 And I will call a meeting to order. Hopefully Gordon, you're going to be able to stay on this time. Well, I wasn't able to get on last time, so I think this has been rectified, I hope. Good job. We've got a backup computer ready to go to town hall. We'll have to take a 10-minute recess so we can drive to town hall. Hopefully not. Well, the minutes we do not have a quorum of those who are able to sit out on the minutes tonight, so we will postpone those until the next meeting. And this is now time for public comment. If anyone has any issues to talk about tonight, this is the time to do it. And Eric, do you have anybody interested in speaking? I'm pretty new in the chat here. I don't hear from anyone yet. I'll get focused just another moment here, because we don't have any public comment this evening. Okay, then we'll move right along then to the Route 2A pedestrian path preferred alternative. And Eric, I'll turn it over to you to turn it over to Lisa and somebody from StanTech and someone from CCRPC. I'm getting Lisa connected right now and I see Eric from StanTech will get him connected. Lisa, hi Lisa. Who else should I connect? I see Christine. Should I connect her as well? Yes, please. And Si, if he's available? I'm not sure if Si is on. I see someone logged in as Galaxy S8. That could be Si. Si, if you can hear me and that's you, could you just let me know in the chat? Si is not on. This is not on. Okay. Hi, Christine. So we've got every one. Teri, I'll turn it over to our Assistant Public Works Director Lisa to go through this agenda. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for having us tonight. This, as you may or may not know, is the Route 2A missing connection pedestrian path. It was supposed to be part of the Essex Alliance Church project, but once they pulled out, we kind of got lost in the shuffle there and we've been trying to be able to connect the metal run path to the existing path. And we reached out to Jenner County Regional Planning and got a UPWP and they were able to connect us with StanTech and we're working on a scoping study for this project right now. And what we have tonight to present to you is the scoping study with two preferred alternatives and we're hoping to get your endorsement and the preferred alternative that we believe is the best choice for this project. And for those of you, Christine Forrest from Jenner County Regional Planning and Eric Elling from StanTech and they're the ones that we're working with on this project. We've had, I believe, two public informational meetings already at this time. The first one was very well attended and we got a lot of feedback from people and everybody is extremely in favor of this project. As you know, Route 2A is a very heavily traveled highway for the town of Williston and this is a big connection that will actually make us all the way to Essex from task corners. So I will turn it over to Eric. He's going to go through the scoping study report and then we'll take questions as necessary. All right. Thanks, Lisa. Yeah, Lisa covered a lot in her introduction. So my intent here is to just sort of compress several months worth of scoping into just a few quick minutes, just hit some of the highlights. So we will look at the project development process, we'll look at the project area, review the existing conditions and then show the alternatives. And as Lisa mentioned, the main purpose of us being here is to seek endorsement from the select board of the preferred alternative. And so once I fly through these slides, I'm going to go pretty quickly. I'll leave some time for questions and comments and we can go back and look at any of the slides that need to be pulled up. And then we'll wrap up by talking about what comes after this scoping study. So most projects follow this typical process. We are at the tail end of project definition, which is where an issue or problem is identified. We work towards developing alternatives to help solve that problem. And if at the end of that process, there's an alternative that's embraced by the community, then the project can become eligible for funding and then design and construction. So we started back in October. Lisa mentioned our two meetings. The first one was in December that was a local concerns meeting. Based on the feedback we got, then we developed the alternatives and then brought those alternatives back to the public last month. So then we're here again tonight to show the progress of the scoping study and ask for endorsement of the preferred alternative. Eric, if you're interested, you can share your screen as well for folks who are watching at home. I thought I was. Are you not seeing it? No, we didn't come up yet. It should be enabled. There we go. Oh, sorry about that. No problem. Okay. Well, you haven't missed any of the good slides yet. Okay. So the project background and area. So as Lisa mentioned, we're looking at Vermont two way from Bodry Lane to the Vermont State Employees Credit Union driveway. And this is the final missing link of an otherwise pretty comprehensive network. And as we all know, and Lisa also mentioned, two ways heavily traveled by both passenger vehicles and trucks. And the area that we're looking at doesn't have any dedicated facilities for cyclists or pedestrians. So graphically, what we're looking at, this is industrial lab and mountain view up at the top of this image and then tap corners down here. And we're sort of right in between those two. This is our project area right here. Bodry to the VSC parking lot. So just a little bit of the existing existing conditions. There are shared youth paths and sidewalks beyond our project area on both sides. There's a marked and signed bike lane to the north. GMT has a bus route that runs through here, although there are no stops directly in our project area. Bodry Lane is currently a gravel road with no dedicated bicycle or pedestrian facilities, except for the new path, which was just completed, I believe, last year. And that falls right about in this area here. And so with that, I'll jump into the alternatives. And I can make these bigger. We'll start with a look at the typical sections. This is sort of what it would look like being down at street level. So starting with 2A, we've got the existing edge of roadway here. So there would be a 5-foot grass strip, 10-foot shared youth path. And then there'd be some varying slope on the backside to catch back into existing ground. Bodry Lane would be similar, except in alternative one, there would just be a 2-foot buffer. And the thought there was exploring an alternative that kept the path a little bit further away from the adjacent properties. But besides the buffer, it's the same 10-foot shared youth path and then slope down to tie into existing ground. And then we can take a look at what that looks like in plan view. So the red lines here show the state's right-of-way. So as you can see, as you will see as we go down, the path completely falls within the state's right-of-way. However, this green area on the backside is sort of the limits of construction. That's that slope needed to tie down into existing ground. And that does go beyond the right-of-way line. So that just means temporary easements during construction. So beginning at the VSECU parking lot, we have our 5-foot grass strip. It stays consistent all the way down through. One minor impact is there is an existing culvert under 2A right about here. So that culvert would have to be extended to carry it under the path. Carrying around to Bodrie Lane. And here's that 2-foot buffer I told you about. And it ends right about here. And now this aerial photo was taken before the path was complete. But that new path is located right around here. And so for alternative two, it is very, very similar. The only difference is that Bodrie Lane gets the full 5-foot grass strip. So the typical section for 2A is exactly the same as it was. And now it's also the same for Bodrie Lane. And so 2A is again exactly the same. And then the difference being the path carries back towards the south by 3 feet to give that extra grass strip here, which will provide a little bit more space between the roadway and the path. And again ends in the same place. And so now I've got a table that sort of compares the two of them. Will come into the same construction cost. There's really no difference between the grass strip and that gravel buffer. Both meet the project's purpose and need of providing a safe, comfortable connection that can be used by all age groups and ability levels. And will contribute to the town and regional bike networks. Both are a vast improvement over existing conditions for bicycles and pedestrians. They both have the same level of ride avoid impact. That would be along 2A. And it's those temporary easements that I mentioned in the plan view. We're not anticipating any environmental or cultural resource impacts with either of the alternatives. They both fit in pretty nicely with the existing drainage patterns. There's no need for any new infrastructure except for the culvert extension. Both are under an acre. Actually that threshold just changed from the status. Now a half acre threshold for requiring a stormwater permit. But these both fall below the half acre anyway. So they wouldn't require a permit. Now the big difference between the two besides having that little bit of extra buffer space between path users and the roadway is that that 2 feet buffer on alternative one really doesn't provide an adequate place to store snow in the winter. So what that ends up being is sort of a battle between the sidewalk plow and the roadway plow. Whereas with alternative two that five foot gives a nice place to store a snow bank. And because they're ultimately very similar either way, it's really the winter maintenance and the extra space is the reason why we're recommending alternative two is the preferred alternatives. And so with that I would like to turn it over to the select board for any questions, comments. I can go back and look at any of those slides as needed. Thank you. Before the more asked questions I travel that road pretty much every day and there's a power poles along that side. Do they need to be moved or is there any problem with that? That's a good question. I forgot to mention that no with both alternatives the path ends up behind the utility poles so they are not impacted. Okay. So other members of the board questions? Gordon anything? The only real difference that we see from both proposals is snow storage. Winter impact correct? Yeah correct. And then that little bit of extra space to push the pedestrians a little bit further away from the roadway edge. Yeah. No. I don't have any further questions. So Jeff here question for everyone involved. Thank you. The first question is you know the two alternatives which really essentially are one alternative with you know a relatively small difference between the two. That's not man is negative comment but I'm just were there any other alternatives that we should know about or is this pretty much it? My guess is the latter is basically true but I'd still like to hear it from you. Yeah. So early on when we kicked off this project well I mean being on the east side of two way was pretty much crucial just because of where the existing network is. So it didn't make sense to look at the other side and have to you know cross it potentially twice. And then in terms of Baudry there's not I think the issue was that this close this house was a little bit closer and so we felt like the impact would have been more if we would have looked at that north side of Baudry. Lisa do you remember the reason why we're looking at the south side? It's exactly why. The house is so close and the property and the driveway would be impacted tremendously. Plus what we didn't include Jeff which we should have probably is one of the alternatives which they usually say is to do nothing which is kind of you know a worthless alternative in my opinion but they usually include that in the scoping study. So technically you have three different alternatives to look at. Obviously we know that we need to do something here because the community since we put in the metal run path they I mean it's non-stop everybody's contacting me all the time asking when you're going to connect it when you're going to connect it. So we really did get quite a lot of good feedback in our first public meeting. Great all right cool. Next question is on the Baudry lane is the the two alternatives are they both within the town right of way? They're both with I'm sorry was somebody else going to add something? Actually I can Jeff I can answer this question. It is not a town right of way that is not a town road it's still private. Yes of course. So when the developer actually comes in they're going to still have to build something along that roadway section. We're going to save them money when the developer does come in if we build it in now. Before the Alliance Church actually physically left and I know they're trying to sell the property I did originally get permission from them in regards to putting this path in and they they allowed us to go out and do this scoping study knowing that it's going to have to be done. They just didn't want to put their feet in and say yes we're going to do it until they know what who's going to buy it and what they want to do but as we know planning and zoning are going to make them do some sort of connection pedestrian wise. Okay so will this will this be built potentially before that property is developed? Well I don't know where that property stands Jeff but these projects are technically five to six years out before construction. Ouch yeah that's that's the standard and that leads me into the next steps of this we actually did just receive a $300,000 grant well it's $325,000 with our match for we had to break it down into two phases so phase one's going to be along 2A and then phase two will be along road relaying because we can only get a maximum of $300,000 from the federal government to build it and then we have to have our match and this project's so large that it's going to cost more so phase one we're going to design both phases phase one and phase two and then get phase one constructed but the bike and pedestrian grant application just came back out and we're hoping to apply for phase two which is a lot less than phase one and then we can get them both constructed at the same time. Okay good good good news and thank you is it possible or probable that the part of the path that's on Baudry Lane or Long Baudry Lane that we would have to purchase that or an easement or that property? To be honest Jeff in the 13 years that I've been here I've never purchased any property. You're very proud of that record. I barter right you know we try to make sure and a lot of people are willing to do it especially the property owner because again like I said it's technically going to save them money in the long run they aren't going to have to pay to have it built whereas the town is willing to take that on so that's a it's a big bargaining chip that we have in our pocket. Who owns the property right now? It's still the Alliance Church last time you know. Okay okay so all right I for some reason was under the impression that they had not purchased the property but they own the property they are just not going to develop there. They're not going to develop it and they're trying to sell it and I know there's been talks with the developers I just don't know where that stands. No that really helps that very very helpful then my last question I believe this is my last question is and you started to hit on this is the one area that I noticed the evaluation doesn't consider and again I don't mean this as a negative but it's the concept of is it the least impact on the residential homes that it borders. Yes that's why we're going on the south side of Bouldery Lane and like Eric had mentioned before if we cross route 2 then you're going to have two crossings everything pretty much right now is on the east side of route 2A so it would be more dangerous for the pedestrians to have to cross route 2A at Bouldery Lane and then go along the west side and then cross back. Okay and specifically the home that's you know right inside the that you know basically right that home that 90 degree were they okay with the concept it looks like that's in there kind of the back of their house sort of because it looks like the parking area it's hard to tell from here but might be what direction would it be south of where their house is. To be honest I don't know if we had them involved in the in the discussion okay just two discussions but we will obviously when we start the design process I personally like to reach out to the home owners that are going to be impacted the most and get their feedback way before we even start process with permits because that can be a showstopper and as you know we've done a lot of bike paths and pedestrian facilities and 90% of the time they ask for landscaping or fencing the the person that lived right at the corner where the the metal run path came out okay yep was very adamant and not having that adjacent to his property but we worked with him and we were able to provide him enough landscaping so now he's comfortable with it. Okay okay and Eric question for you I think there's a note there that says 10 foot wide shared use path and just I guess to the west of that or towards route 2a is that a driveway entrance cut across the path there yes yeah okay so that would be how they get into their parking area I assume. Yes with the exception of just like cleaning up the drive radius or whatever where it curves towards the road we didn't really touch any of the drives they go back in just as they are they would just be paved in the event they're graveled just to keep graveled from getting kicked on to the path. Okay okay I think that's it for me. Thanks Lisa do we currently plow the sidewalks down on 2a? We do the the the path bike paths yes we do yep um the one across that goes across the 150 foot bridge yes um so do we but there's other sidewalks between the credit union and Taft corner so they get plowed as well. I believe they do yes Terry so this would be this would add to the plowing that is correct and because we did receive the federal grant from this it's mandatory that we maintain it all year oh interesting that's part of the conditions of the funding so maybe if we do this maybe we'll no longer have a bridge to nowhere exactly and it'll be easier for the the guys to maintain because they don't have to stop and they can just continue on with the path right yeah right any further questions from the board seeing none then there there is a uh a recommended motion to make before we move on the motion Terry is there a rush for there to be a decision and the reason I ask that and and this quite often is something I I ask is that we wait until next meeting because there's just the opportunity to obtain additional input maybe the Wilson observer will pick it up as a news article maybe people will be watching the meeting tonight and want to weigh in on it so if at all possible my preference would be to wait till the next meeting before making a decision I'm pretty confident which way I'm going but I still would like that input um Jeff can I just absolutely the Wilson observer did advertise our first public meeting um because I reached out to them and I said I'd like some more feedback and we advertised it yeah all over the place um so the public has been informed in regards to this um and it's not urgent but we're hoping to get the grant agreement and it'll probably be in the next month or so okay well I'm I'm proposed I forget when our next meeting will be this is the second meeting of this month so two weeks yeah that would be my preference not a big deal if we don't but that would be my preference so I would need three votes tonight to do hold a powerful seat tonight don't I so um it would appear that we we could have a very short discussion on this in two weeks and and do it at that point great so if there's no objections then we'll postpone the action on this until uh the first we are the next meeting uh in uh April can I thank you Terry anything else Terry can I add one more input sure um just so you know that it's very rare that we were awarded this grant without having the scoping study finalized they were actually very shocked that we were able to get it um that's how important this project is especially to the state and the federal one everybody involved oh okay interesting well yeah and oh sorry go ahead I just I was just going to add we certainly would do our job it's just I I just asked for these two weeks just that the bike pad grant that Lisa mentioned has a deadline of um June 4th so there's time um and it would help the town's case to have the endorsement between now and then so that could be included in the grant application we can we can have that yeah my dates are a little confusing but our next meeting will be the first in in first week in May so we'll do it at that point perfect great good so thank both all three of you from uh being on the uh the meeting with us soon we'll take this up uh then at our next meeting yeah thank you thank you for having us thank you take care stay safe thanks so we'll go on into the next one which is the community justice center update and board structure with crystal lead McSweeney uh Chris Lee I'm going to get you connected right now welcome Chris Lee Good evening everyone thank you so I want to say thank you for making the time to hear from me tonight about the community justice center and wanted to just give a brief update about where the center is at what we've been doing and then make a request to see if we can think about some some process steps so I just wanted to share that in the last year our CJC has handled 204 cases as of the end of March and that is in addition to dealing with some reparative circles and mediation work that's been done for conflict resolution and have had increased referrals from our other service areas such as the the Heinzberg police departments and Richmond police departments and as a result of those increased cases we have found ourselves needing more volunteers to be able to do the work that that we have been asked to do and to date we have 30 current volunteers with a exceptionally long wait list of interested people not just from Williston but from all of the service areas that our grant covers and so with that comes a challenge and that's what I'm here to share tonight and wanting to see if you all would be in support of looking at the structure of the CJC in seeing if we could think about some possible changes just to board structure so the way that our board is designed right now is that all of our volunteers are considered board members we are the only board of CJC's across the state that have this current structure that means when decisions are made monthly meetings I need to pull 30 people together and it's just it doesn't seem sustainable anymore with with the volume of people most justice centers in the state have either a cab or a board of directors which is made up of about 10 people and so I you know I think when we first started out and we weren't dealing with as many cases and we weren't as well known and we didn't have the responsibility that we carry now that structure worked really well but with the increased growth in the need for that growth I'm finding it to be a little overwhelming and so wanting to check in with all of you to see if you would be supportive of just looking at you know in supporting some configuration changes not asking for a decision tonight about what that would look like but just if you would be in support of that and myself and our board chair and vice chair and I think in addition with with Eric Wells would be working to draft some proposals moving forward so since you have a board of 30 and that's in my mind excessive for sure but how do you parcel out how would you parcel out things for other people to do like committees that you would propose yeah so so what I was kind of imagining was just having a board of directors if you will comprised of already our current volunteers so we would meet with that group once a month just to go over kind of operations and make sure that we're meeting town requirements and our grant deliverables and then have the continuation of our volunteers working on panels and other ad hoc committees which as I said our workload is pretty extensive and people are really really interested in joining so keeping that structure of the volunteer still doing the panel work but having a smaller a smaller group of folks to work on grant deliverables to work on you know any deliverable for the town and making you know our work time together much more efficient comments from members of the board none for me really looked look to you to decide determine recommend what's what's best the one question I do have is how do the other how do the 30 board members feel or is that too many to know how they feel so we actually spoke about this at one of our recent meetings and we as I said we do have 10 people who are really interested in focusing more kind of on that advisory role and what we kind of have been talking about is like an executive work committee is kind of what we've been doing to shrink down some of that you know the complexity of having so many people and we did recently put out a survey to all of our current members asking which which area they would really like to continue to volunteer and is it on panels is it with circles or is it doing more kind of that advisory work and we as I said we do have 10 current members who are interested in carrying forward the idea of becoming more of the advisory group and then I think if we did that we could open up a little bit more room for volunteers especially given that the the amount of cases that we have and the interest not only from Williston but from our other service areas and Eric can attest I feel terrible when his email gets flooded with interest but I think he can attest to the the vast interest that that is within the community to serve in that regard. It's a good problem to have it so we have amazing volunteers in town and it's always great to see people interested in serving. Any other comments? Is there any objections to having Crystal Lee and her board go forward and come back with some suggestions that we can take some action on? We're none so I think we'll look forward to seeing you back again sometime in the near future. Thank you and so I think that wraps up the business of that particular one and you know I think you're going to be talking about the Williston racial equity partnership update which is next on the agenda. Yes thank you so wanted to also just kind of give everyone a quick update both for this lecture but also for the general public to know that the racial equity partnership structure has been created and we have myself and Rick Maguire completed all of the interviews with all interested applicants and we determined through a shared process of all of the members or people who were serving to put the partnership together the best fit for the steering committee and I did send along an infographic of the partnership structure so I will be leading the partnership and also acting as the town liaison to give feedback and updates to all of you and then we broke it down so that we have a task manager as well as subcommittee leads and then our other members of the steering committee and anybody else who was interested in joining the partnership was not turned away we shared with them that their interest was very much appreciated and that we would be having smaller committee work that we would be looking for them to serve in that capacity and so we have held our first official meeting which was great we got to know each other and put together some action steps for the steering committee and so looking ahead we will be working on a one two three and five year strategic plan to share back with the select board over the next couple of we hope that we'll be able to do that in the next couple of months in addition to creating a mission statement and share values that that would match up with the town values as well. Okay any questions for Crystal Lee on this? No not really I'm just more curious about what it is you're going to be coming up with obviously you know your crystal ball is probably as murky as mine right now but this is just so critical it's going to be hard and I think it's going to be hard to keep the momentum going you know we stop me if I'm diverging off track a little bit here we took a difficult step which was the decision to raise the Black Lives Matter flag but in a sense that's kind of the easy first step the next step is continuing to make progress and that's going to be hard it's going to be difficult it's going to take perseverance personally I'm just get the sense that that's that's kind of in your forte and but on the other hand it's just so necessary so thank you. Of course and what I will say back to that Jeff is I think that this work is is far overdue and I think that it aligns really beautifully with restorative work the need to address racism in our community I think the people that we interviewed and that we we placed in the positions for the steering committee are more than passionate and dedicated to to addressing systemic racism and institutional racism in our communities and we know that it will not be an easy task but I also you know I can only speak for myself but I I feel like as I said this is long overdue we have seen an increase in crime related to you know issues around race certainly we're seeing you know increases of things in Williston and wanting to make sure that we can do everything we can to help advance Williston forward and and I wish that I could say in a racing racism but I think that that would be a real big you know a real big magical step but at least starting to dig in and address those issues acknowledge that we do have a lot of it in our communities and work together so that we can as I said live up to our town values and also make Williston a safe and brave community for for all people and I think that takes you know strong dedicated people it takes a strong and dedicated leader who can work with all walks of life even those who are who are potentially not not on board yet and to recognize that that work takes partnership and so I'm excited about the work I know that it's it's not easy but I think we have as I said a great group of people educated people you know on on these issues and we'll work into our best to to live up to to the expectations of addressing the harm that's been created in our communities great thank you of course any further questions for Chris I just want to recognize Chris Lee's work and our other community members who are serving on this steering committee moving ahead and folks who've worked with the partnership as we as we formed it or the winter to try to think think through what are the best next steps for us as a community so I I know these folks are going to help um work on that and there's a lot of opportunity for other folks to communicate all the time so like we're saying we're just getting started these important conversations and moving ahead as a town right thanks thanks sir so we do appreciate all their time and efforts as well so thank you thank you so I think we'll move on then to the next item which is the select board vacancy update and I can tell you that the subcommittee of two which was Jeff and myself we met we did not meet together we were doing our work independently of each other using essentially the same criteria to look at the the 10 candidates for the select board position and working independently we came up with the same five top candidates and actually the top five we were not in agreement on the six or seventh or whatever after that so we decided to present the following candidates to be interviewed hopefully at our next meeting regretted dagustino shake of mount scott riley sherry westman and steve lambreck and so those are the five people who have been contacted and have agreed to um come to the next meeting uh for their interviews the the questions now for the board are as how do we wish to proceed from that and I have some recommendations that so if we can uh think about and that is that we have uh at least right now two essay questions proposed uh one by myself one by error and uh what I would propose is that we send that out to all of our four members to see whether or not we wish to have one if we have one can we decide on that or do we want to have both essay questions submitted to them and then we have uh some of in-person questions that have been recommended and Jeff has three that I've seen I have a couple I have not put on paper but if we were to ask the the select board members to get back to Eric uh by friday both on the essay questions and on questions that they would like to think about asking at the um at the interview process that would be um very helpful and it would be timely and lastly um we have a question of what if uh a candidate is unable to make the the next meeting inadvertently because something comes up at the last minute either they get their COVID shot and they're feeling terrible or what's there I've been called away um on on business and I think it would be unfair to all of them and to the select board to go forward with interviews without having all five candidates present at the uh at the same meeting so my recommendation that not that one would be to if they're not available uh at the the next meeting the one in May that we would postpone it for two weeks uh to uh go forward with the the interviews so those are my recommendations and what are your thoughts fully on board yep I am too I think it's really important that we have all of the candidates at the same time uh so everybody has a fair playing field for um you know proposed questions either that are before or and or at that meeting so yeah I'm on board with that as well the as far as getting back to uh Eric by the end of the week that sounded okay to you for the essay questions and the in-person questions yep okay all right uh Eric anything else that we need to talk about on that uh I don't think so just just to recap I'll wait for the board's um direction on possible interview questions by the end of the week so I can start to get those together I'll share out the two essay question ideas with the board and look to see if there's consensus on on which one we're both to go with um then we kind of work to find details on on the essay in terms of length of those types of types of pieces there right on email to all of us staying all that would be good okay I'll uh I'll get that out first thing in the morning great thank you Eric thanks good thank you so I'm moving on then to the financial policy updates and that's with Shirley our finance director and if Shirley's ready to go well we are yep she's getting connected right now how's everyone this evening good good okay so um as we promised before um when the auditors did their presentation of the audit that we would come back and just talk about I'm going to refer to the management letter we'd follow up on that a little bit um and some more some more detail just um for our plan of action although we don't don't have a timeline with it yet because there there is a lot of work to do here um we'll just talk I'm just going to go through and and as a reminder talk about some of the um so the deficiencies that were considered material weaknesses and um and talk about those and whether we need a policy or not um so the first one loans receivable I don't know if you remember so that was the VCDP grants that flew through the town that get recorded on our books um and when they were recorded there's an asset and a liability um on your balance sheet and those two basically net to nothing so in conversation with the auditors we said well we don't really have any deferred liability those those loans are never going to be repaid most of them have conditions and if certain conditions continue to be met after a period of time they're really just forgiven so we decided to just move get rid of the deferred revenue because like I said nothing's coming in and we just booked allowance against those loans so that asset has really a net zero balance as it did before on our book so it's just a different classification of wording um true up the wastewater facility costs um again I've talked about this before there is a schedule that s extension maintains um when they put the budget together that's based on an estimate of the usage between the tri towns so the village the town and and Williston they put a estimate together which then they bill from that estimate all year long and after the year is done and they know the actual usage by town then they they they true it up and um if if the town has contributed more money than necessary towards those costs it essentially stays with the town of Essex and they have a reconciliation that shows what is due back to the town of Williston at this point there's no recommendation by the village trustees or I guess the committee to send that money back to the town so what it's been used for is in those years that Williston has actually used more than what we paid for it just decreases that fund so it doesn't affect their budget so by leaving the dollars there we just use that I'll say as float for those overages and underages so their their point here was that we didn't update it timely but in reality we do update it every year but typically when we're at our during the audit Essex it's only got the prior year they don't have the current year for us because of the delay this year Essex actually had the FY 20 schedule done and updated so we booked that in the audit we actually booked two years within this year and put that in the order and the auditors saw that as a lack of control and I say it's really not it's really all to do with timing and the delay in the audit so we do address that annually. Surely quick question is is true up a financial term? Sure is Jeff how do you like that one? Okay so when I say true up I mean their Essex is actually just looking at what we were built for the year versus our actual usage yeah they bill us more than we actually used so that it's that comparison so if they build us more than we used they have a payable account payable to the town of Williston we recorded as a receivable from Essex so every year so let's just say in FY 21 we used more we consumed more than we paid for based on their quarterly billings that would just come out of that they're payable to us and the receivable would just be reduced. Okay very interesting yeah the thing I like about it Jeff is it doesn't make our budget fluctuate because we budget based on what they give us for an estimate you know based on our historical usage so it does keep our budget in line with with the numbers we're getting from Essex to prepare our budget with. Okay and it's fine if that covers I'm just surprised that we aren't built on our actual usage which is would be read off the meter. Well I actually can't quite tell you how that works because that's the flow we're talking about sewer so we're talking about the flow that comes through right there's a meter there but now you're talking a little bit beyond my knowledge so like quarterly just like we did reading our meters and we build quarterly in a rears. Yeah yeah so so I can follow up with Sarah Mason at the town and just ask her why. Yeah or it might be a Bruce question I don't know. Yeah yeah okay great thank you. You're welcome um so the stormwater grant and loan program it's very confusing so I'm not going to get into the details here but this is the you know for the HOAs who have the stormwater pond issues that are part and they're part of our MS4 so it's how we went through the state to get grants and then some of those HOAs needed loan funds and how we record that on the GL so we've recorded it in the last few years the same way past mustard with the you know the action the auditors helped Jennifer with the setup of this initially and it's just to me it's just sort of a change in the auditors and how they'd like to see the presentation of this information so it's one way in our trial balance we presented it a different way and the financial statements this year and we'll just follow that reporting and the financial statements going forward and it will take care of this management letter letter comment. I am I don't know if you have the management letter but I'm sort of looking at that as well as I'm going through the memo I put together for you so the next deficiency was water tower rights and sewer capacity rights so again this is a difference in how auditors look at those assets I mean I actually asked questions my first year here saying I don't get if we we have an obligation to pay part of the debt for the sewer upgrades and for the water tank none of that debt is issued to the town of Williston it's issued to the water district and it's issued to the s to s extension but we have an agreement that says we are going to pay x amount of that debt we didn't we don't actually have that liability hadn't had that liability recorded on our books only a part of it so what Sullivan and Powers came this year we actually recorded our complete obligation on the books which makes complete sense it's more accurate reporting the offset to recording that liability is just an asset which we depreciate so it's a right because we don't own the sewer treatment plan we own rights to use it so it's still an asset that's depreciated or amortized so we just gross up our asset and we grossed up our liability is to reflect those two things so that was a one time we're done and if we continue you know if they have more debt and we have another agreement we'll just record it gross on both pieces and asset and liability let's see fun classifications so this is one of those items where overall i'm going to there's sort of policy policies that need to be created and approved by the select board and then there's accounting policies that we don't have right now that really don't need to be approved by the select board but those accounting policies tell us myself and people who come after me how to account for something on our general ledger so the fun classifications is really just um we don't have an accounting policy now so i need to create that and there are lots of things that we'll put in it but one is um how we set up the funds so and when i say fund i mean um if we were to establish a new utility for example that's not part of the general fund because it's a proprietary fund it acts like a business the way we account for it so it's putting all of that in words to say okay that's a new fund or that's just something i'll give the example like the host town fund we put that in a separate fund and we included it in the special revenue fund it really wasn't that because the agreement for the host town fund fund is just an agreement about how we will get fees those fees are part of the town's general revenues so um so that's you know one of the funds we talked about before that brought up the issue um there's no in those agreements there's no language that says okay we're going to use this revenue just to support our capital expenditures even though that's what we had done so um when we created the the fr-22 budget we really eliminated the host town fund because we will recognize that income within the general fund as part of our general fund revenues now we still may say okay we're going to use all the host town revenue to fund our capital expenditures but we don't have to which just here's enough here's revenue that should be within the general fund so so it's a policy defining when a fund should be set up versus when something's just a general fund in a new department within the general fund okay okay um so under revenues again that's something that is just needs to be addressed in an accounting policy about what is the definition of an unearned revenue and to give you an example of that um we um let me think of something um a good example is we got money through the CARES Act um for Todd's program for summer recreation and it was meant for additional expenses for staff and and expenses above and beyond COVID so we received all of that money there was I mean Todd really just answered a couple questions and we got an allocation of money um last May so we um we got that money up front but it's a particular purpose so what we didn't use prior to June 30th sits as deferred revenue meaning we've got it but we haven't earned it so in FY 22 we then or sorry FY 21 we then recognize that is earned revenue and it's revenue that goes to the the P&L the income statement if you will so that's what deferred revenue is um and we were doing something about a different with forfeitures for the police department so we fixed that in these financials and so again that's a matter of me documenting what is deferred revenue and how we account for that in accounting policy allowance for doubtful accounts um I have to remember what that one's the name is an odd name doubtful accounts counts we don't expect to collect um so um we we established for the first time an allowance against our property tax receivable so we have a property tax receivable for those uncollected property taxes and so I went through that and made notes for the auditors and essentially said we should establish an allowance here's what we don't expect to to collect and um a good example of that of the the few that we have um so we have a piece of property off ochre road that somebody purchased for development so we were charging fair market value for several years the developer found out it wasn't a developable piece of property so the listers brought the value down but we have all these unpaid taxes I don't I don't know if we're going to be able to tax sale the property but we're probably not going to collect those taxes so now we have an asset and and a contra asset the doubtful accounts that net to zero so saying the value of that asset we really believe is zero so we for the first time this year set up that allowance against our property taxes Jeff looks like he has a question well it's just an interesting it's an interesting question that you raised is this if a developer purchase a piece of land and then we appropriately tax that land based on the ordinance that's in place at the time yeah and then sometime down the road the developer for whatever reason finds out that he can't develop the land the listers go do their thing which is say okay you know we concur now here's the new value of the land maybe the value is actually zero though that not sure that quite makes sense right um but during that period in which the the land was appropriately assessed at the developable price I don't understand why the developer is not on the hook to pay those taxes and well I'll just say in this particular case I think there was a lag Jeff between the communication and bringing down the value of the property so although you know we send letters and we've tried to collect they're just not going to pay because there's nothing for them to get out of it and um our only recourse is to tax sale the property to get our money back but again and the town doesn't want to own it where the location of the property is it doesn't connect to any trail it's okay so a way to look at it is it's less expensive to consider it a doubtful account than it is to go through whatever legal mechanism we could to try to collect the property taxes do well right I don't I think the the legal mechanism here would be to try to tax sale the property yeah and okay and maybe a neighbor might want it it's it's it turned out to be wetland it wasn't enough water I think there was one other issue so but unfortunately three sides of it are um have roads beside them so then you're talking about one property and who's actually adjacent to the land versus across the street from the land so so we've got a couple weird things like that that um it's on Eric and I's to-do list to move forward with those okay um so authorization authorization of general journal entries they we've already implemented that um the auditors just wanted to see all entries so I review Mary's and mine aren't reviewed so Eric was going to do it but I said uh Eric's really busy so Mary reviews mine and I review her so that's the process we have in place now but um so that is taken care of but you know only from the point we got the management letter so part of the year we don't have that in place so this comment might be back again next year but but that would be it because now we've taken care of it so um I am now sort of jumping ahead and so we were talking about significant material deficiencies and then um they then they go on to here's our recommendations for things you need to do so a fraud risk assessment that is something that I don't know if it's ever been done here so I will reach out to the LCT and our auditors and see if they have templates for us to do that and that will become an annual event and I imagine we'll probably submit the results of that to the select board just so that you know it's being done um so uniform guidance so along on my list are the uniform guidance are the rules um when you have federal grants so they're what you look to to say okay this is what I need to do to be in compliance with federal grants long on my list are to incorporate these things into our policies but we also need to create policies so these um I'm under the section of my memo that says uniform guidance policy so all of these policies are things that will need to be implemented and go to the select board for review an eventual eventual approval so um the conflict of interest policy you might say oh we have one of those and within our personnel policy we do address conflict of interest but not the way that the federal government wants to see you see it under the uniform guidance we'd actually have a policy all on its own and then we act would have an annual questionnaire that goes out to we'll say key key personnel for the town that would be all the select board members and all the department heads and we're looking for where there might be conflicts so I'll say um um Jeff you you work with the state and you're working on a project that we're that the town has something to do with and that you we accuse yourself for that so it's a little different with towns than when you're working with other entities because you're looking for shareholders that you know that you might own a lot of stock with us and things like that so so there will be an annual questionnaire that comes to that is has to be completed by all key personnel going forward and I will reach out to both our auditors and VLCT to because they already have some templates um a financial management policy again the auditors have a template that we can use there our current policies and our personnel policies um current especially has some real uh the uniform guidance has real specific rules about procurement and when certain things need to be done like um if you spend over uh 25 maybe it's 50 000 now with a certain vendor um we have to go through SAM the system for award management and make sure they're not on the excluded party list so I have been doing that anyways and I attach it to either the invoice or I put it in the grant folder so I have been doing that when those issues come up but we just don't have that documented what those steps are so we we need to update our purchasing our procurement policies for that cash management and drawdowns for reimbursement um of federal awards so um that actually we have pretty simple policy because most all of our federal awards are after the fact so we're submitting an invoice with all the backup to be reimbursed so it's just writing up what that policy or process is um and then our employee travel and reimbursement policy we don't have that right now on my to-do list but it is spelling out things like as detailed as you know what's our tip policy 15 to not to exceed you know 20 percent what's the IRS mileage reimbursement rate how to use a credit card you know all of those things we need to spell out in a policy yeah how to sign out the town jets yeah yeah that jets for the domain um and then documentation of our internal control system um this is so the auditor started doing memos for us we were hoping to get to it but it was just too busy so they started the memos about our different processes like what is our process over processing payroll or processing accounts payable or processing cash receipts so they started those memos so I will take those from them and just um and enhance them to include more information so the the major control streams we need to just document what those how the process works and what the controls are there um cash accounts um this isn't a policy I just wanted to address their concern about we roll all of our cash into one account and then allocate our earnings and I'm like no way um I just this is what I disagree with because when you see how many funds we have and there's no specific purpose I mean it's just as easier to have a bank account for the environmental reserve fund and I know what the interest is that needs to go back to that fund so there have been some accounts that are duplicate accounts that weren't used we have um I think gotten rid of all of those now um we had some old funds that we were able to show that we'd actually use those funds we have a couple of them left um that we still need to work on um sort of how to spend that money and get rid of those funds um so but what we've worked on cutting down the number of cash accounts but I am definitely not in favor of combining them into one um and especially our utilities have to stay separate anyway so um monitoring voided transactions and credits I think once we have our processes documented those things will be incorporated within those processes and then we'll look at the controls over that so I think I babbled enough and let you have more questions I'm good thank you okay anybody with questions really I think you've covered it very well thank you you're welcome move on to manager's report Eric yep um kick things off I'll keep Shirley on here and um I distributed the finance report for February early in the week um Shirley can I provide that report for the board now okay so you didn't get rid of me after all um so I just wanted to touch on so I have my memo in front of me and I really just highlighted the things that I added from the last time because you get to a point in the year we're just really repeating the same things because the variances don't change so I'm just going to highlight um some of the things I added um that have that are changed or different uh or that I just want to highlight for you so under the property tax revenue um nothing has really changed or moved there but what I did want to say was or just point out that if I looked at March 15th of 20 versus March 15th of 2021 and looked at our delinquencies they really haven't changed so I'm looking at that as being positive because COVID has not made that number jump up um so I just wanted to point that out um the local 1% options tax I mean I think right now we've collected 54% of the budget so we're a little bit and that and we only have two payments so even though it seems weird that this is February it's the timing of the payments but we have we are at 54% of budget and um you know our last projection had us just 15,000 below budget um and you know who knows what's going to happen now with things opening up a little bit more restaurants being able to seat more people some of that rooms and meals tax might come back a little bit more than we originally projected um the clerk revenue I hadn't talked about before but they're at 76% of budget and again if you look at February as a percentage of our year-to-date budget is about 67% and they're already over budget and even though there's 75,000 of passport revenue that is you know we're forecasting to be zero um the level of recording of documents is pairing that clerk's budget is actually at 140% of budget right now and um it's still not slowing down right now so that certainly is carrying um carrying the clerk's revenue plus what we budgeted and um I would expect it's probably going to be over at the end of the year so I'm going to jump down to the highway revenue um one piece that I forgot to mention um last month when I was writing this up and I just wanted to bring to your attention um that the highway revenue was at 122% of budget so we talked about FEMA we talked about um the stormwater charges being more than we budgeted but the one thing I forgot was the um state of Vermont um didn't have their town highway their class two town highway um and structured ramp program this year because their budget got approved so late it was too far in the year so what they decided to do was to allocate that money in the grant program out to all the towns and municipalities so um we got an additional payment of 43,562 dollars so that helped the the state aid is already 105% of budget and we still have two more class two and three roads payments to be received so that is doing well um police expenditures um they have some big dollar items so they are only at 57% of their budget but the two categories that are driving that is their patrol um salaries um are at 61% of of I'll just say 887,000 dollar budget and even though chief has made great efforts to have all those positions filled he then then they're open again and he's in that position again at this time with two positions shy but hopefully soon he'll have those filled again and then overtime overtime is only at 59% of budget and that's 154,000 dollar budget and again because of COVID the overtime has been very limited in the police department to reduce exposure so um I would expect that we may see that continue to be under budget at the end of the year oh let's see um I just wanted to note that the environmental reserve fund and the housing trust fund the budget is 70,000 and 20,000 for those and it hasn't been booked as of yet but in April that did get booked I was holding off sort of waiting to see where the financial projections were going to lead us and since we're at a comfortable spot I went ahead and I did we did fund those funds um in April so that those will be booked in April and you'll that that variance will will go away um and that's really all I had that was newer different for this um for the month of February good thanks for any questions for Shirley no good job thank you thanks thanks Shirley you're welcome one one comment that might help for next time you mentioned highlighting if you could actually physically highlight I can I'm a visual guy me too and uh yeah that will I will do that great thank you and truly also a couple other things I'll mention from my written report one one thing I didn't have my written report um so moving ahead I was thinking about this um for the meeting start I think we've passed our one year of zoom meetings as of as a select board I believe we started that beginning of April of 2020 it's hard to believe it's been a been a year of this board meeting environment um so with that said you know as things continue to open up and the outlook continues to look good with vaccinations and kind of taking steps moving ahead um just for the board to start thinking about is kind of what meeting structure would look like in the coming months there there's certainly no rush to to go back to to in person completely um one one thing I'm I'm working with channel town meeting tv I can't remember the name has changed is a hybrid meeting setup I mentioned this before that they're going to pilot it here in Williston they're going to supply a lot of the equipment it's going to be a a camera that can be remote controlled essentially from someone in the studio and some audio equipment um I met with with their staff and we're kind of sketching out how the room can get set up there's a couple technical items that will buy television mainly so there's a visual feedback both ways we're very how to get that set up we'll probably have two TVs one so when the board is all back in session we'll have a tv facing the board which is below eye level then we'll put another tv on the other side facing anyone physically in the room oh yeah see people at home or I really like tonight for example with the route to a project having the engineer being able to zoom in on the plans provides that nice sense for people watching at home and if someone's in the room you can see it on that screen right in front of you yeah even when we do that the board could still bring personal tablets or laptops and just keep them muted if they want another screen in front of them um okay so there'll there'll be some um some things to work out with this um I think we're having a great opportunity from to be able to pilot this here and if it works for us we can buy some of the equipment moving ahead to continue to do hybrid meetings um into the future um so I'll be working on that and at least with with Terry in the town hall we could at least we could have that equipment set up Terry would need to be on the laptop um it would just be we'd have a separate camera there and you'd have another screen to look at but I just bring it up this evening for the board um technically with the Vermont forward guidance public bodies could start meeting again as of May 1st I know that's right around the corner um yeah so I just bring it up for the board tonight to think moving ahead in the coming months what might you may want the board meetings to start the transition back to um cool I like the idea no good that kind of goes on to um some town office reopening planning I'm continuing to work with department heads on what this is going to look like um looking at the state guidance the universal guidance that's coming out but but also just understanding what our what our staff is looking at and what our town needs are um so I kind of see it as a three stage process um and in each department be a little bit different um so we're really looking at our kind of town hall and town hall annex are where we have some staff who are still working remotely right now and um and the library and and those staff who are working somewhat remotely some have been remote every day and some partially in the week we're going to have our staff back um I think we're have some back May 3rd some back May 10th um and the library will be a little bit later they're still working out their reopening plans but my we're safely set up in town hall we had most people here um before we kind of went back to a remote posture last fall but we'll have um everyone who's working on site is either in their own office or in a separate workspace surrounded with plexiglass um more than six feet socially distance well we have um extra improvements or ventilation systems extra um portable units we also brought in last year and we'll clear our mask wearing whatever you get up from your chair um so that's phase one just have our staff spending remote work um that being said I think it would be something for the town to look at as personnel policy moving ahead if um sometimes remote work is allowed in the future um likely on a department head discretionary basis but we don't have any language in the personnel policy about that right now we we took that posture based on the um emergency declaration guidance from the state um so we're we're at a point now we can start um looking to bring people back and then kind of think what our future will be but probably further down the road and if we need to pivot again we know we're we're equipped to make that change if needed but I'm hoping we can have everyone back here and I have to send everybody home for that environment but so that's step one but then step two and three are really you know the next phase of opening the the doors um just for people to come in and out and we're not quite sure what we want to do for that just yet um I will say we've had appointment only for researchers McClurk's office and the planning office we've been very creative to work with people outside the picnic table coming in the back door for notary services um Tarn has been available over zoom over the phone over email to make town services work so I will probably get to you that a little bit longer and we'll figure we'll keep working on a plan I'll put the board updated on and the community update on what that looks like but just trying to go slow and be mindful like um everyone else here and then to update the board on discussion last time again the Black Lives Matter flag um I got feedback from the steering committee for the racial equity partnership uh their first meeting um as well for some feedback there on what to do when we have a situation where the flags are at half massed and we don't want the Black Lives Matter flag to touch the ground so what we've done and um that setup is currently going on because there's a half staff proclamation which I think expires into the day today um we're placing two Black Lives Matter yard signs in front of the Town Hall and then we're raising the flag at the fire station um on one of their flag poles so the the flag will be flying either at the fire station or the or the Town Hall um and we'll keep the message at the Town Hall of the yard signs okay my last thing I'll mention is for the my TAF Corners project coming up this Saturday I'll put a link in the chat here there's another step in the public engagement process I think it's from nine to noon and it's um an open design hands-on design workshop where attendees will work in small groups led by the consultant teams to digitally collaborate plan and sketch and share ideas about TAF Corners future so it sounds like a really interesting and innovative approach here working through zoom and I know the planning office has been sharing a lot of information about that this week and they'll continue to be additional check-ins with daily studio updates the following week and then there'll be another um work in progress wrap-up coming up on Monday May 3rd with a public engagement session there as well so the project so well underway and I know Matt will have a another update to to the spot where as we keep going here so um that's all I have in my report this evening and thanks Eric any questions for her before we uh go on so any other business we need to talk about tonight one thing um a while ago we had talked about um a trapping in town and I just want to make sure that that's uh still moving forward yep I've been um working with our um contact at the state and it looks like we'll be able to have that back on the agenda probably in May I think one of those days was going to work um there and the board's going to have a busy agenda coming up the next couple months as I look at the future items and okay some of the business we the board will have to conduct with um enterprise fund budgets uh and additionally that's like board member interviews and then um the tax rate um likely in in June and volunteer reappointments and all those all those usual items for this time here okay that'll be one of them as well Jeff okay good thank you anything else for out there business if not then uh we'll be adjourned until weeks from tonight thank you all we're adjourned good night everyone good night everyone