 can see so let's move on to business item 5a consider adoption of resolution and appreciation of Susan McNamara hill right sure just a quick overview here as you may have heard the town of Essex as village of Essex Junction have separated as part of that we've been drawing certain services apart separating some of the town departments the clerk's office is one of the ones that is going to be split our shared service is going to be ending on June 30th Susan McNamara hill has been the town clerk for the past several years she's dedicated decades to the community she's worked with the village of Essex Junction she's going to be going back to the city of Essex Junction so there is a resolution of appreciation for her in the packet thanks Greg before I make the motion does the resolution need to be read we typically do read it directly the clerk typically reads it into the record yes I'm good with that uh so resolution and appreciation of Susan McNamara hill whereas Susan McNamara hill began training for the town clerk and treasurer position in 2016 and was officially appointed for the town of Essex in January 2017 and whereas Susan will be resigning as town clerk and treasurer on June 28 2023 and whereas Susan served two municipalities as clerk and treasurer for nearly seven years through a period of shared services for the town of Essex and the village city of Essex Junction and whereas Susan has performed laudable service in managing all elections vital statistics required reporting and customer transactions during her Essex tenure and whereas Susan led the effort to digitize land records in 2019 eliminating a multi-step process and creating an online index allowing title searchers the ability to search the database from the town's website creating efficiencies for the office and customers that was particularly valuable during the pandemic and whereas Susan recording in progress during the pandemic when clerks were often the only employees working in the office to answer customer inquiries and provide critical support to other departments that were working remotely and whereas Susan mentored numerous municipal employees and election volunteers demonstrating leadership through expertise and meticulous attention to detail as a repository of records for two municipalities now therefore be it resolved that on the occasion of Susan's departure from the town of Essex at the select board on behalf of the staff and residents of the town of Essex hereby extend our most sincere appreciation to Susan McNamara hill for her commendable service adopted this 26th day of June 2023 by the Essex select board okay thank you candle at this time I make the motions to select board adopt a resolution appreciation of Susan McNamara hill thank you don do I have a second thank you Tracy any further discussion do you want to comment thanks Susan for all of her hard work for helping me many times for a lot of different things and and my wife as well and I think anybody that's been in this community has been lucky to have a parks office who will hold your hand through the process when you don't know a lot of the things they go on so awesome work thank you Ethan you know it's a very complicated job there's a lot of a lot of pieces to it that need to come together and stay together and move in the right direction to keep down on on tracks when you come to BCA tomorrow night you can thank her personally yeah and that nudge does hey any any comments I would just say she will be missed knowing what it takes to digitize records thank you Susan it's a big lift yeah okay all those in favor of approving the motion please say aye aye those say nay the motion passes five zero thank you very much let's move on to business item five b interview volunteers to serve in the community advisory board we have three zero three present there's chris harvey chris here or online chris arthur bergeron and dan maguire okay great great um so I guess we will do these in order of uh typically what we do is what in the order that they appear on the agenda so um Arthur come on up introduce yourself um good evening my name is Arthur Bergeron can just share anything yeah share anything you'd like with the with the board to help us uh consider whether to sure reside here in the town of Essex I moved here in 2020 with my family from Fairfax Mont the daughter wanted to attend a bigger high school um for the sports um and there was a lot more opportunity for her to be able to have attended a bigger school here at Essex High School um a little bit about me I've been married for 26 years I have three beautiful children I was a career firefighter for the city of burlington for 23 and a half years um I have a an absorbent amount of experience on both sides criminal justice and you know professional firefighter as well in the medical field including with narcotics um depression PTSD anxiety um an array of different uh different types of things that these officers and first responders um see on a daily basis um what else can I tell you um my sons a state trooper we're the state of new hampshire he serves in the United States Army and my son Colby is in the Air Force both graduated from Norwich with criminal justice degrees and my daughter just graduated from Essex High School and she is off to coastal carolina to also study criminal justice okay thank you any questions any questions what do you see your role on the community affairs advisory board excuse me to be my role um I read a little bit in regards to the description I actually was reading it when I uh when I was just resting at home and then when I woke up after signing up I was like whoa like there's there's a lot of things um in law enforcement as far as first responders community justice um a lot of kids suffering um a lot of different things in life whether that be at home in school or just on the street um it's important to know I grew up um as 15 brothers and sisters I grew up in a very rough neighborhood in boston massachusetts um I have brothers that are in prison personally that uh got caught up in the in the drug game back in the day um I've seen a lot um as far as um these kids and adults and uh low income high income could be the president of a bank to the generator to school um it's quite concerned on what's taking place um in our neighborhood even here in Essex Junction never mind burlington but also the the amount of stress that's put on the police officers and first responders I think I have a really clear understanding um how to work through not I'm not I'm not like perfect at it um but I I also um have a lot of experience dealing with that on both ends so I think I could bring a lot um not only to the police department but delegating um from people in the community get out there and and try to be um some type of a role model for for whether it be young kids or or adults and see if we can come together and and work as a team to maybe um get the police department out there a little bit more and kind of smile when they're driving around and um engage with these kids more um you know like at you know at the uh five corners when these when these kids across in the school I think the cops should be out on a nice day instead of sitting in their cruiser that's a perfect time to engage with these kids some of these kids that might be the only engagement that they get other than school um and so that that's some of the things that would work on um as well as is trying to improve the relationship that kids or adults or any type of human being could have with first responders not just the police department but fire department in EMS as well thank you yeah okay thanks any other questions I was going to ask him um made him interested in serving on the um committee advisory board but I think you just answered quite a bit of that um so I guess I would say are there some things that you think you could do um I wouldn't say immediately but you have some ideas of things you could bring to the table for some issues that you that us did um that I could bring to the table I think I think um it's important to keep uh clear communication open with everybody involved whether that's the town of Essex um whether it's the police department whether it be citizens um you gotta get out there engage um I attended the coffee chat at the the coffee shop here at the outlets um with the police chief which was a great opportunity just to see what they're what they may be dealing with on a on a daily basis but support I think is a big issue um education um there's a lot of missed opportunities that I think not saying me as a personal alone but maybe we can build something to get more engagement into the community to you know to understand that not all police officers are bad and um but I think a lot of times I was a fireman my whole career my son's a state trooper and I'm like smile like you know just smile engage with these kids because they're afraid of you a lot of kids are afraid of police officers um and unfortunately these this time in error it's it's very difficult to be a police officer but there's also been a lot of negative negativity attached to be in a police officer um and poor choices that have have given them maybe the name that they have at the moment but there's good cops bad cops there's good firemen bad firemen there's good people bad people so if we can get out and engage in the community and maybe form a picture of what their job really is uh entails um I think that maybe could be some of the difference for starters it's not going to happen overnight it's it's going to be a process do you think there will be any conflicts of interest between your professional involvements and family members in law enforcement um I am retired um I retired from the city of Burlington in 2020 I wanted to engage a little bit more with my kids my son uh has three deployments under his belt now um and my daughter um just graduated from high school so I wanted to focus a little bit more on the only time that I have missed over the years so I don't think there's any conflict of interest if anything it gives me a better understanding having kids in law enforcement um as to what they may face on a daily basis and as being the first responder for the city of Burlington which runs about 11,000 calls a year um I've seen firsthand what many um people are going through and a lot of it is unfortunate circumstances whether that be drugs or a poor home life uh you know poor poor role models no food um you know homeless transient population is huge in Burlington um you have to have a heart and you got to go into it with your eyes open just judge someone by what you're being presented with you know it's it's very important you got to do that or else you're going to lose the trust and anybody that you're going to try to approach or try to talk to that makes sense to you so I don't foresee it being a conflict of interest my son's a state trooper New Hampshire not in Vermont I am officially separated from the the city of Burlington I am retired um and my other son resides in New York so my daughter will be gone so no thank you yes sir do you have any hi how are you I'm great thank you I do you have any ideas or examples of how you would be a conduit for the community for voices that typically have gone unheard and as you said those folks who may not feel safe uh raising their voices as it relates to policing conduit you gotta you gotta be able to find a way to reach those individuals you really do they're not going to come looking for you unfortunately until they're in really time of need um the mental health crisis right now is just out of control um when you go through the academy they've gotten better now in this day and age to where it is now actually a part of an academy and you're being taught and trained on how to deal with individuals now um whereas before you know it it wasn't anything that was ever trained on or discussed because it just wasn't that much well maybe it was but back then it wasn't as noticeable as now so we've really got to try to dig in and see how we can go about um making relationships with these people and I'm not really sure how but I think having some sympathy with these individuals um and trying to build that relationship and engaging with them whether that be at a food shelf um you know you know you know like a luncheon or some type of a community gathering um where you just throw on a lunch and get all these people to engage you know it's I don't have the answers for all of it but gotta start someplace and I'm not saying that it's not already in place but um I know one thing with the transient population in Burlington they hate authority um they just like authority so much and they're they're threatened by the badge they're threatened by the profession um they think nobody wants to hear your problems you're better than them um and that we need to take that down a little bit and actually sit down and have it and engage in a conversation with them and and get to know them a little better for me personally when I was on duty you know we were busy but if you if you make that connection when you get there it's less likely less likely for them to swing at you as sometimes they will they'll attack you you know um especially if you're taken away they're they're they're high on whatever drug they may be on but thinking it's important just to try to build some type of relationship with these people that um have a difference in opinion I don't know if that it's it's a it's a big big basket of many different things that law enforcement and first responders deal with it's not just a little little book that you can hit and be make it better tomorrow I don't know if that answers your question yeah thank you you're welcome okay um do you have any questions for the select board uh no I I started to read through it's it's it's a lot um I see it's a two to a three year commitment um but I I do feel personally that um I would I would definitely be the right person to to be on the board I think I can make a big difference um I think it's important to to work and dig hard and at the end of the day I think for me it would bring some fulfillment that now that I don't have my kids being gone um to have a purpose in life and and to maybe make a difference in one person's day would be so well worth it so for me personally I think this would be good okay thank you any follow-up questions okay thank you so much we'll uh we will um be going into executive sexual assert later just to discuss uh appointments and uh either way you'll be uh notified all right okay tomorrow that's after that all right whether you're whether we've chosen you're not so yes sir or you can or you can hang around till the end of the meeting all right I'll hang up for a minute great thank you thank you okay take care okay so let's see I do not see um Chris joining yet or not so uh Dan run up and do yourself and bear whatever anything you'd like to I'll select where to decide thank you everybody is very welcoming I appreciate that um I've not been here before so um I'm a resident of the town and have been since 2004 I live um upon Saxon Hollow Drive I've had two children go through the school district from start to finish and I've got one more who's starting her freshman year um I am a criminal defense attorney I have an office here in the town and have since 2004 um I do exclusively criminal defense representing many many people who are indigent who cannot afford an attorney um I deal with the police from that perspective which is very different maybe they're Mr. Bergeron but we may complement each other nevertheless um my wife is Erin McGuire she's the executive director of student support services for the Essex Westwood school system and she's also the director of diversity equity and inclusion what I would bring to the board is an equity-based lens um and regarding policing I learned about this opportunity about a week ago at the Juneteenth celebration here in the Essex experience so you Dawn and Tanisha and I also met officer Maynard Jackson and I thought that that I would put my hand in the ring here to see if I could offer some some perspective regarding marginalized people in our community and the police in in what they're doing in their behavior I'm going to refer to some notes if I could please the first thing that I'll tell you is that I'm surprised um that there's not more people here of color people who are marginalized are not here um I'm another white guy right there's this white guy it's too bad that we haven't gotten more trans people uh more people of color to apply for these positions because that's what the focus here is based on what I read on and this flyer here is you're looking for people to assist marginalized people in the community so that their voices are heard um so I would imagine that our role as a board would be to hear complaints to investigate complaints to work as a liaison with the police department in an advisory capacity and I'm prepared to do that although I would step aside if someone came forward who was a person of color or someone else who was marginalized in the community just so that you understand um it's important that when we look at what this board I think is going to do uh is to make sure that people's rights are protected in police interactions that the police are um maintaining are behaving in a way that protects people's rights um that if there's any inequities that we need to address those inequities and I look at it as an to be an advocate for people who are in the situation with the police uh which you know I'm familiar a little bit with the chief I think he's been very progressive I've sat on a board with him a year or so ago with Sarah George and Talitha Moore I like what he's doing and he's open-minded and I'd like to be a part of that thank you I'm in trouble because he just took my question and answered it before I asked it um how would you handle a difference of opinion on the board in other words if you wanted the advisory board to go one way and the rest of the board didn't agree with you how would how do you handle conflict like that so my job is adversarial I'm starting to finish right but I would look to be more collaborative here but many aspects of the law are clear about what's okay and what's not okay and you know I get that there are good people and there are bad people and there are good cops and there are bad cops if the police are doing their jobs correctly it makes my job as a criminal defense attorney really easy they make me work when they don't do what they need to do if they're not following the law they're not following the rules or they're skating close to the edge and that happens all the time so yeah yeah I think I'm not going to be a board member that would just roll over in other words in the face of a bunch of other people's comments or concerns I would hear but I would still stay true to the equity lens that I'm telling you that that's what I would bring to this board thank you do you have any ideas of ways for for the outreach or or things that could be it does seem to be because they're not here the people who are trying to assist and help are not here tonight and the only conclusion that I can come to is that and it was mentioned by the fellow ahead of me is that there's some real distrust of the police I do see the chief making movements and having community gatherings he's very actively engaged so all of that needs to continue but other than that I don't have any way to pull these people in other than to show them that we're doing something when a case comes before us and then can I just follow that up with a little bit more of like I'm not very familiar with the whole process either but when these situations are happening or or you know how do you get the outreach to hear the stories and have them come like the ideas of how to get people to come to the board and share their stories or I mean that's a hard question I guess but yeah I don't know honestly I don't know but I imagine it's going to require some footwork and if Mr. Bergeron is serving him he's he's a force I can tell like he's a magnet and so we would all work together I would ask the same question that I asked Arthur and that do you feel there would be any conflict of interest between your professional position and your position on the board I do not do not if there was a case that I was presented with taking as a criminal defense attorney and it was involved with the board I wouldn't take the case I deal with conflicts of interest all the time so but I don't see that this would be a conflict at all it would complement what I do every day thank you sure you're welcome all between you Ethan and Kendall you've already answered my questions all right give me questions for us um this is a brand new thing right yes and where did it spawn from like where did it come from was it this select board that came up with the idea or was it the chief or Essex best okay and did the officer who was the community liaison was he part of that spare head do you know where he was after he joined Essex best started started before Anthony came right yeah Anthony yes by Anthony joined us after he was hired by Essex police department I see okay so yeah after after the murder of George Floyd there was a significant sure response to that um and that that was the the genesis of us trying to figure out how to move forward with something similar to this um and yeah the was very very very much involved in in getting us in this direction what's the commitment in terms of or do we even know how often does this board meet uh do you know so is it whatever we want to create so it's my my understanding that once the board is formed the board will will meet and then decide how often to meet I think that's going to be part of the the task once the board forms to figure out what capacity it has how often to meet when to meet those types of things and does the board report to the select board or does that work it'll be an advisory committee so I think they will provide advice to the select board provide advice to the police um in all honesty I think it's going to be it as you said it's new so they figured out as we figure out as you as it goes and figure out what gives us a lot of knowledge of the community and just one one clarification um Anthony Jackson Miller he's uh he's a civilian he's he's with the police department but he's not an officer I've just heard officer a couple times so just well he's an officer in swat and he told me that he worked in swat and as a police officer but that here in Essex he has that special role and on the application they have him listed as community affairs and public information officer separate from police officer but yeah I can understand I'm not worried about this confusion I just wanted to make it clear here because I didn't know that either so okay any follow-up questions from board members yeah I would like to take the opportunity to ask you since you did mention something that I have been wondering about is that we don't have the disenfranchised community members coming forward for these board positions you have any suggestions or advice for the board of anything we could do more than we are doing to enhance that or improve that when I figured out I'll let you know honestly I came here I expect well when I saw the agenda and I just saw three names I was disappointed because I was hoping to come to this and see a room full of people color who were interested in serving on this board and be willing to step aside for them so I don't have the answer for you in that regard thank you no so this wasn't the only session of interviews we've had we had other this is a second this is the first one isn't it really no we're two we have two others two others okay there are five uh candidates I guess I guess I guess uh both try to connect with Chris but uh and they're also the junction the city is also going to have three people so we'll all work together right right thank you all right thank you thank you very much and uh as I said before we'll we will go into executive session later and have our discussion appreciate it thank you for your consideration thanks for coming out both of you thanks thanks so much okay let's move on to our next business item which is interview volunteers to serve on economic development development commission we have uh three candidates here Tanisha come on up introduce yourself and let's know what you're about hello everyone um pretty sure everybody's familiar with me my name is Tatani Shredita I served on the economic development for three years now um when I first moved here um I was um granted an opportunity so I took it um I'm also with the best program um where we just turned into a cab um also with a housing commission um a little bit about me um I have three children um two live with me right now um I moved them to Vermont um one wasn't happy about it but he's here um and I'm serving on it and I just started my own business and you all know that as well um so I'm a business owner as well um and being on this commission helps me to navigate and look at different opportunities for people that are on the this evening from the small businesses um we just helped a couple of people with one of the grants so um I personally helped talk her through the grants um and how to fill fill them out and when they get them we um kind of let everybody know in the community um they have one for uh BIPOC also other opportunities for women in small businesses um uh my idea was to highlight women um single women or married women that are open in businesses so um that was one of the things that um I was pushing for so thank you questions from board members what would you like to see the economic development community do that they're not already doing we need to do more partnerships we really need to do more partnerships um sex and um we need to work with them is more um I know we were trying to do something with food trucks there because um their um factories so people don't have to go out so we were trying to do that as well um just a couple of things um just partnering partnering making sure that everybody is well aware of us and spread us you know getting the word out that we are here for this information and everything so yeah thank you can I ask you a two part question go ahead um the first one you kind of answered so that's why I have a second part now because I'm I've prepared backups today because last week or last meeting I got stopped a couple times so but um I you answered this a little bit but I was just curious if there was anything besides the the grants that you that you helped with that you were that you achieved that you were proud of when on your three year so I I um just give different ideas to my colleagues or my other volunteers that we can do with um people that are starting new businesses or people that are moving here I had an idea of um doing a packet for all the local businesses all of the um realtors different little areas where we can give them a packet and they know about us um if they want to start businesses we need to let them know what businesses or what buildings are available if they want to come here and you know outsource whatever the case be um that information needs to be known you know we have a lot of people interested however um as you all know that housing is not all that great then my my second part that was awesome thank you for that my second part was um I I've seen it from just my short year and a half here but what draws your heart to the town of Essex I love it here I actually moved here um I obtained a visit um and I just I like it it's small it's quiet everybody knows everybody um I've been welcome with open arms I love you know the people um just getting out in the community I'm a community person I like to talk to people this period um information is important for certain people you need to get that out if we don't know they don't know either so they won't come thank you Kendall any question I would just follow up on Ethan's question a little bit in that what would you consider the highlight of your service on the commission today um just to see people um thrive in business um getting that information because of the pandemic um they lost a lot so we're trying to build back and give back that's that's it just the information given of information I'll say that thank you well I was gonna ask with everything you have going on if you have the time but I've seen you in action and know that you make the time yes I'll make the time um but given that you are a a business owner how would you handle any potential conflicts of interest that arise while you're while you would be on the I've done a couple because um a couple of the grants I wanted to apply for I discontinued um because it needs to go to someone else that needs it um I can do what I need to do um I let that get let nothing get in the way from that period do you have any questions for us um no because I think it's still three years right and with it everything's separating um it's two for the city and three for the town because I didn't understand I know they were explaining this to me and I was like okay this doesn't make sense so when the so when the separation um leads into this month right there'll be separate um economic development commissions for each of the two communities so um and we are actually going to have a discussion later about um non-residents participating in town um okay town committees and commissions and so um the the entities will be will will be um so how are you all doing it that's what I'm asking like how many people are they're going to be we haven't had the discussion you haven't had it okay yeah yeah it's on the agenda for later tonight but we will have that discussion before we make our decisions later this evening as to who we want to apply okay okay Andy yeah our board's still going to stay five members for the EDC I think those we're not we're not changing the uh the number of members of the board correct correct okay okay so I'll have another question so with the chair and the vice chair um are those tangent on being in the town there's there's uh we haven't again we haven't had that discussion yet as to whether or not to restrict membership and under their committees or commissions to residents once someone is appointed there's no this the select board doesn't put any any restrictions or requirements on who can serve as officers of those um okay committees or commissions okay okay I just wanted to know if you definitely want to leave all of that to the to the committees and commissions to decide who their leadership will be okay okay ask one more question sure would you want to serve for the town of Essex that's kind of what I was asking if your heart was it you know yes I would be interested in the city yeah I was told that um I can only do a certain amount because I'm the city and um the town would be yeah that's why I'm asking questions because I wasn't clear I know they've told me about certain things but I wasn't clear on any of it so I just was making sure and so we we currently have a number of committees and commissions that have non-resident members and again our discussion later we'll we'll determine whether we what we want to do about that yeah because when you are separated everything separate I was like uh oh where am I going so yeah it's a little nervous okay thank you thank you and I um I can just add one more thing I don't know if the city is going to have an economic development commission or anything like that so the select board is is looking out for the town's economic development commission town still intends to have one five members I think is the goal and conversation later on about residency okay okay thank you and that's a very good no idea whether the city is gonna all right thank you Tatanisha so uh next on the list is uh Polina Thompson Polina I see that you are online go ahead and unmute yourself and feel free to turn on your camera if you'd like introduce me I do have the camera on can you see me yes we can and we can hear you okay um yeah my name is Polina Thompson and I moved to Essex five years ago on Thursday I am actually originally from Mexico I've been in Vermont for almost 14 years um I have two girls in founders school I was told about this position by Leonora guess we're both Mexican so she thought of me I have my own business I have a bakery from home I mostly make cookies um I don't know if you saw them I made some last year for the Juneteenth celebration um and yeah I guess that's why they thought of me uh like the person before us was saying I think they just want more of a mix in the community more um you know more different races so we can all put our input um but yeah I don't know much about all this whole thing but I'm here to learn and if I you know I'll start somewhere I can help somebody that'll be great great thank you question was from board members so you don't really know what the economic development committee is I do I read about it I was yeah what do you feel you could bring to that committee as a business owner I guess I will say like Tatanisha was saying like maybe just explore more around and maybe create a directory I don't know if that's something that already exists but I didn't know I don't know what like businesses are around I don't know what's coming to the town what new businesses are you know it's like if we I feel like if we have more information about that I was uh contacted by Jean a few months ago about that grant Tatanisha was talking about which I never heard of like she just sent me all the information and she's like oh they created this for BIPOC uh small businesses and then I went into the website and I was looking at it's like how do I know about these things as a business owner I mean she contacted me because she saw my cookie somewhere you know but now because like if I maybe if she didn't see my cookie she wouldn't have known that I'm from BIPOC community you know that so it's like I would like to know more information about this I'm not on the website all the time I don't know where to see this kind of help I mean it is help that we a small business and all businesses can get and I of course apply for it and I mean hopefully I can get it but if I if I don't it's still you know it's good to know that that kind of help is out there and we need I don't know if we need to reach out or someone needs to reach out or we gonna find this information somewhere to just now we're like other businesses to know about this you're like hey no this is happening maybe you can get help maybe you can call be a community and help each other just maybe just by not worth and saying these business does this you can go to this person they'll help you with this other thing like I don't know much about it so I think that will be something I would like to be involved in thank you Ethan um sorry Don stole part of my question but the rest of my question was going to be I don't know how to say this do you have like enough free time to you know commit to the meetings and and and you know maybe possibly do some outreach I know some of the work that goes in with the EDC's like you know and a lot of our other communities as they assign like you know many tasks and people go out and do do outreach like the business directory for years past was was trying to be developed so just didn't know in that sense of of volunteerism if you had you know the free time to to do some of the legwork and and some of the ideas that you had mentioned if there's any other ideas of things that we could make better of of what's currently going on the EDC I know you haven't probably attended a lot of the meetings but there's there's quite a few irons in the fire right now so I'm just curious if you were number one aware and and number two if you had the any time constraints that would that would restrict that you know I think I was explaining that I wouldn't I mean I work from home so I do mostly I don't have a bakery I don't you know it's like I would do everything from home mostly because of my girls but I always find the time to do I mean it's not what I was explaining to me it's like this doesn't really take that long but if it is a few hours a day I can definitely do that my husband works from home most days too so I have help that could help me if I need to leave the house or do something I I'm gonna have a problem with that awesome thank you welcome handle question yeah I'm just trying to figure out a phrase it um do you have a particular item economically that would have benefited you as a small business owner that you would change you got on the commission I guess no I just like to help you know if like the person was saying before me like if I can help people in my community as well like I try to always uh like if you speak Spanish I speak Spanish obviously and in English so it's like some people do not speak English that well but they want to they need help so I I'm always willing to go and translate I'm always willing to help somebody translate anything like I do want to just be able to send that help send that information to people who need it and and be there for them thank you welcome Gracie I got a question yeah so as a business owner if there was something in front of the EDC that was a conflict with your own business um or something that would benefit you personally how would you how would you react in that situation I think I just I'm I'm not really you know I like to help any if I can hear all the sides of a conversation or a discussion I'm always willing to find a solution for everything I'm not really close stuff to the one thing so I I'm always open to first listen like I feel like that most of us just need to be heard sometimes what our problems are and I'm I'm open to that all right thank you do you have any questions for us thank you okay all right thank you so we will thank you for I'm stepping forward and thank you for taking the time to just to meet with us yeah of course we will we'll be having a closed door session later this evening to talk about who you want to appoint and we'll let you know tomorrow what they're whether you've been chosen thank you so much okay let's see do we have Tim Mack let's see him online so then I guess we will move forward uh we're skipping over the energy committee as I mentioned earlier um so we have um Truffer Williams who is come on up Trufford um you're interviewing for two positions and rather than have you come up twice I think we would just cover it with one discussion okay introduce yourself and share whatever you'd like with the board uh okay decision making well um my name is Trevor Williams I live on Cattella road here I've I've lived here about five years now um I yeah with my wife Nancy and I was a professor of civil engineering at Rutgers University for about 35 years and um I have a PhD in civil engineering and I've did a lot of research in various areas my specialties were construction management uh transportation engineering and planning and the last few years I've been doing railroad engineering but um um and I've published a couple books and about construction management and um but uh I'm I'm retired and and I just felt like I'd like to give um back to the community I've had a lot of different experiences in a lot of different areas um uh I used to do one time I did traffic engineering time and traffic signals installed computerized traffic control system uh did a lot of research and using artificial intelligence for um railroad problems and also for predicting construction costs and um um I could go on but uh you know I've had a lot of done a lot of different things uh I think that's the highlight so I mean I've I've published uh you know like a hundred academic papers and uh things like that so oh I was on the planning board of Princeton New Jersey for about five years and uh that was an interesting place because it was everything was zoning was very restrictive and uh a lot of issues they had this thing that happened there where the lots were uh people were turning their houses people were buying houses carrying them down and then building a bigger house sideways on the lot and uh that was got to be a big problem there that was kind of interesting whereas the front door did not face the street and it didn't look very good but uh you know people wanted to do that kind of stuff have a big house um yeah I think I've hit the hit the high points I guess my first question would be have you read through our new town plan or the town plan I have and how do you feel your expertise would contribute to it well um mainly I think on the transportation side I have expertise as I said in traffic engineering highway engineering I've worked with the design of roads um let's see um and of course I have the experience in in Princeton where there was some interesting issues and I think I understand planning law I took planning courses way back when and I just think it's important that you know planning be done in a um what I want to say a systematic way as opposed to you know we lived in New Jersey for 30 years and there's a lot of places developed really not very well there was just little strip mall after strip mall and it's not a very attractive thing so I would like to see you can see that things are growing here but uh the possibility that that it can be done in such a way that's that satisfies everyone business owners but it's also pleasant to look at and and uh that kind of thing I think that's important can I ask another one and given that you're applying for both zoning and planning this is two parts where do you think you would be most comfortable working and do you understand that we're switching to a d rb and how would it would you be willing to participate in a d rb if appointed d rb development design development design development design development design um sure um now the first part was you asked me you're applying for both zoning and planning yes though um given your background where are you most comfortable um probably planning but I was told I had originally just applied for planning but then I went to a meeting um and was told they they desperately needed someone for zoning so uh I applied for that as well I have some experience with zoning thank you well since Don asked everybody's questions I am gonna I am gonna expand on that question Don asked because that was actually one of the things that I have asked um others and and I'm interested in asking you um so so right now the planning commission is also our review board so they make they they review applications and and improve them so moving forward in the future if if taken by legislator um our charter is said to change to have a development review board which would solely do reviews and the planning commission would solely just focus on planning yes so when that I should say if but if and if and when that happens would you be interested in staying on the planning commission as far as the the aspects of of planning or would you be more interested in the review process and the approval well maybe uh both yeah I well in Princeton I was on before I was on the planning board they had what they called the site plan review advisory board which did all this did all the site plans and I and then I got on the planning board but I was I think I was more comfortable that I could kind of weigh in on the engineering aspects of you know people want to do a development the the traffic impact the again there's you know the zoning but but also just that I left that out that I I work for two different traffic engineering firms one in New Haven and one in Boston and we used to do these studies of the traffic impact studies where you you'd try to figure out how much traffic that particular development was going to generate and so I know about that I know about paving I know about uh well I know I know about construction and about how uh one of my big interests was construction contracts um uh you know sometimes they affect you know what gets built and uh if I should add some notes I think I'm starting to ramble but it's okay okay does it does that answer your question yeah so you like the planning are we or because like the review when when the review process happens right so the the planning would just be like you know what the town sees for well plans and as the plans come in but then the review board would be more of the the engineering side of hey yeah like this because of the traffic or I mean there is like a yes the the review board probably that um you know speaks to my expertise I should also say I'm a professional engineer um so yes I mean but I'm also interested in the kind of the broader you know what happens we like to see right now that's right now that's all we have is the everything so right I'm just curious for future of if you knew if you're aware of the split and that that that is going to happen hopefully so I'm also thank you oh thank you handle any question would you care to share over your long and distinguished career one particular highlight uh in relation to planning development review that is applicable to the position on the board well I know that there are some reasons I see planning um I'd like to think that that we did some good things in Princeton to keep from from sort of uh kind of willy-nilly development and I I I remember kind of feeling that that I had done something to help maybe Princeton develop in a little more of a rational manner and and naturally there's a lot of pressure there there's all sorts of developers you know wanting to build things way out of scale with what the existing town was and so I consider that maybe planning wise um but uh yes thanks for saying my career is distinguished thank you ask one more question yeah go ahead um during your tenure on the planning board in New Jersey did you have any particular items that came up that were very contentious and how did you resolve them well you know the the one that always sticks in my mind is that there was a vacant lot and people in that neighborhood and it was an extremely wealthy neighborhood that taken to using that lot as a park but then the uh people who own the land they wanted to to subdivide the land and sell that property so um people um you know it's nice if you could do it but but the main thing was was that Princeton didn't own the property it became very contentious but I mean that's that was the bottom line was that Princeton didn't own it and couldn't turn it into a park and uh but it got it got very uh vocal and I always remember that one thank you yeah Tracy so understanding that the planning commission currently reviews applications um eventually there are plans is with the legislature's blessing that that will move to a development review board um if an application came to you that you personally disagreed with what would you rely on to guide your your thought process and a decision well that that's that's interesting I I asked the planner for Princeton uh about that and the thing always stuck with me that okay you might not like it but um if it meets all the planning laws and the zoning um you have to approve it right because there's there's no laws being violated or no zoning violation no planning violation and unless you can show that I was told that well it's the United States and it's it's capitalism and you can't just stop people from doing things that's that's what I was told way back when so thank you okay thank you do you have any questions for us no um I don't think so uh how often are the two committees meet so the the uh planning commission meets twice a month I believe one meeting is dedicated to planning the other is dedicated to development reviews generally um and the the zoning board meets as needed okay there's a once a month and times sometimes give me a well once a month I'm I'm retired so that that is not a problem so I do have I do have a question though so you you've applied for two seats yes is this an are you is yours is your inclination one or the other or are you actually interested in both oh I I do both I mean I I um I'm interested in zoning and and the planning uh I suppose if it came down to one or the other it'd probably be the planning but yeah okay thank you right you've heard the spiel that we will come back uh what we're meeting offline later to discuss appointments and yes to let you know thank you right all right so um thank you for uh for stepping forward and um that gets us to the end of that uh business item but I've been uh told that Chris Harvey has joined who was uh interested in viewing for the community advisory board and we passed that agenda item um so I guess it's the board feel about circling back and allowing uh for us to interview are we rescheduling all the others or are we making decisions now this is it tonight okay and yeah okay with circling back to this okay so um uh I understand that the the name MacBook Pro online is uh is Chris Harvey Chris if you could uh unmute yourself and introduce yourself and uh yes I think that's me and uh you know let us know or share anything you'd like uh with the select board that would help us make a decision regarding appointment sure shall I turn on my video if you're comfortable with that yeah go ahead that's fine hang on you got me yep we can see you we can hear you okay cool uh well thanks uh I totally got mixed up with dates for reason in my head it was Wednesday but anyway thank you for uh accommodating my lateness I am interested in this so uh my name is Chris Harvey I am a new resident of Essex I've been here for two and a half months um but I am not a new resident of Vermont I grew up in South Burlington and Underhill I left Vermont in 1988 to go to university and uh just returned after lots of places around the country and overseas uh the most recent 17 years I spent in Saigon Vietnam uh and uh built business there with my wife and we that business ended and we decided we wanted to move closer to my parents who are here in Essex and South Burlington so that's why we're here today why am I here talking to you today is another question well uh my wife is Vietnamese and this is she's just a recent immigrant to America and was scared to death of crime in America she would see in the Vietnamese press about the gun crime about the I mean it's very sensationalized over there as I guess it is here as well so when we moved here and I was checking out the police Essex police website and I saw a citizen's uh police academy so I signed up for it I thought well I can learn something about the police and learn about what's happening and tell my wife uh who we have four children between three and nine also and uh it was actually a wonderful experience we just finished a couple of weeks ago and then um I learned about this opportunity and I mean I'll share a few things with you guys about the uh the uh citizen's police academy I was I learned an incredible a great deal and I was really impressed with the professionalism of the police and their their honesty in their genuine wanting people to understand what they do and one example and it was it was really amazing if you guys don't know this is this whole use of force I don't know the word for heuristic if you will um there's there's a very strict rules governing use of force and what they can do in different circumstances uh and which I didn't know and uh one of the ideas that I had if I were to serve on this board is to try to get this out into the community to understand these rules and police really I was convinced they really do abide by these and do their best to uh to follow these rules um so that's why I'm here tonight I think that I can uh well I'm certainly enthusiastic and I like I'm I'm enthusiastic about a safe and fair community in Essex for my family with four kids and and everybody else which is why I'm here tonight great thank you questions from board members I'm gonna let them go first because I'm not sure how I want to word my question and that way I don't take away anybody else I'm curious if you have any ideas um as I know you had mentioned um you know your your story and thank you for sharing that with us but I'm I'm curious if you have any ideas on ways to eliminate um the stigma whether it's outreach or it's you know public events or I'm just curious if you have any ideas on more ways that that the community advisory board could create to help folks have their relationship so the stigma you mentioned stigma could you like you know you said that your wife was um terrified of of you know the crime and I don't know if that was related towards the police department or just in general you know just in general so I wanted to understand what was happening with crime in Essex and Vermont and I thought a great way to do that was to join the citizens academy which was a great way to do that actually so I'll guess I'll read word my question to I'm sorry for the misunderstanding on my there's instances in Essex where the relationship between the police department and the community hasn't always been you know the best okay so how would you interact with those voices and then those people and bring it for the board or the board as a whole to resolve the situation with the police department well absent any specific parents I'm not sure which instance you're talking about I learned about a few when I was the citizens police academy but I can just say a couple of general statements that I think will that I've found in my career and by the way I've worked in a cross-cultural environment for 17 years in Vietnam and I found that you know you sometimes you're dealing with people from another culture different background you have bring a set of beliefs or understandings you're not even aware it's like a fish in water but that may be the case here I'm not sure but what I found to be really important is is both sides understand each other the I think the community needs to understand clearly what is the job of the police when should they call the police I think the police can maybe make more public appearances I'm just shooting from the hip here by the way but I think it's really important I was really impressed with the professionalism of the Essex police at least what I saw and their willingness to share and I think people need to under I think trust is built under transparency and history people need to understand what the police are doing and why they're doing it they need to understand in what cases can the police escalate force and when when somebody is doing some certain thing for example let me give you guys an example what I learned is if a if someone the police is interacting with is cooperating the police can't put their hands on I mean they really can't use any force at all if they begin not cooperating that's called passive passive resistance that's another level up and then if they're actually assaulting the police officer threatening assault police officer and the police officer can do certain things I mean I learned a lot I've learned about and I've read about in the press about certain incidences and now that I know what I know I'm like oh okay the police officer is out of line there or maybe there's more facts can you understand here so okay let me summarize I think the community needs to understand better why the what the police are doing and how they do it and specifically a lot of maybe questions are around use of force and I think the community needs to understand better when the police use force and when they don't and under what circumstances does that answer your question and I think trust is going to be built on openness and both sides understanding each other and a history of it once you have a crisis it's too late to build trust you should have been building it the whole time thank you does that answer your question yeah I don't think I had a solid single answered question there for it just I was curious on your thoughts behind the okay is there some process in the hold it on the board so thank you I don't know if you got a question you answered my question pretty much thank you sure so it what I'm hearing you say is that education is very important aspect of this super important yeah so understanding that there are community members who may be hesitant or even fearful to reach out directly to the police what do you see as steps to work on that education and trust component well the first is understanding why are they fearful I don't you know why are they fearful or they had an experience have they had experience with the police that have been scary why are they fearful about that I think that's important to understand I think another important thing to communicate to the community is under what circumstances should they be calling police and what can the police do in certain circumstances I mean I can even envision an FAQ like when should I call the police can I call the police when I have a dispute with my neighbor can I or whatever it is I mean when is an appropriate time to call the police what would be inappropriate behavior from the police for example I think again I think it taking the citizens police academy really demystified the police for me my only police encounters have been speeding and traffic tickets but until until this they were kind of a black box to me like I feel pretty intimidated by being pulled over the police before but now I would feel okay I understand how these guys operate I understand they have rules that they follow very judiciously actually I thought at least that was my impression from taking the citizens police academy and I think the community needs to understand this it's a really a marketing problem fundamentally talking from business terms how do you get the community to understand what the police are about and how they can help you and what are the police's goals and how those goals how do they overlap with the goals of the community that's that's really important everybody wants to save community it's called picking the high level like everyone wants to save community everyone wants lower crime can can this fear be addressed if we understand the root fear can we address it somehow either through maybe something bad really did happen I don't know you get to the bottom of that but understand what's causing it and how can how can how can the police be more transparent about their behavior and so people know what to expect when they call the police does that does that make sense it does thank you as a member of the community community advisory board how would you get what would be your first step in getting this information out begin to build this trust that's a great that's a great question so marketing problem like I said before um um I don't know events um having police appear more human and maybe answer questions in certain community events for example might might help one of the things that frustrated me is I mean okay again I'm from a business background I think in business terms I was a little bit surprised that the Essex police they put an incredible amount of effort in the citizens police academy I mean really amazing amount of effort which three three hours a night were like eight weeks and they they they prepared very well and they were really on it with their presentations and they thought through what they wanted to tell us and they're only like 10 students 10 people in the class so they put all this effort for just to reach 10 people and I was thinking wow this information needs to get out there a lot further um I mean that's a marketing problem I'm trying to think of different marketing channels I mean there's people are online there's Facebook there's uh there's there's there's there's advertisements there's uh you know bus stops you have to think about some simple marketing messages maybe there's a QR code on it that we would direct you somewhere you could get more information about what the police do but you have to really arouse in the in the target segment like you know what do they care about and let's speak to that thing um and try to get this information out that I would take some doing I can't answer that question right off the top of my head but I want to figure out where are these people living and I when I say living I don't mean living physically necessarily but where are they spending time and how can we reach these people with some simple messages because another thing I've learned in marketing is uh messages need to be very simple and repeated again and again and uh you know you can think of all these marketing jingles like have it your way and McDonald's or whatever but think about what are the fundamental things you really want to communicate about the police that that that people need to know and then repeat them um again and again and I just want to share for your information I believe that the police department set how many students they wanted in their first class but because it was so successful I read that they are going to do it again so thank you for your input I think that's yeah it was it was really I cannot say enough good things about the quality of the presentations and the depth of the knowledge that I got especially the one stand out for me I think in terms of the community is the use of force um presentation they there was a dashboard they gave us they called it it looked like a car dashboard and it was like different like uh you know drives or reverse or um and there were different levels of force suitable for different things and they were really careful about it and we talked about some different examples um uh you know and from the real world about how officers had not behaved properly and now that I understand this stuff this is really uh demystified police to me like if if if you're if if a police officer goes up to somebody just shoves him and this person is being cooperative and not being aggressive that's completely out of line and people need to know that the Essex police are not going to do that I mean they shouldn't do that and and I they were very careful about it they were really they really respected those those rules of force and I think people need to understand that thank you all right thanks Chris do you have any questions for us yes thank you for asking I do um here's a big one uh what does the board see as the cab's role and what is your design how would you define your desired outcome of a successful cab are you with me yeah basically this is a whole new concept Chris you're going to be sort of designing it as you go but okay build a bridge between the police department and the public to improve communication so as you said people are not afraid to communicate with the police department but so people will be free to come to cab to express a concern and then you would discuss it as a committee and if it warrants then you would bring it to the to anthony into the police chief okay my understanding of where they are right now but as this grows it the roles can change well here's an idea if standing of the role here's an idea that I mean this is one thing I used to do uh when I managed people is you have a session that's called ask ask ask me anything and so the the chief I used to do this and I used to do it people could actually ask me anything in person or they could submit a anonymous google form to ask me anything it really was anonymous I didn't know who submitted these forms and then I would answer everything I'd answer every last question no matter what I would answer them um and if I wasn't able to answer I'd say I can't answer that but what about uh some kind of forum where you gather members of the community that you want to address and chief hobe gets in front of them um and you say okay ask chief hobe anything ask him anything and they ask him right that's an idea that would really build trust I think yeah I believe that's the purpose of his coffee hours that he's holding right now so okay good idea but are those coffee hours in the accessible time I'm not sure um but anyway there's just some ideas other question okay that's my big question thank you guys for your question and thank you for your service and thank thanks for stepping forward Chris you may not have heard uh mentioned earlier that we will be going into executive session later in this meeting to discuss uh appointments and um uh should we come to a decision we'll uh you'll be informed by town staff tomorrow okay or you can hang around to the to the end of the meeting and find out that um is that is that something I can observe actually no you guys have your deliberations that's after we have our private discussions we will come back to the to the meeting to um make a motion if we and assuming that we do appointments and we should be doing a bunch of appointments tonight it's up to you whether you want to stick around or okay thank you it depends on whether my kids are going to come in here and start grabbing welcome to s6 yeah thank you thank you it's good to be here okay so let's move on to our next business item which is 5h discussion and potential action on town of Essex logo survey results uh who's taking this one that is Tammy right did you skip G there's Tammy hi everyone hi Tammy I wasn't ready for you to be skipping G either so um here I'm back here tonight um to present to you some uh logo survey results so uh based on our last meeting that um I attended with all of you in May um you know we were the discussion was based around let's let's get some feedback from the community on the front end of things um and so we put together a survey that provided the um logos that I had presented at the last meeting and also um some questions that um folks could answer optional questions that could answer um they came in different parts so that if um somebody was voting and they didn't like any of the options we asked them questions as to what parts of this would you change what color would you change would you use different elements that sort of thing and then we had a couple of questions at the end that we asked all participants so if they did vote for one of the logos um or if they didn't vote with the logos we were still asking them the overall questions like what do you think of when you know of Essex when you think of Essex um so in your packet you have the responses we had 327 responses and of those responses um and I should say that that went out um in the newsletter it was on our website it went out um on our social media um I'm trying to remember front porch forum um so we had several different ways that we we did send this link out to folks um of the 327 responses 73 favored a new logo 17 favored keeping the original logo and 9% did not like any of the options um there I think was based on some of the feedback we received I think there was some confusion from some who participated in that um some of the answers are clearly um related to the city um and and not the town um and I and then some of the people that were favoring to keep the original logo were just simply saying as a response that they um just didn't want to spend the money the money um on rebranding um but overall there's 73 of the responses are in favor of going forth with the new logo and then from that in the packet you can see um how the votes played out for each of the one two three four five different um drafts that we sent out to everybody um the one that received the most of votes was the full color um and then second came in was the mountains and water um and then there were the last three were different variations um look yeah and then Greg I think Greg's sharing that up there right now um and then I shared in there there's it's kind of lengthy but hopefully you've had a chance to look at all of the different responses from everybody which is also included in the packet um based on those responses I took the I had a discussion with Greg I took the um one that scored the most votes and then added a couple of variations to include um some of the probably more most of the feedback that we received which was you know we'd like to see trees with one of them um another was a more prominent you know like we want to see indian brook um and another comment was basically we don't have that style of barn let's have a gambrel style um so I did a couple of versions of the colored logo just changed some of those options um and Greg has those stuff on the screen now uh the first one essentially oh I added a storefront there was a um some of the feedback was you know please add us we want to see the stores um and the Essex center on here um so I added a storefront windows and arch on the water tower to make it more distinctively the water tower um and raise the eye level of the water basically just took that whole background and moved it up so the water could be seen um and changed the style of barn and in the second option um I have a different color for the water tower added some windows and doors um and a greater emphasis on the trees and the water um these are just a couple of options and you know there's we have many many different versions of many different logos that we went through to get to this point but um including you know we used I did a couple of versions with knives uh with the with the sacks and knives I did um uh try and even think some of the other possibilities that I had in my head leaving me right at the moment um but this seems to be bringing it in to the same elements are repeated through all of the comments water mountains views um you know rural country stores you know so there's a lot in the trees um those were a lot of the comments I was seeing so um I guess at this point I'm presenting all of this to you in the hope that either we can make a final selection um or or possibly take one of the versions that we have here and give me some you know direction um as to you know would you like to have this but you want something a little bit different on it or um let's just scrap this and just go in another whole direction and if that's the feeling that we're going to do I guess we need to know that too so um and I don't know if Greg has any other comments on this at all um to add uh Tim the only thing I'd add is um Tammy and I spoke a little bit and um yeah I want to get your feedback today I think the other option that Tammy and I discussed that she didn't mention was do we do a runoff and take three or four logos and um put those back out for vote and feedback and try to go ahead from there but um at this point yeah I just wanted to share the results of the the survey and the feedback we got and hear how you'd like to go forward with that. All right thanks Tammy thanks Greg. Comments from board members? So in we have to start over there. So I'm trying to think back to how the survey was laid out and worded and I see this statement 73% favor a new logo was there a very direct question that says do you want a new logo? I think I think the 73% were out of the logos that were presented 73% liked one of the new logos. Okay Tammy correct me if I'm wrong in that. That's correct. Okay because when I was looking at that with 327 responses breaking it down only 23% voted for the top one. About that. So I'm looking at it that way I'm not sure that that's a very clear this is the one. No that's why we said you know do you want to take a few of the ones that kind of had the most votes and do sort of a runoff of some sort. They think what we're trying to get at and what Tammy put in the memo is that what are the options that are presented 73% of the people are happy with one of those new options. Any other questions or comments? My comment was I liked the logo number two. I would suggest that you change the barn style. She did. Is that it? There was a number of comments that they wanted a different roof on the barn. And when you say logo number two do you mean out of the original ones or the modified ones that Tammy had? The two options that she has here that she has modified based on all the comments. Thank you. There were a lot of comments green and gold and that's it just make sure there's some green and gold in it and change the barn style and I'll vote for number two. So I want to start by thanking Tammy for all of her hard work on this. I do want to add that I really like number one. I've seen both styles of irons and S6. There's one on towers road that's like the other style. But I did read a lot of the feedback and I don't mean to say this the wrong way and I really do appreciate all of your work, Tammy, but I think that we need to stop changing this logo around take the ideas show them some of these that we've created and send it to a graphic designer. It's very, very minimal money to have a logo created in a way that aren't shapes from computer generated apps. I think if we took all the feedback and these two logos, maybe a couple others that meet the criteria from the feedback in the modern house in an holistic way, send it out there, have them create us four or five options. I really like to see personally, I'd like to see 65% of people agree on one logo. I'd say 50 would be awesome. And maybe we can make a decision on 50, but 23% with the feedback that we got. I mean, this is the last time the logo was changed in S6. This isn't going to be something that would change every three years. We're reprinting everything. We're making sure it's we're rebranding the entire town. We can't do it on on a logo that has 23% approval. I just don't think that's feasible. Those are my thoughts. Thank you, Tammy, for your hard work. And I was fascinated to read how many people won the fairgrounds and the railroad station and railroad tracks. And I was like, excuse me, those are not part of the town. But anyway, I don't understand what your first one, what that background is supposed to represent. So a lot of people wanted the S6 experience, the buildings where you've got the whole the blue tower. I don't understand what that background is supposed to represent in S6. You guys are you talking about the blue or those buildings because it looks like you've got another silo and another barn back there. You know, I think if you look at like the logo we have now, there's like a little city in there. That's what this is. Or a little town, I guess you could say not a city probably long words, but in the original logo that's that we have now, I don't think we have that. It's not in this document, Greg. But on our logo that we have, we had a picture. Yeah, it's not on there, but there is like there's the mountains, you see the mountains, and then there's a little it's so it's very, very little. So that's basically taking that and just kind of trying to take the town part of things and bring that into a more reasonable size so that you can see it. I don't even know people, you even noticed that in the current logo that there's those buildings. They're representing the buildings in the town. Is that what you're saying to me? That's the town. Yep. It's the developed part of the town and the developed part of the town. This is a rural town. They're not based on specifically apart from the water tower. They're not based on certain block or certain images, but I give me a moment and I can pull up the current logo. It's more to be represented. So this is the current logo that's on our town website right now. Yeah. And then the very big center of that. The yellow road is the... This is town. Is the image that Tammy says she kind of put from and put it in there. I mean, I just see the, I'm sorry, I don't mean to cut you. I just, I want, I don't know, this doesn't really say much about the town I live in right now. Tell you the truth. Me. And that was kind of the problem that I had or have is it was, I love the, I love the idea, right? Like I, I went through a logo design and I drew something on a piece of paper that looked like my, my two, my almost two year old or almost my two and a half year old drew with a crayon, right? And somebody made something spectacular for me. And when I see this, it's not that the, it's not that the work isn't there or like, awesome. It's just like, I feel like the shapes of the buildings is something that I made with, you know, the, the Microsoft Excel and, you know, and computer glass. There's, it doesn't represent anything that I know. You know what I mean? They're just, they're just blobs. Like I love the barn. The barn has detail. And that's where I like, I'm not saying that Tammy doesn't have the right design idea. I just think that we might need some actual detail in the logo if we're going to go the route of having a town. You know what I mean? Like if you're going to go just a barn in a lake, just do a barn in a lake. But if you want to have a town, they're like, because personally, I see, I see the barns, the water tower. I see a barber shop attached to a church farm kind of, you know what I mean? I don't know. Like I don't distinguish anything in that, in the buildings. Like the other buildings are great, but they're, I just don't, I don't know. I think from the feedback and the voting, I mean, it's pretty clear that we're not anywhere near to making this decision. I was the last time you remember that Essex remade their logo. I don't remember when it was, but I think we did approve that one. I was just showing, I don't remember when that was. Sometime in the last 15 years, I've only been on the board nine. So, I mean, because it was, they wanted the Essex experience according to the comments. They wanted a lot of Saxon Hill, and I don't see anything like with trails or hiking or any of that that the people are asking for. I mean, that's what I read in the comments anywhere. I mean, it's hard, right? There's 327 responses, which is a pretty good response. And yeah, that there wasn't one that stood out and said this 50% of the people are 65% of people, but that's tough to be expected. I think when you have six options, people are looking at those different ones. I think when you have 300 plus comments, it's hard to get everything in there. And so, I mean, I do like these two better than the original ones that were presented, because they have more detail and I can see it. But it still doesn't say to me, come to Essex. This is Essex. I just, I don't see that. And I think that's part of what we're asking is, do you want us to start over? Do you want us to build off of the couple 2345 that got some better feedback and take that out again? Sounds like some of you are okay with some of the ones here. Some of you would like to try again. So yeah, I guess we're just trying to figure out what the next step is at this point based on the feedback we've got. And again, it's tough to get all 360, 320 comments. I understand that. I'd like to see a couple hundred dollars spent and see some options of the graphic design. We actually did spend over a thousand dollars with a graphic designer who came back with some that didn't pass the mustard with our committee. And then with these, I had, I know that these do look like they're just kind of cookie cutter, but they are actually my own artwork. So I probably would not be inclined to just hand them over to somebody. You know, when you do this type of graphic work, you can go in different directions. So there's like the possibility like you can even see some hand drawn. Some people will actually just draw a picture. And there's logos that are just a picture of a setting or something in particular that you want. But then you can go as far extreme as just being very abstract. And you can do that very simple type of look when you think of things like Pepsi Cola, just that like, you know, it's a circle. So it's all in how, you know, detailed you want to get with your design. I think I was trying to strike something in between detailed and enough so that we can still use it in all of the different places that we need to use it. Because actually marketing wise, we're going to do more than just throw it on a website. We're going to be putting it on clothing and on trucks and tiny little business cards and a lot of different things. So I think I was trying to do something a bit with, you know, let's try to keep it simple. But at the same time, you know, let's add the trees in there that have the detail, let's add the barn that has the detail, just trying to find that balance. And I did have these all looked at by a professional graphic designer, who gave me some a lot of a lot of useful tips to be able to get to wear on that. And that was pro bono, we didn't have to pay for that. So if we were to give this over to a graphic designer, I would want to be specific as to what it is we're asking for. Again, if you look in the world of logos, there's many you can do things that have no color, they're just a black and white drawing. I mean, there's the array of what you could be asking for could be huge, not to mention the 347 responses that we've gotten, which Greg was pointing out was, you know, hopefully we're honing in on a few elements. I'm not sure we can get everything. I don't know if it makes sense to put everything. You know, one of the comments was to make the cloud fields into the Saxon knives. And I'm not sure if everybody would get that. Maybe that person does. Maybe other people may say, What are these Saxon knives? I don't understand. So you're always going to have that difference in opinion. You're always going to have, you know, I guess, not just a difference in opinion, but a difference in taste. And so I'm helpful that we can, you know, move forward with something that everybody's going to feel like, okay, you know, maybe he's not the one I picked, but I'm very happy with this. But again, at the same time, I don't want everybody moving forward just with something that they don't like either. So, you know, if we were to move forward with another graphic designer, you know, we would have to certainly, you know, pay for that. And I would want to, I guess we should know for sure exactly what it is we're out of what our ask is. What are we asking for? You would indulge me for just a minute. Actually, the logo that I thought was the most effective was the funky one you had with a dot and two colors, the water and the lake. You had Essex beside it. And my wife who's way smarter than me said that just put beside that experience Essex. And here's your branding and your logo all in one, because everybody knows where the Essex experience is. I'll just throw that out there. That everybody's worried about having a picture that speaks to everything with Essex, but really a lot of towns and states and everything have a logo that has a single word like vacation land or something that speaks to the people of the associate that I would just the blue and white the greatness. This one. Yes. And then put experience Essex in there. Yeah. She's thought you put you put experience Essex in there and then it speaks to where you are. Everybody knows where the Essex experience it is. It's a simple logo that it's only two colors. So it's not super busy and it's distinctive. It gets rid of the one of the original versions I had of that one used the sun, the yellow dot up at the top as the O in Vermont, which was kind of interesting. And then I thought of carrying that, you know, so like the O was actually that yellow circle. And then you would carry that yellow circle kind of into other elements of different things, you know, you could have t-shirts that have that yellow circle or whatever happens to be. But yeah, it's very simple. And that's there is that is all my my own artwork. And I know it looks very blocked, like, okay, you can probably get like the barns, the the gambrel barn is probably the least of my pieces of artwork that's probably most most of the flip art that you see in this is comes from that everything else is something I took the pieces and built. So I would say the mountain in the water. So that one with the sun that is the most original of that is completely mine. There's not much for flip art there. There's at least one hand up in the public. I'm going to go to public comment here. So let's see. Oh, well, you know me can't signal. So a logo is supposed to represent a brand. I'm going to ask the same question I've asked before. What is Essex? Brand. And then if we have that, we can look at the logo and say, does this logo represent that brand? When a person not familiar with the town looks at the logo, do they get the sense of that brand? That's the key of success with a logo logo doesn't come first, the brand comes first. So what's a good effective logo? You've seen Colchester's logo. Anybody familiar with it? Pretty simple, two colors, little people doing recreational things on the logo, biking, something sailing, I think. Obviously water. I know right away. Colchester's all about recreation. Very clear message. I understand their brand. Essex has a challenge. We have a lot of different things. Just look at that list of what people think of when they think of Essex. So what should our brand be? I say you go with the flow. Essex has a lot of different things, so the brand could be something like Essex has it all. A logo could reflect that. We actually have an example of a logo that is trying to thread that needle. Parks and Recreation logo has a quadrant kind of a setup, not suggesting that that be our logo. But I'm just simply saying there are graphic ways to solve the problem. You give the graphic designer the brand, possibly a few elements, fewer the better. Because remember, the logo has to talk to people that aren't familiar with the town. That's a very crucial element. Once the graphic designer has that, they put their skills to use. Tammy has done a lot of work and I totally appreciate it. Tammy and I have had this conversation already. I've built plenty of systems where I was not given all the information I needed and I had to throw it out and start over again. It's hard. You feel ownership in these things. There's no question about it, Tammy. I do appreciate that. But sometimes you realize, yeah, I wasn't given all the facts and I need to go back and punt. So that's my feeling about the situation. I think that it actually is an improvement, no question about it. But from the land mass area, what is Essex mostly? Forest. That is what Essex is mostly forest, but it is a lot of other things as well. Agriculture is there, but it's actually a relatively small portion of what Essex is. We have a budding industrial area. I kind of think that we're pushing for that. I think possibly that should be reflected in the brand and then the logo possibly, not definitely, but possibly. I think these are the kind of things you need to think about. I also think that the Economic Development Commission, which I applied for, should be somehow involved in this. I mean, it's kind of like economic development, right? It just makes sense to me. So I would encourage you to think about the brand first involving as many people as possible. You have a commission, not even a committee. It's an actual commission of the town that's dedicated to this activity. They should be incorporated into this to come up with that brand. Once you have the brand, then work on the logo. I think there's a lot of information in the survey that can be used, that list of things that people identify the town with is useful. But again, you have to also be careful in that you want the logo to talk about the brand to people that don't live here. That's it. Thanks. Thanks, Karen. Betsy. Hi, Betsy Dunn. So I do like some of the logos here. I did vote. But when we had the other graphic up that had Essex, the words Essex, and you saw in the background, the mountain. The current logo? That one. I like the mountain itself better than this mountain. This is not a view we have of our green mountains. Our green mountains that we see when we're going down 15 is the chin and the forehead and everything. That's on that other logo. You know what I mean? Tammy, do you know which one I'm talking about? Yeah, absolutely. I know what you're saying. I'm sorry. I didn't know you were talking to me. No, no, it's okay. Well, I was only two because you're the person who drew these things. Yeah, I have that idea. Yeah, so that's the view I'd rather see if I was going to see that. And I don't mind having, and you could do, I don't know if you could do that because I thought about it just as we were all talking, as you all were talking, about the two forms of triangles with the top of the top triangle being the sun or the moon. But I saw that they were more triangles, but I wanted to see if that would fit as well. But I don't think that would fit well there. But I do think it would fit in the two that you have as the two choices you were thinking of for us to think about is that background mountain. That's all. Thank you. That's it. And yes, I keep it simple too, too much. Yeah. Any other public comments? See any hands online? I guess I haven't made too many comments myself. I kind of agree with, or not, I do agree with Kendall on the, I like the the two triangle one, because it's simple. It leaves out all that detail so you don't have to be specific. I also see the potential of thinking of brand first rather than coming into a logo. And I know, I know there was some incentive to, because we're also doing website work now to have something available for that, but it doesn't seem like we have consensus. Whatever you want to go with this. The website's a live update, right? You put stuff on it. You put information on it all the time. You can't change the logo? Well, it's we're getting ready to redo the whole website. So revamp the whole thing. And Tammy can, can please jump in. But part of the reason of doing the logo first was we could have a color scheme. We could have some of those, well, basic color scheme, I think, but Tammy's more the expert on that. And she's heading up the website more than me too. So I don't know if she has more to add on that front. I can just briefly say we've already started that website. We just started that website redesign work. We didn't want to tackle that until IT was kind of kind of more of their time to them to be able to help with that. But yeah, one of the key elements will be just we get a free redesign every four years. So we want to take advantage of that. And that means we can change colors and the way that the website looks in addition to regular updates. So at this point, we're starting the work that we can do without knowing what that color is going to be. And which are the other elements on the website. So but at some point, we will need to know what we're going to do. I just have one more question. But if we spent over $1,000 on logos of town money, why weren't we presented with any of them? Hey, Tim, you and I talked about that and the logo review committee did as well. They were too busy. And we kind of started with some of the stuff Tammy talked about. We wanted to capture team one to capture the sense of what Essex is. We wanted to do it a simple way that it could be blown up shrunk down, not have too many elements going on. And there was a lot of back and forth with the designer that we were using and just it kept being busy. There was too much in there. So that's why we decided to scrap that. Go ahead internally. So how many hours of graphic design did we get roughly for over $1,000? Tammy, do you know the answer to that? I would have to look at the invoice. I don't know how many hours that was. We ended up with, I think, three designs. Three? I think three. And then we went back again and we got some revisions, but a lot of it just would break that it would have been difficult to work with. I will say I've got a lot of other versions that I've put forth. Greg has probably seen so many logos as I's are crossing at this point, but I did have, I do have versions that have the mountains that look a little more like Mount Mansfield and the views that Betsy was talking about. I do have versions of that. I've got a couple of hand-drawn versions that I did. Some with the Saxon knife. There's several different kinds, but for one reason or another we dropped them because either they just didn't hold all of the elements we thought, didn't have, there was something in them that was missing, but I mean, I can always revisit those. I can go back. I can look at them or like I say, we can just come up with different versions and try to do another shot at it. I'm happy to do that. You know, if that's what you folks want me to do. Otherwise, we certainly can go and I know what type of company I believe that Ethan's talking about. You can submit and have different, is that like brand crowd possibly Ethan that you're talking about, brand crowd? Or there's another one. Or what do you mean for logo design? For the company that makes them. I know there's some in Essex. I personally use somebody from Fairfax and they renditioned my logo about 30 times for me over the course of a couple days. They charged me for three hours and it was $111. So I'm just curious as to that personally, you know, sitting on the Slackboard and being a taxpayer at Essex, I'm a little concerned that we spent over $1,000 on a logo that none of us even got to see. I'll get done that and if you're curious to see it, we can certainly do that. I assigned a team to come up with the logo. They spent a lot of time on that. They had a lot of back and forth with the designer and it wasn't meeting the criteria and the standard they had set rather than continuing to spend money. I totally agree with the stopping of the designer of that. I've never done logos before this year and it was a different process. But I'm just curious to know what I guess I'll turn it back to Andy so he can ask the questions but I'm not comfortable with making any decisions on anything. So what's the board want to do? It doesn't sound like we want to go out with any of these designs we have here to go for another vote. People want to see more detail or do we want to... I'd like to see more of the comments incorporated. I'd like to see if that background is supposed to be the Essex experience. I want to know that and if they want to focus on Saxon tail, I'd like to see a bike rider or something or a canoe on the water. I mean something that says... The concern there though is when you put it down on a small business car that's going to... And I get it. It's going to be too busy. I get that part. But maybe take out some of the field part. So that's... I mean all that field stuff is we don't have many open fields in Essex. It's trees. There's over a thousand acres of currently used agricultural land in Essex. It may not be cows on every bit of it but there's over a thousand acres of land that gets harvested every single year. You can drive on on Chapin Road. You can drive on Cold Stage Road, on Towers Road, on Center Road and you'll see a barn on every one of those roads. What I'm saying is how many people... How would that bring people to Essex? We're trying to sell what Essex is to come to Essex and see this. How many tourists are going to come look at Chapin Road fields? Chapin Road? You know? That's not a field. That's an orchard. Anyway, do you understand what I'm trying to say is that this is both like Ken said supposed to sell Essex and that's basically what people were asking for more of the stuff you would see to bring people to Essex. And I don't see that. I was going to raise my hand. I don't know where this thing is. I do have other... I have a lot of other versions and when I hear you all talk I think gosh I probably could match that with this. I do have some with kayak in them. I have some versions with... I do have spent a lot of time on this. I spent a lot of time on this and you're only seeing it as like a portion of it. So I'm wondering if I should provide you with the full landscape. You can see just a plethora of all the ones that I've worked on. It might spark a different direction possibly. And then with that we can also provide the ones that the graphic designer had given to us and just give you a broader path. I guess I was trying to bring you something that we kind of narrowed down and I think maybe we just need to go back to the beginning and show you where we started. And then if you're not finding anything in all of the different versions that I've worked through, I think at that point, certainly another option would... And I'm not at that point but even an option now would be to just like not bother doing that and just move on. We could also just go and just try to find a proposal out there, try to find somebody that would work on this for us at a cost. So I guess that's the direction I'm offering is that that's one option is I could just kind of go back and just show you the other pieces that we've got. I even have a version of the original that I just kind of blew up the town part of it a little bit, added a little different color, thicken the mountains a little so there's like there's so many different versions but I could put before you that maybe you would say, I like this, can you take this element, bring it over here and I'm happy to do that. It just seems like it might make more sense to do it on a smaller scale, maybe perhaps with the number or two of the board to work with me so that we don't have to do this, you know, several meetings more. I'm sorry we're creating so much extra work for you. No, I don't think you should apologize at all because I think you really do want to try to get this right and I want to get this right. So, you know, what I think that maybe the committee that I'm working with, this is what they said and so maybe we just need a different committee. Maybe this is just an idea of like maybe we have to have different perspectives from some different people, you know, and go from there and if I can't provide you with what you're looking for, you know, I think what I was showing you is basically what's in my toolbox, it's not all that's in my toolbox, it just happens to be what we send out and what we came up with as options that satisfied everybody and seemed to be the middle but there's more. I mean, we can do more. Okay, so do we want to bring the whole treatment match into this meeting or do you want to have a couple of us go work with Tammy to? I'd rather have a couple of people work with Tammy, I think, and I think we all, I mean, basically we sort of all got the same concept of what we want. We just haven't seen it all together yet. I don't know. Yeah, I agree with that. I just wanted to touch back on a point because I think, I think me and Don's conversation there a minute ago just touched on a huge point because there's no brand. People want to see these things, they want to see the experience and that and to me, and I won't go off on a tangent on this, but if people want Essex to be a four story condo with a movie theater behind it, then put that in the logo. Or if they want it to be Essex that has Saxon Hill and a name Brooke and all of that, then put that in the logo. But I think Ken made the perfect point. We don't have enough, we don't have a direction. We're trying to put all that into one logo and it's not, you know what I mean? That can't be a logo. You can't have a movie theater next to a farm. It's just not there. It doesn't exist. They turned it into an ice cream shop, you know what I mean? I'm being serious though. As you develop out, there's different sections of town. If it is the town center and that's what we're focused on is the business corridor and that's the brand of Essex is just the business quarter, then it's the business quarter. If it wants to be all of it and you throw in those couple small shops with the burn in the water tower and then the mountains, then it's that. I think there's a good point there. We're repeating a lot of stuff we've said already. All right, but we don't have, we still haven't, the board hasn't made a consensus of a brand of what we want them to draw. Right. So what I'm hearing, so I've heard whatever we said, Ken, you got any thoughts on what we should, directly we should go. It's very hard and the branding is important. I just think you probably could do the branding with a logo, a word logo and hide to whatever emblem you have because Essex is so diverse. There's not one thing that everybody said Essex. What about instead of the Essex experience, why don't you put experience Essex? That's what Kendall had said. That way, that would you say, I didn't, okay, I missed that part turning it around. Yeah, use the, use the, his suggestion was use the abstract. Okay, that's how he said the Essex experience. I want that. Okay. Experience Essex and then, but again, right. Is there any other detail that could be put in that anybody wants to see or whatever? Yeah, it, you know, I keep going back to the Carps and Rec logo and like the geometric shapes and then you, it's scalable, right? You can insert different things to make up the whole of everything that Essex is. Mm-hmm. So you could have like, you know, there's a tree with a trail, there's a frog, you could have water, you could have, you know, like a little shopping center. Or a little red barn somewhere. Okay, right. So, I mean, the overall point is to like, I think it makes sense to have something scalable like that that you can plop in for, that's a technical term. Plop in. You know, the, the various components of what Essex is depending on whether you're working with Parks and Rec or whether you're working with town offices or whether you're working with economic development. But that base logo would for all intents and purposes remain the same. And then you're not trying to cram everything into one logo. I actually have two that I used the same shapes that we have in the Essex Parks and Rec because that was one of the things we talked about in our committee is exactly what you're saying. And I have two versions of that. You just have not seen them. But yeah, we did the same thing. And I, and I, and the other thing we did play around with was the idea of changing the icons depending on what department, you know, you were looking at. So like you could use that same, that those same shapes and then use different icons for say the planning department and what they would be doing and whatever else you like. Yeah, you could totally have a lot of fun with all of the icons and switch it up but just use those same four pieces. And like you said, clock them in there. You know, but that's, yeah, I have two versions of that already. So you get the sense that we're not, we're not ready to go forward with any of these options. We'd like to see what has been done before. We'd like to try to integrate in some sort of branding possible or possibly have a flexible thing. So Tammy offered to go through all that. I think there was some sense that we should do it with a smaller group rather than the whole group. How do we decide who's going to do that? Anybody? I'm more than willing to sit down and help. Anybody else willing to do that? I didn't want to be the one to offer it up first. And I want you to think I'm going to drive a barn into the logo, but I'd be more than happy to sit down and go over the. So the intent here is right is to go see what's what's been done to see the rest of what she's got and to go for it goes in there and you can come back and educate the rest of us as to what more information about it and their ideas that we need to appoint these folks to do this or just say they volunteered to do it and you can just have Tammy tell us what works for you. Tammy can get together and organize some discussion offline. You can't have more than two of us because then it comes to you. Get the young and the older is perfect. You're still young. Oh my goodness. Well, you are older than me. I am old. I know. I didn't say old. I said older. I take everybody's questions and now I'm all old. I can't win tonight. All right, it's all relative. I think we can move what we should move on now. Thank you, Tammy. Yes, thank you. No problem. A lot of work and thank you for being willing to continue working. Yeah, no problem. Okay, moving on to discussion and potential action on town. No, I just read that. Discussion and potential action on adoption of the town of Essex Declaration of Inclusion. Is this me? Yes. Hello. Good evening. Well, hard to follow that discussion, but maybe we can. Who knows? So this Declaration of Inclusion, just to reiterate, you have a draft here that has gone through. Essentially, I took some templates that some of the other towns in Vermont had already adopted. This is through the Vermont Declaration of Inclusion Project that's run by Al Wakefield and Norm. And Bob Harnish, I want to say is his last name. Anyway, and took those templates, kind of looked at them, but I've talked a lot about it. Essex Best looked at them, they came and presented to RCEE when we first had that committee. So it was a while ago now. This has been a bit in the making, but part of that was because separation came in and we wanted to make sure Essex Best knew what it was going to do and decide on that first. So in the meantime, I sent this draft around to the department heads. I got feedback there. I then brought it to the Essex Best meeting and got their feedback as well. And so now it's in front of you with that input. I will note that I also, in creating this, this one around February, March, I met with Catherine and incorporated some of the town plan language into the original template draft that I sent out to the department heads to make sure that we were using language and ideas that we had heard from the public already in those sessions just to make sure we're getting as much public language as possible that we already have access to. This was something that was brought up again last spring and winter even actually and has been a project that has been shelved until kind of we got some other aspects of separation done. And so now that we're here, this is the draft that is on the table for your discussion. I will note that you could approve for adoption tonight or you could adopt it straight up. It's not a policy or procedure. It's really up to you how you want to proceed. You could do another of those things either. But there is an option there as well. If you wanted to approve for adoption, it would then go on the reading file for the next meeting and that might allow for some more public to see it or look at it. It really is just up to you as to what you're thinking and what you want to do. Okay. Thank you. I agree. Any comments or questions from board members? All right. I mean, I have a motion but I don't have any comments or questions. The one comment I have is that I read through the entire thing and the word discrimination is not included anywhere. So I would like to include the word discrimination somewhere in a sentence that says to that and the town of Essex select board condemns. You've been very specific. But as we all know, we can't tell what is going to be discriminated against at any time. So I would just like to add discrimination so that it's clear that we include all discrimination. Are there board comments? Or is there a specific place that you would like to put that? The second paragraph where it says to the end, the town of Essex select board condemned. He wants to have discrimination put in there too. I think you'd go perfect after ageism. Sure. Because the first switch is into all the isms. Okay. I see what you're saying. Isms and discrimination and it goes on. So yeah, right there. Yep. Okay. All right. There's no more. Any other board comment? Let's go to public comment. I thought I saw a hand up in the room here. Can come on up. So I've been looking at this issue a little bit and I've been reading that a lot of these declarations now are starting to include the word belonging because it's not enough to just be included. People need to not only be included, but they need to feel as though they belong. If you could work that into it, maybe in that one little section where it says feel included, maybe be included and feel that as though they belong or something along those lines might be a nice thing. There's something that I think you're going to start seeing a little bit more in these going forward. People are starting to come to that realization that just being included is not quite enough. Thanks. Any other public comments? I don't see any hands up online or in the room. So let's I guess bring it back to the board. So there was a comment about adding belonging. So if you put in that first line, the town of Essex Select Board, I think that's supposed to be hereby declares our commitment to fostering an inclusive instead of welcoming, could you put belonging in there? Yes? Yes. I didn't want to speak for you all. I easily can. If you all feel that that is what you want. How did we all miss Herbie? It's supposed to be hereby. Because I didn't see that. You didn't see Herbie? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah, say Herbie doesn't. It was then say the town of Essex Select Board hereby declares our commitment to fostering an inclusive and belonging place for all residents, visitors, employees and more. No. Well, it could say fostering an inclusive and belonging atmosphere. Atmospheric is a flow. I doesn't. Yeah. Inclusive and welcoming place where all residents, visitors, employees and others feel they can belong or feel they belong. That works. I still got a hand up though. She may have something. I was looking at that last sentence. We understand that our community is best serve when all residents feel included, have a sense of belonging and equitable access to town services and facilities. Have a sense of belonging right there. Yep. That works too. Yep. Perfect. Thank you, Trace. That worked more great. Neither adopted, which means we're done and it's adopted. Or we could approve it for adoption. Then I make the motion to select what I do. Which means that we would approve it at a future meeting. It's our policy to not approve major policies in the same meeting that they're introduced. It's questioned whether or not this is a policy. It's a statement and it could be considered a resolution. So I think we can approve it this meeting. Or we can adopt it. Well, it's been passed around to so many committees, Andy. I think it's- Yeah. I'm just explaining. Yeah. No, I don't. Yeah. So you can make the motion and you can discuss whether- I make the motion to select what adopt the Declaration of Inclusion with the changes. Thank you, Don. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Ethan. Okay. Do we want to have any discussion? Anybody uncomfortable with adopting this tonight? Would you like to extend it to the next meeting so that we can have an opportunity from our public comment? People can certainly comment on it after we adopted. We don't have to- people don't have to- you can always hear more comments later if need be, if you go have them. Any thoughts? Okay. I see thumbs up. I see nods and heads nodding. So the motion is to adopt with the two changes that were suggested this evening. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Both say nay. The motion passes 5-0. Thank you, Marguerite. And thank you to everybody who put any finger on this at all. That's a lot of work. Appreciate it. Right. Thanks so much. Okay. Okay. Moving on to the next business discussion is Madam Jay, discussion on potential action about residency requirements for volunteer boards, commission, and committees. This has come up a number of times. We've mentioned it earlier this evening during some of the interviews. We have not in the past had any requirement for residency. Statute allows non-residents. I think the only actual statute says that our planning commission has to have a majority of residents. The only statute I'm aware of uses a statute. It gives authority to city council select boards to create boards as they see fit because planning commission is one that is detailed out by statute. I think that's why that is in there. There are certain charters that say, may say residents, you have to be a resident to be a member of the planning commission or different boards, but we don't have that at this time. So we sort of use that planning commission statute as a model for other boards and committees. I mentioned here, I'm not sure if I mentioned specifically, but there was one, the conservation and trails committee. The planning commission have had members in the past recent years where somebody was a member. They moved out of town. They remained on until the end of their term. I think apart from that, the housing commission is the only one that specifies in Essex that you don't have to be a resident as long as the majority is made up of residents. I think that's one of the changes though, that they just made. They take that out and that change. I don't know. That's not sure. No, I mean, they pulled it, but I thought I read that that was one of the. So we currently have a number committees, commissions and appointees that are non-residents. So there's questions that come up. Do we remove, if we decide that we don't want to have, that we want to have all the residents, only do we remove, I guess we first, we have to answer the question whether we want to exclude non-residents. Then we have to deal with the question of do we want to remove anybody who's currently not a resident that represents the town? It's not just committees and commissions, it's also, for example, it's a green mountain. Our appointee is currently not a resident at the town. We just reappointed. No, we haven't yet. You haven't. He's on the list. We have to do time. Okay. So what are folks feeling about residency requirements for? I'll start. I think it is a huge disservice to this town to kick off anybody who's served for this town or wants to serve for this town and isn't arrested. I feel that if someone has the best interest for Essex and they have the interest in serving Essex and whether they're a new appointment or they're a reappointment, especially the reappointments, and they've proven their dedication to this town, I feel that we're doing a huge disadvantage, a disservice to the residents by removing those people from the boards and committees. Originally when we first started talking about it, I was kind of like, maybe they should all have to be town residents and the more that I thought about it and the more that I learned from all these volunteers and their work that they've done, and really one of the last things on my mind is what town do you live in? And with one of our interviews tonight, I just wanted to make sure that they knew this is just Essex now, would you still like to serve for us? Because if you want to serve for Essex, I see no harm in that. Those are my thoughts. Thanks Ethan. I guess I'm going to speak against that in that most of the boards and committees and stuff that you see, they're very careful to have a balance to represent different communities. And the truth is, is that the town of Essex and the city of Essex Junction are now two different communities just like the town of Jericho or Williston or anything. And I really think that the residents of the town should be on the committees, not non-residents. I would have a really hard time in probably most places being appointed on any committees in another town, unless I was a particular expert. And then I wouldn't necessarily be put on as a member, but I'd be put on as an expert, a professional, you know, in that capacity. So I can appreciate the service of those people from outside the community, serving the community in that capacity. But if you're a resident, you're a resident of the town, you should service your town. It takes away a lot of the question. If there's ever any kind of conflicts or issues, if you have all residents, because you're all in it together. I guess that's my two cents. Thanks, Kendall. Anybody else want to comment? Go ahead. I am having a difficult time with this. We just passed a declaration of inclusion. And now we're talking about excluding people who want to serve for the betterment of our community. If we make a blanket statement that you must be a resident, it closes that door. So if there is expertise, I'm not talking about City Town, I'm talking about other neighboring communities, maybe someone who has a business here who lives in a neighboring community, if they want to participate in EDC, I'm just pulling it out of the air, that would prevent them going forward from participating. I've said it before, I don't care where good ideas come from, bring me the good ideas. And that's where I'm landing on this. I do think that we should clearly state that residency is preferred. But we as a board, as the memo says, we as the board can make that decision when we appoint based on who the applicants are, what their experiences are, and the current makeup of the committee. That's where I sit. Coming into tonight, I was really going to open this big can of worms to say, absolutely, you had to live in the town. But having listened to multiple people speak, having listened to what Tracy just said, and the fact that I did not realize that Tatanisha lived in the city and not the town which really changed my view of some things. I think it would be, and I don't know how to put this correctly, I would prefer it be all town people, but I also wouldn't make a stipulation. I mean, but I would give town residents first choice. I'm saying, I mean, just I say, I don't know how to word this. I'm saying that I'd rather have people live in the town and work for the town, you know, because they're really invested in the town. But I also understand where Tracy's coming from it and what Ethan said, if they wouldn't have applied if they weren't really interested, even though they lived in the city. So I don't know how to word it. I just, you know, but my coming in tonight, my biggest feeling was, well, the village voted to separate from the town. They don't want anything to do with that. So why are they applying to the committees? That was my initial response to this whole thing. But in listening and then during the interview, I just kind of a little bit of change of heart. I think there's a difference between existing committee and commission members versus new appointments. I think, as Tracy said, we can make those new appointment decisions on a case by case basis. I agree that that that town resident should be referred, but if you've got a qualified candidate. We don't, I don't think we have any situations where any that anybody that we're considering now is is not is a new appointment that is not a town resident. I think you have some terms that have ended that are not residents, but they would be reappointment. So yeah, so those are those are existing members that were have been serving that have been serving. So I think there's there's there's a different standard, maybe a different question. If there was somebody who was applying that's is it, I don't know, we'll have to have this. We can, I think it's a case by case discussion at that point. Do they have the expertise? Do we need that skill? You know, is there some other ex-annually in certain sense that though I'm I'm in favor of allowing non-residents. In one case, we had a resident who moved to South Carolina. It's not it's not always it's not just this extension that non-residents could live in still serve. I have a problem with that one. And it was it was it was like the last six months of that would just give every five districts their appointee kind of that situation. But so Ethan, you had your hand up for more. Yeah, I just had a couple thoughts popping in my head from Don. And one of the one of the biggest points that that I wanted to just say was that not everybody voted to leave the town. So a lot of people like Ashley, that loves the town. So but the main reason why I came to this and and I was just had another thought when I was hearing what you had to say, Andy, is I don't know if I if I added this up right. If I have, I don't have a directory of who lives where just from my personal experiences. But I counted seven seats right now that wouldn't be filled because there wasn't enough people that applied for the positions to fill them and more so would be on the housing commission on, you know, our GMT rep and GMT rep, which is Alan. I don't know where Alan lives, honestly, but he's I don't know if he lives in the juncture, if he lives outside of Essex in general. But then there's there's, you know, I mean, with there's planning, there's trying to think of zoning. Yeah, zoning, you know, so I just I just had it, you know, where the whole case by case, and if there's a new appointment or repointment, if we're going to do it, I say we just allow it and then it be in the interview process, we do interview everybody. And then when you're making a decision, you know, we're looking for qualifications or residency. I mean, personally, I'm just asking a question. But personally, I prefer somebody that I understand, you know, when there's people who apply for things that we may not have, you know, openings and they may not have the experience and they're willing to learn. Also, when we have people who have experience come to us and give us information and share that they're qualified to volunteer for this position, I don't think whether I lived in Westford, Essex or Essex Junction, personally, I wouldn't see that as a disqualification, you know, it'd be like saying, we were only going to hire pow truck drivers from the town, because we didn't want them to get Greg's mailbox from there when they found the road, you know, I don't know, just throwing it out there because it does sound silly when you use it in a different scenario. But I totally understand the whole and I was on them. Like Don said, when the separation happened, I was dead set. And then I met everybody and I learned about what they've done for us. And I mean, I wouldn't be here if I didn't care. And I feel like everybody else that steps up to volunteers is only here because they actually care about this community. So I think that that has its way. I just want to add in those last couple comments. So Greg, when we advertise positions, do we put residency preferred in there? I don't think we do, but I'm not positive that certainly something we can add in. Because it's something that I think we should let folks know. Right. That the criteria we could use when we have our discussions about whether or not. Yeah, the only the only thing that says is the ask if you are a resident of the town of Essex, and I was confused whether whether cab didn't ask that question. Because I couldn't tell I got personally, I wasn't going to ask them where they live. But on the cab of applications, there was no residency. I'd have to check on that. I know that we we know that we're not residents. Yeah, I was just like, that's funny. All right, so I see some hands in the public. Betsy, come on up. Good evening, and it's Betsy Dunn. I do not believe that we should have non residents on the committees that in the commissions that we have. I think they should be Essex town residents. And I think a person who's got expertise and is concerned and is involved and wants to be involved can always come to meetings and contribute in that manner. But they don't have to be the people making the votes about what happens. For economic development, a person could poach. They could be we're looking at a person to come into the town to the business. And this person's from another town and goes back to their group. You know, they're looking at that place over there. You better see if they might want to come on our way. You know, I don't want that. I want us to start thinking about what we want. And as a town, we're just in this fledgling newness. And how are we going to participate and go further forward? I think it's really important. And yeah, we do have people who aren't the committees that don't have full membership. And we had a person drop off of the committee because of the atmosphere on that committee. I think we need to have a good ethics issue here. A conversation because why aren't people signing up for it? Because people are interested in their community. And what's keeping them from being a participant? I think that's the really big question there. When you say you've got all these committees and commissions that don't have people who are signing up. I think that that's a big thing. And I think that maybe it's about term limits. Maybe it's about, you know, not being able to be a chair of that committee for the next 15 years. And, you know, and push the way you want to go. I think it's really important to look at those things. And I think that people of Essex can rule their own domain. Thank you. Thanks Betsy. I see a hand online. Lorraine Zalun. Thank you, Eddie. Now I can argue both ways. I think there are so many different variables involved. I think it could depend on the committee, the commission, in terms of what benefits someone from another town being on it might bring, like for example, even on the Conservation Trails Committee, someone from another town served on it could potentially even bring more traffic from an outside town. Because we're such a small state that creates marketing and community. I could argue that people who have a business here and can pay business taxes that they also might benefit some of our committees too. I even serving on like the economy development committee because they have a state. I wouldn't necessarily want someone from the planning commission to serve on this from another town. So I'm almost thinking like this is the kind of question. It seems that it looks like it's a chartered proposition that maybe we could just look into the history in terms of our size of town, Vermont, and what serves a community like ours best. I just think you probably need to think about a little bit more if it's going to be a charter thing. And totally like Betsy said, one of our issues is our lack of ethics in the policies and in our outreach. We really aren't that great in terms of figuring out how to outreach better to get people on our committee. So I know we need a lot of work. I know there are times that we go through population changes is that you have more people available and times that you don't. And it's interesting tonight or over this path to see so many new faces. It's just fantastic because I personally would like to give a difference to people who live in the town. But I think there might be times that the population down is down or whatever, but you may want to have that feel. So anyway, I just might want to Google it and see what's best. Thanks, Lorraine. Any other public comments? I don't see any hands. So and since this I heard is that we not limit or anybody want to react to any of the public comments you want. I hear both of the comments. I'm just curious if we went that way, who would fill in and I don't have the list off top of my head, but I know that all the positions haven't been applied for to fill all the positions. So who would fill those positions or are we just going to run with a boy? I mean, like the housing commission that board's been in crisis for a quorum for for a while through the through the city and in the whole separation. And now that the separation is happening, there's two members and and one of them is currently a city resident who wants to possibly come to the town and there may be just one member coming up, you know, we make an appointment possibly, depending on how we decide this and there may be two members, there may not be a quorum for the housing commission. Well, we do more outreach than at that point. I understand. But from now until that point, there's no there's no business happening. And that's and that's not just one board that's that's multiple boards that there's that there's I'm not saying for the quorum, but I'm just saying for a full board. You know, I wish I had the I wish I would have written it down because I knew it was going to come up tonight. I just didn't have the time to get a hold of Greg over the weekend. I was camping. But I would really look into how many vacant seats there's going to be by limiting that because there's quite a few of the consensus is that we not limit. Right. And so I'm just responding to it's it's my absolute preference that committee and commission members be residents. I just don't think that there is always one right answer and that we should have some, you know, some gray, not just black and white to be able to do the right thing in the moment. Yeah, I agree with that. And if it's preferable for Essex residents, and we get up, you know, more applications to have vacancies that we're still going to be advertising for for this year, if we get a swarm of Essex residents, then next year when it comes about and we have another swarm of Essex residents, we can fill all the boards with Essex residents. So be it. Let's do it. I just think it's a disservice to the town right now to not have as many people in those committees and commissions as we can. Okay, so in order for us to continue as we currently are, we don't need to take any action. Correct. I'm really happy to work with Tammy and get something on our applications form that residency is preferred. But beyond that, yeah, no actions needed. Yeah, okay, with adding residency. So I would just ask the question that unlike most towns, if we are not requiring residency for our boards, does that mean we have to advertise outside of the town? Just a question. I don't think so. There's any obligation there at all. I think it's, I think for some of our boards, it's unlikely that people from other municipalities would apply. If it was a paid position, Kendall, a full-time paid position, they would have to advertise outside the town because it's not a full-time or a paid position. It's a volunteer position. Well, I just wonder because our volunteer position is a paid position. We do offer a stipend. We compensate our members where a lot of communities don't. So I mean, I'm just asking the, it sets a, there's a gray area that hasn't been discussed before. And sometimes that's probably why a lot of places specify residency is because then you, that answers all those questions. So I'm just curious about that. All right, so we're moving on. All right. Next one is discussion on potential action on plan to improve communication between volunteer boards, commissions, and committees. Greg. This is something that we started discussing at the last meeting and wanted to come back and propose some hopefully tangible steps to improve those communication based on a conversation, based on some giving it some thought after the last meeting. The memo lays out some options. Coming up this week, we're going to be doing a breakfast with the chairs and the vice chairs of all the boards and committees way to start communicating that way, give and take feedback from the boards, have the different members going to just brainstorm and chat and hear what the others are doing. We talked about minutes, whether or not to include those in the packets. Certainly the simplest, quickest way is to just visit the website. It's going to be the most up-to-date piece of information available. We could put a link into the packets each week. If we were to include them, the minutes in the packets, it probably doesn't take that much time for staff to do uploads, but it is just one more thing for people to think about and remember. It does make the packets bigger. It's something we can do. It's not the end of the world, but it may not be the simplest option. We talked about inviting board members of the boards and committees to come to select board meetings. Talk to staff a little bit. We were thinking if we do that, probably the, I think somebody mentioned it at the last meeting, to August, September, October timeframe might make sense. Chance to talk about what work plans are for the coming year and what budget needs might be requested for the year after that. We could keep that open-ended. It could be invite the whole committee, invite the chair, the vice chair to come in and give updates. That'll take time, so they could be helpful to have some questions like you do with the interviews about what you're looking for, prompt people ahead of time, so they can come in a little bit more prepared. Another idea is to have each of you volunteer and serve as a liaison to the boards and committees. I don't think you would need to necessarily go to every single meeting by any means, but you could be a point of contact for those board and committees and you know attend once or one or two a year. We can keep doing the town meeting showcase that we did, that we do a town meeting. There's always an opportunity to expand that and do a little bit more with that as well, but so those are some of the options. I'm sure there's more that are out there, but those are the ones that we could be thought of in the past few weeks and wanted to present to you tonight. Okay, so I wasn't at the last discussion you had about this. I haven't heard my thoughts, but... Well, why don't you share them then? So this comes up so often with the select board. This isn't the first time that the question has been raised about trying to get better communication. My experience in past go rounds with this is that the consensus at the end of the discussion was that select board members that are interested in what committees are doing can go find their minutes on the website rather than adding them to the packet. So that's been what has happened in the past. The other thing that comes to light, trying to address some of the comments that Greg made is not all committee members or chairs are comfortable coming and speaking to the select board. It's something we can ask them to do, but it may disincent people from being chair. It's something to think about. Again, believe it or not, that discussion has been had before by the select board. I think of the other thoughts. Each committee does have a staff member assigned. So there certainly is a path for committees to communicate to the select board. They can certainly ask their staff representative to go ask for any help that's needed. As any member of any committee can do is call any select board member also and share their thoughts. I guess I'm disinclined to add more content to our meeting packet. Some of them get pretty long to begin with. All of the information is available already on the website. Each of us can go find whichever committees we're interested in finding as can the public. It's more workload on staff to assemble the packet. If it doesn't happen, then you end up having to address why it doesn't happen. It can be problematic there. Again, I think I have a number of times invited specific committee chairs to come to at least share their needs for upcoming budget season. It's inconsistent whether we get a response. I don't know. I'm not saying. That's maybe a harsh thing to say in public that some of our chairs don't ask for what they need when they need it. I shouldn't have said that. Too late. Yeah, it's been said. I don't know. I think the breakfast that we're going to have Thursday mornings is a good idea. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully we can have some approval discussion there. I really like the idea of having the community fair as part of informational meeting. Maybe there's a way to have that happen more than once a year. Trying to get more volunteers that way also. Go ahead. Before I forget because I forget things, but I've had said that about the minutes on the packet because I don't need to dig any further for things that aren't, you know, packets are long enough. So if we add in the committees of the commissions of five others, I really like something off of that idea. And like you had mentioned, and Greg's proposal here is the select board lesions or lesions. I like that idea. I think if we split it up and said, you know, I'll take these two, you take those two, and then I wouldn't say like, I wouldn't say like have a have a dead set requirement of you have to go to one meeting a month or whatever. But I could see myself, I've done it. I could see myself attending two to, you know, three meetings every three months or whatever, you know, I've attended two different commissions this year, or committees. Oh, I should say. I like that idea. Because that way I don't have to know what's going on every single one of them. You know, then we can all kind of come back and have it on an agenda one day of, you know, I guess that would be kind of hard because we'd all be going at different times, but I don't know. I like that idea. I just don't know how to execute it. You just reminded me the other point that I neglected to make is that this has come up before and it's been discussed and the response that we've gotten from some of the committees is they don't want the select board to exert undue influence on what they're doing. That's the why we appointed a committee. If we want to appoint a committee, we should let them do the work, we should respect their work. If you if the select board wants to do the work, the select board should do the work and that and that metal, you know, that's the right word with with our committees. And we've gotten that response from some committees in the past. Well, if we just go there to listen with a piece of paper, you can, you can absolutely, we're all absolutely, I know we are, I know we are, but I just think you can just do it in an official capacity. It makes it something different. Right. I was going to suggest that we include the link in the packet each time. And if there was an easy way to maybe specify the committees that had meetings that particular two week period or whatever it was between, so you could narrow it down. And then in the reading file on the agenda, just leave a space that says comments on minutes or something so that if any board members had any questions or comments on what they read in the minutes, they could bring that up in a meeting. Just a suggestion. What was that last one, Kendall? The in the agenda that you have in the reading file, a place that comment on committee minutes, something like that, just so that each meeting, if any board members had any questions or were curious about something, they could discuss it during the meeting. They might not have anybody that can respond to that question in the meeting. That's where I'm going. But if it was worthy of consideration or question at that point, Greg could follow up on it or could be discussed later or like that. I'm mostly just curious to kind of keep up on what's going on versus questioning what they're doing. In the past, it's come down that it's up to, it's incumbent each select board member to follow their own interests in that regard and not to add content to the select board meeting. But that's, I'm just saying that's what the past is down, isn't it? Well, in the beginning, Andy, in how I've seen it, I mean, I've brought this up previously, but how I've seen it done is just, you know, it's for consistency and awareness of information because many community members may tie into this meeting, but not others. They may not check agendas regularly, but more than likely, if they are interested, they will be interested in this meeting. So how this has happened in other communities is, you know, I have an interest in planning. So if I were to attend a planning commission meeting or conservation and trails at the next meeting, if there was some event, if there was something going on, if there was a survey, whatever, at that next meeting, I could speak up during board member comments and say, oh, hey, just for awareness, like, there's the survey. Or at the next meeting, they're, you know, they're looking for community feedback just to bring more awareness in amplification of what's going on in other areas. So that's where this comes from. It's not a, like, oh, or, you know, big brother listening in on everything you do. It's just for that consistency of information and to make sure that the community is aware of what's going on in other areas because it's difficult to, you know, keep tabs on what every committee is doing. Right. And the community reaches out to us if they don't know, and if we haven't been informed, it's really hard to answer their questions. You maybe think of something and then I'll comment on you. Don, too, Big Kendall, your thought about having an agenda item for board committee member or for board members to comment on the minutes is that you, because Tracy mentioned the board member comments, you can comment on anything. I don't know if that's sufficient or if it's going to be... Yeah. I mean, it didn't have to be formal as long as you knew under the reading minutes that if there were any comments that somebody said, an example would be I listened in on the RPD pizza thing, and it was great. And they mentioned a number of times they wish a lot more people were involved in that. So say this was the reading file. They say, hey, they're having an RPD pizza day and there's probably more coming up. Check it out. It's great. That type of a thing. And then Donna, as for what you just said, none of us are going to know everything that's going on at any moment. So I think, and I do it all the time, I do it for you, I do it for staff and residents. If someone says, hey, what's going on with such and such, and I don't know, I don't know. Let me look into it and get back to you. That is a perfectly acceptable answer in my mind. I see hands up in the public. Should we go to public comment? Sure. Betsy, come on up. Good evening. Betsy Dunn. So I'm the clerk of the Conservation and Trails Committee, and I could certainly send you the minutes at any time. I have them done by the third, we meet on the second Tuesday, and I always have them out and to our staff member by that Thursday. So they're there two days after the meeting and they could go up online immediately, but we have to have them approved. That's the issue. We don't put them online until approval. But we could do is that you have a public to be heard time and you could ask these four committees to come and just give a public to be heard. The committee could say, I'll go ahead and I'll go that day. And they just let you know in a very brief synopsis what we're up to. And it's done. But it keeps you informed about what's happening in your town that you're governing because we're making decisions about what we want to do within the town. And we're also creating a vision just like the Planning Commission is envisioning. We're envisioning what we see of the trails and the parks and with the conservation that we have to do, water management, the quality. So I think you'd be wanting to know about those things. And I'm sure that every committee that there is has got important issues of their own. I don't know what they all are, but I can tell you they have them. So I would think you would want to hear and a public to be heard that could be like two short sentences. And just so you know what's about them and you could say, well, what is that about? We didn't know. I heard one suggestion and I just tested it out. I just go online and check for the most recent agendas and minutes. So I tried that for conservation and trails committee, went to the conservation and trails page, nice link, most recent agendas and minutes. Click on that. It doesn't go to the most recent agenda in minutes goes to all the future meetings for all the entities that they change the dates, the range you want to see, and then specify the committee that you want to see. Then you can see those meetings in the past and the link to the minutes. I don't think that's a good option. The idea of having a link to each of the minutes, that's a good idea. But I've experienced what the city is doing, because I have to read their packets, and they are including the minutes, the DRB minutes are in their planning commission is in there, and it becomes like a newspaper. When you get a newspaper, you don't read every article. You just read the articles you're interested in the headline, conservation and trail. I'm interested in that. I read that. So minimum a link, I think is a great idea. Actual minutes, if the committee sends them in, it should be a lot of extra work. I think that that's actually the optimal way to go. Oh, I should say conservation and trails committee passed a motion at its last meeting to send in the minutes. I don't know if they ever got sent in or not, but we did. Thank you. Lorraine. Thank you. For me, just our lives are really busy. I'm looking for like kind of a one-stop repository. They can kind of click on and get it for even in a minute. I don't care how it's done. I just want to make it easy on me, because I'm selfish that way. But I'm thinking even like, I love, I think Tammy Geschel does them, the civic alert, and even to be able to sign up for notification for when the minutes go out or something. So, and to me, part of this is about cross-pollination, making in better communication so that we're better informed. And a lot of the committee's work are actually overlapped in a lot of ways. They think we need to make sure that that overlap happens on a regular basis as well, because it's more efficient. So, I don't know how that's to do that, but I do want to do something that makes it easier. All right. Thanks, Lorraine. I think we, I wasn't sure if you got cut off or you stopped. It's like she stopped. Okay. All right. I'm sorry. I said thanks, Andy. I'm sorry. That's how you heard me. All right. All right. All right. So, what do we want to do? Ethan. I have a comment, I should say, but since we're doing a website redesigned, maybe instead of agendas and minutes, it's agendas and then minutes. That way, when you click on minutes, you only get minutes. When you click on agendas, you only get agendas. And then that way, they'll still pop up in newest form. I mean, like right now, you click on agendas and minutes and you get the upcoming meetings. You have to, like Ken said, you have to do some funky business to find the minutes, but I don't know if that's a big sense. I don't know if it's, because part of the way it's set up right now is just that's the functionality of the website and that's Civic Clerk and that's how they set it up. I can certainly talk to Tammy and IT and relay that message if it's something that they can do. If you'll indulge me for a moment, can I go to the website and try to work some of this stuff through? I screen, go to the town of Essex website, your government, agendas and minutes, and it has all of the, right now we have the select board meeting. That's tonight. You scroll up, there was a conservation and trails committee, there was an economic development commission, planning commission, housing commission, if you scroll down you can see the meetings that are coming up, select board, housing commission, housing commission, you can filter it. So Ken said he went to conservation and trails committee. That might be a functionality of the website, the link that we have in the packet is the one that I just went to and that's where it just has all of them. From there you can click on, you can go to the event categories and click on the conservation and trails committee. Then you have to search the keyword minutes. No, and I can check with Tammy and IT and see if that's something that going to each committee's page, the minutes that automatically populate it, that's something I can check on. If you go to cemetery, now I'm back in 2021, I'll try February 8th meeting. You click on that and there's the agenda, there's the minutes. Could you go to March 28th conservation trails? Which year? What's this year? See I just clicked on it and back with conservation and trails it says, okay didn't work first time, great. Yep, the minutes. And I admit our website is not perfect, it's not the most. I don't think it's our website, I think it's a bit clearer. I guess one thing that I did was as soon as I got there I put in sort of thinking I was preparing for this meeting. I went and chose my starting date is June 5th because that was our last meeting and an ending date of today and it automatically brought up all of the meetings that have happened and click into it, click the minutes right there and it actually, I didn't know that that functionality was there because I'm used to the old website wonkiness. So we need a community website training? Yes. I always see it with free pizza. Yes, probably some donuts and coffee and a big room. We could do it remotely though. Yeah. Pizza delivered to everybody? Maybe, what's the budget? Yeah, if they did it remotely then we'd have to teach them how to split their screen first because they'd be trying to watch you share your screen and do it at the same time. So what do we, what action do we, is there action we want to do? I would just say that if it's fairly easy for them just include the link and see what happens going from there. So the which link is it the link that goes to the site that has all of the things down there? Yeah, right, don't need to pour it in here. Just include that in our packet so that we could click on it. Right and there's no expectation that the select board will read every word of what's out there. No, but the public might. Yes. Because I gotta go do some reading now and find out why it's RPD now. It's sort of PDI, you know RPD pizza party. I didn't hear about that. You didn't? No, I missed out. Oh, you're camping that well, can we first? All right, so so the the consensus that we want to include the link to the website that includes all meetings, minutes or agendas, minutes in each meeting packet so that folks who look at the meeting packet can find that link and go to that site and read what they want. We also will have access to that. So if somebody asks us a question, you can go find the minutes for the specific meeting that is of concern. I just have a question follow up with that whole thing. So like, we're using Civic Clerk, right? I don't know if I don't forgive me if I if I'm misremembering right now, but was the Google question ever resolved? I don't know what the Google question like one of the time I googled something. Oh, if it's related. Oh, the question of whether something related to the meeting perfectly fine. Okay, because that was going to be my question is I know it's not really Google, but it's basically Google the Civic Clerk thing. So I can't are we allowed to like somebody asked us a question of, hey, can you look back to this, you know, March 28th meeting, you know, I just want to make sure that was okay that we go in there and we, you know, click on it. During the meeting, you can look you can search anything you can use your your your electronic device for anything that is supports the purpose of the meeting. Sure. Yes, I went to the policy and okay, I just corrected myself. I couldn't remember if you had told me after I'm I'm I'm unfortunately remembering my dinosaur days when we didn't have these in front of us. Oh, yeah. And and and having this even on the table was ground upon. Yeah, so apologies there. No, it's okay. I just yeah. Yes, you may you may use your computer for purposes of the meeting. Why are you in the meeting? So do we need to take action on that? To do that? I don't think so. I think just direct. What I'm hearing is we're going to have the breakfast on Thursday. We can always report back after we have it. Yes. What is this breakfast on Thursday? It's the third time I've heard you say it. What is it? We're so after the last meeting, Tammy, Marguerite and I put our brains together. Maybe we mentioned that at the meeting to the idea of having a breakfast with the chairs of all the boards. That's kind of a thank you for what you've done and also just a chance to get in the room and talk and offer, you know, what what support can the select board give? We had some money in the budget. It's the end of the fiscal year. We figured we could try to make it happen use it or lose it by the end of June. I'm sorry, why use it or lose it? I get that, but I just heard you mentioned I hadn't seen anything about it. I didn't know what it was. Thanks. So we'll do that. I'm hearing that you're okay with putting the link in not all the minutes. I'm not sure if you want to proceed with any of the other ideas or just mull them over for the time being or if we should start planning to invite or set up liaisons or anything like that. Anybody want to advocate for anything? I still think that these committees need to do a presentation to this select board. Minutes are fine, but especially for future planning, we need to know where they're going and what they need. And that doesn't always is not always reflected in the minutes. It doesn't have to be the chairman if they don't want to sit down. It could be anybody that's willing to sit down by the mic. I'm just saying minutes are fine, but we need to know what's happening and what the future, especially now, or uncharted territory is a new town. So that's just my opinion. Whatever you want to do is fine. So my thought on that is that we know which staff members represent each of the committees and as they go through their budget preparation, they should be considering what the committees that they support need. In general, we don't do specific individual budgeting for each committee except to the staff that supports them. Anybody want to advocate for any of the additional items that have been suggested? No, I want to thank you for how you broke it down, whoever broke it down because it was Ethan from I love the little comment sections on the side. All right, so we still have a couple of business items that Sorry about that. One of them was the intent to go through the first two subsections of the charter, the updates that were proposed by our charter committee. And then we also have a discussion about appointments after that. Should we proceed? So I took the proposed charter amendments and I laid them out the first two chapters. And unfortunately, the blue looks very much like the black in the document. Next time I will use green instead of blue. Hopefully it looks a little more contrast to it. So it's hard to tell where the changes are here. Which ones are red? What are you looking at? One's red. No, that's blue. Yeah, there's stuff in there that's blue too. That's the problem. That holds together with all the implied powers. Oh, so that looks black to me. I had to zoom in on it, but once I zoomed in. Yeah. So there may be a significant disadvantage here that somebody has to read aloud all of the changes if we use this document. Do we want to defer? Mr. Chairman, at this time, given that we still have a lot of business left, could we maybe move this to a different night? That's a little bit what I'm thinking, especially given the format of this that is really difficult. Honest. When I put this together, my computer gives me a black background with colored on the foreground. So it looked very different than when I saw it in the back. I'm like, oh gee, I printed it out. So even in this harsh lighting, I can't. It's hard to pick out and I don't want to read the entire content. Like I said, I had to zoom in on it. I was drawing a blank there when I came back. Extremely difficult to read. Well, I thought it was 100 times better having it this format. Because I read it and I could I had to like I zoomed in. I saw the blue because I was looking for a new language. The fact that Don said, no, there's no blue in the document anywhere. I can't. I mean, other than what he just showed me, it still looks. This is problematic. So let's defer this to another time. That's perfect. I can work with you on that. Make sure we have a good color contrast or a way that this works better. Everybody okay with that? Yep. All right. So then we will move on to I apologize anybody in the public who might have wanted to comment on it. Does anybody want to comment? No, let's move on. We'll bring it up again. So the next item is to consider appointments to boards and committees. We'll do that in executive session. So consent consent. Make the motion to approve the consent agenda. Thank you, Ethan. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Tracy. Any comments? This is on the consent agenda. Yeah, I had a couple comments. Line 200 of the minutes did note that I said that the town should not be paying for the road to fee transits. Not that fee trans shouldn't be paying for the road. It was in the minutes, the correction. Okay. And that was it. Greg answered my questions on the warrants. Thank you. Although I will note take five minutes that if the water and sewer department's newest truck is 2014 and we're doing $9,000 of repair on it might be worth getting a new truck because it's already almost 10 years old and that's the newest truck. It's one of those capital items to be aware of. That's it. Thank you. Did you send that one correction to the minutes to? Yes. Greg, you've got that. I've made a note and I'll touch base to make sure I get it, right? Okay. Okay. All right. So we have a motion to approve consent with one change in the minutes. Do I need a new motion to do that or just any? I think you're fine. All right. All those in favor of approving consent say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. They can send his approved reading file. Any board member comments? I would like to thank the committee that put together Juneteenth, especially a young man named Jamal and I apologize because I did not catch Jamal's last name. Hanky. I believe. He did an awesome job putting it together. I mean, and given the fact it was Father's Day and it was not a very warm day. They had an awesome turnout. The music was wonderful. And again, I'm sorry that the rest of the board didn't show up, but I do appreciate all the work that went into it and also thanking Tatanisha because she did desserts for it too. So really good. You're done. Do you have comments? I have a comment. And like I said, I apologize. I did not bring my computer with me this weekend to spend time in my family camping. I don't have a chance today, but I'm really confused about the V-trans sweater because they're willing to move the speed zone to make it a 40 mile speed zone. But in the same sentence, they say that a pedestrian only crossing for the speed limit is 40 miles per hour or less is the only place they put in the lighting. And they're getting away by calling it a bike head crossing. But my understanding is in the state of Vermont, you cannot ride a bicycle across a road crossing. You have to stop at the road crossing, get off the bicycle, walk the bicycle across the road crossing, unless you are continually in a motion that follows the road path. So I didn't know. And I'm sorry, I said I went camping this week and I didn't have a chance, but I'm just a little concerned that they're trying to maybe square up that one. I'm going to choose my words carefully. Okay. Yes. We got a response from V-trans that is willing to make some improvements at that crossing. And having talked to our public works director and our planner, who are both experienced with transportation and V-trans and those types of things, we all agreed that we're getting something. It's not everything we asked for, but it's a good step in the right direction. Are we thrilled? No. Are we happy that there was acknowledgement that the problem could be improved? Yes. Just had a quick curiosity and then I'm pulling that I can email you about this here, but would that help reclassify that by having that 40 miles per hour zone as the benefit of the change? It's already 40 miles an hour. Well, only one side of its 40 miles per hour. The other side of its 50 miles an hour. Yes. The crossing is here. It's 50 going this way and 40 going the other way and it's not until you get to here or here that it changes to the other. That's about, yes. But I'll follow up in an email. I just had to make a comment about it because I was reading it last night. I was like, what? So thank you. You should all the work that went into that also. All right. And on the charter changes that are in there, that was those of our consideration at the, they were going to be for consideration the next meeting. We'll defer those and also make sure that we have good high contrast. Thank you. Content so that we can tell what's, what are, what the actual, what's the changes. Thought I did it all right. All right. So let's then go, anybody, any other comments? On the reading file? Reading file, yeah. And a welcome award to our new town clerk and then July 1st. Good choice. I think so. All right. We have motions to go into executive session. I moved it to select board enter into executive session to discuss the proposed public official appointment in accordance with one VSA section 313A3 and to include the town manager and deputy manager. If you do the, maybe it wasn't in the packet, but the full appointment, employment or evaluation of a public officer or employee. I don't see it here. If you're willing to accept the amendment. I'm willing to accept the amendment, sir. All right. Thanks. For the second. Second. Thank you. Ethan, any further discussion? Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Motion passes 5-0. So there's only one motion there. And so assuming we're making an appointment tonight, we will come back to the meeting. Scott, you don't have to stay. Mr. Chairman, if we could maybe just take a 10 minute break, let him take stuff down and we could stay right here because everything's spread all over. Instead of going upstairs for executive session, let him pull his equipment and go. And then we'll come over here. It won't take me 10 minutes to get out of here. Right. That's what I'm saying. If we take a 10 minute break and then we can do executive session right here. All right. Because everything's, I mean, all the applications and everything are. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's spread all over. There's a lot of this. There's a lot of everyone in my room. Yeah, sir. Okay. All right. All right. So. Make the motion. We take a 10 minute break before going into executive session. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Don. Thank you, Ethan. All those in favor of a 10 minute adjournment, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. So, I didn't say.