highlight of the Crescent Connector, which is one of the real opportunities that allows for a big change in how traffic could move through the main intersection and really will bring a lot of benefits. So we'll kind of look at some of the existing conditions that people have been, you know, I think observant of and really became more aware of that during the Design Five Corners process that it's very difficult to be a pedestrian village because there is such long expanse of pavement, long waiting times, and a lot of barriers to walking. And then there's also a lot of the streets are full of traffic and also don't create that environment that's nice to walk in. And one of the things we actually learned in this by doing a survey is that there's a presentation that it's not very enough to walk in this extension. Airport feels a lot further to walk even in short distance. And that's something that's intended to try to address. So we did want to spend some attention looking at traffic and how it would work after the Crescent connector and then with the Design Five Corners implemented and really update that, because there had been a little bit of a look at it five years ago or so with the first effort that Julie worked on that the RPC did and we wanted to update it, make sure it's still looked about right. And the purpose of this chart, let me scroll down a little bit further. This is all the traffic counts that we have available from VTrans and CCRPC over the years. And there was a little bit of inconsistency that once our circled were counted during a school year, most of them were counted during the summer. So we have to make sure that affects traffic. But basically what we see a trend is just up till the Cirque Highway was built. So about early 80s to when it was 94, traffic was really growing a lot. It was a real period of growth in the region and the state. And then once the Cirque Highway opened, the traffic fell off and then it's been kind of wobbling about that we're not really seeing a trend of growth anymore. And that's something that we see all around the state. There's a lot of economic and demographic reasons for it. But I mean, one of the good news is that we really need to think about planning the traffic that's here today and maybe a little bit of a safety margin. But we're not planning in the era where we're likely to see a lot more traffic in the near future. And then the other thing that we noticed was kind of interesting and encouraging. We didn't have as many data points on pedestrian counts, but we did have a few between 2000 and 2014. And we see a lot of increase in the number of people who are walking in the village. And at different times of the day we'd have the morning and the afternoon. And one data point was during a school, the other one circled. But seeing that increase is kind of consistent with what we see in other places too. A lot more people wanna walk and are trying to walk even though the environment's not as supportive of it as we would hope. Another piece of the work we did is we collected some data through an online survey and really focused on sort of walking, perceptions of walking conditions and what people walk to and where would they walk if they had a better environment. And we found more people drive through us extraction than walk through it. And the results are more detailed in the report. But basically the people who walk a lot are people that live nearby. So it is all in walking distance or people that like to go for walks. And a lot of walkers are people getting exercise and not necessarily going on a sort of utilitarian trip. And then like to walk around the village to shops and restaurants and maybe between destinations. So that's certainly the main behavior we see today. And then we also asked about some of the barriers that they found to walking in five corners. And I'm certain the first one was that it's far from where they live, so they're not gonna walk all the way from their home. But also there's not as many places to walk to in the village so they don't have that opportunity to walk from place to place. And that's clearly a big part of design by corners is to bring more activity and destinations and buildings into the village. And then, yeah, this is just an example of the kind of pedestrian environment that doesn't really encourage walking and that we really have opportunities. Sorry, these were just to be on one page but my page size isn't quite right. And that's kind of the environment that's obviously and that's a photo heart simulation heart reel I think that Julie had put together. So now we'll go into a little bit of design five corners and how it kind of meshes with the village plan. And first of all, that's the, this is a concept sketch that Julie did for the project and it shows, you know, it's interesting some of the sketches there's cars on Main Street, some not, but the current thinking is the best option is to completely pedestrianize Main Street. But again, that's not the main goal of the whole intersection reconfiguration and you encourage new development and growth and infill that you're already starting to see. And here are a few of the key elements of the plan. So there's a lot of opportunities for green stormwater infrastructure as well. Not all the pavement has to serve heavy traffic. Having a village green right in the corner there is a great piece of it, a lot more trees and landscaping and then the big piece is converting the five-way intersection to a four-way intersection and rerouting Main Street traffic onto Main Street. And then safer pedestrian crossings at the five corners which we'll still call it five corners for ease of, knowing what we're talking about. And so we looked here at some of the goals that are in the village already and we really have a really strong connection already with promoting thoughtful growth, moving traffic more efficiently, being a welcoming place for all modes of transportation. And so one of the things we want to advise the plan is making those clear connections to the Design Five Corners project and project finance, pedestrianizing, pedestrian safety and converting the intersection. So we did some analysis of the traffic itself as well because we really wanted to make it very clear that how it'll work better and what the implications are and concerns and things that might need to be addressed. And so I have just a few charts that show how the intersection will work. And I guess I don't know if I have a slide, maybe going back up to here, but probably everybody kind of understands but all the traffic coming in say from, Western here would come here and go through this way or if they were heading south and groups away, they'd go that way. So it's taking some traffic away from the four-way intersection and then the other great benefit is that the four-way intersection can move traffic much more efficiently because there's a lot less time switching from phase to phase and actually more traffic gets through. Fewer streets, let me go back here. So one of the big typical measures that we generate with traffic analysis is the average delay per vehicle. And it would be similar for pedestrians, but that's one of the big outputs of the model that obviously affects everybody driving through. And that cuts almost more than cuts in half with the four corners. And this is part due to getting some of the traffic out of it, but really more due to the more efficient operations. And then this middle graph here shows if you look at how an intersection switches from phase to phase, there's a lot of what we call lost time where you really have to stop the traffic and wait a little bit before you let the next direction through. And we really cut that down by almost in half with the four corners operation. And then on the graphic on the right shows we're actually increasing the capacity or the throughput of the intersection by going from five corners to four corners. So at its peak, you could get more cars through, yet we're actually needing to put fewer cars through because of the aggressive connector. So all those just add up to really a much, much improved vehicle operation. And that translates to air emissions and idling and exposure to air pollution and a lot of other benefits. So we've really convinced ourselves and hope that we'll talk further about this to people who wanna know more about it because it's certainly so big a fact, but that it really will be a great improvement. And when you start looking at one of the things we did is we actually had a drone video of the intersection during peak hour. And we did that part of probably thinking we had to do it differently. So that was sort of a compelling part. And then this is just a chart to show that the dark line is how much and this is morning and PM peak hour, how much traffic gets diverted out of the intersection and it's not a huge amount, less than 20%, I think 10 to 15% and that's just mostly the traffic that will head south and then go down rootway towards Wilson. The other piece that we looked at from the traffic calming, I'll go down here, traffic operations, we look at queue lengths, how far traffic gets backed up. During the peak hours. And so here the dark lines are with a four as a four corner and green as a five corner. And you can see that, and this is only for the afternoon peak hour, because we had another day here. So in the case that typical peak hours extend, queues of cars extend well back. And I'm sure some days they go a lot further. This is the scenario that we were evaluating in there quite a bit shorter, you can see the dark lines and pretty much true in all of the different approaches. Not as big of a difference on Park Street, but it should make it easier. Therefore, one of the concerns was if people are getting in and out of say driveways or side streets around the intersection, will that be easier, harder? And it'll be easier in those cases because there'll be less traffic kind of blocking the way. There's some real, what we think will be safety benefits to having a simpler intersection that's a more predictable operation and just what we call the conflict points alone, which is one of the reasons why the five corners are obviously in the wrong direction at a time because there's too much potential for crossing traffic to conflict when you have such a large intersection. By bringing it tighter and then having simpler traffic close, you can actually, one of the benefits is you can have the left turns going at the same time or even more simultaneous movements in a safer operation. So the other piece of it will be pedestrian improvements to the five corners itself. And these are also very much tied in on the left are some of the language through the village plan that are really have a great tie in with some of the elements of the plan, the village green, better pedestrian crossing street trees and pedestrianized main street. And again, we're looking at how to strengthen that connection in the village plan. And this is one of the most important reasons why it will really be a better environment for pedestrians half the corner itself. So on the left side you have a long way to get around from one corner to the other and it's going to be so much shorter and so much less exposure to traffic once we're at a four-way intersection. And that also means less time and that actually is another reason why we're, there's less time for pedestrians to cross means less time we have to take away from the traffic so it all kind of again adds up to that. I think better for everybody, he'll be kind of a win-win in terms of operations and delays and whatnot. And then the other set of goals in the village plan that are very much supported by the work here are really to kind of help the recreation urban open spaces, plazas, bridges to gather and within the village. And again, there's a lot of great benefits that we'll see from the Design Five Corners project. So again, making those adjustments. And then economic vitality, a big piece of this is to try to get businesses and activity and people walking to them. And so having a viable business environment is really important and really what the results of the Design Five Corners will be that the street environment quality will be the place people actually want to go walk and it'll feel not like a long difficult walk but a enjoyable walk. And that tends to really improve the business environment, customers, foot traffic or local businesses. So there should be a good tie in that scene. Some of the other economic goals and development goals that are part of this. And there's some great opportunities for green infrastructure as we mentioned to take what's now paved and make it permeable or green with grass or vegetation, literally. That can be incorporated into this. And we just sketched out some potential opportunities of how many square feet could be converted to rain gardens and parks. And then the whole pedestrian closet could over time be made into permeable pavement because it no longer has to support heavy truck traffic. That, you know, and how that's exactly designed and programmed is probably something that you'll get to think about after this fits. Established but there'll be way more opportunities to make them more environmentally friendly kind of surface in place and better to collect water and filter water. So one of the concerns we definitely heard about was the parking change that would happen by closing main street. So the diagram up here in the upper left corner shows the number of parking spaces that are currently on main street that would be lost with the converting it as a pedestrian street. We actually got help with CCRPC to film recordings of the whole day of the parking area so we could count how many people were parked during different times today and that's what I'll scroll down here now. So what we found is that these spaces for most of the day were well under 50% occupied at just a few short peaks when, you know, they're probably converging. Several people want to get sandwiches or whatever and it's, you know, it's probably not, and I know as we've spent time here it's not an easy parking to get into and it's not the most comfortable place to park so I can kind of see why most people would prefer to get off the main street and park and then walk to where they're going. That's a huge loss of economic valuable parking and then the crescent connectors actually gonna be adding some parking pretty nearby so there's certainly enough to make up for the sort of occupied conditions that we'll see. So the other thing we made some recommendations of things that could happen towards implementing the plan and obviously the first is getting all the language into the village comprehensive plan which we have specific recommendations but another idea to really consider is a demonstration project. If there's still people aren't sure that this is the right thing to do, there's more and more support for trying things out and demonstration or pilot it could be a weekend or a few hours even at first and see what it's like and see what the benefits are and that can often help generate conversations really helpful to mention the project more permanently. So the next is updating the comprehensive plan and this is something that Chris is a land use planner who wrote a lot of teach help language so if you have questions about it we'll be happy to answer that but really goes all the way to updating goals, policies and any actions. One of the best things, the easiest things about this from my role is that your plan is already talks about a lot of the things that this is doing. So I sort of anticipated I'll have to go in and change a bunch of things because it doesn't necessarily reflect this but you're already talking about it so it was much, I updated some, a lot of language is sort of making sure that the specifics are in there now relative to what this concept but I didn't have to make significant policies. Yeah, it's a lot of it was sort of strengthening that. So we also outlined some kind of next steps that would be appropriate and I'm sure other things will come up as we go but really getting the Crescent connector built and it's starting construction, I think the summer is what I understand with the railroad crossings and then see how the traffic changes so that's going to be important inputs of maybe seeing if it's kind of doing what we thought it would do in our traffic models as far as how much traffic is going around. And then once it's open and running consider a demonstration project for what a pedestrian main street would look like or maybe it's more what a four way intersection would work like because you have really good primary reasons to do it. And we definitely looked at the traffic lights and basically the way it works all the traffic lights up for main street light up if no one's there. So it won't be a huge barrier to getting the traffic lights work correctly for it being a four way but it would to really get it worked well in a week peak hour you really need to go in and retime a signal. So a demonstration might be best done on a Sunday or maybe for the Saturday but not do anything, you know not extended the weekdays until you're, you know, we can see how that goes and see if you need to do something more. There'll be a step to coordinate the V-trans to actually change where group 15 goes and you know, we connectors done so but that'll be a conversation to have and there's some concern with the Amtrak corridor as well station as well that that needs to be connected to a state highway or designated as a I think that's kind of a formality but there'll be a conversation with V-trans that they'll have after the present connectors open. So, and then it's, you know really redoing the signal more permanently and then doing the other constructing curves so you have the better pedestrian crossings and then main streets kind of available for other uses. So, so that's in a nutshell what we see is the path forward and that's it for any presentations I'm happy to Chris and I are happy to answer questions Peter, chair, okay, I'm going to first do chair, please do. Thank you, Lucy. So questions, just go ahead. Your traffic studies one back to the, I don't have to go way back there but you indicated the time for signals and the improvement with going from four or five-way intersection to a hallway and you had, I think, three charts there. One was delay, yes or no? Maybe you can go back there. Anyhow, my question is is that based on the Crescent Connector, the connection is is it the Crescent Connector or is it just the four-way intersection? You're saying the four-way intersection is going to do that? Or how much of it is based on what the Crescent Connector will do? It's much more about the four-way intersection. But do you have a breakdown? I'd be curious to see what the numbers are without going to a four-way and keeping it a five-way with the Crescent Connector and see how that sugars out before just jumping into this and saying, I'm very hesitant to support the idea of closing off ministry. I'll tell you that right off the end. I've been against the idea since the get go of it. I think it's going to put a lot of pressure on streets. People aren't going to want to pass through the maze of street, you know, coming off onto Railroad Street, turning back on to Maple Street to get over to Pearl Street. And they're going to be looking for ways that are going to be quicker to... And you're doing this, I just, I look at it and say, when you narrow it down, you lose a street for vehicles, bikes, whatever, other than pedestrians, I'm saying. The pressure from that has to go somewhere else. And so you're creating another four-way intersection down at Maple Street, at the intersection with Railroad Street, which will be the Crescent Connector. Now we're going to shut down, so we're going to move more vehicles onto that intersection, waiting to make the turns. I'd be curious to see what the numbers will show with just the Crescent Connector. That's actually what we compared it to with the Crescent Connector build, but still is a five-way. And maybe I didn't... Okay, so those numbers had nothing to do with four-way then. You said it was four-way, the numbers were four-way. Well, so the five-way scenario, so let's go back here. So first of all, this is showing how much traffic is removed from the intersection by the Crescent Connector, because it's only the traffic going from Route 15 to Route 2A. It's totally gone, it uses the Crescent Connector. The traffic that's coming on Main Street and going to Pearl Street will still go through it and just go through on Main Street. So that's a piece of it, but you can see that's like a 15% reduction. So that's not explaining a whole savings of delay and time that we're seeing in these. But the five-corner scenario assumes the Crescent Connector is built. So you're getting the benefit of... So this is like a future, future five-corner with the Crescent Connector and future four-corner with the Crescent Connector. So the great benefit is all the traffic and the better operation. So you don't... These numbers are just your estimates? They're a traffic model. You're looking into the future, not knowing. Right? Well, just looking at the future changes, it's not assuming... Because this doesn't have a date, it's not dated. I don't know what the times, when these... There's a lot of assumptions in here that I just have a tough time really being sold on based on these assumptions of what might be... I'd be interested to see when it all is completed, the Crescent Connector, how the numbers... Because I've also spoke to a lot of people and there's a lot of concerns as people here know, people with businesses over here on Main Street have expressed that to me. People who have expressed it to me, so I just wanted to put that out. Right, and that was why we had public meetings. And I totally understand why it's counterintuitive that fewer lanes would be better. And it has to do with the scale and having quicker times through the intersection actually makes it more efficient. I see. It's a big topic to have to talk into maybe another time, I would. I have two questions. One is correct, remind me, the intersection of the Crescent Connector and Main Street, there'll be a streetlight there, right? Is that... It's not gonna be a streetlight. There's not going to be a streetlight. There's no need for streetlights. Okay, so that takes care of my question out because I was wondering about stacking at the intersection of the Crescent Connector and Main Street going back towards the congregational church. So there's not gonna be a light there, there's not gonna be a light there. No, there's no such thing. One of the interesting things about Columbia for the intersection is the sequence is more efficient. People are less likely to do it on the side streets because it'll take them longer to do that than it will just down to the man road and both roads. And my other question is we approved a year or two ago a plan for Railroad Street, for redoing Railroad Street with the bus station and changing it to a one-way. So how is this all going to impact that? Yeah, I don't know. That's actually looked at by the CCRPC and the trustees asked them to look at it and it said that if anything, this would help. It was railroad avenue. This would help railroad avenue. It wouldn't be negative at all. Okay. Thank you. If I can kind of just glim on the two things. So where I can't envision with this, although with the latest report, I'm more sold than before because of the pedestrian. So we did choose that change brings. But so let's assume that we do this four-way and we make the changes on Railroad Avenue. I'm confused as to the traffic that is coming down Main Street into the five corners. So it's not Maple, because Maple would go to the Crescent Connector. What does Main Street traffic do if they wanna go over to Pearl Street? So they wanna cross the five corners and today they would just go straight. What do they do? They will turn left onto the Crescent Connector and then turn right on Maple. Well, that's actually not the Crescent Connector. That's Railroad Street. Well, I mean- They'll turn left on Railroad Street. Then they're gonna go to Maple Street and turn right onto Maple. And then have- And then they'd go across to- The same way, Gloria, it's the same way, let's imagine there was a big pothole on in front of Martins right now and you were coming down Main Street and you couldn't go down- So you take a left on Railroad Street. You'd go on Railroad Street and then you're being a right on Maple Street where the tracks- And then you cross right over. Oh, you would cross- Okay, yes. Okay, I get it now. Yes, thank you. I'm gonna bring an L instead of going up straight. And while, you know, it's a little bit longer, there'll be so much less delays that we wouldn't expect a lot of diversion. And with, and I apologize, I forget what we ended up with on Railroad Avenue. So could traffic come down Main instead of turning left on Railroad Street, turn right on Railroad Avenue, turn left on Lincoln Place and kind of do what they do today and go around. I mean, that would be another option. Okay. But the main flow that we're anticipating would be- We'd be good to go the other way, the more efficient, but. Okay, thank you. A lot of this is based on the modeling that you have said and have you ever had the modeling be wrong? They're not always perfect and that's why we focus more on like the overall capacity of cars and what the models, you know, we do make a lot of assumptions in models and that's how we design intersections. And so, you know, they're fairly reasonable of giving average behavior of people and how they'll react to cars and how closely they'll follow. And there's always things that can come up that are beyond what a model to anticipate. But what we are more confident about is the way the intersection will operate, there will be less lost time. There'll be less time that's spent with nobody moving. So the results when you start getting into that make a lot of sense that it will be less delay. To predict the exact amount, you know, we have an estimate that's not always perfect, but we. Right, and there is no principle. Has there been a case study of a five corner intersection going two-way, four-way intersection? Sure, yeah. In fact, we're working on a project in the main that's actually a six-way intersection going five-way. They're definitely huge efficiency savings by trying to consolidate. Having examples of it's worked in Portland, it's worked in communities in BC and D, having that as well and having information would be helpful to the future. That might be something that I would case study or. I'm not sure if this is a question for you or for us, a procedural question. So if we adopt this and say it should be put into the plan, what happens when the time comes, because a connector is built and we realize that these models don't hold and we don't want to do this. I don't, the municipal plan, we're not, we're not, we wouldn't be legally, oh, too bad it's not too bad yet to do it anyway, that wouldn't happen. I can speak to that. Oh, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, first, you know, I wouldn't write language as a way to do these things. And yet, yeah, if the numbers prove that this isn't the best decision, you guys can say we can't do that and then revise the plan accordingly. And go from there. There's no obligation to the town to commit, you're not committing to implementation. Okay. It's just saying that this is the current vision. Okay, and I thought so. Yeah, yep, absolutely, that's a good question. But then I will follow that up with, so then what is the benefit of us putting this in the plan today? I can speak to that too. Okay, great. So one of the primary reasons that you want to put these things into your plan is that that's how you then go after, if you want to go after funding. My name's Michael. If you want to, if you need to change regulations, in this case, there really isn't, your zoning, it would work. You don't have to change the zoning based on my assessment of your zoning where it's tentative to accommodate this. But it really tends to be about when you cover your program, your programs or certain funding sources, they want you to state the need. And this is how you say, this is what our vision is, and then you use that language to sort of back why you're asking for funding. Or, and also I think that you know, you're gonna, it's gonna be a conversation with VTRANS. I think a lot stronger if you say, look, the community has adopted this as our vision. I was supposed to say, well, we did this study. You know, I think it gives you more weight. Okay, thank you. That's helpful. So do you think that currently in the plan we have considered pedestrianization of Main Street, that that's not strong enough language for funding purposes, that it has to be something stronger, like implement to be designed by foreigners? You could leave it that way. You'd be okay. Yeah, I don't think that that's deeply different than I would be concerned about it. Has your modeling in tractor trails been a lot of trucks in that model? Oh yeah, yeah, they're exactly. We have data on what percentage of each leg is different sized trucks and that shows up in the model. So we actually have the stimulation, you'll see the large trucks moving through. So, and there are definitely quite a few, so. Does your model include sections when the train is there, we got a tractor trailer and Park Street is totally closed down? We have, didn't model a rail stoppage scenario and that has been looked a lot with the question connector traffic models. So it might be something we could examine. I mean, when a train crosses its daily, it's pretty inconvenient or beyond even so. I think it is, it's being laid. It's fine. That's a daily occurrence. We don't know on that for sure. Actually, I wish it wasn't there. Guaranteed. All right, the thing is, is that even just the crossing connector without closing Main Street, we know that right now, the entire intersection closes down. Everything. If with the Crescent connector built, even if you don't change the circuit, even if you keep Main Street open, the route two way to 15 legs stays open, even if the train is coming through because that circulates outside the tracks. So automatically I would assume you're in better shape just from that perspective. That's kind of scary. Just wondering if there was a reduction, if you saw a reduction in pedestrian and traffic accidents, would the change, or proposed changes if you didn't? Well, we have a model that doesn't really predict crashes, but based on, again, that simpler intersection and smaller, we would expect it based on other. There's a lot of studies of what is definitely in simpler, definitely, is correlated with better safety. And then for pedestrians, they just have a lot of time just from traffic and easier to see, so I think they would definitely be okay for a bit. So great for a walking district. Right. Yeah. And with the forward intersection, does the pedestrian crossings just sort of go leg to leg to leg? So if you want to, instead of what you do now, where you turn it on, and you can go right through the middle, you go back to the traditional, I want to go across, I want to go across, and you wait and wait for the times. And you can go concurrently with the food traffic. But you're going concurrently with the walk. Yeah. And generally, when you have a left turn, we still have left turn phases, you don't have pedestrians, you don't have pedestrians, you don't have pedestrians. Because the distance is short, you're not hustling, you don't have to hustle across. Right, right, but that's more time than life turns. With the closure of Main Street, and of course, Nell, it's not the main priority of this, has there been intentional outreach, and maybe Robin, has there been intentional outreach to the businesses on Main Street to ask how they feel about this? To know you're here with a public meeting. Yeah, we had a meeting right in the dark room right there. And we spent a lot of time at the farmers market as well and tried to. Right, but did anyone go to the business and ask them? I did a long time ago, I will say the Ness paper exists on Main Street because of the potential Main Street paper that's very nice. I was told specifically, that's why I wanted to go there. And that's why I looked at another million fund. I think in that regard, it's going to be very interesting to show then your actual study of how many parking spaces. I think some of the merchants on Main Street think that they're just booked all day, and it turns out they're not even half booked most of the day. And that kind of says something about people who actually drive to the Village Center to go there. They usually park somewhere else because it is a challenge to park on Main Street. And from a cycling point of view, there's a few of us that are going to be probably talking to you about changing how parking is formed on Main Street, and in front of Martin's friends does because it's incredibly dangerous for cyclists. So we're going to be advocating for a significant reduction in parking spaces. Probably on Main Street anyway, aside from this, because you can't cycle past someone diagonally reversing out of a parking spot. I mean, so that's, we're already going to be trying for, we're probably trying for a reduction or a change. Yeah, so, yeah. Ronald? Just to address that, I have a question. At the moment when either the two trains a day come through all the lights are red, through the Crescent Connector Project, we've negotiated with the railway that the railway signals will talk to the traffic signals. And only the lights on the roads that the train is going to cross will go red. The rest will stay green. There's no chance of conflict. So that will reduce the amount of, I don't know if that's in your model or not, but that will reduce the amount of backup as well. Who? I just, this is just a comment. It's not a question, but I think it's really interesting how that's so much of what we talk about here and with planning. There seems to be this disconnect between what model show and the reality. And reception is of residents and people who travel through the five corners. And I think we need to be really cognizant of that as we move forward on these things. And part of whatever we decide, whether it's, you know, what committee coming forward, whether it's this plan, we have to educate the community. And we can't just put this in and say, well, data shows this. We're not going to listen to your perception. I mean, it's still a perception that's very valid. And I just want us to be cognizant of that as we move forward. Along those lines, that's why I know those mentioned before about how maybe doing a demonstration on a Saturday or on a Sunday, I understand that from a cost perspective. I'd rather see us put our money where our mouth is and put the money in to have our signals re-timed or whatever it needs to be. So that way we can actually do it during a week, during a full week, that everybody's spirit is going to be like and see that for me. Talking about cutting the wait time in half for something like 30,000 commuters every single day, that's, that is profound. That's not just a little thing. That's a huge amount of time. That's a really big impact. That's true. That's significant. But until we show it, I think there's going to be a perception that it can't possibly happen because there's too much traffic and there's no parking. Right. And at one time it didn't make any sense that the sun doesn't revolve around the earth. You've got to actually fill the data and then people go, oh, don't worry. You have to show the data but you also have to show with a demonstration project, not on a Sunday afternoon, on a Friday evening, show what can really be come reality. This is a huge, I mean, this is, it's very simple to have a study and it's very good. Let's not have any illusions of the political and the communication that's going to take a break if we, when we finally get, when you finally get to that point or whoever is here, finally gets to that point. That's a big, big political effort. Yeah. No question about that. Other questions? Well, this implementation plan speaks to traffic but it doesn't speak to the other portions of the Design Five Quarters project. This is only a small segment of that project. And I thought, oh, great. Okay, we're going to hear about the economics and the business thing and all the other stuff. And it's only about moving cars. So I was a little disappointed that it didn't deal with the whole concept of Design Five Quarters and how the downtown area was going to be revitalized through economic development and how the parking's going to be improved or the perceptions of the parking being improved. I feel a little disingenuous saying that there's only more parking spaces when there's not, when the businesses that are on the Crescent Connector are going to want to have those 19 parking spaces. That's in front of their businesses. Okay? And to get people with their little vegetable legs to walk from that quarter of a block over here, it's all processions. So I mean, you don't address that. I don't know if we were directed to address the business components that aren't here in this implementation plan, which are actually very important components of Design Five Quarters. Right. Because people need businesses and of things to do to want to condemn here, be here, and not the gigantic parking lots that Julie Campoli took pictures of. And we all love that during that project. Right. I'm not disagreeing with you. There's a lot more work, but I think the issue here is that this is really the key essential component in does this work. And economic analysis and those kinds of studies, I think we would have to, that's work for planning commission. That's work for, that still is yet to be done. No denying that. But I think if you say, if this concept doesn't work, then that changes the whole flavor of everything else you're going to do. I mean, I would say this is pretty foundational for moving forward. Also, I would say that this portion of the project of the Five Quarters image is what the image is in large part going to be responsible for implementing. All the buildings that Julie drew and added in there, none of that is on publicly on property and that's going to be the developers who own that property. We need to make sure that our codes and our comprehensive plan refer to what we want it to look like. But then beyond that, we don't necessarily have control to say we want to make sure there's a bakery in there and we want to make sure there's a law firm in there. We can control up to a point what the plan is going to say about the kinds of economic development that are going to happen within the businesses. But we also know that we have some vacancies. So those are things that aren't addressed in the comprehensive plan. We have to work on those separately. But this closure, the pedestrianization, the five to four corners, that's something within the village's control completely. It doesn't address what you're saying. I'd say it's in the village. Partly. I wouldn't say completely because it's in the state of Vermont because it's a state highway. But the other thing is, like I agree totally with what Diane said, the design by Port of Charette was not based on traffic alone. It was designed on primarily improving our downtown and certainly addressing pedestrian, biking, making it amenable to those type of activities. But this is one portion of it. I disagree that it's the... I'm not against including incorporating the design by corner concept into the comprehensive plan or our municipal plan, wherever you want to call it. That's... As some people get confused, like you explained, Diane, this is just what we foresee to be for our community, what we'd like to see. It's not set in its own. It's not held to those standards. But obviously the LDC or the Land Development Code, you are held to those standards. Those are rewritten every five years and we behold people to those standards whether it's piling or penalties for not complying. I wanted to make that clear. Yeah. I would add to that or I would propose a next step after this while the planning commission is working to incorporate the LDC and the five corners plan into the LDC. In order to address those concerns about economic development in our downtown district, I've recommended in the past and I will continue recommending that we take steps necessary to form a village center, excuse me, a downtown designation. We already have a village center designation. I think it would be very valuable for us to get that additional designation that would allow us to have access to additional funding and opportunities just for the village center. And it would open up opportunities for business owners in the village center to expand on their buildings to improve their safety facilities, sprinklers, elevators, that kind of thing. It would be a way for us to solidify the village center as an economics district and help us do other things that would answer those concerns. So I'm hoping that in the near future we're going to start having conversations about taking the necessary steps to begin the designation process for that. There's a lot of evidence that we've seen because we've been doing a lot of these projects that sort of have the transportation and economic connections because they're very connected. There's a lot of evidence that says that we communities make investments like this. Businesses are more likely to come. In the survey we did, people don't feel comfortable walking you. Well, if they're comfortable walking you, then you have more people walking. And the more people on foot or on bike, the more likely they are to be in businesses and there's an economic benefit to that. So you can't say, well, if we change this, it's guaranteed to fill our store funds. But it's the thing that Village can do to help move that forward. And then the downtown program is a great example. And there's definitely additional funding to focus on things like this through that program. Just one last comment. I think the numbers that we see right now are obviously going to change. The community itself has been evolving and changing. We've got a senior housing project right over here. Just off of Park Street. We've got some more development that's happened just past the end of Park Street on the opposite side of the street from where this senior housing is. Those residents in the senior housing that's going up are going to be walking on the streets regardless. I mean, they're not so old that they can't get out and get around. So you're going to see that anyways, no matter what. And I think it's great what we can do to improve the walkability of the community. But I'd just like to see, like I said, those numbers after the Crescent Connector is completed and I agree with George. That will help when the traffic is stopped at the five corners of the train. It will divert some of that traffic. But I'd like to see what the numbers are later after that. Are we thinking that the Crescent Connector is really starting this spring? Well, thank you. I have GNW NCR committed to gearing up for an April start on the crossing. And so the crossings? What about the... First because if we're working on the road I don't want people on the east side of the tracks driving along the April and Park to get into the west side of the tracks. So that's the first thing then. Only construction traffic will cross the new crossing until the road's finished. V-trans probably don't want to bid the connector road until next winter. Because they'll get a better price. But because more or less all of the instructions on private property would have much of an impact on traffic, on the trunk roads coming in the only public road there will be working on is the upgrade to railroad street. So any other questions? Because I'd like to kind of move it on. We've got quite a few other things on the agenda tonight. Okay, and I'm going to say thank you to Lucy and Chris for coming. And also for Peter for coming. And I think that maybe down the road if we have more questions maybe we could have you come back. But I really thank you for your work and your presentation. We've got a lot to think about here. One other thing. It is recommended that we make, that we actually approve the Design 5 Corner Study and ask staff and planning commission to include it in the new municipal plan for 2019. So, yeah. There are no figure numbers. There are no figure numbers. There are no table numbers. The report is incomplete. So I would ask you to have them complete this report before you accept it. Okay, well we'll put that on the agenda for the next meeting to have the complete, any details that need to be put in because I think there's a lot to chew on here for tonight. Diane, if I just may, do you have a 21 page report because the one that I have in my tablet that's 21 pages has figure numbers, has table numbers? Yeah. But if you don't have it, then maybe we need to. Everybody got to say one. Figure asterisks, figure asterisks, figure asterisks. Oh no, we've got a much more detailed report here. Yeah. The village printed off for me because it's too big for my internet provider to accept. Oh. All right. So you have one that's complete then because this one is all figure asterisks. We do, but I mean I don't, if you've got an objection or you're concerned I don't want to do anything. Well, that is my concern is that the report is incomplete. Ah, look at that, figure 20. So you've got one with all the figure asterisks. Just the end of it. No, we've got them, but I didn't go there. Yeah. I don't see the harm in waiting until our next meeting and if there are any concerns. What's the trustee's pleasure? Do you want to take, we had the presentation and I think we can table the actual inclusion into the village until our next meeting if you want to. I didn't just do it now. What is everyone thinking about? Diane, are you comfortable with what you have? I'm comfortable with what I have. I mean, it's their report. We're good, it's not that the planning question is going to be voting on this. No, they don't get it. They don't get it at all. I just want to clarify that because, I mean, you have three people here. They didn't want to, they weren't happy. It sounds like they're happy now. Well, at the end of the day, George, you guys can approve the implementation plan and then it's our job to incorporate it, but then at the end of the day, it's your job to do that. Just making sure I understand that. That is exactly what happens, Amber. Okay. I'll move that the trustees approve the Design Five Corners Study and ask staff and the Planning Commission to have it included in the new municipal plan of 2019. Do I hear a second? Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay, unanimous. Thank you. Thanks for coming, guys. Thank you. Thank you very much for being here. We'll be talking a lot more about this. And we lose 80% of our audience. That's so great. Thank you. That's what I was curious about. What did you think? It was great. It was pretty remarkable. Yes. Yes? It's cool. Yes. Nothing that's really good is really good. Yes. Yes. Now I agree. But it's a big deal. I know you are. I'm going to give you a sticker. Just like mine. Let's not take a recess. Can we just spring into, can we have some conversations take place outside, maybe have Jim come up? And Evan, do you want to join us too? Jim, do you want to join us up here? I'm still on camera. Yes, we are. We're having a joke about being invited to the adult table. You're invited to the adult table. You can come sit at the adult table. Dan, there's an extra comfy chair over there. Yeah, sorry. So we are on to considering the conditional adoption of the roadside. No. Adopt a warning. Oh, I'm sorry. We've got to, I'm sorry. So our first order of business under business is to adopt the warning for the village and the meeting. Has everybody seen the warning and comfortable with the numbers and the process and so forth? Shall I read it for the camera? Okay, and the key piece is Article 1, shall the voters act upon the report of the auditor? Article 2, shall the voters approve an annual general fund budget in the amount of $5,164,913 for fiscal year July 1, 2019, June 30, 2020? $3,556,422 of which is to be levied in taxes against the village grant list. Article 3, shall the voters approve holding 20 training and a meeting on Wednesday, April 1, 2020, to act upon any articles on involving vote by Australian ballot and to reconvene on Tuesday, April 14, 2020, to vote to the village officers and transact any business involving voting by Australian ballot. Article 4, other business that may be lawfully done at the annual meeting, and then the ballot questions are to elect village officers including a moderator, a village trustee, three library trustees, and that's it. Everyone got that? Okay, everyone got the same thing? So has everyone seen that? Any questions? Do I have to discuss this or do I hear a motion? I'll move. We approve the warning for the annual meeting on April 3rd and 9th, 2019. Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay, passes unanimously. So we're on to now. Jim, thank you for waiting, and I hope that was an enlightening. Completely. I thought it was pretty interesting. So we want to consider conditional adoption of road sidewalk and utility infrastructure on Tap Street and take us through it. Yes, it was requested from the school that the central technology that we accept the infrastructure. For us, the infrastructure can't be inspected until string time to make sure it's in proper condition. Okay. It's the most opportune time for us because we have a storm water permit under application. Okay. We've incorporated it into the permit. We can withdraw it if the trustees do not approve this tonight. But staff recommends you consider the acceptance of this infrastructure with conditions that they address any standing inconsistencies by the 1st of July. Therefore, we can keep it in the storm water permit and not have to go out and revise this permit once it's been issued. Okay. Again, it's just for, if this was a normal development, we wouldn't be requesting this. This is something that's been phased in over a couple of years and that's with the school system. Okay. Any questions for Jim? Any questions? What is the point of this, that retention pond or the storm water pond, is that the main goal or is it also the street? The street, the sidewalks, piping underground, everything. So as we've done with Athens Taft and other sections that the school has worked on, we'd be taking over that infrastructure under the municipal side of things. But the condition would be to take care of the work by July 1st. And the other condition is that they continue to plow the sidewalks with a balanced structure because of some missing segments that need to be repaired. And doing it this way is better for the community than having the remaining street and sidewalks become part of like a condo association in the private streets similar to some of the other private streets we have. It was never intended that way. So we're proceeding the way it was originally intended, is my understanding. We're presenting it this way because if we don't incorporate it into the permit and the trustees vote to incorporate it at a future time, we have to open up that storm water permit again, which is a potential for appeal. And we've had discussions with the board before about possibly modifying the land development code to only accept infrastructure at the time of permit renewals to reduce that liability. Other questions? Do I hear a motion? Oh, it's not a good question. I just want to make a page. I will move that the trustees conditionally approve the adoption of the road sidewalk utility infrastructure for the portion of Pap Street showing the attached map subject to the requirements outlined into the vote. Do I hear a second? Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Great. Thank you very much to the next item. And I believe it is also mostly your show, Jim. Go ahead. The question before you was to, whether or not to allow us to apply as the permittee for our current land application program that we have with the Whitman Farm and Essex Junction and the Far Farm Enrichment. We've been part of the Chidna Solid Waste District. The Solid Waste District can't buy the solid waste in the Essex community. As part of that, we had the land application program incorporated under a permit. Essentially, the permittee in Sella took over all of the infrastructure that we developed and then we got to continue to use it as a third party. Over the past five to seven years, times have changed, issues have changed, and we're proposing to take back that program in-house. So, relatively speaking, we're dealing directly with the farmer. We had this discussion at the Tritown wastewater facility annual meeting, and as part of that, there was agreement that we have a third party involved, that third party would oversee both the farm operation and our operation. Conceptually, we're thinking about working with the farms agronomists so they can do all of the farm nutrient management plans over the land application and provide that third level of check for both parties. We can do it in a much more consistent and, I think, accurate way than dealing with the third party out of the region. We feel that way because in the fall, the agronomists that we're speaking with who does the farm work for the Whitcombs discovered some mistakes in the stage program which utilized to do the calculations because he understands the farm requirements as well as the nutrient requirements that we're held to. So that was an interesting find and it was a find that nobody else had picked up on. That's the reason why we would like to pursue this as a director with the farm in a partnership with the third party to make sure everything's in line. Any questions? I thought this was a fast one. This was really interesting stuff. Jim, I'm just curious. You were talking about renewing our biosolids program, but as you know, there's now a bill going around in the State House banning biosolids applications. So is there any news about where that went? Hopefully it went somewhere dark to curl up and die. We'll see. It's still early in the session. Last year it was a bill that was floated and it never came forward. I did testify at that. Part of the discussion we've had both in meetings with the agency and natural resources and elsewhere, how do you manage your waste responsibly if you're shipping it out of state for everything? And part of the reason for the land application is to recycle those nutrients in a way that's beneficial for the facility and the farm because the farm is definitely something that's excellent for them from an operational standpoint, but it's also in control of the use of artificial fertilizers on the farm. And that's a huge problem. So it's a local solution to a locally generated item. Similar bans have been proposed elsewhere in the region and none of them have ever gone through. And I like to say this, I don't mean to be crass, but you have to remind people this is not a wastewater facility problem. Everyone contributes to this and we need to find solutions that are regulated, reasonable, and local as much as possible. Otherwise you're trucking material all over the Northeast. In fact, some of the bills that have also come have unintended consequences because people don't realize biosolids are used at a higher treatment level for many things that are brand-name products stocked in Walmart and elsewhere, a local hardware store. So some of these have unintended consequences that really haven't been discussed or evaluated. So banning biosolids, not just land application but anything, would potentially drag in residents of what interesting stuff. I don't think that we can have a first reading. I don't know. Any further discussion about your motion? No, no. I'll move the trustee support the application of the agency natural resources to transfer the biosolids land application permit from Cassel organics to the village of Essex Junction. Then staff is then authorized to negotiate the relevant land application agreements with the participating firm partners. Second. Any further discussion? Andrew, second. Any further discussion? Paper? I'll close. Okay. That's very good. Gifts are sent to Tom. I'll leave it on there. And then finally, we have the CSWD Biosolids contract and Essex Junction participation agreement and I'm not sure who's handling it. Jimmy, you're handling this or is Evan? I'll be up again. Okay. Do we fall in over it? Okay. I didn't know it was a duo kind of thing. We're going to put the carrot before the horse. We're going to be involved in commenting on the Chidna Solid Waste District's negotiations with Cassel organics. Going back to last year, the Solid Waste District went back up again to bid for sledge management services for all of the Chidna County wastewater facilities, with the exception of Hinesburg. Two viable bids were received. One was awarded to the Cassel Organics Company again. And with that contract, it was landfilling. The other one was shot again in New York, which was an old private company that was turned over. Basically they make a class A highly treated product. One additional step beyond what we do. It costs us approximately a dollar more per ton to process there, but we're proposing we go there for beneficial reuse and recycling of this material rather than landfilling that material and saving the dollar per ton. The dollar per ton savings would be real money, but I think it's short dollars because the landfill is nearing its life. They're working on an expansion that's going to be a challenge. And there is scuttlebutt that the landfill tip fees will probably be going up, and odors have been an issue with some other facilities up there, and it wouldn't take too much for them just to stop accepting them. So I'm not saying that could happen, but we have received calls from them before about odors, and it turned out it wasn't our sledge, it was somebody else's. So, again, we're just proposing to go to Coventry. No, it's someone else's. We have to record every trailer that comes in, where it came from, and when you get to other complaints, they can narrow it down to where it is. And oftentimes the complaints come in because of what's seen, not necessarily what's known, especially certain areas. Yeah, thank you. We ran into that in another landfill with some of our material that was actually proven to have no odor, but it's still pulled it away from using that for a landfill kind of material. Interesting. Other questions for Jim? Good. Do I hear a motion? Does the trustees authorize the unified manager to sign the CSWD, Essex Junction Participation Agreement pending favorable legal review? Second. Seconds? All in favor? All right. Opposed? Okay. And now we're on to the flexible load management innovative pilot program. We're getting very popular on the energy side. And you're presenting a very diverse whole scheme. It's not to happen. Well, since I wrote this transmedal just a few short days ago, we were approached by two other people for a concurrent program from the same organization. So I've suggested that maybe they talk to each other at house and see how we corporate all of this. The whole idea is to, in the goals of the state's self-sufficiency on the energy plan for the state, saving the ratepayers money, installing the replacement co-generation engine, and modifying it to the most, the best financial advantage. We were intending to reprogram some of the program, some of our operations to do exactly what this program intends. We have looked at this program type of program a few years ago. We had what was called the dispatchable rate. Dispatchable rate is what the utilities use on those peak demand days in the summer and winter. They expect we're going to have our highest electrical demand from say four to eight o'clock on Tuesday night. If you're a subscriber to that dispatchable rate, you must reduce your load during those hours of pay-up penalty. And as to our facility, our process is our priority. We can manipulate loads, but we can't shut everything off because you've spent twice as much energy bringing it back up. They have since approached us without any coercion or request. They approached us through a couple of partners they're working with to do a pilot to have a dispatchable rate but no requirement to do so and any load that we can shed we get paid for. So it's a win-win situation. With the co-gen, we can configure that anyway. And when we reconfigure it, we'll set it up so we can run that at the maximum during these dispatch hours as opposed to just following the demand on the facility. They're also looking at a continuous energy for waste water facilities. Waste water facilities are the largest, amongst the largest energy users in every single municipality in the state, and we've got one of the largest facilities so Efficiency Vermont, along with Green Mountain Power and these other energy partners are looking at ways to monitor what you're doing and then modify it. Sometimes at their expense in our savings to go forward and provide reliable conservation and load management as opposed to a responsive based on process. So again, all of these things, the timing of these things are kind of incredible because they can all be looked at holistically as opposed to individually and then fitting them into different programs. And it's at a time we have to reprogram our system for the new generator, which is due shortly. So we're just asking for permission to look at this voluntary curtail net and work with Green Mountain Power to try to quantify those costs and then work through the manager so that this makes perfect sense. Any other questions for Jim? I can't give you too many details because there's still under development but I will forward. When you get the announcement, when you do something else, it'll be great to learn about this. Thank you. Do I hear a motion? I move that the trustees authorized the unified manager to sign the GMP Flex Polo Management Innovative Pilot Program Agreement. Do I hear a second? Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Thank you very much. You've been busy, Jim. Appreciate it. I appreciate your time. They were all related. Thanks, Jim. Okay, so we are on to approving the annual financial plan for Town Highway, Sarah Macy. Do I have that right, Sarah? I try not to put my name on things anymore that I'm not actually ready to talk about. So this year has been seen annually around this time. Now that the board has adopted the budget, we're required to submit to VTRANS a summarization of the bottom of this, you'll see winter costs versus non-winter costs and we've also historically put in our capital projects and then let them know at the top section how we're going to pay for it. So this is tax dollars, but this is also a spot where we can put in our mileage of road and this is where we get our reimbursement from the state or payment from the state on highways every year. Our mileage should go up a little bit. Our Class 3 roads we accepted Roscoe Court a couple of meetings ago and so that is reflected here. This ties to the budget and I just need you guys to approve it if anyone have questions about this. Is everyone good with this? So I will make a motion that the trustees approve the annual financial plan for town highways. Second. Andrew seconds. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? And I guess we need to also approve the certification of compliance for town road and bridge standards and network inventory. So are you doing this? So this is an annual certification that we still follow the town road and bridge standards and public work specifications that were adopted by the Board on February 11, 2014. I did confirm that. And that they do we are seeing them from the future. They are in the process of updating these so next year we'll have an update. So something to look forward to. If we don't approve this, we all have to stop dragging on the roads. No, but we won't but we need this for a grant. Any questions about this? Do I hear a motion? We approve the certification of compliance for town road and bridge standards and network inventory. Do I hear a second? Second. I think Elaine got that one. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. So we're thank you very much Sarah. Anything else on business that I'm missing? I think we've got it all right. And I'm going to send the signing of the annual meeting around in a minute. So we're just on to the consent agenda and all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. And any questions about the reading file? Yep, go ahead. I have two things. One is the the voices for education summit. I just wanted to point out first of all it was an awesome summit and I wish some of you guys had been there. It was great. I would like to request that we have the voices for education folks come to either one of our meetings or a joint meeting with the select board to review the findings because there is a section in the back of community input or community things that we can do to improve diversity and there's a number of items that the Board of Trustees could take on or could at least authorize to have happen to improve diversity and equity in the community. So I think it's important for us to review the things and then talk about how we can implement them. That was my first thing. And the second thing is for Evan regarding the joint safety committee policy. Regarding the joint safety committee policy in the reading file letter H I just would like to request that there in items 1, 2, and 8 you make a choice of either the Brown out or the Essex free, either the town fire or village fire at the risk of making your committee very large. I think it would be a good idea to just have one from each. One from the town versus one from the village take one from each. I just think from a perspective of the village employees and the town employees I think they'd all like to do it together. I don't mean to micromanage but this is something that kind of goes wrong. Everybody should be presented not handpicked. Any other questions? Any other comments about the reading file? One of the things is we have asked some of these people from the committee and they've said no, they're okay. I get that. I just sometimes word comes back to this board that people are feeling underrepresented and so rather than from the outset selection I totally get what you're saying but trying to walk a fine line and making sure everyone is feeling represented. It would also be nice if they did feel underrepresented that they talked to me. Absolutely. Do you have anything to report anything about scheduling or that we need to know about? No, just you guys know we met with GMT we're going to bring them before the village board and select board. The school board is working with them directly because some of their stuff this affects everybody but it definitely is going to affect busing so that's still ongoing as you all know winter to either the village or the town salt usage and overtime is way up it would be nice if it would stop but it would be wonderful that's an understatement and one of the terrible effects of what we're also seeing is deterioration of roads so I know that Ricky and Dennis and others would love to see temperatures at 45 and rising they could then do patching at least in the interim but you really can't do it until you get some warmer days or it'll just disintegrate and you might as well just throw a 20s in the hole because the next day there'll still be a hole in no 20s so putting patching in until you start getting warmer temperatures it's not going to do anything so we'd like to see what improves so that we can get out and start doing some road maintenance that's probably good enough for tonight okay, thank you thank you any other comments, trustee comments? not anything else? so at this point I'm going to make a motion trustee's enter into the executive session for the purpose of discussing a personnel issue and it'll just be us and that's it no decisions will be made it's just a discussion so we won't be coming out and making a motion or any kind of a formal declaration do I hear a second? second any further discussion? all in favor? and I think we'll take a 5 minute break while we clear the room yes