 So I guess Colchester had a lot of damage Friday night and they sent us a couple of pictures asking you know if you guys had any damage we'd like to know if there's like a million dollars of more damage. What are you talking about? There's like these pictures of like funnel clouds and other things. Apparently we dodged a heck of a lot. It was funny you mentioned it because I'm looking at this email I'm like yeah it was a little windy here and some rain but I didn't know that. Yeah I'm like a million dollars. I mean we had like about a half an inch of rain here. Three quarters? Yeah a couple years ago. We got some people. Do you see if there's any? Do we have the uh... Yeah I'll get you. There's a whole line. Whoa, it's ready when you are. There it is. Scott, you're about ready? Okay, Sam you're about ready? Whoa. No? Not play that recording. Oh whoops sorry, what did I do? Let's start over again. You're running up the sand hill again? Where weren't you? I knew it. Okay I will call the May 7th 2018 Select Board meeting to order and invite you to rise and join us in 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 of your God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. I'd like to welcome everyone. We don't usually have a full house. It's nice to see everybody here tonight. I'd like to remind you that if you have a cell phone if you could please put it to silent or turn it off that would be great. And we have a sign up or sign in sheet at the table. If you could all make sure that you get your name on that we need that for the minutes please. So thank you. And just a quick update too. There's some water line work going on Densmore. And that means they need to shut the water supply off somewhere around 830. So if anyone is still here about that time you might want to think about using a bathroom before then if needed. So just a heads up on that. Okay so we're going to go on to yes sir. Also it'll be off till about 5 o'clock this morning. So the crews are going to try to get it done. But it's a big project right outside this office so if you're in that affected area you might want to get the children showered and bathed. And then it should be up and running for tomorrow morning. Okay we're going to move on to the agenda item number two. And that's for additions and changes and Greg. Three potential additions and changes for your consideration. First off there's a letter from VFW complying with the condition when the liquor license was approved for FW there was a condition that the board receive a letter, the town receive a letter from Mr. Vince Dober taking himself off the application that has been received. So that can go, I'd suggest the consent file for that. Is everybody okay with that? I know a lot of you are here for the VFW liquor license. We're going to be moving it, likely moving it to consent agenda because it was already approved conditionally. The condition was satisfied so it will get moved to consent and then approved when we get there. But if there's anyone that wanted to speak to it or if you're just here to see if it got approved or not, again it's been approved. It was conditional. So I believe it's the select board's pleasure to put it to consent agenda. There's no objections with anybody who was hoping to talk. Yes, sir. This year does the board have any questions of me or the organization itself? I don't think so. We just had that one issue and it was satisfied. So I think we're all good on that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. Okay. So we're going to move the VFW liquor license update to consent. And what would you like to do? This is the press release policy. Item five. After circulating now we heard some feedback from the staff and the press that had some additional comments on that. So we'd like to move that to your reading file as opposed to taking any action tonight. We'll see that at some future. That's the idea. Yes. And lastly, there are some potential minutes changes from Ms. Renner for to go with item five I. Okay. And that's what we have here. Yes. Good evening. Good evening. Okay. So we have. Yes. I would like to request that we move up the minutes of April 16th, which we're problematic and address those while we still have a full room of folks because I think when we do the minutes late at night. We're prone to perhaps handle them in a different way than we would if we felt that the public was watching. So what do you. I'd like to just move up the minutes of April 16th. As soon as possible, maybe five A or B. I would not propose doing that because we have many guest speakers here tonight. And I don't want to move it ahead of them either. Right. You have to balance that. We always do it at the, at the end. I don't know why these minutes would be any different. Well, perhaps we could ask how many people here have a concern with the minutes and would like to speak to them or would like to at least hear the minutes of April 16th possibly corrected or not. Okay. So then why don't we move it to after F or we do in place of F. I don't think that's early enough. I think that we have fewer guests than we just had people raise their hands. What's the board's pleasure going to like to see it? We usually let majority rule on these things. I know why this is happening. So we might as well just give it a go. Okay. Where would you like to see it? After the interview? I think we should wait until after Mr. Nye's interview and after Green Lantern and Mr. Dodge. Okay. So do it at after D. Everybody okay with that? That would be my suggestion. Andy, put it after D. Okay. And we're doing which minutes then? All of them? April 16th. Okay. So we have, we're going to move April 16th minutes to after D. We move the VFW liquor license update to consent. And we're moving the business item 5 F to the read file. And we're adding the proposed minutes updates from Eric. Yes. Just a clarification. The VFW. Isn't it? I was also an ad because it was never on. It wasn't on the agenda that was published. Okay. Okay. So thank you. Thank you for that clarification. So hearing those updates, do I have a motion to approve? So moved. Thank you, Mike. Do I have a second? Yes. Thank you, Andy. Okay. Any further discussion about the updates to the agenda? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Motion passes 5-0. Okay. Okay. So we're going to move on to public to be heard. That's a time for the public to speak to the select board on items that are not on the agenda tonight. Is there anyone here tonight wishing to speak during public to be heard? If you could state your name, please. Members, there's things not on the agenda. Okay. Yes. Patty Davis, Hillside Circle. I just want to relay just a spokesperson for bikers, runners and hikers at Saxon. And the only thing I'm going to say on the feedback I'm getting is Saxon Hill is a mess because the Vermont Mountain Bike Association, they already put a map that there's a new parking place, but people are still parking at Saxon Hill. All the bikers don't know where to go. Where is it legal? Where is it not legal? And a lot of bikers assume that it is a park and that this is a park, right? And I said, yes, it is. So I feel like I'm their spokesperson. The only other thing that has been a mess and the town's been great, they came and picked up garbage today. All of us in the area want more police. We want to be recognized as by the recreation department as a park because it's cut off at Allyn Martin Parkway. All of us that pay taxes here that use this area, we demand the service and we want to be on the map. It's the park and recreation map. If you go online, it stops at Saxon Hill Park. That isn't fair. We pay taxes. This has nothing to do with the ordinance. This has to do with our rights, the public, the people that use this area that bought these homes, these expensive homes and pay taxes. We demand our services and safety signs like the no shooting zone sign that was taken down. That's all. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Patty. Anybody else for public to be heard? I'm concerned about the way that the minutes were handled at our last meeting. So as a general statement about meeting minutes, and I know Elaine, you're new to this board, so maybe this is different than the way the trustees handle it. One second. Minutes are on the agenda. Right. This is a general statement about how they should be handled. Okay. But that relates to minutes. Right. I don't get to have a soapbox during the minutes. We just go over corrections. You have a soapbox whenever you wanted, Irene. Yeah. Public to be heard if our item is not on the agenda. Minutes are on the agenda. Therefore, I would respectfully request that we follow our policy. Andy, did you have a... I was just going to say that we always... There should be an opportunity for comment before we vote. Right. Right. Any further discussion? Right. And that would be the appropriate time. Right. These are about the minutes of April 2nd, which are not on the agenda. Again, minutes are on the agenda. Right? Minutes. And you want to talk generally about minutes. We have minutes on the agenda. That's... Public to be heard is for things not on the agenda. So I would really request that we follow our policy. Unless I'm misstating that. Okay. Okay. All right. Yes. I just want to say that I think you are misreading what's on the agenda. What's on the agenda are minutes to approve minutes for specific dates. If someone's making a general statement about how minutes are done, that's not on the agenda. So I would just like that note in the record also. Okay. Item I is minutes, colon, and then it has specific ones. Correct. Minutes is clearly on the agenda. I just disagree and I would like that in minutes. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Okay. We're going to move on then to our business items in 5A, which is an interview. Tonight we have Alan I and I would like to invite him up. He's the Chittenden solid waste district rep for both Essex town and the village of Essex Junction. He's been on it for quite some time and is on the executive board and I think you're the treasurer and going to all the meetings. I'm the alternate and I never, you know, you're always there. So that's wonderful. So thank you for doing that. And your appointment is for three years and we always two years and we invite people back to when they want to re-up so we can hear from them and tell us how things are going and there may be some questions from the board for you. So how are things going Alan? As you noted that I am now representing the village also. When did that start? About 18 months ago I guess. It was only made sense with a lot of the joint things that are going on in my mind to, you know, kind of represent the whole organization. So it was a little bit of a discussion within the executive board and apparently had a little bit of an issue with it but everybody accepted it and it gives us a few more votes and it's weighted voting there based on population. So Burlington has like nine votes and we have six now. So excellent issues come up. But no, as you stated I am on the executive board and have been for several years and am on the finance committee and the secretary treasurer of the organization. So I think I'm doing a pretty good job of representing Essex in the village. There are a couple of things that are coming up that I wanted to make sure everybody was aware of. The first is that we are having to pay to get rid of mixed paper now at the MRF, the recycling facility. Things that have occurred in China have caused some great issues worldwide and so instead of getting 70 to 80 dollars a ton for mixed paper we are paying 30 to 40 to 50 dollars a ton to get rid of it. So the rate for dumping at the MRF is going to be going up. And that responsibility has been delegated to the executive director or the director, the executive manager I guess we call her. And so there may be rate increases in your pickup at your house based on this. The other item is compost. I guess I would say that it isn't the money making opportunity that we thought it might be six or seven years ago. And we are going to start talking about backing off on some of the product line, topsoil and potting soils and focusing on compost and more bulk compost in the future here. But we are going to be having a lot more discussion on that and where we go with that. But I know that there was some concern a few months ago when people started to have to pay to drop their compost off at the drop off center. But I talked, I went on Friday, I went to the drop off center and I asked Todd there if he had had many complaints recently and he said no. So people have accepted that and are looking forward to that. And then the last item is that we have a fund that we set up and provide money into every year which is for the communities that can create projects to help clean up different areas of the community. Essex has used it in the past for Christmas tree removal and if there are Boy Scouts or something that come up with a project to clean up a portion of Indian Brook or those kinds of things. The disposal, the pickup, the containers, all of that kind of stuff can be paid for by this fund and so just need to know that it's there. It caps out. I think five years, I think the down gets maybe $1,200 a year because we got three in the village now it may get $1,200 a year now. But after five years if money hasn't been spent it just stays at that amount. We don't keep increasing it because it didn't look like a good place to hold money. So that is available. So if folks come in and are looking for projects that have some ideas, I know when I was on the board the Boy Scouts coming in for ego projects and those kinds of things, it's available there for those kinds of activities. I hope to be reappointed by you guys. Thank you, I appreciate that. I want to ask you about GreenUp Day. How did that go? Well, it was Saturday and we have a meeting coming up. We usually get a rundown at the meeting with respect to how many tons and usually, you know, Cassella has taken that for free and we pay for the tires and those kinds of things. Although I was around the county a little bit on Saturday and it didn't seem to me that GreenUp Day was as reambunctious as I've seen it in previous years. There's pieces of road that I noticed didn't get hit this year that normally get hit. And, you know, those kinds of things. I don't know if there was the same number of people volunteering this year that might have volunteered in years past. You said we could get six votes total because we're combined. What would we have gotten if it was just the junction and the town? The junction would have three votes and the town would have three votes now because the junction went over 10,000, that's a 10, 1, 2, 3, yeah, over 10,000 residents this last year based on somebody's numbers. And so it's a vote for every 5,000 residents or portion thereof. Okay, anything else you want to add before we open up to questions? No. Okay. So I'd like to open up to the board for questions for Alan. I see Mike. Yep. Alan, can you shed a little bit more light about why China was a paper thing? I'm just curious. Yeah, I don't know that I can speak to all of the issues, but what I've gleaned is that China was taking a lot of dirty trash and they passed some laws where they weren't going to do that anymore. And so that minimizes the amount of mixed things and those kinds of things that they take. But for a number of years, I mean, they were taking everything, no matter if there was oils or anything else, you know, and they've just cleaned up their program a lot more than what it was previously. I would have thought paper wouldn't be one of the soiled. Well, I don't know that, but it has a lot of other mixed things in it because we don't separate out, you know, the white paper and the glossy paper and everything, but hopefully some other country comes up, you know, maybe Vietnam or somebody decides that they want to be a big recycler and reprocessor. Thank you. Alan, can you share with us or remind us about the mandatory composting when that's supposed to happen? Oh, goodness. Not this year. You know, the legislature was doing all kinds of things with it for a while there this year, and it might have even disappeared for a little bit, but it's back. And so it looks like it'll be 2019, 2020, that organics will not be allowed in your trash. And will they pick up? That's one option. Haulers need to provide pickup options. You can take it to the drop-off center. Something that, you know, the village treatment guy doesn't want to hear, but there's garbage disposals that you can do and you can compost in your backyard. And if you compost in your backyard, then the meat products can go in your trash. And so there's a lot of things, but I think we will be providing a lot more waiting for this legislative session to finish up. And then I think you're going to see a lot more publicity on where we're going with it. But all of the haulers are going to have to provide that option. Even there's a hauler that has a drop-off up behind the Lutheran church in Jericho on Saturdays. And those kinds of operations are going to have to provide all of the services. So he's going to have to provide compost, if he wants to stay there, compost, trash, recycling. Irene. Alan, you and I have had this conversation over email, but I just wanted to bring it up so the public knows that they've been heard on several of the front porch forums lately. People have commented about illegal dumping that they've seen and their frustration with that. And one of the residents also has provided a suggestion asking if there are vouchers available for people who might not be able to afford the fees at the dump. And I know you're going to take that to your executive committee, but I just want to let people know that that concern is... It is an item on the exact board agenda for this coming month. I don't know how it'll go, but we'll talk about it at least. Any other questions, Rowland? For the haulers, you were thinking for a while they were discussing about, you know, segregating it somehow to define certain areas for haulers, but that's off the table. Off the table. Yeah. And there were some legal implications with respect to that. You know, getting into, I guess we were coordinating trade or whatever that stuff is. So, yeah. Free market rate. Right. The one thing that would be really good, and I know when we were on Saxon Hollow Drive, we did it with a bunch of our neighbors and got a reduced rate. And I know on the condo development that I live in, of course we have one hauler come in and pick it all up, but if a neighborhood decided that they could get together and go and ask one or two haulers what their prices would be if they did their whole neighborhood, I think they would see significantly reduced rates because right now we have three, four, or five haulers Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday going through neighborhoods. And so I know with all the folks in the Lane Farm developments could get together and say, you know, we really want a hauler, can we do this or what we're on the side circle, or someplace, because we only have 35 units there and the little development I'm in, and our rates are the lowest that I have ever seen. Okay. Because they just, you know, they're in and out of there in about seven minutes. It would cut down on wear and tear in the streets. It would cut down on fuel use and pollution and all kinds of good stuff. Absolutely. But you don't want the small haulers to go out of business. That's correct. Okay. So if there are no other questions. I think we're coming back next month with the budget. Okay. And Sarah Reeves will be here with that, the new director. Okay. And we'll get the budget in advance. I think it's already been provided to the town. Okay. Excellent. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So you know the drill, but I'll say it anyway. We may go into executive session and have a discussion and come out, make a decision, and then somebody from the manager's office will contact you tomorrow. So, but we really do appreciate, huh? That's an awful process. So, but we do appreciate the dedication you've shown as our rep for so many years. Thank you. Thanks, Helen. Thanks. So what's the board's pleasure? Do you want to go into executive session later for this or do you want to do an open? Open? Okay. Are there other candidates? No. Then it's not necessary. I move that Alan and I be appointed to the Chittenden Solid Waste District re-appointed, excuse me. Okay. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. Okay. I think I already got that one before you, Helen. Okay. All those in favor of re-appointing Alan and I to the Chittenden Solid Waste District as the Essex Rep signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Five-zero? I guess you can just shout. Okay. Thank you. Thank you all. All right. We're going to go to item 5B and that's discussion about submitted petition regarding representation issues. So I presume Irene, you're going to... So, a point of order? Yes, sir. I just wanted to... I brought this up during our discussion about our conflict of interest policy and this is a... This seems to be a case where this might apply and I just want clarification. I'm not objecting at all to the discussion. I just want to understand whether this Article 5 prohibited conduct of our conflict of interest policy, Section B says a public officer shall not represent or appear on behalf of any person or organization in a cause, proceeding application, or other matter pending before the public body in which the officer holds office. So I'm curious whether the Board considers that to apply in this case and that's someone else other than a select board member should be the spokesperson for this issue. I've been putting your thoughts on that. It seems to be pretty clear, but we can waive it if we so... We can waive it. True. Why have a policy if you intend to waive it? I would say that it... I would say it's the select board's policy and you are the arbiter of whether it applies or doesn't apply. I'm uncertain if it does or not. It sounds like it does apply here, but... Thoughts? I have a copy of it. The public officer shall not represent or appear on behalf of any person or organization in a cause, proceeding, application, or other matter pending before the public body in which the officer holds office. So as I said, I'm not objecting to the topic we're going to talk about. It's just a question of whether we should have someone other than a select board member. If we go that route, then I presumably want to postpone it to allow that person to prepare because I presume Irene probably was going to speak to it, but I'm not sure. The only thing that I would suggest is that unless I'm misunderstanding this is not an action item tonight. This is a discussion. I think Andy's got a good point. If it were an action item, then my suggestion would be that we table it and let someone prepare other than Irene to bring it before this board. But I think because it's not an action item, it's an item for discussion. I'm thinking that my opinion should go forward with it. I appreciate Andy's calling our attention to that. I agree that I think that it should not be a sitting select board member who presents a cause to the board. I do think that's a conflict, so however the board chooses to handle it is fine with me, but I appreciate being reminded of the conflict of interest policy. So you would propose not having... If the board chooses to discuss it, that's fine. If the board chooses to wait for another representative to prepare themselves, that's fine too. Irene, you wanted to come in. Yeah, I've already discussed this in a joint select board meeting with the trustee use, and I would appreciate, Andy, if you're going to bring something like that that you give copies to all of us in advance, if possible, so we can be familiar with the language and just make sure that we're not being caught. It's right here in our... Yeah, we all have copies of it. We all have it, but we don't have it handy. I mean, just a roofed it and... Oh, I'm sorry, I've got it on my tablet. So it sounds like the board's okay, in general, to discuss tonight? Sure. I'd rather not put off the discussion. I just... Okay, but that's... Yeah, that's a valid point in why we have a policy. So I'm allowed with it. It's okay? All right. So Irene, why don't you kick it off? As you may be aware, there's a petition with 280 signatures on it that asks the select board to acknowledge and remedy the fact that 11,000 residents who live outside the Village of Essex Junction lack representation in municipal matters compared to their village neighbors. In other words, there's no one speaking for just the interests of those outside the village residents as the consolidations of the town and village departments move ahead. For example, this unequal representation should be as much of a concern to everyone here as the issue of unequal taxation on behalf of the village has been. If you paid close attention, you know that our consolidations have begun to address the disparity in taxes by shifting expenses over the past five years. On the other hand, the disparity in representation has not at all been addressed. The boards continue to put forth plans for merger and plans for consolidation without acknowledging or attempting to remedy this representation deficit. I'd like us to find a way to remedy this foundational problem once and for all so that every voter can feel confident that they have representation in meetings like this. Fair outcomes will only result from balanced negotiation. We know that can be done because we've seen the school board designate outside the village as a district for a very long time. How could we create this balance? Well, first of all, we could encourage the town outside the village to form its own overlay district comparable to what the village did many years ago, 125 years ago, with its own board of trustees. Another way would be to increase the size of the select board to accommodate the five village trustees as well as five outside the village trustees. In that way, this board would act as a 10-member at-large board, so we would all represent our districts as well as be at-large members depending on the type of issue that we are considering. Those five members from each district could act separately whenever a hyper-local policy or a committee or budget item arose. I'd like us to see equal teams when discussing matters that affect equity as well as consolidation. I can't think of an issue that's more pressing for all of our board members than making sure that all voters see that someone has their back at this table. Okay, comments from the board on that statement? Anyone who wants to go first? Mike? At the last joint meeting that we had, it was, I believe, unanimous decision on the part of both boards that this was to be an item, a work product item, if I'm not mistaken, and that the direction that both boards were going to take relative to consolidation and governance were going to be brought up because we all agreed that it was an important issue to be resolved. So I appreciate the comments. I, to be honest with you, would prefer to see a 10-member select board with five members from each district. But I believe that's a decision that has to be made by both boards. I am not in favor of an overlay district. I think that we can do better by having an expanded select board with five members representing each district. So that's my opinion. Anybody else? Elaine? I'll add to what Mike said by saying that our boards have been actively discussing this topic for quite some time. We've been made very clearly aware of the situation. We're working on it. It's something that takes an enormous amount of time and effort and requires a lot of legal assistance and statutory assistance. It's not this limitation that the select board or the trustees have set upon themselves. Our charters are in statute. Our governance is in statute. There isn't a quick way to fix this. So we're already working on it and it's taking time. And while I understand the sentiment and I appreciate the sentiment, it takes time to do it. And I think we're already working on it. During the joint meeting discussions? During the joint meetings, the conversations our boards have had separately about it. We interviewed and hired a manager on the premise that we were going to work towards it. We are all working hard on this topic and so this just kind of feels like repetition. We're really, really well aware of the concern and we're working on it and we're working on it. Thank you. Any? You don't have to. Yeah, I don't know. There's many places where representation isn't necessarily equal. I live in a part of Essex where I have one state rep as does Irene. Many people here probably do too. Other parts of the town, they have two state reps. So it's not, there's, you know, I don't know. I don't know if that's somewhat relevant but it's a fact of the way governance is set up. We're not a necessarily a democracy or a representative republic. The laws that we have define how we're represented. And I would ask that if there's anybody in the town outside the village that thinks I have not represented them adequately, please let me know. I have concerns about the setting. I mean, I don't think we want to or we can or maybe we can. Sorry, I shouldn't have said we can't. It's my thought that if we within the town set aside or add representation for folks outside of the village that we then also have to add equal representation back into the village because then people outside the village would be able to vote on town-wide things and district things. Is that how this works? And then you have to add a, the other half of the town has to be added into another district. So they'd end up with three votes. I'm not sure how this mechanically would work. Other than, you know, if you, if we had a town with two villages, which I think is what has been proposed, if you segregate the, all the representation along the boundary, then it becomes a town with two villages or they're separate, right? So this is either, this sounds more like a separation than a unification. One of those villages would be paying taxes to the other village who has, it has no representation. So, I have the floor. Excuse me, I'm sorry. So I'm, I'm kind of at, I understand the fact that folks that live in the village get to vote on village issues. They also get to vote on town issues. People outside the village get to vote on town issues because that's the municipality they are a member of. If you have a, a tennis club and a bowling league and all of the tennis players are also on the bowling league, but not all the bowlers are on the tennis league, tennis in the tennis club. The people that are in the bowling league that aren't in the tennis club don't get to vote on what happens in the tennis club. They only get, when they're deciding where to have the bowling banquet, right? They don't get to votes. I'm just trying to understand why we have to, why, I, sorry, a rambling here, stream of consciousness. So I understand the whole, the thing of that there's, the two entities overlap. Some residents are members of both. But I don't understand how we're, we're failing to provide adequate representation for folks outside the village. During our joint discussions, we have a list of things we want to include. And one of those is representation. You know, this, this thing. So that's, even without this petition, we're doing that anyway. We plan on, on, on, on studying that. And to do, if you want to do districts, you need charter changes. No way you're going to put representatives appointed by any, anybody, outside the village, and assume that they're going to represent outside the village only. When the people in the village are paying taxes for the whole town, that would be representation, or taxation without representation if we know what that means. So, and we also agreed, as we go through these things, that there's a lot of moving pieces, representation, the voting, the way we do voting, all kinds of things that require charter changes. And what we agreed to upfront was we're going to put all the pieces together, have one, one change, not do a piecemeal. So it's an important discussion that's already happening about representation. So I'll find that, what I had a problem with on the petition was the bit about the school pieces. You know, we're selecting. We do the municipal government. We don't touch, we don't have anything to do with the schools. We admire them, and the work they do, but we don't control those. So a petition asking us to do something about the schools, that's misinforming the public in a petition, which I think is unfair to the public to do that. So that's my point. I'm going to go to Irene. The select board should not be meddling in school business, but it was allowed to warrant a vote for the April school board election. So I would not want to promise anyone that the select board will never be involved in any school board activity again. I hope and pray that we're not, but one never knows. And so applauding the school district for at least recognizing that the town outside the village is distinctive and has its own characteristics and its own needs, I think it's really important that we understand that a lot of what goes on here at Town Hall is done for just outside the village residents. We've had a town highway tax that has been misnamed for decades. It has been charged only to outside the village residents to pay for only outside the village roads. So we've been very careless by using the word town to mean a whole lot of things, but for example, the town cemetery commission only manages the cemeteries outside the village. We have a firearms discharge ordinance that only talks about the areas outside the village. And I think if we took the time to study our own structure here and to redefine the words that we use to refer to the things that go on here, we'd be surprised at how many departments here, committees, ordinances and other things are solely for the town outside the village and for the select board which is currently not made up of outside the village residents, but it really doesn't matter because we are beholden to everyone here for a group that is not beholden just outside the village voters and has been elected by just them to manage these exclusively outside the village concerns is something that would never happen that's where to me the aha moment occurred when you've got one district in this town that has its own board, has its own policies and has control over those things but you have another district that for all intents and purposes was at one point a water district and then a school district and now happens to have no boundaries on it because we lost our school board in the merger that are distinctive outside the village school board in that merger it is appropriate now to be looking with all due haste to find a way to represent those 11,000 people and their interest and their committees and their policies somewhere in our governance structure and until we do that I don't know how we can go forward with consolidation conversations because you're pitting people at this table who are representing the village and people who represent everyone in a situation where we're supposed to be deciding things for 11,000 people who have no one speaking for them and that's not acceptable to me and if you go look at people's origins which happens at times we'll say well how many people are from the town outside the village or inside the village I'm not sure that's appropriate because of what our charge is to do as selectmen but even if you look at it it's still lopsided in the average right meeting now with the village trustees we have six village residents and three outside the village residents so even if as select board members we were allowed to represent outside the village interests we are outnumbered two to one therefore I think that this is a huge first step before we do anything else on consolidation to right size the people and the representation that's at this table because if we don't 11,000 people are being short changed I saw a lot of hands I saw Elaine first then Mike and then Andy so Elaine go ahead Northfield Waterbury St. Albans Swanton Bellows Falls Rockingham there are more than a dozen communities in Vermont that have villages incorporated into their towns and they are all in this exact same situation in different ways and I think it's important to allow this board and the board of trustees to work this situation out in the way that works out best for all of us what I mean the language I'm hearing when you're talking is that it sounds like we are in a vacuum and we are the only community suffering with this great injustice you know that we aren't special in that respect the other language I'm hearing you say is that we are pitting each other against ourselves I'm hearing that the village and the town are in competition with each other I am hearing that the town has an enormous amount of responsibility that has nothing to do with more than half its residents and I'm hearing that the partnership that we have been working all these years to solidify does not matter to you and that's very upsetting because that flies in the face of all the work we're doing it's a slap in the face to half of the town residents and it's disruptive to the process we're trying to achieve we are already working on all of the stuff that you want to fix and I think we would all like to ask you to have some patience and to come on board the boat with the rest of us and do the work that we need to do it's going to take a long time it's going to be a lot of compromise that will leave everybody at the table unhappy in some degree and it's going to be something that it will be hard to understand and complicated and we will need to have outside experts help us with it your proposals are all quick fixes that first of all won't work first of all are not legal so I'm really wishing that we could move on with the conversation both boards have already started last week Greg sent an email to all of us and said would you please define this long list of words and so we're setting our common terms together right now it's our homework that's due on May 10th so that we can talk about it next week Jennifer Nour asked us to start thinking about defining common terms meeting with her on March 24th we are working on building the common language that you're insisting we don't have that's just one small step in the work we're doing and finally I'd like to get the conversation back to the petition that's on our agenda and I have a question regarding the school aspect of it because as Max said the select board does not have jurisdiction over what the school board does and so my concern is for all the people who signed this petition how are they going to be notified that the redress they were seeking by signing this petition is not going to happen because it's not the select board's responsibility to do it how are they going to be notified that the petition was not accurate in saying that the select board would be fixing the school problem when really it's an act 46 issue that the legislature is taking care of right now I know that was a big statement with a lot of stuff in it but in the end I just want that last question answered so that was directly requesting a response from Irene yes please sure if you can keep it kind of short because I want to let Mike and go too at the time the petition was begun there was no knowledge of act 46 or the fact that there was a remedy among the petition signers and there also was no knowledge among the school board members there was even a problem with the ballot that was warrant here so we're all learning as we go along and as I said because the select board is looking at this governance picture and because the select board does not have assurance yet from the legislature that a bill has passed correcting the hiccup that caused us to warn the vote in March for April the select board should be keeping its eye out I think as it looks in town and village governance for anything it recognizes as a red flag and then I would hope you can raise that with our school board friends and let them know that hey not only do we see that act 46 I had a little issue here that might be corrected through legislation but have you ever thought of X, Y, or Z it's purely to get us brainstorming since we are the ones who are sitting around thinking about governance issues last I knew the school board had already merged so they're dealing with sort of the aftermath of merger whereas we're still putting some of the pieces together as far as I'm concerned and that's why I included the word school because I don't want it to be exclusive of anyone I want us to keep our thinking caps on and respond just to that one quick thing two seconds may I make a suggestion that in order that we address the concerns that this board and perhaps the ESWD send a letter to representative Gian Battista who sits on the education committee to say we would like to receive your assurances that act 46 remedies will be addressed at the opening of the new biennium in January as soon as practicable so that we can be saying that we are paying attention to this issue so that our school board is able to warn the issue properly actually staff is already on that they're doing that letter and I presume the school board probably do the same thing so I'm going to go to Mike next again I refer back to the last joint meeting that we had and just my own opinion here I I'm not in favor of a quick fix I think we see enough of that in Montpelier where you have to go back and double track or you get half of what you want and then you wind up having to pick it up again I would I am much more in favor of a thorough research of the issue before we go and propose a charter change to that end one of our assignments is to comment on the work schedule and the work progress and the ten of us are going to have an opinion on what needs to get done in what order I agree with the earlier statement I think that before we can have a board that equally represents both the town and the village I think that the tax inequity issue has to be resolved I do not see that as a quick fix but I think in order to have a board that would be free from those from that yoke I think that's one of the things that I'm going to suggest at the joint meeting be one of the first things that we deal with I think the second thing and not in any particular order but for me the two biggest things are does consolidation do we take a breather do we table it here do we go perhaps as Elaine suggested last week and we fine tune public works maybe we do because that's where one of the tax inequities lies is on the street on the highway tax maybe that's maybe we take a breather I don't know my opinion is not the only one that matters but I think the point that I'm trying to make is this is not something that you can just do by flying by the seat of your pants and I am not going to support a temporary quick fix I think the boards need to be able to do their work prioritize the things that are going to allow us to have an equal board and then move forward from there thank you Mike and Leigh is that coming? I can repeat myself I did take an oath to serve the entire town of Essex which includes the 11,000 people that have been mentioned outside the village and I again I invite folks to tell me how I've failed or any of us may have failed to adequately represent those folks at this table thank you yeah we're going to be working on these these items to do this representation thing that's already some were talking about I went to ADL listened to the seventh grade presentation on options for going forward and that's one of the recommendations they had is when we come up with a new consolidated government we consider two districts so yeah it's something that we said we're going to be discussing and I agree with Andy all selectmen when you're elected by the entire town you're obligated to represent the entire town and the people vote you in so you have the authority to represent everybody regardless of where you live Mike you're in the village Elaine you're in I don't see that you would have any conflict making sure that you represent the entire town I live out just outside there and I consider the village as well in my consideration so so I think we can get there if we work together and if we get back to this petition it really wasn't even necessary I mean the selectmen can bring these things up by themselves to the board and you don't need signatures behind it I mean that's what you can bring these things up and ask for them to be discussed so I think we're on the right path we're getting there what I said before at a joint meeting is that we want to make sure that we're allowing and encouraging the public in this process from the entire community so that we can validate where we are and where we're going with them and move forward together I think it's one thing to listen to the public and it's another thing to have decision makers at the table I've spoken to at least two members of this select board in the last several months who have insisted to me that there are no only outside the village issues so it is an ongoing learning process and I hope that in two more months people will tell me things that tonight they are denying are true or false or whatever but I think we all have to be gentle with each other and we all have to keep brainstorming and thinking through these issues as much as possible because yes there are issues and committees and other things that the select board is not the most appropriate board to legislate or regulate or monitor those activities there needs to be some group of people from outside the village only with that as their sole purpose who are either elected separately as an overlaid district or that are folded into the select board with all due haste we can put off anything we want for as long as we want but if we don't fix the representation that we make sitting at this table as joint town-wide select board and village district board is not being done with the interests of the 11,000 people who need exclusive representation comparable to what the village trustees bring to that table and that would require a charter change which we already said we are going to do one charter change so I don't see that happening in my opinion but ok any other comments on this? do you want to take comments on that? when we are done one other comment I would like to make about the error that was in the legislature language to there is a letter I know that the staff is going to send to encourage them to make sure they correct that but things happen maybe it won't happen we'll need to make sure that we have our staff and our attorney working with the school board and their attorney to find some fix if the legislature doesn't come up with it that can work I know what that would be or how that would be but got some smart folks that we can put effort into to make sure that we do that correctly I just happy to work with the school district on either a letter from the town or a joint letter from both of our entities I'm trying to get the legislature to do that but also should the legislature fail which we hope does not occur that we are prepared to be able to have a conversation well in advance of candidates and others that we're on the same page to get is in their charter and what is in the interest of the town residents having the representation that is proposed in the school charter as well as westford and village of s6 junction if I remember correctly and I did get an email from their board and responded that I would also be happy to meet with them at any time to start working on that process any other comments from the board before we open up to the public Mike? Just a suggestion I don't have a comment but just a suggestion Mr. Chairman given the hour and what we still have left on our agenda might we suggest that comments that are the same is a very quick I agree with so-and-so and down we go and just leave the comments to separate ideas. Is there anyone here in the audience wishing to speak tonight on the petition topic? So we have keep your hands up high so there's one, two, three, four, five, six so we'll do that and go through once if you could keep it to just two minutes or less we would greatly appreciate it and if you heard somebody say something that you agree with please don't repeat it just say I agree with what that person said just as Mike said to keep it going so I'll just go from left to right I guess pardon? Okay we could start with Martha that's fine. My first comment it comes from being a member of the Board that doesn't come from the Board it was very disconcerting to find out and hug this petition on the day of our budget so not having ever been informed that the school was going to be mentioned in the petition and I found that disrespectful secondly I think there I heard a conversation or a piece of this conversation that talked about the school had found a way to do the separation between the town outside the village and the town inside the village the fact is that the taxing districts are different the town outside the village is taxed separately on school matters from the town inside the village and from the rest and I think that makes it a different setup than what you think says in this panel Thank you Martha. Okay and I'll start with the gentleman right there if you can say your name for the record please My name is Richard Jesse and I guess the simple comment that I would like to make I think the representation issue is an extremely important one and it is an issue that at least in my personal opinion needs to be addressed you know as hastily as possible granted it's complex but quite possible I guess my feeling is that the representation issue needs to be addressed before many other consolidation issues need to be discussed that representation should be given priority and to the extent that other consolidation issues can be put on hold can be postponed can be delayed so that the representation issue can be dealt with I think my opinion is that is the way to proceed Thank you for your comments I agree with the gentleman on my right I have a question Could you state your name for the record I'm sorry Mary Kraus I live in the town and I was wondering if you could put your hands up if you live in the town Where are you all You all live in the town That's the only way you can be on the select board The town outside the village How many people live in the town outside the village It's all three Okay And there was a woman right there I'm Sarah Salatino I live out on Breeding Hill Road and I feel really underrepresented out in the town of Essex a town outside the village we don't seem to get any police services our roads are unkempt there's I feel like I live in the wild west out there like the town has just simply forgotten about us that live out and beyond Route 15 I agree with what you had to say Sarah very much and I think maybe consolidation should be tabled I will tell you that I'm a very busy person raising a child and I also have a very full time plus business which probably most of you in this room have no idea about and I just want to say that I don't get a chance to come to select board meetings I do the best I can I try and get to the town meeting I'm sorry the meetings we have in March sometimes that's very difficult to get to but I feel very underrepresented when I see this petition I didn't hear about it but I'm glad that the people are being heard obviously these 288 people had had something to express and Andy Watts if you want to get to know us come on out, all of you come out and go into your community the town outside of Essex and get to know us so we're busy people as are you but really we're paying our taxes in this town just as much as everybody else thank you in the green John Lark I also live in the town outside the village I just want to agree with the people next to back row especially with you as well that we do need we need to feel that what is happening in respect to the possible merger is going to be done fairly so that we all feel that we are properly represented it's not that we have to represent in an adversarial way but we need to feel that there's people sitting at the table when this happens that look out for our interests and it's true that I'm sure you all have very fair minds but we all have our biases that we don't necessarily recognize when we're in a negotiation like this so I think that that is you need to listen to what Miss Renner is saying because she's got some very good points and sometimes I suspect that she's not being heard thank you John and there was one more hand okay yes well I would stand but it hurts too much it's Don Hill Flurry and it is the first signature on this position I can't believe the amount of concern that generated I signed it not because of the school issue because I knew that was a legislative problem I signed it because of the representation problem Elaine you may be a wonderful person but no matter how wonderful we all are you can't you can't represent both board and be fair about it this you need to have five people that are in one entity but my most important question to this board is having lived here since we were Essex Center which is probably not anybody else where did you get the idea that the town outside of the village wanted to consolidate I mean if in five to seven even maybe ten votes since forever that's never passed so where did you as a board get the idea to start consolidating by wanting to create a sustainable community in the future and doing it piece by piece and having the public approve the budget which enables it is the permission that we get from the public to do it because to me it feels like it's a backdoor issue and one only the hundred and ninety two people that I'm meeting are actually aware of the stuff that's in the budget that's being put towards this consolidation and I understand more people could be involved I got it but to me this backdoor feeling it really bothers me a lot in the fact that at your last joint meeting when they announced the savings for the paving project here in the village but not one person mentioned how much savings the town would have stuff like that bothers me as a resident outside of that at town meeting I don't know if you're there but we show the savings for the town municipality and for the village municipality and for the total community together but we get our permission by the public who approve the budget and we've been on this path for five years so we have the six people who spoke so you had your hand up that's true I'm sorry I didn't mean to whine there Max I agree entirely with Irene's argument and with the people who say that we need to do something before you start making the decisions that you're going to make because we do not have equal representation but I wanted to also express an opinion about just the process that I watched among the people here tonight and I heard a lot of from this end of the table I heard a lot of the you word you say this and you do that and you want this and that's a very accusatory and it just really seems that you're saying that our petition was repetitive it was not needed because you're doing it anyhow but then at the same time you say we want to hear from the people it sounds like you're a little bit schizophrenic for us only if we tell you what you want to hear and so we are definitely feeling you are not hearing us you are not representing us and you gave a perfect example of it tonight by your meeting okay thank you if it's 30 seconds or less action 9.1 department needs assessment and strategic plan executive summary February 2008 who did you hire for a consultant for the Essex the whole town Essex Open Space Plan for guidance on development versus preservation and recreation versus conversation conversation uses consultants $40,000 plus that's 10 years 10 years ago where's the action who did you hire for a consultant in the park and recreation department needs assessment plan is this about the petition well it's about the representation of Essex Essex has waited 10 years I think the zoning board the police chief and the town manager need to do their job and represent us in the town on this 10 years is long enough okay thank you I need to cut her off Iris I asked people to raise their hands because we are at a late hour it's a very important thing thank you all for your comments we hear you we do so thank you you can email them and to the town manager and they can get put in our in our reading file okay so thank you to the board and thank you to the public for coming tonight to discuss our business item 5b okay we're going to move on now on to our next item of business which is a request from green lantern solar for support of new solar energy and storage project and tonight we have we'll representing GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP GMP for support on the new solar energy and storage project and you want to walk us through it again just state your name please yep I'm Will Veve and with you tonight we'll go around Kirk Schilds with Grimond power okay well welcome tonight gentlemen yeah interesting project we have had the report in our prior packet and read it and it sounds pretty exciting so you want to walk us through it yeah we're here to go through what is the 45-day notice package is what you received this PowerPoint will go through all the top points of the project as it's designed over at the chemo ink property on the old sandpit if we can go to the first slide I'll introduce Kirk Schilds who's the lead on this project just as some background Green Lanterns partnered with Green Mountain Power and GMP Essex solar storage is the entity that is permitting this project yeah we'll go through this real quick because I know you guys are jammed on times on time so we'll blow through it quick but one of the things I thought would be helpful is that we get a lot of questions like why did you why are you doing this and why are you doing it here that kind of thing so having some high level contacts usually helps we're seeing a lot of solar now in Vermont and we have a lot we're getting more and more solar in our power portfolio for serving customers one of the big things that we're seeing though is that regional transmission costs are rising over time and it's one of those things that it's one of those costs that we have little control over so as we're thinking about our rate structure and trying to find ways to mitigate upward rate pressure driving transmission costs down is one of those things that we try to do so one tool that we have is to try to reduce the amount of peak load later on in the day that it gets used by customers and gets allocated we we get our costs from the region allocated based on the most energy we use in a single hour during a month or in a year so as much as we can shave that peak load down in that one hour costs to GMP get reduced from the region and of course those lower rates to our customers as well so that's one of our strategic ignition initiatives is try to target peak loads try to get peak loads down as much as possible so that we can optimize the the transmission costs and lower those for customers all right I want to go to the next one so one of the tools we have is to use battery storage to be able to take solar energy into the battery when solar energy is abundant and then fire it at the the peak loads in the later in the evening our peak load used to be like one to a clock in the afternoon but now it's moved with as much solar as we have it's moved later in the evening it's like six seven o'clock when everybody gets home turns on air conditioners in the summer so we're able to absorb a lot of energy during the daytime hours and then when we have a forecast of peak we're able to use a battery in target peak loads and shoot at the peak loads try and get those down as low as possible so with a project like this we have a couple of projects going on around the state we have we've done solar projects in the past but this is a way to supercharge solar by pairing a battery with a solar project so we've partnered with Tesla we're using two megawatt power pack batteries that we're going to be using with so with large utility scale solar rays and selected sites around the state and we'll be doing those to target the peak loads so that's kind of it in a in a nutshell at a high level and yeah there's a larger initiative going on from G&P's perspective which is pretty exciting and I think they're one of the first utilities to distribute this solution on the distribution level so we're really excited to be doing business with them and now I'll just go over the actual project how we're designing it and what you'll be seeing so we're partnered with Green Mountain Power as project partners the solar project will be a 4.496 megawatt solar facility ground-mount solar integrated with the two megawatt hour battery that has eight megawatt hours of storage capacity the project itself is going to occupy approximately 25 acres of the old Sam Pit off a river road currently owned by Kimo Inc. On the solar side there'll be approximately 19,400 panels those will be installed in rows running east to west south-facing with no shading issues no inter-row shading issues to be able to collect as much solar power as possible store that at the proper times and then the battery will discharge when G&P tells it to discharge. What are the benefits from a project like this? This is a new local source for about 1,100 homes is the actual electric equivalent of what will be installed. The battery is going to store solar output until it's instructed to discharge and at the optimal times it will drive down costs for all G&P rate payers that's statewide which is also important because this is part of a larger statewide initiative on G&P's end. The battery system is going to allow G&P to maintain service for local loads in the event of extended power outages or disruptions and real quickly that's an islanding solution which basically would allow for higher grid resiliency and the ability to keep the power on if the lights go out for an extended period of time where before that would not be possible or let me jump in on that one. We're installing a test a 1 megawatt Tesla battery in pan right now in a retrofitting a solar array that we had put in there in 2016 and so that is really going to be the first battery that we're going to be testing this micro grid slash islanding feature and it's something we're really excited about because nobody else is really doing it. It requires a really sophisticated set of protection systems that once we develop this skill and this muscle we'll be able to deploy in other areas and it's it's it's happening now so that battery will be going in in June when this project goes forward this time next year we'll have we'll be able to exercise that muscle with this project as well so it's pretty cool feature to be able to island and provide micro grid services at a scale like this. Another benefit that's an important one to everyone that's here as well is the additional taxes that the project's going to pay the property will pay and that's done through the Vermont State solar tax which is a distribution of the installed equipment's value which is then prorated at the the town's mill rate and for a comparison I believe the town of Milton on a similar project with the battery plus solar that GMP is doing is seeing about twenty two thousand dollars a year in their tax revenue go up on that single project so that's also an important part. Important to all of the projects that we design is low impact. This is a perfect solar site on a plate-out sandpit that's well located and out of view. We're limiting impervious surfaces, new surfaces will be limited to transformer pads, equipment pads, and battery pads, and any needed upgrades to the already existing access road into the site. The native soils are going to remain in place and the areas around the array will remain vegetated and the land inside and around the perimeter of the fence will be periodically mowed as an ongoing maintenance and as part of the reclamation aspect of a sandpit is the planting of vegetative material. GMP employee is pollinator friendly mix which encourages the bee population to be as strong as possible. There's minimum vegetation clearing all of the negative aspects that have happened to this property have already happened through the years of its operation as a sand and gravel extraction business and there's very limited vegetation clearing for shading issues and no need for any blasting so the construction process is going to be streamlined and straightforward. On construction and operation we expect process to be about 16 weeks from beginning to one in a set of about three phases. Phase one will be the construction of any of the upgrades to the access drives and the equipment pads on site within the project. Phase two will be the actual construction of the array whereby the racking is delivered posts or a ground mount post system which is a pounded post that goes into the ground with a machine. There are no footings or extra concrete for the post it's a very minimal impact allowing us to remove the project at the end of its useful life without a lot of issue. Phase three is the installation of the solar modules, the batteries, the inverters, and wiring that's the the the basics of the phase of construction over that 16 week process. The first eight weeks have the most activity with trucks coming in and out. Following completion of the system being mechanically complete it will go through system test and operation phase in coordination with GMP to make sure that everything's been built correctly and can interconnect safely with the distribution system. For site access and equipment delivery, the project is at the end of the access road on the high plane. We're accessing off of River Road. The solar panels and rock components will be shipped on pallets and everything is typically delivered by tractor trailers. Smaller trucks will be utilized as well for smaller materials and we expect 60 plus or minus truck loads to be delivered over the course of an eight week period like I said in the beginning that's when all the heaviest construction phase will will commence and take place. Outside of that like I said everything else will be work trucks, box trucks, and regular pickups. On the support side of the project we've been doing a lot of work in our permitting phase right now. We're in the 45-day notice phase. We presented this project to the Essex Energy Committee. We received a general letter of support from them which we're very happy to have and we're excited to be working with them towards their renewable energy goals. It's an important project also for the the state as well on their energy goals. So Dave Scopin's here from the Energy Committee who's been instrumental in working with the committee and ourselves so we if Dave has anything to say there we thank him very much and the committee for that letter of support. The Regional Planning Commission which Chittenden County Regional Planning has also issued a general letter of support. They also had some general comments for us which was to address slopes and stabilization within the project site which will absolutely be addressed and we're working with our civil engineers to make sure that all of those comments are perfectly addressed before the application is complete. On top of that we're working with abutting landowners who've sent in comments as late as of two or three days ago and same comment on slope and stabilization. We're working with them and other butters. I'm actually taking meetings with when they come back from their vacation next week and everything has been generally very positive in coordination with us working through the project on the 45-day notice aspect. So that is a pretty concise report of where we're at. The permitting process we will be planning on filing a complete petition right around June 1st which is a few days after the 45th day of the notice period. So with that I thank the board for taking the time to listen to us and we are here to answer any questions you might have about the project. Okay. Good summary. I'll open it to the board. Questions about the project? Anybody? Board first. Okay. I have a question. Yes. Has this been vetted through the planning committee, the Essex Planning Commission? So we have a meeting on May 24th which was the first agenda that we could get on. So I received an email from the administrator. They're looking forward to hearing the full presentation. They said they were generally supportive in the email but wanted to get through general comments and they're aware of both the letter of support from the energy committee and regional planning's letter. Because you have to, in order to do this project, you have to get their approval, right? No. This goes through an Act 248 process. So we take these meetings to engage with the community, the boards, yep, to be good neighbors, and you guys are a party to the process. The Planning Commission is a party to the process and they can put in comments at any time during the process and that's why we like to engage as quickly as possible with each board and committee. Okay. Yes. You, Green Mountain Power, you mentioned that this, this type of activity would help to lower the electrical rate of transmission. Is that all it, is it, is it the overall rate or the transmission rate which affects the rate? Lots of things go into the overall rate. So some are cost drivers that increase, that put increased pressure on rates and some were able to put decreased pressure on rates. This will be in the decreased. So is there an estimate of what that would be? In total. Well, if I can give it to you on a lot on a unit basis. So if we have, if the project costs maybe like 14 cents a kilowatt hour to build, the benefits to customers are about 16 cents per kilowatt hour that flow back to customers. So it's a net positive. Two cents a kilowatt hour positive to the system? Yes, to all customers. At what scale? Because obviously this isn't large enough to provide that to the state. Right. So we need a few of these in order to make a big dent. So we have like a 700 megawatt peak load and with a, with a two megawatt battery, it can make, you know, you can reduce by about two megawatts. So if you have a few of these though, you can make a bigger difference. And this isn't the only thing that we're doing. We also work with industrial customers to do demand response so they can curtail load. We work with ski areas to reduce ski, snow making to reduce load. So this is one tool. Sure. For the select boards and the people in the audience, the several meetings that I've taken and been a part of at other meetings of the regional, in the region, one of the largest concerns of the business community is the cost of power in this region versus other parts of the country that they're in competition with. And they would like to see, you know, the cost of power to be addressed. One of which is the transmission portion, which is really not even in Green Mountain's control, as I'm understanding. You have to buy the power. It comes in over the transmission lines. And if one of the ways is to reduce the peak load, then I applaud your efforts. I assume this is also happening. It sounds like you're going to need about 300. Over time, you're going to need several hundred locations to be able to store, kill a lot hours, to be able to post back into the system at peak demand. At some point, having a flat load is best. Because when you have, when you have a bell shaped peak curve, which we usually do, then you're paying for capacity that's idle a lot of the time and you're paying for that, just that peak part, only a little bit of the time. But there's a point at which you can't curtail your load anymore because it's flat. So we think if we can get, if we can knock about 100 megawatts off of our peak load, then we'll be kind of, we'll be at a pretty good place and have flattened it pretty well. That's our, that's our near-term planning. It's the ability to store the power from the solar that allows you to use it when you need to use it versus the demand on any given moment. Right. The battery allows you to very precisely dispatch it at the time that you're forecasting the peak and for the duration that you think you need it for. Because the peak load could be, if you think it's going to be a three-hour peak, you have to make sure it's there for three hours. Because if it's only there for two, that third hour, you may, it may be the peak load that you haven't moved it anywhere. It just may stay at that third hour. So it's, yep. Okay. Other questions? Okay. So you're, what you're looking for tonight is a letter of support from the select board for this project. Right. And, uh, Dave, is there any comments you want to make? I know you, we read your letter of supports. Anything you'd like to just highlight in your letter? Well, naturally the committee was overjoyed and personally knowing the location, I don't think you'd ever find one that's more out of, out of the way. I'm probably one of the few people that's ever been in that area. It's not used, it's not seen, even if it made noise no one would hear it. So it's, it's ideal and everything else that a Green Mountain Power is up to is going to be absolutely essential in the next 20 or 30 years, especially if we are hoping to make the 20 by 20, 90 percent by 20, 50. So I think we're, we're so lucky to have had this line in our lap at this particular time that the committee was overjoyed. How many acres will this consume? Total project parcel's 87. The project site is approximately 25 acres. Okay. Does anybody know where, let's say this project goes forward, where does that put Essex and Essex Junction in the solar power world of Vermont or anywhere else? Based on Essex topography, and Dave can probably speak better to the exact numbers, there's not a lot of integrated solar throw Essex, so this is going to really put a big percentage in Essex's portfolio specifically and then also for Chittenden County based on their goals for their regional plan. I think everybody was saying, how does Essex compare to other communities for solar power? I don't know off the top of my head. As far as largest arrays, there aren't many towns that have raised the size. There's only, we have five other sites that have utility scale projects this size. There is a speed project that's in Essex down the road, which I think is the largest one that's close to two megawatts. Outside of that, this would be the largest project in Essex for the time being. So would you say we're in the top five in the state leading in solar power generation? It's hard to say. We could figure it out. It's the next agenda item. Thanks Will. We could figure it out. So my only concern is that the Planning Commission hasn't reviewed it and made comments yet on things that perhaps we might overlook that they know what to look for and what to ask. What we hear sounds really exciting. I mean it sounds really wonderful. I'm just, I'd like, for me anyway, if I you know do the letter of support it would be subject to the Planning Commission's review and support of the project as well in case there's some things that they they find that we didn't see or the energy committee didn't see that we might want to ask you to possibly address before we go forward. I think that's a really good idea because the Planning Commission is in place to plan projects and we would welcome that. That's that's fine with us. So would that be okay with the board to make it subject to the review and approval of the, okay. Anybody want to make a motion to that effect? Pardon? Anybody? I'll just, I'll make a motion that the select board prepare a letter of support for this project conditioned on the approval of the Planning Commission as well. Thank you. Second. Thank you. Mike? Okay any further discussion about generating that letter of support subject to the review and okay. I am a member of the Energy Committee. I've tried to keep an arm's length on this one so that I could vote as a select board member and speaking of politics of interest I just wanted to say that. Thank you. Irene? Great. Oh just the potentially friendly amendment or could capture it but if you would direct staff to send that letter once the Planning Commission has given its show of support just time and wise your next meeting is going to happen before the Planning Commission meeting and if the application is going in before for June 1st you won't have a time to review that letter. Yeah that's fine. Okay. Mike? Your second? Okay. Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. All those in favor of the letter of support with the conditions we talked about with the Planning Commission signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Most passes five zero. Thank you. Good luck. Thank you very, very exciting. Good work. And David, thank you and the and the Energy Committee for the work you're doing as well. Okay we're going to move on to the next item of business which speaking of energy is a funding request from the Energy Committee and we have the chair of that committee with us Will Dodge. Welcome Will. Thank you Mr. Ter, thank you select board members. So you're looking for about 600 I see. What's really interesting about this is that I have to tie together the past two agenda items as as odd as that may seem but the reason that we're making the request and I think this is implicit in or it's it's stated in my letter is because right now one of the best tools that we have out there to track how we're doing basically going right to Evan's question about where are we in comparison to everyone else which after all is what we're excited about and what we think motivates people as much as anything to try to improve on our energy usage and and meet our renewable energy goals is can we beat South Burlington they're probably way ahead of us right now but we could make a very serious dent both with the Green Lantern project and with a lot of other efforts that we're that we're making now but the truth is I can't give you the exact number in part because of the complexity of mixing the data of the junction and the town. Essex Junction has the and I really shouldn't say the town I should say the the OTV or whatever the outside the village to combine that data is tricky in part because the state's largest power produce or consumer is global foundries which is in Essex Junction where the when you look at the town as a whole where the largest municipality we have a lot of commercial and residential in Essex Junction quite a bit of commercial industrial and residential in the outside the village and the good folks at the energy action network which is a violent right now is a volunteer agency that's trying to basically collect data from efficiency Vermont from the utilities from the planning agencies and put it all together in a way that actually makes sense and that gives us a ability to track how what progress we're making over time they are having a real tough time merging that data so we first thought of trying to find funding sources beyond the town we went to efficiency Vermont they said we'd love to help but we just it doesn't fit within our criteria we went to the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission again doesn't fit our criteria although that one's a little bit of a headscratcher but I'm going to take them with their word and I'm going to hit them up for something later when we need it and then we're going to put them on notice exactly then we we had they actually made some recommendations there's I think it's called the New England New England grassroots energy and again that's that's another funding source you know the good thing about this is the education that we do and finding out that we can't quite find the rock where the six hundred dollars is located yet but there's those other good things that we'll be able to use some of those funds for and then the the other step that we took was to talk with the village and the issue came up with speaking with the village trustees the the trustees have been doing a great job as you folks have is concentrating on energy of making it more of a priority for instance the village just put in has had great success with their EV charging they're putting more EV charging in they're thinking about these issues both at the trustee level and at the at the planning department level robin we've been speaking with robin pierce about various different ideas but anyway but on the six hundred dollars the idea was well if we were to split at three hundred three hundred between the the town and the village it doesn't make sense because it's almost like the the village residents are then paying twice so that's why we're that's why we're coming to you with this we also wanted to give you a a brief snapshot that in addition to the wonderful project that you heard about through green lantern and gmp you'll notice that there is solar going up on the the outlet mall that's something that we had a role in playing we are still working on the net metering agreement I think we're very close to having that finalized we're working on an RFP for an energy audit at memorial hall and there's a whole lot of other we're working on an electric vehicle show in concert with some of our other energy committees and different municipalities so there's a whole lot of good things going on but this is just a tool for planning purposes the dashboard that we really need so that we don't look down the road five years from now and say where have we made any progress at all we want metrics I notice I have a wonderful video of when Andy Watts was on the energy committee he he put a great piece of propaganda view well together to try to encourage energy usage but I bet you if I asked him he would not know how much solar since that time have we managed to get in Essex just because we don't have any any tracker and I'd love 10 years from now to know that we pinpointed what we needed at a particular point in time and have been able to track it since then 600 would cover that yes I I pressed on that as well and the folks at energy action network say that's that's what they need okay so this is uh not in the the budget but so but we could probably ask staff to find someplace where that might make sense I know you pointed out some capital line about energy efficiency or something but with the disclaimer that I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to understanding municipal budget so that I saw that line items that well maybe that's something but yeah and maybe it is maybe it's um I saw you're saying I'm just curious if we have fund balance because my impression was capital is more long-term projects that are pretty well defined whereas fund balance tends to be a little more fluid in short term I think I could find six hundred dollars in our budget somewhere that's appropriate for the activity or at least have one of the staff do it for me okay so any questions for uh for will on his request for the six hundred dollars to get this metric piece sorted out I also want to make it I think Andy if you gave Andy the opportunity he could figure that out how much is it but only if you're challenging them but I bet it's more than six hundred dollars worth yes it probably is okay so what's uh what's the board's pleasure Andy I move that the select board approve a funding request of up to six hundred dollars to combine Essex town outside the village and Essex Junction's data in the community energy dashboard second for that second I think I saw Irene so any further discussion about directing staff to find six hundred dollars in the budget somewhere to apply to this uh energy committee request okay hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed most past five zero thank you very much really all right well for you too thank you okay so um we're on to the next item which we agreed in the beginning to modify by bringing the minutes of April 16th 2018 up just that one set of minutes the the other two will remain where they are so we'll start uh everybody bring those up so we'll start as we always do I'll entertain a motion to approve yes Andy just a question though once we have a motion typically we don't take that's true that is true that's our policy specifically for this topic yeah do we want to decide ahead of time that we're going to allow public content comment or are we going to wait to have the motion until after comments yeah our practice is when a motion is on the table we don't accept so I guess we could uh go through the minutes propose our updates and then have a motion to approve those that we we may is that acceptable to the board is it okay okay that way we can not violate our our practice I don't think it's policy I think it's our practice to not allow public input when there's a motion on the table so that being said we'll just start requesting uh if there are any changes to page one page two Irene Irene and then Elaine online 85 I'm guessing it was minimum charge the mistromp subject was concerned with thank you Irene yes rate please rate okay got that's in yeah rate instead of wage okay anything else on two page three and four all right online 155 at the end Hilary Jones to my knowledge was and said this um a member of the ad hoc government the ad hoc committee on governance not the tga anything else on four hearing none we're going on to five all right big change here was handed out separately because there's a lot of words here suggesting online 132 that we strike the first one two three four five six words and we insert Ms. Renner pointed out that the firearms discharge ordinance is for the town outside the village only as the village has its own regulations she suggested combining both ordinance so so that the select board could legitimately decide on a townwide regulation being a townwide board Mr. Duggan predicted just question on that if we confirm that the town ordinance does not cover the village yes let's ask Elaine the town ordinance does cover the village in its entirety very specifically by boundaries the village has an identical ordinance that said and it refers to other types of weaponry like arrows and such the only information in the ordinance regarding actual firearms is that it says there shall be no firearms discharge in the village so there's basically no difference between the village and the town's firearms ordinance in respect to the boundary of the village but they are separate right there's what i heard is there are two ordinance there's two ordinances one in the village one essentially redundant though because the boundaries that are established in the town ordinance enclose the village right and the town ordinance excuse me the village ordinance addresses other kinds of things that you're allowed to fire and there's just one particular sentence that says there's no firearms discharged in the village so and you're saying that the town one so the town one right it draws lines it says from this point to this point to this point to this point and it draws the boundaries the village is fully contained within the boundaries of our of our of the town's ordinance firearms discharge ordinance but there's a second ordinance in the village that also includes other types of weaponry okay and does that make you want it well i'm just you know we get we get bent out of shape when we we make comments that may or may not be fact just i just want wanted to be clear i mean this is what she said it's true so the minutes should reflect what we're said i guess but i'm concerned that it's not necessarily accurate technically it could be said that the village has its own regulation however it's identical to the towns so it's not like it's different would you like to modify what's being proposed then to make that clear but but if we're putting in this is in quotes right we have to go verbatim well yeah i want to change your words i mean because it's right because this isn't quotes well remember minutes aren't transcripts and they're not supposed to be verbatim as a matter of fact we don't have to put any of this stuff in there except i guess i would say then let's not add this if it's it's not true it was said in the meeting it's true okay but it's it's i believe it's an incorrect statement because the the town ordinance does okay so you're saying you don't want you would rather not see this speak okay okay and i want to hear from everybody else too so we know how to go forward from here elaine do you want to also not include that then or in the spirit of accuracy okay mic okay all right then that's three so we're going to say to sam we're not going to add the addition so what about striking that it was confirmed for mrs. writer he's saying keep keep that in or okay okay anything else on five page six page seven page eight this is where the question arises as to what was really set on april second i was referring to the size of the margin of victory not the validity of the outcome of the election it would make no sense for me to discuss validity because what we were talking about was did max's campaigning for elaine make a difference it could have increased the vote totals and in fact put elaine over the top because the voting the victory margin was so small max's campaigning for elaine has no impact on validity so elaine's suggestion that i said something about validity which i protested when she tried to make that correction um is senseless it doesn't make sense i was referring to the margin of victory and i pushed back when that correction was first introduced i'm confused about what change you're proposing i'm proposing that we take out from line 369 where it says line 46 is that on your paper it's on your paper the right so 369 and it says line 46 add and i would just soon see all that come out but i would settle for having just the first sentence come out if miss abtek wants to mention that she talked about the recount that's fine she did talk about the recount but she talked about the recount in response to an issue that was something she came up with it wasn't related to what i said so we're saying line 369 sorry i think it's 368 okay so on 368 we're removing what section or being proposed to line 46 where it says add miss runner question the legitimacy of miss abtek's election to the select board okay so that sentence there that ends with select board period right and if you want to still add miss object responded you can but to me it's nonsensical not have that there okay so what's the i want to hear from the board about removing that line from line 46 where it says add miss runner question legitimacy of miss subject selection of the select to the select board i saw lane that'll come to you andy andy what you got i agree with deleting that line that sentence um i need some clarification on the reliance on verbatim exactly what was said versus intent because i've always understood that there is intent behind every statement and on april second it was the beginning of the meeting and it was the items to uh public to be heard section so it was not a thing that was on the agenda in any way and iran brought up the election and discussed the margin of my winning the election and discussed plurality and majority and her feelings about efforts that were made on my behalf by members of this board which were completely within reason and i'm trying to understand why that was even brought up and so my understanding of the intent of that issue being brought up was to question the legitimacy of my presence on the board and i know that's intent and it's my interpretation of it but it's very important to me that folks understand that in addition to the actual words that are used there's intent behind it and i felt at the time and i still feel today this is my fourth meeting with the select board where we've been having a conversation about whether i deserve to be on this board and so i would really like this issue to be settled because regardless of plurality or majority or whatever use words were used at whatever time at point in time in the agenda i'm here and i'm ready to work with everybody and i want an election legitimately and i want to recount legitimately we don't need to keep talking about it and i stand by my assessment in line 46 when i say miss renner questioned legitimacy of the subject's election to the select board because i truly believe that was the intent of those comments and you were elected by by the people so yes you are you are a full member of the select board uh andy do you had your hand up yeah i i thank you uh i'm i read for sending out the links to the minutes or the the video it was very helpful i did watch both the um the original discussion and the discussion about the minutes of the april second and april 16th meeting and it was it was my impression that the intent was more to direct a skewer in max's direction rather than that's how i felt it so um so i i'm and and in an order i think to in order to um i think lessen the conflict here that it would it would be very uh uh reasonable to remove that sentence to take it out there were some and also as long as i'm still have the floor and speaking i think that we need to have a discussion next time we have our review our policy on early conduct of business to allow some means of potentially tabling approval of minutes if there's question about what was said by any select board member um we could we yes we could do that but we don't have a policy to do that i mean typically i've seen before where when a question is made about something that someone said the individual who um whose words are asked to be changed in the minutes are given an opportunity to rebut that and i think in this case we may have rushed past that and um having reviewed the tape i i am fully supportive of taking this line out um what to you that was me yeah i know yeah before what i mean and what i thought the intent was from elaine right so what do you think miss renner's intent was because that could be what needs to be in there if it wasn't there before that makes sense to strike this if it wasn't in there before then that's what needs to be a minute correct right so right so this right so this this um um the what's what's written here in the april 16th minutes are suggested addition right to the april second minutes right so taking it out removes it from the original would would pretend in there accurately originally is that it's not addressed it's not addressed at all address at all got it got it so you're you're saying you i mean i'm i'm in favor of taking at least that one sentence out of it again it may it may be you know i'll defer it to lane whether she wants the second sentence removed too because at that point the the language doesn't make any sense because it's a response to the to the one before um that was also added language from the original minutes um and again also i think we should have a discussion when we talk about orderly conduct of business how we want to deal with questions of who said what in a previous meeting so that we don't run into this okay so i'm going to ask mike is i i wonder how we can proceed here you care about it being struck you want to keep it in i i'm going to defer because i i did not see the link so i did not see the film i i will say that the election was legitimate the recount was verified i would say let's get this language settled and then let's move on elaine is here she deserves to be here she won the election fair and square let's just get this done so it sounds like you're saying then delete that line as well yes i that that's that's three then we'll go with deleting it okay so yeah um i should i should i keep the second sentence do you want the second sentence mis-subcheck one election by a margin of 18 points with the verbal official recount as just a an information point in the minutes if i could get it to it there's no judgment there there's no intent it's just a fact perhaps i could just amend it a little to make it make more sense in light of the fact that the sentence prior to that is being removed um it just doesn't flow because i'm thinking i would say that um instead sam perhaps we could say mis-subcheck reminded the board and leave it at that okay moving on anything else on eight okay page nine and page 10 okay are there any comments from the public before we make a motion okay hearing none then then i will entertain a motion to approve the minutes of April 16 2018 with select board corrections so thank you i mean do i have a second second any further discussion of approving the April 16th 2018 minutes with select board corrections hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed okay motion passes five zero thank you all we're going to move on to our next item which is uh business item five e and that's acceptance of street management plan with us tonight we have the planner darin tribler tribler how do you say it's tribler darin welcome sorry i only come here every once in a while so you don't know me as well i know you from darin as darin i never say your last name so welcome over here i can take you up thanks again for having me for you again on a busy agenda day so i just wanted to present this street tree management plan that you've read i hope i know it's a long document 31 pages but there's a lot of good information in here and i will give you a brief overview and also for the benefit of the public first i want to start by saying why are we talking about well first of all actually i want to give a shout out to um margot record who is a former conservation and trails committee member who put a lot of work into this document she really did most of it and the vermont urban and community forestry program provided a lot of assistance she's moved to western mass which is why she had to lead the committee right yeah she was very passionate about this subject and has asked me to keep her informed of the progress um so i'll start by saying you know why are we talking about managing street trees um it's maybe something obvious but i want to sort of go over why it's even an issue one is that we can't live without trees um we wouldn't be on this earth without them trees can live without us but they've seemed to have a hard time living with us um in an urban environment it's difficult for a tree to survive on a street in an area with um lots of pavement lots of people walking around mowing lawns so uh it's important if we want to keep trees around to consider how we're managing them and how we're making their environment better or worse um so with that why do we want to keep trees around in an urban environment one is that improved air quality i'm actually not going to run through all of these but because they're all in the plan but um i just want to sort of put them up there happy to talk about any of these um some of them are a little more straightforward than others but um generally there's better air quality stormwater mitigation shading um better wildlife habitat and most importantly from a financial perspective higher property values and from a municipal perspective traffic calming better communities people who are happier in their communities if we are not managing trees properly in the urban environment there's some consequences some of them are sort of the opposite of what i've just showed you which is stormwater consequences increased sediment and phosphorus erosion which is a big issue here in vermont um we the town has an investment in the trees that are owned by the town we've put them in or we've taken ownership of them if we're not protecting that investment we're losing money on that essentially um dead trees or disease trees that are dropping limbs can cause power outages so we want to make sure that we're not contributing to costs that are passed on to rate payers um and also you know it's just nice to have trees around we don't want to lose that and you'll see some examples of what um losing trees can look like so with that um i also want to mention that emerald ash borer um is here don't panic we've got a plan and that's what we're presenting tonight emerald ash borer is and actually i just realized i forgot my box but i'm going to go grab that in a sec um emerald ash borer is a invasive beetle that um thank you very much just want to pass around um some touchy-peely things so you can get your hands on what emerald ash borer looks like and what it does to trees um nothing alive no it's all contained not going to get loose um but it is an invasive beetle that preys specifically on ash trees um it came from asia and was introduced in the midwest originally and has spread pretty much all over the east and the midwest it was only discovered in vermont in february so we've known it's coming for a while but um we're now starting to think about exactly how it's going to impact us this is an image of a street in Toledo Ohio before emerald ash borer came in and after it killed all the ash trees on the street that was climbed entirely with ash um it was often uh the sole landscaping tree to replace chestnut after chestnut blight took out all the chestnut trees so we're continuing to have this problem of pest sweeping through and taking out all of our trees and we're trying to fix that so as you can see it killed all these trees and then when all the trees are dead you have to take them down and this is what it looks like this is an example in boulder colorado where emerald ash borer came through they had to cut down up trees and now there's nothing left so we want to make sure this doesn't happen in Essex how are we going to do that first of all we're not going to cut down all the ash trees just because pest is coming through we want to don't be rash plan for our ash um this is credit to steve sinclair who's the retiring director of forest at forest parks and rec the conservation and trails committee has developed several street tree management goals for the town we'll go through them really quick one we want to establish dedicated funding for urban forest management because we can't do anything without the staff time and the resources to make that happen there's no point in planning if it's not going to get funded we want to continue to monitor the health of public trees we've already started doing that but we want to keep tabs on them we want to improve and maintain the health of the urban forest we have some ideas about how to do that and we want to prevent and mitigate the impacts of invasive pests like emerald ash borer but also others like um asian longhorn beetle there's an example in that box as well and we want to continue to educate the community about urban forestry and how to care for trees and the impacts of invasive pests so the conservation and trails committee and the conservation committee before it consolidated undertook a public tree inventory looking at all the trees within the public right of way along the streets not necessarily all the street trees some are on private land and we also captured the four neighborhood parks in the town outside the village the village did its own tree survey in 2014 that they incorporated into their street tree management plan so this will be a separate document but essentially the same similar to the firearms ordinance a lot of volunteers helped with this effort we surveyed a lot of streets we only did the urban areas we didn't do rural roads because there's just forest everywhere we didn't do forests themselves like indian brook or saxon hill or matthew town forest because those are managers forest management under forest management plans not street tree management plan but we had a lot of really good citizen participation in this in terms of the results we saw that overall there is a relatively good diversity of species in the town's street trees or publicly owned trees however there are a few dominant species and sorry this isn't showing up very well but the dark blue there is green ash the red is red oak and the green light green there is norway maple which is actually an invasive tree so we want to not plant any more of those and ideally replace them as soon as possible and there are a few others but we want to try and encourage no more than 10 of one species no more than 20 of one genus and 30 of one family of trees that's sort of a good rule of thumb to go by it depends on the site it depends on the species that are available but basically that'll give you the best resilience of an urban forest in terms of one past taking out all the species all of one species that is we also looked at the health of these trees that were inventoryed most of them weren't most of them were in good health but there were a few that need some attention and some that are on their way out we want to try and replace those ones that are on the way out not lose them entirely and we want to try and fix and help the ones that are in fair condition in terms of the size which is sort of a proxy for age and this is specifically diameter most of them are in the six to 12 inch diameter category so you know roughly the size of a person and their test which means that most of them were planted about 30 give or take years ago right around when a lot of the subdivisions were designed and built so there's going to be a bit of a baby boomer effect with trees as well as people in Essex we want to try and start replacing those middle-aged trees with younger trees and make sure that the older trees stay as healthy and long-lived as possible a lot of this all this data is actually available online if you want to look at it and the public can look at it too on the agency of natural resources atlas you can see the town as well as the village has their data up here the white trees in the village are new planning sites i won't go into detail about all this but just wanted to point out that it's up there and it contains a lot of really useful information which i realize now we can't see on the projector but there's information on the diameter of the species any issues that it's facing as well as sometimes a photo so you can see your neighborhood trees so with all that information we looked at it and said okay we know that these invasions are coming we know that we're going to have to manage even trees that aren't susceptible to pests what is that going to cost so just looking at let's say emerald ash borer sweeps through what would it cost for us to remove those trees that are affected or and or replace them and or treat them and try to keep them alive there's several options when it comes to emerald ash borer so we actually did the math and said here's what it would cost to take them out before emerald ash borer comes through that's proactive removal would be about $50,000 for all of the publicly owned trees in the town outside the village that's just removal it doesn't include cost of replanting reactive removal after an ash has been killed by emerald ash borer is more expensive up to two and a half times more because you have to deal with rotting limbs and safety issues as well as what do you do with the wood that is now infested and can't be transported or dispose of the way regular clean wood could be so if we are going to try and remove any trees that could be susceptible to EAP we would advocate for proactive removal not necessarily before emerald ash borer arrives in town but certainly before any trees are dead and gone so it's not a question of if it's just when it's really when naturally emerald ash borer only would travel maybe a mile not even a small amount per year a small distance per year the problem is people are driving on roads and sometimes carrying firewood or even just carrying the pest on a truck or whatever there's lots of other vectors but that's how it ended up in Vermont so quickly within 10 years of its discovery in the U.S. There are other options than just taking out ash trees and we do hope that some of them will actually develop resilience to emerald ash borer the other thing I'll mention is that trees that are healthy generally do better against fighting pests the ones that are killed are usually already having some sort of health issue whether it's not enough water or not enough certain nutrients so the problem with urban trees is they're generally susceptible to a lot of those issues. So there are options for keeping trees in place even if they are infested by emerald ash borer it's basically medicine and it's pesticides insecticides which no one really likes to use but if there are particular trees say in the Ethan Allen prairie grounds or a park that we want to preserve while we replace them and let another tree grow to maturity that is an option some of the options for insecticides are actually way cheaper than removal and replacements and they actually have been shown to give those trees longevity over at least 10 years but it is still a chemical that we're injecting into the tree and that comes with some potential consequences that we can discuss again this doesn't these cost estimates don't include labor for actually putting in insecticide or replanting or anything. We also looked at Asian Longhorn Beal which is another potential pest that could come it's not here yet but it affects a wide variety of species ash maple elm birch lots of their hardwoods so the vulnerability is a lot higher in terms of the number of trees that could be affected. Same cost for proactive versus reactive removal insecticide treatment is a lot easier and cheaper for ALB and it's been proven successful so that is an option but just wanted to lay these costs out there so that we know going into this what we might be looking at and that we're not facing a $400,000 tree care bill in one year or three years. So in terms of next steps we want to address the unhealthy trees the low hanging fruit no pun intended tree to remove those so that they are not susceptible to these pests coming in we want to plan logistically and financially for emerald ash borer as well as other invasive pests we want to consider preemptive replacement of some trees in areas with low diversity so that they are not completely wiped out you know like those trees and or like that street in Toledo and identify sites for new plantings increase the urban canopy put as much out there as possible that could be resilient to any pest and consider sorry I'm gonna jump back consider climate change in that as well because some of the trees that we're planning today that are alive today may not survive in a climate changed world and update the landscaping standards for development through the planning commission we've can already I already have some ideas for how to do that but that may require some changes to the zoning regulations to make sure that new development meets these same standards that were applying to our town-owned trees and then continue outreach to landowners about this issue invasive pest property care etc so I've talked for a little bit I'd like to answer your questions of course we try um so there is not a budget for urban forestry at the moment not exactly there is a budget for maintaining the current trees that we have it's called the conservation fund which I believe is now been not the conservation reserve fund but it's been renamed the tree care fund or sorry Dennis I'm calling on you in the town right away this year we're ahead of the game we have a touch that account very much but that's about the dollar value this year that's there and it usually gets burned up that way again no pun intended or we just getting information today and we're going to have a plan down the road uh there's two it's a two-step process one is to accept it so we say we accept it it's not adopting it yet and what we might want to ask for before we adopt it say show us what how we would handle this in our budget and what what the potential cost would be so we might want to make sure we see that before we get to the adoption phase but today it's really here's the report um a lot of good stuff in it and we're looking to adopt it and then that work can go on great just add to that maxis laid out the adoption process once it's adopted I never want to have a report that just sits on a shelf but it'll be up to the board to review each year and make those budget choices as to how much money is available and where it should be allocated and does it meet this plan or not so this is really more of a planning document saying we'd like to adopt this as policy so that we can go forward moving along with how do we budget for this and the conservation and trails committee would be involved with that hopefully in terms of coming up with numbers and working with the select board on how to make that happen and what's needed thank you anybody else uh eddie yeah I happen to live on one of the streets that has 15 percent ash um and I have to confess for four there's four trees on my property on my my uh tree lawn I guess I would call it that's what I used to call it when I was a kid but uh I have to confess I don't know if any of them are ash but um you can find out by going on the uh yeah that's gotta look or I can go look at the tree and get up my identify my tree identifying guide but uh I I guess the question I'm going to ask is that a conflict of interest for me if trees get replaced on my just want to put that out there that I'm on one of those streets that's likely going to need some attention we all benefit to the protecting the trees right and Evan well thank you for bringing that up we all live on a street somewhere and by having a plan it's sort of no pun intended it inoculates you from you know what happens necessarily on your street when we tell people oh so they they removed two trees from trustee wadzah street well that's interesting except we removed three trees from this street that street and that street because it's a matter of our plan and you're actually not involved with which trees we remove and which trees we keep those are actually done by professionals and our whole goal as Darren had mentioned and is we're stewards of the ecology but we also want to make sure that we don't devastate a block all at once which is you know coming from Chicago and the Ravenswood neighborhood which was devastated by the Dutch Elm disease only to be replanted by ash trees and now they're learning even in the city of Chicago that species diversification is really the way to go and then through our development plan we want to make sure that we don't have developers just planting cheap the cheapest tree that's available in the market at the time we want them to actually have diversity and Darren and I were even talking about it um as part of this plan you know you could have a beautiful stretch a street and you're going to pick one of those trees that's just going to have to be removed and start planting a sapling now so five six seven years from now that tree is starting to get to a place where it's not a twig and it's prominent and it's neighbor which was kept alive for seven years maybe got treated a few more times it's now got to go and you have not deforested that block in that tree and so it's not really about where you live i'll appreciate it it's about making sure the town um is protected and is looking at its trees as an asset yeah thanks for having me um that is one of the suggestions in the plan is to do that piecemeal uh Dennis I just want to comment on thank you Mike Dennis could you come forward a little further it depends upon where the board wants to go and and I don't want to take up a lot of time but in the operating budget what we get July 1st we have to spend by June 30th or it goes into the general fund if a councilor set up in the capital account then you can put those funds away a little bit at a time and incrementally save up for that situation where all of a sudden you do have to spend the 30 or 40 thousand dollars and you've got if you don't have it all you at least have a piece of it and so there's a certain benefit I've always thought of putting these kinds of funds into some form of capital program that's dedicated for that use knowing that that use is coming it's kind of like putting the money away to replace replace the roof um on Memorial Hall 25 thousand dollars a year after four years you've got the hundred thousand you do the work uh again you don't know when this is coming but you know it is coming so it's prudent to maybe put those funds into that type of a fund as opposed to an operating fund that every year you'd have to say well we didn't spend it so let's take action to put it into the fund it's it's just a way to meet a better plan for the future if you can do that when you know that you're going to have to spend that large amount that's correct yeah save along the way sure I will add that there's a lot of actually grant funding available for planting new trees there's not a lot available for treating trees with issues like emerald ash borer or other diseases so if we focus on the treatment and the management and then maybe we can leverage other funding for planning replacing those trees that might be a good way to go we also want to do this in a we'll call it a staff friendly timeframe I mean when you do things a couple of trees a year or something manageable we're able to do that in our schedules if you put it off and put it off and put it off then staff is not able to take down a hundred trees in a season and then we end up having to go out to contractors and doing other things and we'd probably be going out for contractors when everybody else is going out for contractors and therefore pay a higher price so we want to also consider how we can get this done in a logical manner and in a timely manner be proactive because you know it's coming right but I also like Dennis's idea of the the fund the money that we don't spend in certain areas sure of course some should go back to the general fund for other allocations year over year but when you do have these expenses similar to a rough or similar to a fire truck it's not like this truck's not going to age it's the expense you're going to have you're going to have it someday so I think this select board has been proactive in keeping those monies dedicated for the use they were intended thank you any other questions or comments I would love them I wanted the select board accept the street treatment plan to be adopted by future meeting thank you Irene do I have a second thank you Mike any further discussion on accepting the draft tree tree street tree management plan hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed okay most pass 5-0 excellent work thank you very much thank you I do want to add one quick thing about this location and representation issue one of the suggestions is to do a rural area survey so that's next on the to-do list so to look at those rural roads not just the urban areas and try to get a sense of what the composition of those areas is even though it may be private land and private trees and I apologize I stepped out for part of your discussion this having a tree management plan is also one of the prerequisites for Tree City USA if I'm not mistaken or something like that to have a dedicated person in charge of doing tree management so we have a tree warden I'm not sure if there's any funding that goes along with that but there is a requirement to do I think two dollars per capita of money towards street tree management urban tree management in order to get that tree city USA recognition the village has it they'd be a great resource to check in with about how they did that and to model after that great designation that they got but as we as we look at this and being stewards of our ecology you know we do a lot of work in storm water we do a lot of work in wastewater treatment we do a lot of work in trails and and things of that nature and trees are a big part of who we are and so I think that you know having maybe the idea of tree city USA designation we should as part of our planning take a look at what that is entailed yeah apart from the funding we're pretty much already there and we could apply if we had that funding and it's a good thing to also do some outreach great thanks again for the great work there okay moving right along we're going to go to 5g that's adoption of water and sewer rates for fiscal year ending 2019 so we've we've had our discussion with the water and sewer rate we've done the public hearing yes we then just hadn't put it on the agenda to adopt it here we are today to do just that so is there anything you want to say before we uh no all right excellent thank you Dennis okay so uh what's the worst pleasure any questions for Dennis I think we've been through this a lot so maybe everybody let's pay 69 of the uh of the packet Andy I move that the select board adopt the following changes to the water sewer rate structure for fiscal year ending 19 FY19 water rates and fees number one increase the water rate from five dollars and 26 cents per thousand gallons to five dollars and 42 cents per thousand gallons to maintain the water initiation fee at one thousand dollars base fee per connection plus five dollars and 73 cents per gallon per day is that right okay of capacity three increase the water minimum charge per year from 165 dollars to 170 dollars for bill water users four times per year as soon as the system of billing can be effectively put into operation sewer rates and fees number one increase the sewer operating fee from eight dollars and 98 cents per thousand gallons to nine dollars and 27 cents per thousand gallons to maintain the sewer initiation fee of one thousand dollar base fee per connection plus 10 and 30 cents per gallon per day of capacity three bill sewer users four times per year as soon as the system of billing can be effectively put into operation the rate change is effective upon passage with all water sewer usage billing applied with the billing period starting after the spring 2018 billings that's a mouthful thank you i have a second Mike any further discussion about adopting the water and sewer rates as just mentioned hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed okay most pass five zero thank you i'll put it on the web page um there's a document that we do every year and we also provided the community development town clerk's office library just some flyer so people know what's what's happening with regard to the rate so that will happen very good okay Dennis now that you're here um we're going to go into item business item five eights and that's approval of contract for traffic signal maintenance let's be um it's light so i don't want to go into a whole lot of detail but um for a period of time we had a company that did a lot of our signal maintenance for us basically throughout chitenden county that company went out of business person retired and the business went with him um we scrambled for a while for a number of years we the state agreed to pitch in and help us on any maintenance that had to be done emergency stuff they wouldn't touch anything that was new where we had to actually change over a signal installation um what happened was their principal the state does not have any have many people to do this um what they had is their principal person who has worked a lot with our signals in the town and is really familiar with them retired um and went to work for uh east coast signal east coast signal is one of the premier signal companies in new england um they're up here doing all the signals along loop 15 all the transfer over and getting those in shape um what we have recommended doing and listed in the memo our signals we recommended um similarly for the village and i'm going to be going to a meeting tomorrow night to recommend that they do a similar type of action but that we contract with them for um i believe i put in here a three-year period um which the town attorney has looked at we went back and forth with east coast signal over insurance um their format is a little different than ours we finally got that settled and with some minor issues but um we did not settle on a specific price for the for it we've got their price sheet for showing up and doing work uh with a lift uh if they work in the cabinet a lot of the stuff we can do ourselves and we do do ourselves um i think the signals on um our two susie wilson road ones short of root 15 have kicked out due to rainstorms over the last couple of months probably three or four times it's a simple switch over and our guys go down open the box to the switch over there's no outside cost the problem is when you start to get into load centers or you start to get into problems with the actual signal heads if the wind takes one and blows it off we don't have the equipment to get up there in middle traffic to do it um steve and the business his headquarter out of water barrier as well as new hampshire he has the truck she has the equipment and so what we're trying to do is is do two things sign an agreement with them that will provide if we have an incident or a need they will show up to fulfill that need to repair and maintain the system as we need it we also want them because of steve's knowledge um and before he does a real full time long-term retirement to go through all our signals and look at our cabinets look at our signals um the stuff that they're replacing on route 15 for the state is better than the stuff that's in our signals right now in terms of controllers cabinets signal heads you name it we'd very much like to approach and i know erin and i have talked about working with the state it's a little difficult to have them hand over that stuff but if they decide that they're going to market that it might be worthwhile to redo some of our signal installations with that equipment since it's a newer version and it would be a lot less expensive than doing it new but we want we want east coast signals and steve to go through our entire system identify what's needed um there's one particular installation we've had some complaints on that i've got a i want him to look at some solutions for um and then if we do design or make changes we would have a design engineer design the changes that's a totally separate arrangement we would then bid that out as we would normally do any project and if east coast wants to bid on it that's fine but they're more of a resource for emergencies and for us to identify what are our future needs for um our signals we've got seven locations at some places there's multiple heads the village has eight um and rather than combine them into one contract which gets a little funky now since we've got one financial department but still running two sets of books it's easier to run two separate contracts one for the village one for the town so the what we're requesting um from the board is permission to enter into um a signal maintenance agreement with them for a fixed period of time um we'll see how it goes and see if it's it provides that backup that we don't have now in terms of equipment and um you know if the signals go out on susie wilson road in the middle of the winter and it's a major issue and then we're not equipped to handle we need somebody who's technically competent to come in and do the repairs and that's what this provides for us. Is beach rands doing this work and and and covering the cost or no they were billing us they were we were we were being billed for and we've had you know probably half a dozen bills over the last couple years that they've done um but steve was local he was easy to get a contact with um it was a kind of an informal agreement that they had agreed to but when they lost their principal signal guy and that's the point where we got a notified from the district highway office basically saying we just can't do it anymore we don't have the people we don't have the experience you're kind of on your own. So in the the village uh you're going to talk to them tomorrow yes and they're going to probably have to do something like like this it's a similar contract with the names changed. So the is that go into their highway budget? There is a um there is a online item in their highway budget for signal maintenance. I don't have it in front of me right now I did I did look up ours um I was curious I just got the last month's financials um our traffic control devices um are about 34 000 dollars a year in the budget um so far this year we spent 18 000 for repairs and all the other kind of stuff that goes with it so we've got about 14 000 so this year um given two months left unless we get a northeaster that comes through that takes all our our signal heads down we're probably going to be um able to afford that one time survey out of the funds that we already have so we're not going to have to have extra funds to do that. But getting back to the village if it goes into the their highway budget then that's covered then because it gets rolled into the town that's correct general uh or the operating budget that's correct I'd like because it seems like that's where it belongs then in the highway budget so that it can be uh townwide you know paid by the town funds. It is it's what's complicating it now is the two financial systems and who pays for what so technically um it ultimately should probably come out of one account to cover everything but with the current two sets of books you need two bills it makes it easier to have two contracts and two bills but in the end the town's paying for both the town and the village if the charge for this for the village is in their highway budget yes it all it's all it's it's it's the same as if it was in one budget it's just easy but but it's just easier to split it this way I just want to make sure it wasn't the town or the village paying you know separately out of their village funds no no it's it's in highway it's actually in their highway budget that comes into our budget as well yeah any other questions for Dennis on this any yeah in the uh second to last paragraph just above the recommendation that the paragraph starts the contract is to a degree open ended at this point and you said a few minutes ago that you would have a term to it is that I have to go back and it's been a little awesome to look at the contract but the contract um let me just see what we put in there if we if we change that or not we didn't we we left it open ended on cost but we did not we changed it so it was yeah the term of this agreement shall be three years from the effective date renewable upon agreement of the owner and contractor and for a length of time agreeable to both the owner and the contractor so it's not open and it's it's open ended with regard to there's no dollars in this contract that says they're going to do it for $25 or $100 we have attached to the contract their fee schedule so every time they come out we know what that fee is going to be so we can that's a control in place um but there's no maximum limit that says we're going to limit your expenditures to $15,000 or anything like that that's what I meant by being open so the open ended is not from a time scale the time scale is fixed for three years but it's open ended with regard to cost okay and then we'll have to manage those costs within the budget that we have that's the name of the game okay other questions okay what's the voice pleasure on this sure that'll be great I move that the select board approve the signing of a traffic signal maintenance agreement between the town of Essex and the east coast signal thank you Mike is there a second second any further discussion about approving the uh the signing of a traffic signal maintenance agreement between the town of Essex and east coast signal none all those in favor signify was saying aye aye post most passes five zero thank you Dennis thank you very much appreciate it good night okay uh we're going to move on to item five aye which are minutes and we're going to um have a motion to approve the march 24th 2018 select board minutes with select board corrections thank you Irene all right let's do I have a second second that's close okay uh let's start on page one page two and three okay so Elaine then we'll come to you Irene I would like to ask a question about paragraphs starting line 130 okay there's some factual information that is incorrect and so perhaps the conversation we had earlier regarding wording versus accuracy um line 131 the village charter was put together in 1893 when the village withdrew from the town the village has never withdrawn from the town uh the village created a separate district within the town to tax itself for services that town residents didn't need at the time so so 1893 date is okay no the village never withdrew from the town right uh the date correct the date's fine yeah the village charters put together in 1893 period period okay and then strike uh when the village withdrew from the town correct okay does that make sense everyone that makes much more sense and um same stop okay line 133 that the village has different ordinances such as a gun ordinance we just discussed this earlier in this meeting the village's gun ordinance is not different from the town's ordinance so I would say strike that last phrase as well such as a gun ordinance okay because that's not correct everybody okay with that it includes a firearms provision they're okay we strike that such as a gun ordinance okay all right anything else that was it okay uh yeah the end of line 120 mr egan on the tape um talked about equal representation so i'd like to add and that equal representation would be the best remedy period okay all right uh that was page three page four and five and six seven iron line fourth like line three fourteen uh mr tyler was talking about the old cost of equalization so if we could just put a period after increases and then delete the rest of the line I think it's accurate everyone okay with that I'm sorry I missed it a period at the end of increases at the middle of line three oh yes yes and then delete the rest because that was the historic folk work thing you're saying okay okay all right anything else on seven eight all right line three thirty eight please where it says I was hearing from the audience it was I was hearing from my peers and um at the end of the line I'd like to add a comma top down so they're working on a total top down margin and then in three thirty nine insert in the middle of that line between r and not aiming we are not aiming what line was that sorry we'll skip that we'll skip that it doesn't make sense okay thanks all right anything else on eight yes one more at the end okay the end of the line three seventy three he feels no one's voice should be muzzled that's what he said that wasn't captured is anybody feel that needs to be added everybody okay with adding that yeah okay all right page nine and that's it okay all those uh Elaine I just would like to just take the time to review the tape again and to re-edit these minutes it was a lot of work and I really appreciate you that you did that yeah we have quite a staff so we're very fortunate so thank you Greg okay uh all those in favor of the March 24th 2018 select board minutes with corrections signify by saying aye aye opposed the most best five zero and then we're going to jump to April 25th 2018 um do I have motion to approve that with select board corrections thank you Irene do I have a second second all right let's move on to page one okay page two there it is okay uh 65 the disparity needs to be addressed not has not been addressed and then on 66 a period after signatures because max asked the petition would be put on a future urgent I didn't uh down on 193 in the middle it says one one second so Greg are you getting all that uh Sam hasn't Sam's not seven part Sam's notes oh okay very good okay 93 um additionally in the middle if anyone from the village should be inserted um 94 this is the hiccup they faced past tense comma after future in that sentence in the middle those are ones that we don't not supposed to talk about right okay and the 95 um has not not been addressed but has not passed the correction yet so I got a I got a question the statement that if anyone had been interested in running from the village had been interested in running for that seat they could have who handled the petitions for that vote do we know 93 93 so the question the question is that there's an assertion that because the vote for the seat on this on the um school board that was intended to represent town outside the village was warned to the entire town there's an assertion that someone from the village could have run for that seat I just have a question about how the the petition to get on the ballot was handled who handled that petition and what how was it how was that warned was there some other um mechanism that would have prevented a village resident from getting on the ballot for a town outside the village seat left to check with the clerk I believe that the clerk handled the petitions but I'm not positive and I believe that if a person inside the village had run that they would have been able to based on the way this was you think that but I thought that's what I said so our yeah I know this is what you said but I'm just trying I'm just I'm sorry I'm trying to understand the the the sequence of events because we warned the vote after don't we warn the vote after the petitions are already in so did the discussion about how to handle the petition occur before the petitions were made available that's where I'm just trying to understand if there's some more to this than just just the our clerk began working with the schools and I want to say in january but it could be wrong on that to figure out the process for this I recognize you might have the not not may not have the answer on the top of your head but I just want to I just want to try to make it clear clear up that question as to whether indeed someone I didn't realize they could have there could have been a right and a massive right in candidate you know campaign and somebody could have potentially got the name on in theory but I'm wondering how the petition to get on the ballot was handled not having been here when that occurred I'm not sure minutes are supposed to correct the actual deficiency well no yeah I know I know that but there but there's there's a yeah sorry go ahead I didn't drop did you but we do need to sit down with the school district as part of this as to go over the process that's going to have to occur so things like this are understood in advance it was my first meeting February in February or the first thing in March and there was confusion going on we weren't even clear why the town was warning this election in the first place and we were told well there's a mix-up in the law we need you to do it staff kept asking questions including going to the secretary of state that was my first meeting secretary of state calling their attorney having these discussions it is what it was but those those purse the person that was on the ballot had to have been done before right because it was allowed that's the right that's the piece of the story I'm looking looking for the answer to is when was that noticed when was it when did anybody notice but was there was that were there other safeguards or other did other did how did it happen I mean I said to say safeguards might might imply that somebody thought about it but but you know could could have somebody actually gotten on the ballot from the from the village that's the question I'm trying to get an answer to because it's stated here as a fact that they could have I don't talk about the ballot I just said running for the seat so I think you're right in condition is key and I'll take that I'm new here but I think for another night when it's not 10 o'clock you you may want to consider having a discussion about what your minutes are and what they should be and I will be happy to send you out a copy of the state statutes of the minimums I think you may want to admit slightly more than the minimums but verbatim with intent and other things are leading you to a much different path than I think what is that is really necessary to the public's business so why don't we do that why don't we have that on a future agenda sometime when it's available we could talk about how we want to do minutes going forward because they but I still would like the answer to the question of how the petition was handled because thank you okay anything else on two page three I mean there's a couple references to a Ms Fox here on 104 and 106 into 107 and I believe it's Ms Stein from what I saw on the tape so I just wanted to bring that up there was a Mr Fox but it was not he was speaking at that point saying those things so what that's worth so you're saying instead of Fox but Ms Stein okay because you verified that you said okay everybody good with that all right you have something else sorry oh yeah at the end of line 121 it's not that I didn't think they'd see a vote I don't pay attention to the legislature obviously and representative Dillon John Matista via an email didn't think they would see a vote on the language before the end of the session I was referencing an email in that whole so what's the change that you're asking I'm confused at the end of 121 it says so she yes and I want to put in representative Dillon John Matista via an email didn't think they would see the information came from the horse's mouth because he's the one who's all over this not me that's quoting an email from him page four five I mean on 199 I was asking about sort of the range of the search for the new assessor so I think that's important about the range of yeah yeah I asked if if we were going to go with an in-house search or it was going to be nationwide and and Evan said he hadn't even he was still crying I remember Evan saying he's still crying so I was asking about the range of the search pay anything else on five six seven end of 314 please instead of inside and it's only the town highway department is paving only outside the village I believe but has no town outside the village we're inserting that word or appropriately managing such policies not village policies does everybody understand what that changes you repeat it please with the line 14 she gave an example of how the highway department the town highway department is paving only outside the village but has no town outside the village board appropriately managing such policies we're not managing it properly we have no board of outside the village residents managing the outside the village paving we have a select board that manages it that's what I said that's what she said I'm seeing a lot of heads shaking no does that mean you don't want to have it changed or I think we're beating a death force but it's not as extensive okay so we'll let it slide uh page eight nine Irene on eight this is a repeat comment so I don't know what happened with us but um at line 259 to 260 mr brown starts mr brown states that it's great to hear best way versus village way or townway and that gets repeated here so I just want to take it out here I don't think that's appropriate to have that I mean we have so few minutes um we don't need to repeat this stuff mr brown so 369 through yeah I would just say mr brown felt the discussion blah blah blah oh yes before sam snuck out she did point that out to me and say that um she felt that's what was said and that she would um employ you to keep it in there in both places you mean I thought it was supposed to be a summary of what was said is it see where's the first one 259 259 it says mr brown state it was great 69 or the same and we always talk about how the minutes are just a summary and to repeat someone's statement basically verbatim twice to me seems like we're spending a lot of ink at the same time we're expecting to say in every opportunity that there's town outside the village town inside the village I think until we have a clear policy on exactly what we're supposed to do with minutes we should leave mr brown's comments since because I suspect he would be unhappy if they were taken out he has a village version of this does he not to correct himself we haven't gotten to them yet everybody okay with tomorrow night on your agenda I believe everybody okay with leaving it in yes got that great okay page nine all right so I have a change in this again is on the paper I hand it out okay what is it online 413 we're striking on the board is problematic so that working groups mean be needed in its formative period and we're talking about instead the at large representation should expand with a select board becoming a 10 member townwide board comprised of five village and five towns and village residents who could also meet separately and legislate by districts for as long as needed she suggested taking care to use words other than town which has multiple meanings in different contexts such as townwide town outside the village etc oh that's a lot of detail that we're trying to it is not do or capture in minutes we're going to have that discussion but that I'm not going to support that what's the board's what's the board's pleasure on that one I'm asking a question to the to the board to the other members do you want to ask for more details so that's what you know I know we we we allowed that I mean we need to move this discussion about minutes up kind of soon yeah like next meeting yeah I would say in this particular case because this is a board member by board member discussion about what they specifically wanted the end goal that this change should stand because this is we were invited in that meeting to be very specific of what we wanted okay so I think this is the board okay with that everybody okay okay then let let it stand hiring line 114 she also wanted insert to work with the e 114 14 14 sorry 414 um after forming a period she also wanted insert to work with the ewsdb to find a different date for the school and town and village votes because that's what it doesn't make sense that I I don't have any jurisdiction over the school board vote I want us to work with them and I said our friends on the school board um we want to work with them to make sure that we can get all the votes on one date everybody okay with that I think the sentence has written implies that you have to work with the school to move the school vote I don't I don't care Elaine okay so then we'll let it stand uh me we'll put the change in sorry page 10 474 uh insert in the middle she also wanted insert equal town inside the village and outside the village representation anything else on 10 11 12 okay all those in favor of the April 2015 2018 select board minutes with correction signify by saying hi hi hi all right pass this Bible that was painful okay we're moving on to consent items um we have a second second thank you all right any comments okay um yeah uh I saw the lane first and then I'll come back to you Andy sorry we're on consent we're on consent yeah I just I just usually there's a huge stack of check warrants here oh be right back good one oh there'll be even bigger one next time okay is that what you your comment was yes okay Andy you you have some of the reading file okay anyone have anything on the consent and again I want to just say thank you to the staff for modifying agenda to have uh consent and reading file things separated I'm sorry we didn't have it for one of us human services and we have the thousand page one uh Elaine but so thank you uh I like um I like uh continuous improvement like that that's great okay so um all those in favor of the consent well any further discussion of consent that's another great idea from the village trustees right don't they have a reading file section that we didn't yes we do so thank you trustees okay we like taking the best way that's what all that alignment so okay all those keeps you from having to read a thousand pages that you didn't have to that would be all those in favor of the consent agendas or items I guess signify by saying aye I move to adjourn we're going to move on to reading file yeah it's made of the motion to withdraw it go ahead okay Andy had a question about the reading file and then I have a question yeah yeah I wasn't going to adjourn until we took care of the agenda so so how do we sorry but I have to ask how do we treat the reading file is it just comments we don't have to have there's no motion associated with it or anything um as I understand it the reading file is uh things that are for information or may come onto a future agenda you are certainly welcome to ask questions that would help staff to have them in advance of any future meeting you can also email us a question I did email the questions to you but but I was surprised I didn't get any uh it depends on when they were emailed they were they're emailed at nine o'clock Saturday morning but yeah but anyway it doesn't matter it's not that important not that important really isn't um the uh item b7b there's a typo in there that says there's a references select board meetings of November 4th 2018 that's in the future yeah that was 2013 that was typo for 2013 right sorry yeah yeah the other thing the next thing is the the hearing in Montpelier the the department of liquor control can we get some sort of discussion or information about jurisdiction you know why are there you know we we we're going to have our own hearing they have a hearing our attorney is looking into the jurisdiction that the town has and for that we might want to wait till we hear until after the state has their hearing and their results right so because it may just be moved for us to do anything beyond that so I would propose it yeah yes we are we are waiting to see what the state does we got conflicting information as to what our authority was and we were actually quite wise to wait uh because the information we got might have gotten us into a lot of hot water so we actually uh so we're checking in but it's very likely that we only have the powers that are in the town's ordinance which is quite limited to what you can do so it is appropriate to wait to see what the state does and we will be back to you all right then the last thing is i thank you for reaching out to aunt dot's place and the prevent child abuse and also for accepting at least at this point the jericho food shelves application as well i know we'll have the discussion in june sure we'd like to have as many applicants as possible so that the money that is being provided by the town uh taxpayers is is put to good use and on that note if uh you have something that you need evan to do um and put you know you know the staff is probably going to do it still needs to go to evan and don't copy any of the other staff it needs to be really clear then evan's going to be the cop to to direct traffic to who it needs to go to so that there's no confusion on the staff's heart as to what they're supposed to be doing evan will control okay thank you you confess i've been copying greg is that that's fine and that's why i'm saying others have been doing it too okay you said you just said evan so that's to me as there's the top line and and a lot of times you know i will ask greg to do it but i want to be able to send it to him i'd prefer you just send it to me okay so i'll start so then yeah i'll see see him just just looking for clarity and only evan not greg but but understand that i'm probably at least a full day behind in emails so if it's something i would venture to say if it's something for the agenda which if you're sending it on a sunday or a monday we're not paying him to work weekends too you know so we're going to have to work that out if it's for the agenda because again i'm trying to you know do a bunch of things maybe um so one of the things that i have mentioned is if you do send an email you might want to send me a text to let me know there's an email i do text and even if it's just a simple hey could you i sent you an email please jack because of time i'll get that and i just try not to do emails on sundays so i want to be real make sure it's clear any request for whatever just having no copy of right in the past we'd been asked to include greggs yes that's why i wanted to thank you i know that thanks for that change ilay ask everyone's indulgence indulgence for one more minute regarding the reading file i believe in the a few meetings ago i had asked if trustee minutes could be included in the reading packet and so i'd appreciate it if that could happen and if you're looking for examples of minutes that would be a suitable happy medium between detail and summary the merianne reyerden is the secretary for the board of trustees and her minutes are satisfactory i think they meet a medium that you might be interested in seeing just may use that as an example when we have an example exactly the other thing i just wanted to suggest was um the reading file idea is awesome and i'm really glad we have it now um another opportunity that we could use is for example on the trustees we do the reading file after the consent agenda and it's an opportunity we also have trustee concerns and questions it's an opportunity at that time for board members to have a conversation rather than possibly having board members take part in the public to be heard portion which really belongs to the public and that's there you know we're not the public when we're sitting at this table so perhaps it might not be a bad idea to have a separate place where the public gets to speak first because they're here and they're watching and they're talking about stuff that's not on the agenda and then later on after all the other business is done that's when the select board members can chat about you know i went to this meeting or i had a constituent call me or i have a question about something it's just something to consider in changing the way we um bring up off-the-cuff topics part of our alignment work that's okay anything else on reading file and i'm i'm not in favor of adding uh other organ other entities minutes to our agenda we used to have the planning commissions on there we never did anything with them because it might be a little different because of the work we're we're you know doing with the village at this point i i think we all know where to go find them on the website on their website and we'll go look at them for interested in them it'll be less work for staff to have to add those to adding just to the sake of making details for us to find so everybody uh what's the thought okay okay so now we're done to know what we can adjourn do i have a motion i would move to adjourn thank you harian do i have a second hey good mic all those in favor of adjourning signify by saying aye hi okay good thing