 I'll call the meeting to order is seven o'clock. Happy New Year to everybody in the room and on Zoom. And this is our first select board meeting of the new year. So we have two sets of minutes to take a look at tonight. We're missing one of our select board members tonight, but we do have a quorum. And so we're looking at the minutes of December 13th, 2022. Is there a motion to approve? I'll move to approve pending modification. Is there a second? Second. Page one. And page two. It's a very minor change, but under its item three parks or recreation and parks, Alan Brook should be two words. Yes, it is. Hearing nothing else on the corrections on December 13th, all those in favor of approving the minutes of December 13th, 2022. Say aye. Aye. Three ayes have it. And we're on to the minutes of December 20th, 2022. Is there a motion to approve? I'll move to approve pending modification. Is there a second? Second. Page one. Page two. And page three. Just one minor thing under 13. The second bullet down, last sentence, excuse me, reads capital items include replacement of the person door frames and doors. I read that too. And I assume that's opposed to garage doors. The big overhead doors. That's what actually what they said. Just wondering if maybe we should just add that clarification. Probably good idea. I mean, it could be the dog doors. The slack board doors. They also have page three. If not, all those in favor of approving the minutes of December 20th, 2022. Say aye. Aye. Aye. We're done with the minutes. And we're moving on to public comment. Anyone in the room who has any public comment? Seeing nobody here, anybody on zoom that has public comment? Not seeing anyone for public commentary. Okay. And we'll move on then to interviews and appointments. We do have one interview to conduct tonight. And that's for the conservation commission. David Westman, I should come up to the table. And we do have your application in front of us. And if you could give us a brief description of your background and why you'd like to be on the conservation. Yeah. Thank you very much for having me. I'm excited for this opportunity. I actually, many years ago, I was a community organizer for the Sierra Club. And I worked on public lands preservation and wilderness in California and Alaska and Utah. And so conservation is very much deep in my passion and my bones. I left the Sierra Club and the conservation community to focus my work on energy. And since graduating from Columbia in 2006, I've really been working in the utility and public utility regulated space. My current job is director of regulatory and state agency affairs. Recording in progress. For efficiency Vermont. And I was just joking with Eric that I want to do this for my community because it has virtually nothing to do with my day job. But very much speaks to my passion for getting outside, protecting lands, trails, parks, outdoor recreation, especially for the residents here in Williston and being able to make those lands accessible and available for everyone to enjoy. I'm an avid hiker, outdoorsman. I take my kids hiking even when they don't want to. I take my dog hiking even while she always wants to. So she's always game for that. So that's where I sort of sit and I just want to be a part of this community and do something for my community. That's why I'm here. Good. Thank you very much. This is one time that the Board gets a chance to ask a few questions. Age where if we left them alone for an hour or two, you know, either they'll keep themselves busy with library books or the switch, one of those two things. Other questions? Hey, thank you for applying. Have you had a chance to look at the town plan and how it addresses conservation? Yes, I have been a part of several of the town plan organizing events. I was actually, I led the subcommittee that developed the town map. I worked very closely with Matt and his team in the planning office and led a small group of volunteer citizens to put that map together. Right on the eve of COVID. And we were working on that plan through the fall of 2019 through 2020. And then I followed its progression as the as the town plan developed. And in my opinion, it really like got overshadowed by the massive sort of like zoning and planning discussion that was going on for the tax corners area and the sort of development zone, which is fine. That's a really big deal. But for my part and the part of our little subcommittee, we were really focused on trying to explore alternative transportation methods and identifying future multiuse lanes for the town and how people could access not just that development zone, but also thinking longer term about like where in the future, the rural parts of the town, we could look for conservation easements. We could be on the lookout for paths and primitive trails and bike trails. We came up with a lot of really sort of unique ideas that were sort of presented as you know, connecting some of the further out bike trails to the Richmond trails, which would then connect to the multiuse trails, which would then bring us into the downtown and you know, trying to sort of bring that web together. So yes, I'm familiar with it. I very much had a strong part in at least one aspect of it and have been following it for several years. Okay, great. So how are we doing? Asking that question a little bit differently. If you were to be on the conservation commission, what would you advocate for? I think Wilson has a really unique funding mechanism for identifying and protecting lands. For a town of this size to be so active with foresight, to have a dedicated resource like the, I forgot the exact word, but you know, the conservation budget to put money aside to protect lands that are important for the town and for the residents. I think that's really the strongest asset that the conservation committee would be able to make recommendations to the select board for obviously. But I think generally we also have, and I participated in this, we went to the conservation committee for recommendations on, you know, when we were doing that town map and we got input from that committee about primitive trails and places where we would like to see, you know, expansive trail networks connected and I got exposed to a lot of long things that had been long thought of from that committee and we ultimately put them in the plan. So I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of sort of roles to play in the future of planning. But I also like the opportunity of, you know, as I was just kind of getting ready over my lunch hour for this interview I was going through some of the old minute meetings and, you know, just little things like if you acquire a parcel of land, how are people going to access it? You know, and I just went totally into a rabbit hole and I started pulling up plots of land that the town owns and imagining like if I were, if I wanted to get to that property, how would I do it? Where would I park my car? Would I be able to bring my dog across private property? Like is that a legitimate or accessible piece of public land if you can't actually get to it? Those are the kinds of issues that I think the conservation committee should also be addressing too is that, you know, if we're going to make the investment, if we're going to spend those resources, we also need to think about how are we going to guarantee access. It's a big issue also with, you know, like the nature conservancy. This was something I dealt with out west was when the nature conservancy bought a parcel of land but then didn't build a parking lot or even just signs to announce that it's open and accessible, they called it the nature conspiracy because it was basically not, it was not an accessible piece of public land. It was just sort of being purchased and then put aside. So that would be one of my passion areas is making sure that it's accessible. Okay, good. Thank you. Hopefully this, well actually it won't be my last question, because there is a question I get to ask at the end. Go ahead, I'm having fun. This is great. So we have the environmental reserve fund, you know, with the purpose of buying either buying land or conserving land. Right. How are we doing with it? Asking that question maybe a little bit differently would be how much land is it appropriate for the town to have in conservation? Are we halfway there, quarter of the way there? Are we too far? That's a great question that I would love to dig into as part of that committee. I mean, I will say that the preservation of the Catamount Forest which used those environmental funds, again, a really, it was a tremendous opportunity, it was a great gift for Jim to make that land available and to then for the town to sort of follow through on that was huge and progressive and a great asset for the town in perpetuity. So more opportunities like that I think is what we would want to preserve, but I mean obviously there has to be a balance and I think that's where that, you know, the development zone and the residential zone and the rural zone, all of those things need to sort of be balanced, you know, and that I think pathways through the residential zone that lead to the downtown zone that, you know, also make the rural zones accessible are the types of things that I would at least be looking for as opportunities moving forward. Venues including this one a couple months ago, like that is my focus and that's my passion, is trying to get as far as I can possibly get without getting in my car. Okay, and I'll ask, this question gets asked of pretty much every candidate for a town committee. I, for some reason, get to ask it. Okay. And it's a conflict of interest question. Okay. You alluded to, you don't see a conflict between your work and this job. Right. But if there were conflict, you know, what, you know, how would you recognize it? What would you do? The easiest answer is recusal, right? Any public servant who sees a conflict of interest has an obligation to recuse themselves from the proceeding. I've been in many DRB meetings as a member of the public and have witnessed that. So there's many, there's many opportunities for a council person to step aside and say this is too close to home or I have a vested interest in the outcome of this so I'm going to recuse myself. And I think the obvious answers to something like that would be as if a piece of land were in discussion that were abutted my property, right? Like that's the most common or clear example. You know, I don't get involved in energy placement, you know, so it's like my line of work is totally within the already built environment and so I wouldn't see any conflicts there with like renewable energy or anything like that. My current role would not sort of put me in any kind of conflict there either. Good. Thank you. No other questions? If not, there is a motion suggested. I'll move to appoint David Westman to the Conservation Commission for an unexpired four-year term through June 30th, 2026. Is there a second? No second. Is there a discussion on the motion? Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Congratulations and welcome to the commission. Thank you. Look forward to it. Thank you very much. So next on our agenda is the Muskie Valley Park District annual update and I believe we have both of our presenters on Zoom this evening. Nick Warner who is the Executive Director and Reed Wallace who is our appointed representative from the town. Yep. Again, I'm connected right now, Terry. Nick, you'll just need to enable your camera and audio. It looks like. Hi. So it's actually Operations Manager Lauren Chacody. Oh, I see. It should be joining soon. Yeah, we share the same Zoom. So I think he should be on as well. Yep. Oh, I see him now, Lauren. Okay. Sorry, that happens all the time. It's a sharing. There were two Nick Warner's. Yes. That's okay. There's Reed. Let's see. Nick Warner, I see you connected. You'll just need to enable your audio and video. There we go. There we go. Okay. So Lauren has a PowerPoint. Is there any chance you could enable her to put that up for us? I think it should be all set. Okay. Great. And I'll keep it brief. Thank you. It's not an extensive PowerPoint. I know when you hear word PowerPoint sometimes. And I just wanted to thank you once again for making the time to, to let us come in and present to you. And my name is Nick Warner. And I'm in my eighth year here at the park district. Lauren's been with the park district for a couple of years longer in our park superintendent, who was our third full-time employee. How many years, 25 years? He's been around a long time. So I'm very grateful to both Tim and Lauren for sticking around. They provide a lot of continuity and skill to the, to the system. I'm just going to do a brief overview. This will be stuff, you know, already, but for those who want a quick primer. So the park district is a really interesting hybrid nonprofit and inter municipal corporation. This is our 50th year. We're going to figure out how to celebrate that in the spring. We can, when we can all gather outdoors. We have incrementally grown over time. We have 19 properties, a little under 1800 acres. You can keep going. And this is more detail than you need to read right now. But basically we've had seven towns for a lot of years. I got to say we're thrilled that Essex Junction voted us in. So we now have eight member towns. And we don't have a trustee yet, but Regina is going to be recruiting someone to, to join our board. We're thrilled about that. I just want to thank both Essex town and Essex Junction for really just giving us a lot of help in the transition. And we're thrilled to have them on board. It's very, in terms of how we operate, like I said, we're the small, very efficient staff and we're highly reliant on, on leveraging and volunteer and out to outside resources to accomplish our goals. Go ahead, Lauren. Thanks. We've had a long history with the town of Williston. You guys have been extremely faithful and consistent in your support of our operations. We are, we've made a commitment to work with the town to acquire property within your borders. I connected with the folks from the Baptist church and through no fault of anyone that I think they've tabled for now their intention to go to the next level on their housing project and how that relates to, to a park in Williston will come up in a couple of future slides here. I was at your board last April to talk about the, the Jacob Parcel project. We'll go to the next. We're just going to fire right through these. We have a part of our mission is that is education that gets carried out in a bunch of ways. Lauren has done quite a bit in this area. We are, we focus on being an excellent host and we work with, with students at every level from pre-K all the way through graduate students on a variety of projects and initiatives and service learning opportunities. Next slide. We are highly dependent and it's baked into our model utilizing volunteers. We have a lot of folks and organizations that year on year keep coming back and assist us. Williston Rotary has been very helpful to us and other groups from various corporations. REI has been helpful to us and it's, it's part of our operating model. We don't depend on them to do our regular maintenance. We have a seasonal crew that does that for us, but in terms of doing invasive removal and, and special projects, tree planning and so forth, we use volunteers quite a bit. Next slide. Another thing that we instituted, I think we're in our fifth year doing this, maybe our sixth year. We, in fact, Williston was the first, no, excuse me, South Burlington is the first time we've worked with on this. We decided to do contracting for our member clowns, which means that we work on parks that are not, not owned by the park district, but are owned by, by our member municipalities. And it's, it's worked out really well to win, win in that we charge very simple rate, which is just the base rate, plus 50% for our staff and we obviously, we don't mark up materials and the insurance is typically wired in because we all have the same insure with it from my league of cities and towns. And it means that we are able to generate revenue to help offset the town's financial obligations to us for at large. And also are able to use Tim's incredible expertise to help put together projects for the various towns. And we've done quite a bit with Williston this year. We're cutting a lot of trees, doing a lot of trail work, repairing, punching, and we look forward to doing additional work for you guys in the future. Leveraging is really the game with us. This is just a quick summary of where we're at in terms of our grants in hand. And we're hoping that this grows. I'm totally putting together a large grant for a repair of the Barnett or Ethan Allen homestead property. We also have a great tenant with Forest Preschool that provides us income. And the Ethan Allen homestead museum and contract and maintenance, as I had mentioned, we also are a fiscal agent. We do that on a fee basis. Unless it's a very small grant, and we have a couple of instances where we have not charged a fee, but as since we have an established bookkeeping system, we provide that service for small nonprofits as they are working through their issues. Next slide. Okay, that's the quick and dirty. I just, I wanted to present an overview for those who are less familiar with us. And as you can see from our annual report, we're really very focused on capital projects right now. We've got, we own, as I said, 19 parks. Within those parks, we have seven historic buildings. And we're pretty focused on getting some funding to, to upgrades and Ethan Allen homestead barn and the actual Allen house. We are also over the last few years we've been prepping to do major upgrades at Colchester pond. We actually added some parkland there. We added a new access off of East road. And there is a historic farmhouse there that we had analysis done four or five years ago to get an idea of what we need to do to upgrade that building. We also have a vorac grant to, which is seed money for upgrading our wetlands walk, which is a incredibly heavily used resource that we had to shut down a couple of years ago because after 30 years it needed replacement. So that's a big project. So we are very focused, laser focused and upgrading our assets and also on incrementally growing the system over time. I mentioned the Jacob parcel earlier, which is, it's just, I think it's been delayed. I need to talk with the church and find out what their situation is. But there's a couple other properties near the Winooski river mouth that we're looking for potential acquisition to expand the Derwey, the Derwey Island and Derwey Cove parks. So that's my quick overview. I wanted to leave time in the 15 minutes allocated for you folks to ask questions about, you probably have questions about your allocation in our budget. So I'd like to open it up for questions. Thanks Nick. Yeah, this is a budget night. So you did present the, in your overview that we received a week or so ago a new request for funds. So if you want to just talk a little bit about the price tag and what we'll be getting for it. Yes, I mean the challenge in these times, you know, with inflation rates above 7% right now and you know, the Social Security Cola is going to be 8.7 this year. We always get this healthy tug of war in our trustee meetings where we try to come in with as low a budget as we can that is responsible. This year we're able to pull that off with a 5.4% overall increase in our budget and a similar increase depending on which town you are in the requested town allocations. It is, I still feel like overall people are getting pretty great bargain in terms of the amount of land and free public access and ecological health that we're protecting for what's being asked. For those who haven't, are not familiar with our system, we use a, it's called the fair share analysis each year where we look at the equalized grand list in the population of each town and you have a document that shows you last year and this year's allocations and how they were arrived at and the math that we use to get there and it's our system that we use to determine basically the affordability factor that each town can realize each year. So, Williston's equalized property values jumped a bit more than other towns. So you're coming in at 6.3% higher than last year which is still beneath the inflation rate. So I actually feel pretty good about that. That was a consideration. Interestingly, having an additional pound doesn't help us at all in terms of saving money. It's not like they bring in new money, they just become part of the mix and essentially the two Essex entities are now split but the relative amount of resources they bring to the table are still the same in the big picture. So we're pretty happy with what we came up with this year for the budget. We provide a pretty detailed budget overview, the budget notes that are provided you. This is a really important document to us as we feel it answers the questions up front that you might have about the various costs that we realize and we try to keep the budget simple and clear and easy to follow. So are there any questions about our budget or the allocation this year? Good, thank you. Any questions? Go ahead. Hey, Nick. Not really. Good job. As I went to the budget, it appears when I look at all the different line items and sort of run through them, it appears to me that we're really looking at a cost of living increases throughout those numerous line items. Would that be accurate from your standpoint? That would be accurate. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. No new programs, that type of thing. No, just an expanding responsibility for upgrades and maintenance. But you're absolutely right that the main driver of the increase in the budget is personnel and the cost of living. Like I said, we have a small staff, we have an experienced staff, and I can say that both Lauren and Tim could find employment elsewhere for more money. They're not doing it to get rich, but we do compensate them. We generally target the middle. So the compensation is based on comparison with other similar organizations, and we do an annual review of that compensation to make sure we're paying people fairly. So that's, you're correct. That is the main driver for increased cost is the cost of personnel. But everything costs more now. So, yeah. I guess my only other question is on the next page of the overview we received, which is the fair share analysis. Yes. And, you know, the math is there. Is that approach going to stay there? I know it's been there for many years, and we've raised some questions about it in the past. I'm not that I'm not uncomfortable with it. I just would like to know what the, you and the board think of that approach. I would defer to read a little bit on this. We really, since Rita's been around, she hasn't been part of that discussion as much. We did a deep dive on that back, you know, four or five years ago. And it's, it's difficult to create a system that is progressive enough to represent absolute fairness. The question sometimes comes up, you know, why does this town have more parkland than we do? If we start using the acreage as a factor, the whole system starts to break down in terms of. And it's, we looked, we did a lot of analysis of this four or five years ago. Frankly, in the last couple of years, we've been so busy taking care of the increased usership of our park system, which has continued. I'm thrilled to say pretty much the first day of the, when the governor declared the lockdown, people just filled up our parking lots and it hasn't dropped off that much, especially in the larger parks. So it's a long way of saying no, we have not taken another serious look at that. We're always, I'm a believer in that things change over time, but I also, as I look at other systems that are similar to ours, our system is very efficient and very progressive relative to a lot of other systems. So we're pretty happy at the staff level, pretty happy with the system. If the towns would like us to take another look at it, you know, we'd be happy to do it, but it's about as progressive as we can come up with. And it has been in place, it was in place when I got here, but, and I spent a lot of time researching different models. Interesting, a lot of the districts that I researched where county government is stronger, they place like a very small percentage in the county tax rate, and that's how these systems are funded. And there's a complete disconnect between the funding source and the actual system. What I like about this is getting grilled by the towns each year because it keeps it honest. I mean, I think it's a good system. I think you asking that question, you should ask that every year. How did you come up with these numbers? Because it directly connects us with the towns that we work with. I can't tell you that relative to the amount of acreage that we manage and the amount of access that we provide, you know, back at the envelope, I'm running a $700,000 organization for $400,000. So, you know, I remind myself of that when we have to scrape to get stuff, but it works because we are partnering with all these different conservation groups and nonprofits that help us leverage funding and services and labor and ability to function. Good. Good. Thank you. My only other question has to do with the Jacob Parse, so you brought it up and you made the comment that you need to get in touch with the church. So you expect progress on that in this upcoming... Well, thanks for moving forward quite well. They were on the October agenda to get themselves to the next level. I've been communicating with Brian, their engineer, and with the folks at the church. And we were all awaiting... I was actually had in my calendar to get in touch with them now after the first year so we could start working on the easement language. And I found out that they have paused the project. I don't know what that means, but I will find out. I think emphasizing that they were very clear as nothing to do with the town process, but given... I can guess that given interest rates and cost of materials and labor supply, they may just be taking a deep breath and waiting for the economy to rebound, like a lot of people are doing right now. That's a total guess. I need to reach out in cooperation. I don't have answers on why they're pausing or whether they're altering the project or it's just a timing issue. So I wish I had that information. I don't have it right now. Okay. Do I read into that that the project might be jeopardy? Well, we started this project before the housing project was proposed. And they were willing... I can't speak for them and let me start with that, but they were willing to consider the parking lot and easement even before the housing project began. And then when they started putting that project together, they realized that there was an inherent benefit from a permitting and public service standpoint to embed the trail easement and the parking lot in the project itself, which is how they have it designed currently. So I don't know what their... They've never said no. The housing project is not a condition of working with us. I just, in fairness to Randy and the great folks at the church, I need to reach out and say, okay, what do we do next? The good news is once you get across that border, there's an existing right-of-way that goes all the way to the edge of the property. And there's other ways to access that parcel. So I need to reach out to Randy and find out what their next steps are. Okay. And my last question actually is for Reid. And that question is, what do I need to know? She's still there. Reid, you're muted right now. I feel like I'm still in a learning curve. However, I can say I've been extraordinarily impressed with how much the district does with so little, so to speak. I think the idea of leveraging what they have, both in terms of the funds and the expertise, is an understatement. What do you need to know as a select board member? I think the Jacob's property is going to be the most exciting thing. And I feel like we're just on the brink of something really tangible starting to happen. So I'm hoping that that's going to be the most exciting thing upcoming. All right. Good. Thank you. Anything else? Yes. So thank you both for being here. Actually, I'll three of you for being here tonight and giving the updates. And we'll move on to our next item on the agenda. So thanks again. Thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you. So moving on to a favorite topic that we have at this time of year in the sidewalk following the request. And we have Eric that will lead off and Bruce will join in on the request. Thanks, Eric. I prepared a memo for the board in your agenda pack of this evening that walks through the overview. As Terry mentioned, this is part of the indoor review for the board. The town sidewalk maintenance policy calls requests for new sections for winter maintenance. So simply plowing review during the budget season in preparation for the following year's budget. Request are submitted in great guidance criteria within the policies reviewed by the public works department. I'll mention the lead off as discussed in prior years. The public works department is at capacity to provide sidewalk plowing with a single plow in our fleet. Currently, the town plows about 15 and a half miles of sidewalk and multi-use paths located primarily adjacent to our primary, to our major routes and travel in town. Our sidewalk plow maintains about 10 miles and a pickup truck plows remaining about five miles of path sections. Thanks to member of our public work staff about four hours to plow the sidewalk section after a three to five inch winter storm event. And a number of member of our staff operates the pickup truck to plow the five miles of multi-use path. It takes about four hours as well. And four hours is our standard time for winter operations for staff to complete a route, whether that's plowing roads, sidewalks, or paths. So with our network overall, we have around 30 miles of town-owned sidewalks and paths in Williston. And in addition of a second plow would also require a staff member, we need that to operate the equipment. And if there's a mechanical issue as a reminder with a single plow, we don't currently have a backup. I'll let Bruce speak to this in a couple of minutes, but the recommendation from public works based on criteria is going to be add the sections requested to the town's winter operations plan with that caveat of needing additional equipment and staff to go with that equipment to do so. If the town were to add a second plow in staff, the entirety of the sidewalk network could be added. So it's about 10 more miles that aren't currently being plowed with the capacity to add some more sidewalks as built in the coming years. The addition of the Blair Park sidewalk that Bruce will speak to is about four-tenths of a mile long. There are other requests, the new path under two way from Hurricane Lane to the state police barracks, that's about a third of a mile. And making that change could occur in the current winter operations season should the select board wish to make that operational change right there. So in the current draft budget, additional sidewalk plow and staffing configuration are not initially included. The draft budget did not add new services due to the economic climate in this initial draft. Looking at pricing a second sidewalk plow, we likely cost around $150,000, the piece of equipment. As we discussed this further, if the select board wants to consider additional equipment and staff as part of your FY24 budget deliberations, staff can certainly prepare cost scenarios and budget impacts for you as you work with the budget the next couple of weeks. With that setting the stage, I'll turn over to Bruce to walk through the specific requests for the board. So we have two requests, I think, by Bruce. Yeah, two requests. One is a repeat from last year, the Blair Park sidewalk. As you know or don't know, we completed the sidewalks all through Blair Park now so you can do the whole loop. Even last year when the request was made, the recommendation from Public Works was that we add it. But then if we added it, we were looking at the equipment and the manpower that Eric has alluded to. And the other new one right now is the new section of the new section of path that has been built from basically the Vermont State Police Building on 2A south to Hurricane Lane. Neither one of those are being done right now. And there's also other sections, newer sections, and I haven't been talked about, I haven't been requested, and the commercial buildings are doing it themselves and that's the section from Zephyr Road, going toward Taft Corners to where 99 is. There's all that new path along there that we're not plowing. That was added actually about a year or so ago. But it does appear to me that the commercial businesses are doing that themselves anyway. But it is, you know, a path that was put in as part of our system at this point. So the new sidewalk that's on 2A between the State Police Barracks and Hurricane, that goes a long route to where any possibility the state might be able to do that. The state won't plow sidewalks. They won't just sit on it all. No. They won't, anytime you want to put a sidewalk in the state right away, it's going to be the town's responsibility if you want it. That's the only way they're even allowed to be built. So even up to the park and ride, if you remember, they came and said, you know, we made a requirement as building part of the sidewalk up through there too. Well, we'll build it, but you need to maintain it. So they just don't do it. If it's, they're not in the sidewalk plowing business. They don't want to be in a road plowing business either. Either do we. But not really. So the new section from the State Police excuse me, on Route 2A after Hurricane Lane, we could probably, since it's done with a pickup truck, we could probably do that starting now, actually, just because that does have a little bit more, it has a little bit more room than the sidewalk machine. The thing that we have to remember is that a pickup truck gets on a road and drives. So it gets to a destination to do its work. Where a sidewalk machine may be able to drive on the road as well, but it's not going very fast anyway. So that's one of the reasons why it's harder to say, okay, it's a little bit more sidewalk. We can add it, but it's the distance. And in that part, we're already there. I'll grant you that. But there it's actually quite a bit more sidewalk to do to go around that loop. So. Questions. So with existing capacity, so you feel like we, you know, you could without hiring anybody additional or anything could do, take on the 2A piece right now. Okay. The worst thing that would happen is it would be later. But we could certainly. But later is better than not. No. Yeah. And the only good news about pickup truck is actually the paths are easier because we have two trucks that could do that. Whereas with the sidewalk machine, we got one sidewalk machine. And when we lose it or it goes down, we're not going to be doing any sidewalks. And to, at the beginning of this season, I asked our new highway supervisor to call around or look around and see if something did happen to our machine. What would be the availability of being able to rent or get something. It's just not, it's not, it's not there. So, you know, having been around long enough, trying to even ask another town to borrow a machine or whatever. I haven't done this as I've been in Wilson, but we have tried to do that in the past other places. And they're all busy doing their stuff too. So, we really, I guess what I'm saying is we really need a second. I mean, we really do it because if one breaks down, at least with that second one, we can make some effort to get things done. It's going to take a long time, but it's not going to bring the whole operation to a stop. And there are a lot of places now where people are walking in Wilson. And what's the lead time? I know we've asked this before, but what's the lead time on ordering one and getting one? Oh, we probably won't get one before next winter. Right. Okay. Even if we put it in the budget. Yeah. We're going to be lucky. I haven't tried to order one, but with everything else we're ordering, we're seeing a year out. So, it's probably next beginning of next winter. And so you're advocating even though you might not have the personnel to operate a second one like simultaneous to this one, having a second one at this point would still be beneficial because this current one is on its last legs. Well, the current one is due to be replaced in 2025. Right. The last time we bought this machine was $120,000 in 2015. So $150,000 is not an unrealistic number at this point. So would it be good to have one? Sure. But it would be even better to have the second one with the person. And quite honestly, it's a lot easier on me and Public Works to just do all sidewalks. I mean, it really is. Let's just do them and be done with this. We're not going to do this section or that section or whatever. There's not too many of the municipalities that do it the way we do it. I mean, what we're doing is wrong. But most other places, if you have sidewalks, they're getting plowed. The only other one I know that does it the way we do it is the town of Essex. And name may have even changed since the last time I checked with them. You know, looking at the form-based code and a lot of the initiatives and things we're doing, it does seem in line with a lot of our other efforts to want to have a much more walkable town to have actual walkable sidewalks in the winter. We'll talk about that during the budget. Bruce, the question I have is it sounds from, it sounds like what I'm hearing you recommend is Blair Park is in and the, no. Two A's in. Two A's in Blair Park. The extended part of Blair Park is not in or we shouldn't approve that. Okay. Are you recommending that we add that segment of the path from the state police up to Harvest Lane to the. To Hurricane Lane. To Hurricane, what'd I say? I'm sorry, I don't know what you, but to Hurricane Lane. I'm saying that we could do that. I mean, our policy is set up that anything we decide to do now gets started next season. But what I'm saying is I feel comfortable enough that we could add that short section that's plowed with the pickup truck and start doing it the next time it snows and we plow, which we don't even go out and do until two inches of snow anyway. Yeah, okay. And once again, if that pickup were to break down or whatever, we do have another pickup or truck small that we could put on that and still have that done. It's the sidewalk machine that we're in trouble with. Okay. And the sidewalk machine does have a, when we put one of the implements on it, one of the operators says it tries to creep forward on them while they're doing this implement. We sent it to New Hampshire and had some things that just had got it back. Seemed to be fixed, but then seemed to start doing that same thing again. $14,000 fix has to go back to New Hampshire and it was right at the beginning of the plow season and I made the decision I'm not going to send it back down there right now. We won't use that piece of, until springtime again anyway. But that doesn't mean that something kind of happened to that machine now because of that. So this machine seems to be operating fine. The last big snowstorm, they've plowed twice with it. The operator has no problem with it. The machine seems to be doing fine in just a snow cloud mode. We'll see if we have to go to blow or whether that makes a decision or change or not. So part of the budget process is to also hire a person to operate the equipment. But that's a limited time period that would occur. So what would the person be doing the rest of the year? We would probably use this person and what we're trying to establish is a building, a more permanent buildings and grounds type crew. Right now I have a person in a half that takes care of the buildings and when summer comes around I lose actually the full-time person goes back to, goes, helps out in parks and then we're dependent on if we can hire a part-time person and it's getting harder and harder to do. It's getting harder and harder to find the full-time positions. After Friday I'm down three people. So... Anybody want a job? But anyway, we'll make do. So, and obviously, well I shouldn't say obviously Terry, but I'm sure my highway supervisor would sit here and tell you, you give him a person he'll find work for anyway. Sure. Any other questions for Bruce? This will be a topic discussion as we go into budget deliberations right next week. So thank you. Great, thank you all. So we've got about seven minutes before the public hearing. Perhaps we can start then on the Public Works Facility Solar Panel purchase option that we talked about in our last meeting and see if there's any further feedback that folks have on that before we actually make a decision on that. So Eric, do you want to start off with that? Yep. And Linda Scott will be joining us as well. She'll be on Zoom here in just a moment. So, as Terry mentioned, we previewed this for the board in your last meeting at the end of December. The town has a purchase option for the solar panels located on the Rift of Public Works Facility. This option can be exercised in the fall of now, this year, 2023. Adequate notice provided, which we would need to be by the end of June. I think it's 120 days notice or so. Since the facility was constructed the town has leased the solar panels on the roof of it and received 10% net meter and credits generated. Our option agreement states the purchase price is $125,000 and that's fixed for the solar panels. Looking at a possible way to purchase these, the town has $132,500 in unspent bond proceeds when the town sold bonds in 2013 to build a facility. I consulted further with our town attorney on this and should the select board wish to use the unspent bond proceeds for the purchase it would require the approval of the voters to do so at town meeting. Looking at the timeline exercise the option of town meeting and this marches the potential window for that asking that question should that be the direction the board wants to move in. The remaining $7,500 unspent proceeds could be used towards additional capital purchase or towards the debt repayment for the 2013 bond sale and we continue to pay down those bonds. I think there's another 8 years or so until they mature as a 20 year bond. Our staff suggestion is looking at using that towards the debt service and also look at something if it was purchasing equipment say at the sidewalk plow $7,500 is something but it's a smaller number than the grand scheme of the price tag there. So it's something to think about. But if you were to decide to use it in any other way that would have to be part of the question on the warning coming up in March if you want to go that direction. So the questions for the board to make a decision on the first is does the board wish to exercise the purchase option on the solar panels this year once funding has been identified and if so would the board want to ask the voters at town meeting day to consider using the unspent bond proceeds for the purchase. Board doesn't need to make a decision tonight but certainly probably want to consider something by your next meeting just in the fact that the town attorneys help me drop some initial we need to adopt a necessity resolution for the bond dollars on the warning. Town attorneys drafted that giving up a little more as much time as possible is helpful for them right now a number of municipal clients are asking them to work on bond documents and legal items for town meetings. So Melinda's here as well if you have additional questions Melinda and our consultant Jeff forward presentation at your last meeting on the dollars and cents side of this as well. So is there any questions that folks have tonight or is there more information that we need between now and next week. I don't have any specific questions I think Jeff and Melinda did a great job of presenting the numbers and all of that last week and a couple weeks ago and you know fully support this becoming a town owned asset I think again it speaks to our town goals and our energy goals and so forth my question more or less that's $7,500 specifically if we do we would need to designate the intended purpose of that so it couldn't just be like we'll be like to also spend it we're not sure what we would need to yeah if it's going to be on a little piece of equipment my understanding is you probably need to designate that in the question if it's going to be used to just pay off the debt I'm not positive that we would need to identify that in the question it's probably most efficient to try to figure this out right now as opposed to having a $7,500 potential question in the future we do need to spend these and like we figure out a pathway here in the short term if it's not for this project then another project. And the attorney feels like we could use it side by side yep you could decide to ask the voters to reappropriate the proceeds for another piece of equipment because it goes towards public works or in general we had a question when we purchased the solar trackers behind the town hall about four or five years ago and we used a combination of some of these proceeds as well plus some fund balance towards that effort I'll bring you some money you need to spend so I'm trying to figure out the bond issue not issue we took out a bond to build the public work facilities I assume it was for X million dollars and we now have a remaining amount left in that bond that has not been spent to build the public work facilities of about $132,000 so is that first concept correct so that project came in under budget when it was built believe it or not when we went to bond sale it's the Vermont Bomb Bank pools the debt together and you sell a municipal bond so the amount was sold at that time and the town is paying off its portion of the bond sale okay what other uses could that $132,000 be used for I guess that's part of what I want to understand for instance is it appropriate to use it to pay down the debt on that bond versus buying in a sense something new that's an option for the board by state statute you can use on spent proceeds to purchase equipment or pay down existing debt so the equipment could include solar panels correct system or could include a sidewalk plow I guess does there have to be a nexus with public works? no there doesn't okay right could but it couldn't be used it couldn't go like into the general fund to be used for you know to pay that you know lower taxes probably not no this is a recall of what the town attorney told me those are the two uses in state statute for a board to look at when there's spent proceeds from a bond sale okay and how much longer do we have on our needing to pay down what's the word you know pay off our bond pay off the bond see it's a 20 year bond I think it's 20, 30, 3 or 34 surely it's in our debt schedule here too and necessity resolution that we'll put together and it is specific to the funds must be used for other eligible capital improvements okay or okay okay so I'm just looking into that question so both on the project here I think it's another nine or ten years or so I mean in a sense it feels like 20, 30 money that's available I just want to make sure that's sort of how we should think about it we're want to feel comfortable with how we're going to spend it and surely the question I would have for you if you don't mind in addition is if we were to use that a her in 32 to pay down you know pay down the bond debt would that have a significant impact you know either the time remaining or the amount that needs to be repaid it would not have to pull my computer isn't cooperating right now so we can not decrease the term of the debt interesting so the term is the term so we have 10 years left we have 10 years left so it could pay it down and increments of interest we can actually use it for interest we can only use it towards principal so we might have to use it for multiple years to pay that any other point is that maybe to explain the answer to your question a little bit more Jeff that when these bonds were flowed in the debt whatever the principal was of the debt was our debt but we're paying down but the funds used to come to the town directly to invest that no longer happens when we issue debt it goes with a trustee and then we submit for reimbursement and a trustee hold those funds now this just happens to be from years ago when they used to give us the bond proceeds directly we wouldn't see this happen anymore the fact that we're actually holding these bonds okay I guess the bottom line question that becomes or not becomes is from a sort of I don't know from what standpoint I want to say financial standpoint but of course it's financial it's money is it better to use that $132,000 for a one time purchase like a snowplow or like a solar system to pay down your your bond I'm going to say yes because we build that the debt service into the to the budget and it stays a little amount other than the interest is what continues to go down because the debt gets older because the principal is going down so that we just know a very common flat budget versus these large capital expenses might make that budget a spike and we could help take the spike out of the budget if we're funding it with these dollars that we already have and need these to happen to give the board our debt service in FY24 on these bonds was $4.8 million our principal payment is $240,000 and our interest is $105,000 the interest goes down every year as the principal is paid off more okay and I remember from Jeff's numbers that I haven't pulled up in front of me but there was a pretty significant bump in our solar credits that we would get and so versus owning and renting them as we do now and so that asset would be working for us financially and the big thing is the potential roof replacement point for the facility where it is analysis felt as though there's couldn't do worse than the breaking even and financially as we receive those credits it reduces our electricity spent on our accounts throughout the town so we'll be discussing this next week and if you have further questions if you would send them off to Eric quickly this week that would be helpful so it is just a little past eight and we're onto the public hearing and notice is hereby given that the Williston Select Board will hold the public hearing on Tuesday, January 3rd, 2023 at 8 p.m. in the Beckett McGuire meeting room at Williston Town Hall to receive comments on the proposed operating budget for fiscal year 2024 and capital budget and program for fiscal years 2024 to 2029 and with that I'll open the public hearing and ask Eric to give a quick overview of what we are looking at tonight and then the floor will be open to public discussion. Thanks Terry. I just have an abbreviated presentation from what I transmitted to the board in early December just to set the baseline for the budget proposal who are here watching us at home as well. So looking at some general themes in preparing this budget this year no surprise we've mentioned already this evening is the inflation and the effect on those factors. The cost to provide the same level of municipal services is increasing due to economic factors beyond our local control. We're seeing a 30-year high in the rate of inflation. The Northeast Consumer Price Index we look at through last October the 12 month average was 7%. I believe it went down slightly in November and December numbers aren't out just yet. Nationally through that October time frame it was 7.7%. We're also looking at employee recruitment and retention, maintaining a competitive compensation structure in a very challenging job market right now. We have open staff physicians over the last year and we have some increasing very limited number of applicants to look at. It's a very challenging job market out there and delivery of services is centered on our staffing and say many times we have excellent town staff we're very fortunate to have the staff members we have and we'll have to retain that staff and attract new members to our team moving forward here. We also keep in mind our plan community growth the board has in its transmittal the planning department tries to take an estimate through the best information available what the growth may be we estimate that about a little over 2% conservatively the next 5 years something about that impact on services. And I shared this graph just from the New York Times just showing the inflation and then the spikes where we are about a 30 year high in inflation right now. So when we prepare the draft budget at the staff level for the select board to work through we have to make some assumptions and identify some policy levers each year. So some of the key assumptions we have identified this year looking at our cost of living and merit increase we budgeted generally 3.5% cost of living increase for staff in the budget that's the ceiling identified in our active union contract but it's not for renewal right now. I think as mentioned earlier the actual rate is much higher. And we've also included 2% for either merit pay or step increases for our nice staff so that equates to certainly a 5.5% increase in wages for staff and also of a slide too just looking at our benefits as well. We did change our health insurance carrier we looked at $180,000 health insurance increase we were able to decrease that to about $120,000 by changing carriers and offering a comparable plan that's still a significant 8% increase just in health insurance along for the next budget year. We also look at our grand less growth town assessors sort of estimates about a quarter of 1% for next year this affects the overall tax levy projection grand less is finalized in the spring by the Listers so that quarter of 1% is about $5 million in new property values projecting and dollars wise that with the current tax rate that yields about $15,000 in new revenue from that. We anticipate a reappraisal is going to occur from 24 to 25 and we'll have some information on that this evening as well. We've shifted our local option tax revenue to our pre-pandemic methodology we use a rolling average of 3 fiscal years we're continuing to omit the first half of 2020 as those were outliers especially on the rooms and meals side and then the budget also looks at the town's unassigned fund balance ARPA funds these are offsets on the revenue side to consider to assist in balancing the budget and that's been outlined in the draft budget so my direction of staff in working through to submit budget requests last fall is look at a status quo budget proposals with cost to provide the current levels of services based on the pressures faced with inflation any newer expanded services were submitted as a separate request and then in the town managers draft budget there are a limited number of expanded services primarily some additional staff hours there's no new personnel in the budget proposal our goal was to deliver a budget expense increase lower than the rate of inflation we did that with a six and a half percent bottom line increase in the draft budget to consider which was lower than the national and northeast numbers we looked at at the time so as we look at it by objecting it's a good way it kind of tells a story the primary source of the increase is related to wages and benefits and then we see the operating side items like contracted services insurances vehicle fuel these are all related to delivering operational services and those are numbers driven by by our inflation pressures that we're feeling right now so general fund by the numbers as I mentioned the bottom line six and a half percent increase about $850,000 in the draft budget initial rate looking at taxes about a three and a quarter percent increase what does that mean for a median assessed homeowner about $300,000 home we mean about $98 increase per year or about over the year or $8 tax increase per month generally the revenue side of the budget similar to prior years our property tax levy makes about half of our general fund operating revenue local option tax about a quarter and everything else about a quarter a little bit lower then our capital budget proposal is about $92,000 increase from the general fund that gets transferred in there's no new debt proposed we work throughout it to consider future planning with the town's energy goals in mind and our debt service is about 7% of the general fund overall which is a good place to be so the next steps public hearings just about to occur the board has next item on its agenda to begin your budget deliberations next week at the budget meeting to continue your budget deliberations could potentially look on the 17th to finalize the budget and the town meeting warning there's also time on January 4th to hold an additional meeting to wrap items up if necessary we have town meeting on the 6th then Australian ballot on the 7th of March coming right up so I'll be there sir thank you so for those in the room if you would come to the table when you wish to speak and those of you on Zoom also identify yourself when you come to speak and if you can be very specific about what you like not just the tax rates too high but what would you like us to do to change it so I'll open the floor up to the folks in the room who wishes to speak first Eric, your assistant coming with you welcome thank you everyone I am Eric Howe I am the chair of the Williston Conservation Commission and I am here to speak about the budget and I understand that this year's budget does not include any allocation for the environmental reserve fund before I get into that Jeff, as I was walking into the room tonight I heard you ask our now newest Conservation Commission member how much land you thought would be an appropriate amount of land to conserve in town and I have to be honest I didn't actually hear his answer so I don't know what he said to you I was more thinking about your question the Conservation Commission's perspective would be the answer to your question the conservation would be 30% of the land in town and that is based on a number of factors but I think partially driven by President Biden's executive order from earlier in his presidency directing or requesting that 30% of the lands across the country be conserved for a whole host of different reasons and then that number was certainly backed up in a large gathering of biologists, conservation biologists in Montreal a month or so ago and so the Conservation Commission took a very quick look at this and supported that idea so we have in that executive order to conserve 30% of the nation's lands and also by the year 2030 so it's the 30 by 30 initiative that's very strongly supported by land trusts and conservation organizations across the country the tool that we have is the Environmental Reserve Fund and the conservation easements and that is by far the strongest tool in our toolbox here in town to protect lands for conservation other tools include zoning and bylaws but they can all be changed a lot easier than changing the trust or whatever the vehicle is used to conserve a parcel of land a good example is your conversation at your last meeting that you had around the Glazer parcel and the specific plan for that process so 30% of the land area in Williston would be equate to about 6,000 acres right now we have a little over 2200 acres 2200 acres are so conservative protected which gets us to about 20 15% of the land 12 to 15% of the land in Williston so we're doing really well the ERF was first put in place in 1989 the town was directing $100,000 or so but pretty close to that each year in 1989 and throughout the early 90s and then since then the contribution to the ERF has fluctuated from as much as a couple of $100,000 in that very specific case to conserve the catamount parcel down to zero in a few budget cycles I don't actually know what that would be probably somewhere in the order of $50,000 or so per year I think it was in 2014 maybe 16 6 or 7 years ago the conservation commission did a bit of an analysis and determined that a good healthy balance to maintain in the ERF would be in the order of $400,000 that's where we're at now however as you all know and Eric just discussed property values have increased quite a bit over the past couple of years and that recommendation of $400,000 balance is very outdated so and that puts the town at a disadvantage to be able to work quickly to conserve parcels that may come up as an opportunity to protect we went through a prioritization exercise in 2020 working with Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department and their conservation design program and ranked all of the unprotected parcels in town using several different conservation criteria and the top 20 parcels that came up or that were identified added up to by sheer coincidence 2,500 acres which would actually get us to 30% of the land conserved in town at that point and that was $20, $20 I think maybe slightly earlier the total value of those 20 parcels was about $9.2 million or so Greta, you mentioned earlier tonight the form based code effort in TAF's corners and that reminded me as well that so the plan for that area in town has been to be forward to become the urban center of the town and that predates obviously the form based code effort by a long shot but the idea there is to encourage growth and development in that part of town can concentrate development but it doesn't protect the rural areas of town from suburban development and as I just mentioned we have strong wild laws in place now and working to concentrate development in TAF's corners but not protecting the rural areas from development kind of defeat the purpose one without the other just does the whole plan which is a great plan just doesn't work so the conservation commission and is recommending three things to the select board this year and that is first $800,000 in the FY 2024 budget to boost the balance the ERF to reflect the increasing property values we are seeing here in town the second is to establish a policy to reach and maintain a working ERF balance of $800,000 and include this policy in the 2024 town plan which would then enable the town to either work on conserving two high priority parcels continuously or back to back if we conserved one parcel at half a million dollars then we wouldn't have to work so hard to get the ERF back up to a target value and then the third is to establish a plan to fund the ERF at $100,000 annually until the target balance is achieved lastly Eric kindly did some math for me and for me that a $100,000 increase in the budget or allocation to the ERF would equate to a roughly a 0.7% increase in the proposed budget and that is a direct investment in the future of Williston some could view it as an additional increase but I think the conservation commission would support me in saying that it should be a part of the town budget not in addition to the town budget but it's an analysis of where it will be to help people with the costs and we'll discuss that very soon. Thank you. I think at least a little bit tonight and perhaps next week as well. Okay. Thanks. Anyone else in the room who wishes to speak tonight? Yes. I am read car. as a resident here in Wilson. And I also wanted to speak about the environmental reserve fund and its role in the budget and its role in the town. When I've been listening to public hearings recently, when I've been reading from Forge Forum and the comments that are submitted on all the different things that are happening in town, I do hear a lot of voices that feel like development is out of control. And I don't necessarily agree with that viewpoint, but I do think it should cause us to pause and think about why that gut reaction is happening. And I think as I've sat and watched these hearings and read through all of the comments that were submitted, what stuck out to me is that it seems as though residents of the town feel like there's a very well-defined and well functioning pathway to develop in Wilson, which I personally actually think is a good thing. You want a process that is consistent, you want a process that is clearly defined, easy to follow. We want the same thing for conservation in town. And we do have some things in place, including the ERF. But I don't think it is as clearly defined. I don't think it's as clearly communicated to the community. And I don't think it's as effectively executed as our process for developing land in town. And so I think what ends up happening is that there gets to be this feeling that it's out of control, that there's so much urgency from those who want to develop properties and this void or vacuum as far as the progress toward conserving the valuable open spaces in town. And so I think that one of the things that we could do, the reason that I was in support of the recommendations from the Conservation Commission is that I think setting a policy to establish a good, robust fund level and also show year over year that we are working financially as a town to achieve it would go a long way for folks who are feeling like things are just a little bit out of control. And so for that reason, I just wanted to encourage you as a resident in town to think about the ways in which we can address the underlying things that might be driving some of the outcry that we've heard in recent hearings. Thank you. So people on Zoom, are there folks who wish to make public comment? Not seeing any at the moment, Terry. Kevin Thorley, Vice Chair of the Energy Committee, though speaking myself as a resident here, and all the talking points I had, I think Reid just excited. But I want to just throw my support behind what Reid said. Specifically, you know, we had such a, I think, awesome open process for the Taft Corners form-based code, but we heard a lot of feedback about growth and unabated growth. And there's, if you're on for a forum, like Reid mentioned, you've seen a lot of comments related to the Glazer property. This seems like a really great opportunity for Williston to kind of put its money where its mouth is with regard to, you know, preserving the character of the town. And I don't know which way it will fall when we when we look at, do we want open space and town character or do we want low taxes? That's a decision everyone needs to make for themselves. But I think this is a good opportunity for us to take some of the feedback that we've heard from so many people on both sides of the form-based code discussion and really, you know, give the town the tools that it can use so that when these discussions come up in the future and properties become available, you know, we can make a decision other than just develop it. From a personal perspective, I drive by Jeff's house three, four, five days a week in the summer to go to Catamount. I think the open space that we have in this town is a huge asset to the town and the way that we've preserved it, the way that we operate it, and, you know, give townsfolk the opportunity to use that space. I know that's why one reason I live in Vermont, I know a lot of folks that would probably say the same thing, hiking, walking on trails, biking, cross country skiing. I think it's a great opportunity and the ERF, you know, it allows us, will allow us to continue to have more opportunities like that. Thank you. Thank you. If there is nobody left on Zoom. I've got a hand on Zoom. So I've got a commenter on Zoom. Oh, okay. So I Terry Marin, I'm going to connect you right now. Okay. Can you hear me? Okay. Oh, wonderful. So yes. So the last three speakers covered, covered everything pretty well. But I am a member of the Conservation Commission. My name is Terry Marin. And, you know, we, I've been on the Conservation Commission for a couple of years now. And the Conservation Commission really worked very hard in 2020 and 2021 with Melinda Scott, the former conservation planner and Jens Hilke of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department. And we worked really hard to identify significant wildlife habitat areas and prioritize certain parcels that were of high importance. And without having the proper tools to do this work and one being the ERF, it puts us at a huge disadvantage and the town needs a sufficient balance in the fund to purchase land and or the development rights. And the residents, you know, in the past have spoken out time and time again about the pressures of development here in Williston and how it's changing the town's character. And in 2019, just, just before, you know, the pandemic hit, I was part of a kind of a loose knit group. We called ourselves the CRG 2.0. Some people did chuckle out of that. They know that was. And it was all around. We all gathered together because around the glacier parcel that folks thought was going to get developed with, you know, many houses. And out of that, the town put together a survey and put that put that out for folks to respond to. And there were 70 pages, not 70 comments, but 70 pages of comments. And most of them were not in favor of the pace of development that was happening in town and what was going on. And now again in 2022, 23, the town residents are vocalizing again about the amount of development happening in Williston and all the things that come along with that. And, you know, the glacier parcel is one of the properties that's, you know, kind of under the survey of those seeing people. People are seeing this happening again. And I just think that town needs to provide properly provide, you know, fund the ERF in order for the Conservation Commission to properly function and fulfill its duties to the town as a committee. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else on Zoom? No one else on Zoom there. Anyone else in the room who wishes to speak? Yeah, I just wanted to add one thing. This is Reid Carr again. I wanted to add one thing, which is that it was mentioned that we don't control when these properties become available and we have to be able to act. And it was really enjoyable at the Last Conservation Commission to have somebody up on Old Creamer Road come and speak with the commission about trying to develop a pathway for their family's land toward conservation. And it was very disappointing at that conversation to be able to only be able to say, you know, right now there's nothing we can do. We can't even do anything in terms of the glacier parcel, we don't believe. And we don't have the funds to work on more than one at once. And her response was, well, what can we do? How can we make it better? That the opportunity is better. And one of the main things that we could say is if you can work with other landowners in your area so that there's potential better matching of funds, which is one of the huge ways that ERF has been used to match funds from something like the Vermont Land Trust so that we can preserve a larger area at once. So there are conversations on going in the background and people are coming forward to the Conservation Commission looking for that pathway to do it. So not just the Glaser Parcel, but also a couple landowners up between Old Creamery and and Zuckerbrook Country Park right now. Thank you. If there is no one else who wishes to speak tonight, then a motion to close the public hearing would be in order. I'll move to close the public hearing on the FY 24 budget proposal. Is there a second? Second. Discussion. Just checking here. Nobody. Nobody. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Three to zero. Okay, so now we're into budget deliberations and Eric, perhaps you can just give us a little overview of what you expect. Us to give to you obviously will be talking about some things tonight that either to add things to the budget or subtract them. What would you expect from us? Yep. So the I prepared a draft budget direction to come in thinking sort of approach here. There's certainly it's always a challenge and putting the budget together with there's certainly a lot of great opportunities for the town and you as a board trying to balance your spending side of the budget, your revenue side of the budget and trying to look at a number of these factors and this is the largest public policy endeavor you have each year. So it's not a certainly not an easy job. As I support you, my role as manager, I'm looking for where you want to end up in your budget proposal. Looking at the bottom line on the expense side and how you're going to fund that on the revenue side. If you're looking at some additions, subtractions, direction you want to give me and Shirley as finance director to run cost scenarios for you. We can prepare that information for you as as you decide as a board where you want to end up here. You've got time next week to work through this as well. You can work through it with a couple more meetings this month, but by 17th to the 24th will to arrive at the bottom line as part of the town meeting morning. So what we do every year is come up with possible budget changes. So this is in your agenda packet. There's just a couple items so far. We do our best estimates, but sometimes things come up after the turn of the year here. So so there's about $5,600 in additions and those result from green and green round transits had a slightly higher request than what they initially submitted to us a little bit higher for town meeting TV and the Chinning County tax was slightly higher than what we anticipated maybe. So to date, that's $5,600 from the outside organizations to meet their appropriation of the quest that came in. Look for the board's direction and how how staff can support you in working through this. When I was in the legislature, the appropriations committee was like at $5,600 and call it budget dust. I think we're probably all on the same page as far as putting some money into the environmental reserve fund. And I'm looking at what other departments in town were told to do and that is to follow the status quo. And so we have the opportunity to do that. But in order to follow the status quo, that would be $75,000 rather than $100,000, which I think is probably more appropriate for this year. Since we are looking at a fairly steep tax increase. So I would ask staff take a look at what 75,000 would do as far as increasing the expenses of the budget. I know Eric had mentioned just, you know, and that you had prepared the kind of the numbers for him for the fully funded 100,000 asked to. But if you could also just we could just see the difference, like what that would mean for the budget. I would also I'm obviously I'm a medic there but a big proponent of getting that that sidewalk. So and I actually, you know, in talking, I, you know, obviously we have still a finite amount of our dollars. And but in our last meeting, we had discussed, you know, that we are coming up to some barriers in terms of timing of using that money and ordering things and getting it and having it actually spend. And so and you know, we had discussed a lot about, you know, doing things for the town that really would benefit the town. And so for me, that really does fit the bill. So I would support, you know, potentially using ARPA funds, but I would love to see maybe some numbers about, you know, you using ARPA funds, maybe not using ARPA funds, how that might affect things for us to get the plow at the minimum, but also to add an employee. Since we know that that's necessary too. But would the employee be added in the following fiscal year? Well, because they would have to be available to use the plow right for next winter. Hopefully it'll have a new plow in town, so that would be about half of the fiscal year. Yeah. Yeah. So Yeah, we could run a scenario where they would start say December 1, for example. Yeah. That'd be great. See what the impact would be in the cascading year two as you have a full year with that employee. One thing we've looked at too is potentially looking at, we have a seasonal parks position, we may be able to run some scenarios looking at elevating that to a full year. All it can be more with public works and recreation and parks as well to look at different staffing models too. That'd be great. Thank you. So when I'm hearing seeing feeling is three significant increase budget increases that we should be considering. We've talked about the ear app. We talked about the new staff that would need to come with the plow. We haven't yet talked about the solar panels on the public works, the solar system on the public works garage. All three of those, I think are very consistent with, you know, the town's goals as expressed in the town plan. So I'm in favor of all three of those. But I also think before we can move ahead and deciding whether we want to pursue any one of those, all three of them is are we willing to make cuts in other places? And that's a discussion I think we need. We need to have. You know what I'll add to that. If you take all three of those things and put them into a new budget, what would it take? And this will be up to staff staff to take a look at. Well, this be where we could be cut that total amount of money. Right. If we were to stick with this, I think the budget's coming in 6.6% higher than in the last year. Excuse me if I got that wrong. If we wanted to maintain that 6.6%, what would that mean and fund those three things? Well, the solar panels wouldn't take any additional funding. Right. I'm just trying to see if I can pull up a spreadsheet. Yeah. So we the solar credits right now because you know, they're owned by ISON. We got 10% of the credits back. So really, we generate additional credit against our bill. Right. So I'll just write that as a note. We'll look at that and factor that in at the purchase. That would reduce our electric cost a little bit. I get it. They all three don't have an equal impact. Right. One to one impact. Well, but the solar, the funding for the solar panels is not a wouldn't be a budget item, right? Because we that comes from existing, right? If the board wanted to use the unspent bond proceeds for that purchase. If you wanted to look at general fund dollars or ARPA or another potential use for ARPA, those are other buckets you could look at. But you know, the most significant impacts are if you were to look at raising additional taxes or using additional fund balance, for example, to pay for things and where those policy where you want to land on those aspects. So if we were if we were to pursue that, we would not have to include it in the capital budget. And then, you know, state word is we would write if you're following if you would purchase look to purchase the solar panels with the unspent bond proceeds. Think of that as a completely separate pool of money. It's been in a separate fund in town. It's it's not going to affect the other aspects of the capital operating budget. Okay. I mean, I get the concept. I'm just trying to figure it out from the standpoint of what have we done historically with the other solar panel systems? I forget if it's one or two that we've already purchased. And is that consistent with our capital budget, whatever policy? In other words, you know, it is a sizable expense. You know, it's a one, you know, it's one time. And it's over the 10 thousand. I think there's a rule of thumb we use 10 or 15,000. It's above that. So even though we have this special kind of money, we can use to fund it. Does it still need to be part of the budget? I say you're saying that. Yeah. We likely would include it as a sheet just as a capital planning asset. But in terms of the funding mechanism, that would be the right coming from the bond process. The way to put it is if we fund it as part of the capital budget, and let's say through this, I forget what it's called, we use the bond, the amount we over bonded and we have available to us, it may have negligible impact on the tax rate on the need for revenue, but it still should be part of the budget. Right, just to reflect the asset. I'm getting a better understanding now. For me, that's the easy part, just generating a new capital sheet and just make sure that's reflective in your plan. And if anything, Shirley's saying, there may potentially we may see a little yeah. Yeah, so yeah, so you could reappropriate those dollars towards an operating expense like an employee wouldn't even wouldn't offset the additional sort of expense or or what not our employee expense, but it would help. And yeah, one thing I do want to say about the plow in the additional staff is I remember this came up last year was the first year I kind of said, you know the way we every year go through via our policy and rank people who apply to have their sidewalk plow to me is sorry, I mean, a little dramatic is kind of nuts. And and we should if we wanted a sidewalk to be there, whether we built it or the developer built it, we ought to plow it and get away from this, you have to apply and then we become the sidewalk plow gods and decide whether you're good enough for lack of better words or not. And I'm being a little bit dramatic. I get that. But I would feel so much more comfortable if we said no, these are the these are the areas of challenge or these are the sidewalks and passively plow period. You know, you don't have to apply. You're either right. I don't like it. I don't like saying anybody's out. But yeah, there might be a case where some sidewalks just know it's not going to plow us. Well, we've gone to great effort as a town to have connectivity between sidewalks and between pathways and between things. And you know, it doesn't really matter if all of these things connect if you know, X neighborhood isn't going to be plowed. So you can't get to the place, you know, this plowed area here from this plow area here. I greatly prefer that the whole town all sidewalks and passively plowed. If we can achieve that, that would be good. No, where the money comes from. Just so I have clear, so you're talking about kind of these three items with different potential pools of money. If you'd like me to look at potential, what it would mean to decrease expenses as budget right now and replace them with some of these with which ones would you like me to do? So you can give us the real bad news or and then we have to make a decision. That's our job. Sure. Yeah, I will run those numbers, you know, likely with that amount of spending, you'll be looking at personnel and also looking at, you know, tied to increases personnel wages as well for to get that just just a preview for you for that. And also capital funding for other items in the capital budget to get to that multiple hundred thousands of dollars level for a trade off. Again, and I would definitely encourage I mean, just from my perspective, you know, some at least the plywood could could be a use of ARPA funds. So we'd love to see what that would look like at least budget, the fund that we have for that we're always looking at spending and quite often don't. My as you know, I have some concerns about how we're spending. Yeah, it isn't that isn't a negative comment. I just want to make, you know, I want to feel comfortable with how we're using our, you know, this great resource we got these are dollars. If we use when we buy a sidewalk plow, we are going to be buying sidewalk plows for the rest of our lives. That's a commitment we're making. So while the ARPA funds pay for it, the first time they make it easier the first time we have to buy that second sidewalk plow. In the future, what do they have an eight year, 10 year life? We got to be buying a new one. I have the same feeling about when we hire staff. Yes, it's great. If we can hire staff and bring them in halfway through a fiscal year, I'd say that's a great idea. But the next year, you got to have that commitment that you're going to, you know, fund that position. And so I'm not there yet on using ARPA funds for the sidewalk plow. Well, and if you look at that, we do the same thing we do for dump trucks. We put in a certain amount of money each year to replace that sidewalk plow. I think we're good on this tonight. And we'll see some news next week. That's what anticipated you'd asked me to work on. They were taking their bets. So move on to the donation, gifting, naming policy. And Eric and Shirley, I think if you have any comments on this drill, I should come up to the table as well. If this was presented to the board last last meeting in December, there's just been a couple changes. Shirley gave it a review. So there's a few red line changes that surely suggested primarily relating to IRS requirements. There's any any questions on those? Do you want me to make I thought if you just had questions. So I'm taking my previous experience into account working with St. Michael's and working with institutional advancement for my 20 years there, the language that I wanted to add in, you know, just removing the land donations to gifts of real property. That's just about the fact that real property includes land. We could get something a land in the residential or commercial building on it. And those things just add complication that we really need to stop and talk about and review and what types of liabilities might surround those particular gifts. So I just wanted to add that language in so that, you know, we stop and pause and ask all the relevant questions and you know, as there hazardous materials that might have to be mitigated, etc. And then the last section really I just added was about the IRS requirements for acknowledging a gift at the bottom of this document. And that is pretty much it. Any questions for surely this seems pretty standard. Language. If we're okay with it, then there's a motion we'll suggest it. I'll move to adopt the parks donation and naming policy. Is there a second? Second. Is there a discussion on the motion? Very not. All those in favor of approving the motion, adopting the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. And then we're off to the draft town meeting day warning. So usually prepare those for the board first meeting in January here. This is the first draft. So I'll start with starting to think about how you want to conduct town meeting this year. We've we've reserved the auditorium and it was available that night. So that's the good news. The start. There's no bad news, but that's good news. So I have presented the warning here back to we'll call it the pre-pandemic. So March 2020 when we had town meeting before things really changed throughout the world for a couple of years. So you don't have to decide this evening, but to be thinking about how you want to structure town meeting. Do you want to have the in-person meeting in the auditorium again? Have some floor articles that we've had in the past moderator, due date of taxes, except the town report followed by a presentation about the Australian ballot articles, including the budget. And then we've been in touch with the school and they certainly welcome an opportunity to go through the school budget that evening as well as part of that program. So that that's one decision point for the board and my thought there, you know, with the hybrid environment, we're just live stream that it may be a little challenging to try to facilitate a zoom engagement as well. I'm the board really wants to go in that direction. I can certainly explore it, but just for you to think about, too, just looking for your direction on how how you want that to be set up to some of these logistics to think about as you get your warning together this month. Does it have to be? I mean, can it be can be live streamed without having the ability to engage back? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we can. We can do that. Right. This is what we usually do. Okay. Yeah. So because I think, you know, while that doesn't have it, you know, participation, obviously in the process. And I think that the hybrid format is in phenomenal in terms of getting people, additional people who may not have otherwise participated to participate. I do think having it at the school and having some return to kind of the pre pandemic town meeting format is great. And if people still have the option to at least view it, you know, in that format, that's that's good. Absolutely. I think we need to have a in person meeting just to get people back together in the town. It's been a couple years of pandemonium and pandemic. So to get people back together, I wish we could do a hybrid meeting, but get into a problem of voting at that point. The only way you could vote realistically then is by a voice call, which is okay, but if somebody demands a written ballot or in control, so the voice vote too is kind of interesting. We happen to mute. I do have questions about how a zoom type meeting works when you have a potentially large public meeting like our town meeting. I've only been in, you know, these are public meetings, but they're relatively small. So I just, I don't know the answer to that. Yeah. Yeah. I would like to engage other staff in the manner to zoom that evening if that were to go, but I mean, I feel comfortable. I personally would feel comfortable as long as it was being live streamed and people were able to at least access watching it at the minimum, even again, but just two thoughts. One is we'd have to make it clear that the zoom meeting would not allow any interaction. Right. So maybe it wouldn't be zoom. It might be YouTube, right? I think maybe we should actually use a different platform because of that. The other one is if we were to move ahead with a hybrid meeting, you couldn't do voice. You'd have to do raise hands type thing. Yeah, it'd be more for just say the second half here when you conduct your floor business and that if people want to engage with the public information hearing and have a question for town staff or the school, I could see that as, but we'll do whatever the board wants to do, but I'm just thinking of logistically that there might be, there's more technical items to work through to make that happen. And certainly encourage people to pose questions ahead of time and things like that, you know, so that we could maybe, you know. You're starting to hit on the area that I'm the least, the most uncomfortable with is not getting, you know, the comments, the questions coming in. One of the worry, as I start to think about this, I have is, you know, now that we're, I don't know if the right word is post pandemic, but without there being the digital, the way to participate virtually, are we going to see a very small audience in our town meet? Wish to me, I'm disappointed in the numbers of folks that choose to show up and this could make me very disappointed. What's the, I mean, I don't recall, but what's the numbers like pre-pandemic where you kind of getting on town meeting? 120 or so. Okay. And that's just not representative of Willis. Right? Well, yeah, when we went to Australia developed everything, everything just fell right apart as far as town. And if I remember correctly, we sort of knew it would. Yeah. I know we're hoping to have some, you know, in the lobby engagement activities at the community center, library committees thinking about maybe having, having something that evening for people interact with, with some information gathering. We can also kind of share that as part of our outreach to get people in the room to try to get some participation that way too. Just one thing, I'm going to type all on Article 12. There's an S on the end of member that shouldn't be there. Thank you, Terry. An article, so article five reflects solar panel purchase if this is a placeholder for now. Article six, my previous last month, but this is the ambulance debt that was approved last year for short-term borrowing. We feel that we can get a 1% interest rate by selling bombs in this new municipal pool that they're starting to offer. So if the voters support this, it gives us both options and we can pick the best financing available. I think for both articles five and six, I think it will be important to, you know, when you, I know you typically do something for the observer or whatnot, but to, you know, stress that that's one that for Article five purposes, that this isn't a new bond, that this is not, we're not asking to, to take out more money. And then for Article six to remind folks that they've already approved the, the, the, yeah. So it'll be an explanation sheet that we usually do, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. Anything else on this particular one? I guess that we're going to the managers report. So we'd off with the 20-22 equalization study received it from the state. We are not surprised our CLA has dropped seven points below the 85% threshold. So that is going to trigger an order from the state to conduct a reappraisal that will come this summer. Under state statute, we need to enter into a contract to conduct the reappraisal by the end of this year. So state statute says you need to have a contract, but it doesn't say when you need to complete it. As you've seen in Bill Himan's memo or assessor, we're really at unprecedented times here for reappraisal in the state of Vermont. Bill's found we've got 150 towns are receiving the same order as Williston this year, and next year he's going to go up to 230 towns. There's 251 in the state. So essentially you're having the entire state reappraise in a, in a series of about five, six years. The only towns that aren't going to be affected by this were the ones that did a reappraisal the last year or two. So there's about three or four firms who can do reappraisals. You're going to have towns that it's going to be six, seven years before they can even have somebody in the door to do it. For Williston, we'll build back a meeting later this winter for you, but he's going to plan. We've got someone who conducted the reappraisal for us last time, who's willing to do it. It sounds like it looks like we have some options to just kind of do a desktop review, like Brayton, South Brayton. We may not necessarily need someone that physically go to each property and take out the tape measure and things of that nature. So it's, we have a scenario where we can likely work on this in 24 and 25 and we won't be a number of years out. Bill speaks to other aspects here about our, our COD. He's better versed in that than I am. So I can only paraphrase his memo here, but it's, you know, looking to do a reappraisal, it's certainly not a, not something towns look forward to. And it's something that, that we need to do, but probably looking to do it sooner rather than later is, is best to make sure that there's equity and valuation and moving forward. So that is, that is a big project on the horizon here. Our, our reappraisal fund is certainly in good shape for the cost that we involved with this. That's funded as part of every recorded document and property transfers, I believe. So we've, we've got a good amount of money in there to cover this, but it's, it's certainly an interesting time here and just with the magnitude of this for all the towns in the state. 230. Yeah. Is that 251 number? It's 252 now, isn't it? Oh yeah, Essex. And a few unorganized goers. We got a, we got a reframer. 252. 252, yeah. Kind of all those people who had those patches. Yeah. Well, now they're a collector's item because. Yeah, that's true. That's 251. Remember best one for Ponce was only children, 51. Any questions on that board? No. If you'd like, I'll plan out Bill Heman back to kind of walk through some more detail this winter spring for you. So I'm a little bit curious about that concept. For instance, Williston is, would be required to have a contract by the end of 2023 calendar year. What if no, no companies willing to sign a contract with us? I, I anticipate because they've got too much work in front of us and they don't want to commit to a contract that they won't be able to work on for two or three years. Yeah, it could be a very open contract and I anticipate the legislature will have an update on this as well. Coming up as it's a topic that's going to affect everybody next couple years. So that's a big one. The one other point I guess I'll make and I'll try to be real brief here. I don't think it's a bad thing, although it creates a lot of controversy. It's a bad thing to do. One of those full reassessments every once in a while because things just get out of kilter. And yeah, I can anticipate our grand list will go up by a good number, I would say. Values going up and conceivably your rate will likely go down. But then you're going to have essentially the same levy. You're just going to have higher values and a lower rate to raise the amount of money in some circumstances. I remember when the town did one reappraisal, our home value went up, the appraised value in our taxes actually went down. Yeah, that could happen too. So just make sure that happens. That'll be coming up. Some staff news to share. Assistant Public Works Director Lisa Schaebler is going to be leaving for a new opportunity. Spend here over 15 years on a great job, secured a number of grants, managed a lot of projects. She's going to move into a Public Works Director role in the town of Milton. So there's certainly a wish her well and her new old professional opportunity here. She'll be wrapping up this Friday before the holidays. So we will be working on filling that position here. Also, we've hired two new firefighters. We had a vacancy last fall and with Lieutenant Soper's retirement, they started today and they're going to run through an eight-week academy. They both have experience and met with them both and great additions to our team here. So we'll be back in full strength on paper now and operationally in a couple months once they finish their training. Our ambulance billing RFQ, Shirley and Chief Colette led our staff review on that and I've informed our preferred vendor candidates. We'd like to move forward with working on a contract with them. So they're going to send that to me this week and looking at that squared away in short order so they can begin working on us for that very city. Stop the service in early December. So we've got to catch up on the December billing as soon as we can. So that's moving along. And I also wanted to mention our court. We will work on the next quarterly report now. So it's a little extra time on the first quarter of the year. We're going to be working on the second quarter of the year. If you've got any feedback as we kind of revamped it a little bit. I like the new form. And as we work on that, certainly add things or move things as the board sees fit helps you get a good get a sense of quarterly kind of what our service delivery looks like and what's coming up. So just to close, I want to thank our fire, police and public work staff for our situation we had on December 23rd, but that wind that turned into a freeze events. It was certainly a very productive, busy day. We stood up our emergency operations center for a bit. We had public works coordinating out the fire station with police and fire. We had a number of vehicles. First thing in the morning, especially with the wind affecting going off the road a little bit, tree branches down, people without power for a amount of time. So, you know, we have great staff here, especially when you have an emergency event like this, it's for me, it's something I'm always amazed by just the ease that they can work through it. And, you know, great, just kudos to our staff for working through that and protecting our community. That's all I have to say. Any other business for tonight? Sometime in the next week or two, you should be looking in your email, a good basket for a select board report that I'll be working on. Relatively quick turnaround. OK, and I'll have a list of potential and report dedication candidates to you hopefully by early next week as well. I suppose I have to add to the current staff openings of the Police Department and the Administrative System also paid for notice today. For next Friday. For next Friday. I've included my manager report now, just a listing of open staff positions and you're aware of kind of what that looks like on the personnel side. Do we think that her leaving is specifically related to the adjustment of her role in terms of. Do we know? I mean, do we know if that's I think I could say it's for a new opportunity, but I shouldn't go that's kind of that's yep. If there's no other business, we are adjourned.