 just so you know you're on twice. Yeah, that's a really good question. I don't know if you had to log in or if you clicked on a link twice. I did. Maybe try closing one of the windows and let's just see what happens. I don't know how to do it. In the upper right hand corner if you just click on one of the X's. Till they're twice. So in that upper right hand corner of your screen do you see a red X? No. Andrew, I can remove choice number two from the meeting. Would that be okay? Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna just do one of them. I still see one choice there. There we go. A quorum of the select board is present and I'm sure Vince will join us as soon as he's able. So we're welcome to get started. All right. I will go ahead and call the village of S6 Junction Board of Trustees to order for Monday November 23rd. And I will call to order the town of S6 select board and ask if you are not speaking to please put on your microphone, particularly if you're calling in on the phone. Thank you. And for the trustees, are there any agenda additions or changes tonight? Staff has a change. Item 6E for the for both boards, the discussion about whether or not to mail ballots to voters and sending a letter to the Essex delegation that went on prematurely so that can be removed. There should have been item 6E that should have been discussion of draft merger charter relating to appointing versus electing a moderator and that was to be for the select board only. The material is made into the packet but it's not on the agenda. So leave it up to the board if you want to discuss that tonight. It's not a huge item but it is on the merger and the charter. So totally understandable and it can wait until December 7th and we can get it warned correctly if that's the board's preference. And those are the two changes from staff. So from the for the trustees it sounds as if we need to just remove 6E or as a select board you have an additional step. Yes. So I will ask the board if any of you have changes to the agenda. Dawn, your hand is up. I would like to pull the 6E from the business from the agenda and the merger discussion from the agenda. There's just the one item 6E is the one merger discussion. You're asking for two things to come off the agenda, Dawn? I thought Greg just said that there was a merger part on the agenda. Sorry. Well there's content in the packet. Okay. There is. I think what we need to do is just strike 6E from the agenda. Okay. And then ask the president, Evan, to put the agenda item both this agenda, both the mail and validating question and the question about the moderator on the December 7th meeting. That works for me. Thank you. Okay. Select board. Were there any other changes to the agenda? Evan, go ahead. Evan, you're muted. See, Pat, you're rubbing off on me. When we get to reading file I just have a quick update on a request for absentee balancing process just to mention that because that's still available. Let me get there. We'll talk about it at that point. So there is a motion to amend the agenda on the trustees table. Is there a second? Not on the trustees agenda. Excuse me. The select boards agenda. My apologies. Second. Thanks, Pat. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Please say aye. The agenda is amended. And so for the trustees, would someone like to make a motion to remove item 6E? So moved. Second. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Amber. Is there any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Okay, so that passed unanimously. And that brings us into public to be heard. So this is a portion of tonight's meeting in which if there is anybody from the public who would like to speak to the boards about something that is not on the agenda, this is a portion of the meeting to do so. If you are, if we could start this off by notifying us that you would like to speak, notifying me that you like to speak, that would be greatly appreciated. So if you're using Microsoft Teams, you can raise your hands by clicking on the little hand icon that'll notify me that you'd like to speak, or you can tap into the chat window that'll notify me. If you are calling in, if you could just pause a few moments so that we could address those who are using Teams, then I'll come back to those on the phone. So if I can get a showing of hands of who would like to speak or typing into the chat window? I have a question. Go ahead, Joyce. I'm going to talk about the parking on Warner Avenue. So is that and that is an agenda item, is that correct? That is. And so good clarification. Yes, for the public hearing, we will make sure that there is, well, for all of our agenda items, we'll make sure that there is time to speak to those items and to ask us questions. So if you don't mind holding off until the public hearing portion, that's very appreciated. Thanks. Or if anybody has a question, you're unsure how to get your concern raised tonight, feel free to ask it as well. Copy to directing. So I see nobody using Microsoft Teams with a question in the chat bar. No hands are raised. So for those on the phone, if you would like to speak, go right ahead and let us look at the speak. Okay, so there has been nobody speaking up saying that they wish to ask us a question tonight. Nobody in Microsoft Teams with their hands up or typing into the chat bar. So I'll go ahead and we can move on from public to be heard. And at this point in time, I will move into. Yes, I'll call the public hearing open for the select one to introduce this to everybody and kind of do a little overview as to what the changes are. Is that Evan? Is that Greg? I'll do a very brief introduction, then probably turn it over to Lieutenant Kissinger, who is also here. We have made some changes to the traffic ordinances in the town in the village. The town has warned the public hearing for tonight based on the ordinances that they passed about a month ago. We have made some additional changes since then, so the select board will have to warn another public hearing. I'm just going to go through some of the process stuff right now. The select board will have to hold another public hearing. Assuming everyone's comfortable tonight, we can warn that for December 7th. The trustees, if they're comfortable tonight with the traffic ordinances, are able to adopt the ordinances and have them take effect 60 days from now. And we can do all the postings and notifications for that to go through that process. As I said, Lieutenant Kissinger is here. He could run through some of the changes. Most of them are pretty minor in nature, just fixing abbreviations, spelling mistakes, stuff like that. And then we can open, well, I'm not sure if the trustees and select board want to open it to the public ahead of time or hear from Lieutenant Kissinger first. Why don't we hear from Lieutenant Kissinger first to help introduce this and provide some context? Thank you very much. As Greg said, most of the changes are changes to be consistent throughout the document of spelling rather than abbreviation names, correction of some of the spellings, and two new addresses that were added to were the residential parking only on Brooks and Warner Avenue. And then the addition to no municipal parking over the night between hours of midnight and 6 a.m. And those are the two really additions that dictate that the new changes have to be worn. Everything else doesn't change the context. It was just more grammatical or spelling. But with those other changes, it has to be worn. Thank you, Lieutenant Kissinger. Okay. So for the public hearing, Chairperson Haney, if you don't mind, what do you think about having the public ask questions, prioritizing that at this moment, and then for board members, we can be close to public hearing and get to the business item? I think that's a fine idea. Okay. So then for members of the public, what questions, concerns do you have about the proposed ordinance? And again, similar to the previous process, if you were using Microsoft Teams, please go ahead and use the chat window. Type in there that you have a question or you have a comment or raise your hands. And that would be helpful. Joyce, you did already speak that you wanted to address this item. So why don't you start us off? Okay. I've got to talk about mostly the parking on Warner Avenue and Brooks Avenue and the Pearl Street Park in general. I'm going to spare you the history of the park because it's lengthy. But my husband and I have lived at Warner Avenue, at Five Warner Avenue since January of 1973. That's a little over 47 years. So I'm going to get right to the problem with parking on Warner and Brooks Avenue. It was in a conversation with Trustee Raj Traula in October. He mentioned that a person who didn't live on Warner Avenue had been mowing the grass along Warner Avenue frontage of the park. And this to me resulted in an unofficial expansion of the parking area on Warner Avenue and users of the park took advantage of this person's kindness. Parking on Warner Avenue is a constant problem in front of the park. In the early evening hours, it's mostly discolors who are parking on Warner Avenue and some tend to parallel park which reduces the number of available spaces. In late October, I met with Allie Townreck Director for an hour at the Warner Avenue entrance to the park and we discussed other options for addressing the problems on Warner Avenue. Number one was to clear the overgrowth along Warner Avenue frontage. No trees need to be cut. Doing so could accommodate 10 or 12 vehicles off the road. Bringing enough soil to level the area, marked spaces for signage, as well as lines to encourage pull in, back out parking. Allie said they've done this at another site in the town and it worked well. Signage is so important. Right now, there's no signage at either entrance to the park indicating rules of use. Educate users of the park that there is parking at the drug handle off Pearl Street. Put up signs which say park only in designated spaces, no tailgating, no alcohol. Sign could even suggest that if patrons don't observe the rules, amenities may be discontinued. Neighbors can always call the police on people not abide by the rules. It is extremely important to put up signs and lots of them. Educate not only the users of the park, but the residents too. There are other problems to be dealt with on Warner Avenue and other streets in the Villa Drive development. Speedy occurs daily and it's not just the visitors, it's the residents who live in the development. Walkers don't follow the rules for safe walking, they should walk facing traffic, bicyclists should ride with traffic, and the biggest offenders are the people who walk their dogs and let the dogs decide where to do their business. Teach your children to be aware of cars backing up and teach them to walk on the right side of the roadway. What is not an option to me, I am totally against restricting parking on Warner Avenue after living at that home for 47 plus years. Restricting parking on our street is being considered. In the summer months we have a family dinner almost every Sunday evening. We have four cars in our driveway, three cars at least in front of our house. And to me it's an insult to have to give my family members a parking pass to park in the street in front of their home that they were brought up in. And how do I tell the third car that you're not allowed. If you're considering restricting parking on Warner and Brooks Avenues, then don't discriminate. Make all streets in the Villa Drive development restricted parking. When the fairgrounds has activities, lots of residents let their friends park in the streets rather than the fairgrounds. Restricting parking on Warner Avenue and Brooks Avenue will only encourage park users to go to other streets in the neighborhoods. It isn't the residents who are the problem, it's the users of the park. We need to cooperate, not restrict. So address the needs of the park first with the options that Ali and I discussed for an entire season before enacting restricted parking. If that doesn't work, then I suggest removing the disc golf course, which would disappoint a lot of people. Perhaps that project shouldn't have been approved without first thinking through the problems that would be created by extensive use. Pickleball has been in the park for 10 years and it just took over one tennis court, which was there for 20 plus years. Keep in mind the park is surrounded by houses, condos, and apartments. There'll be more apartments coming soon with the destruction of 197 Pearl Street building and the construction of more apartments, more apartments, more people using the park. Voting for restricted parking punishes the residents, not the users of the park. What's fair about that? As a last resort, we may have to consider Pearl Street Park as a neighborhood park where only residents of the town of Essex and Essex junction are allowed with their guests. Not a great option. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your comments. Is there anybody else who wish to speak to this public hearing item? Again, if you're using Microsoft Teams, go ahead, raise your hand or use a chat function. If you're calling in, you can go ahead and let us know you'd like to speak. Greg, go ahead. Sure. I'll fill the gap while waiting for others. A couple of changes that Lieutenant Kissinger and I have talked about that would get updated that I don't think they made it into your packet are changing some terms such as village manager, unified manager would just become manager throughout the document. Lieutenant Kissinger, I think we're going to make everything just the legislative body as opposed to the trustees or select board. So I just wanted to call out some of those more minor changes that you would see going ahead. Yes, that's correct. Speaking with the attorney, he made us aware that the unified manager is not a term defined by either charter, refers to Evan's position as the village manager or the town manager, how are the languages in both charters referred to manager, and that is what we got approval from the attorney is to use that and that gives us a little bit more latitude. And the same thing with governing or, excuse me, legislative bodies instead of referring to the select board of trustees, it kind of encompasses both. So at some point in time in the future, if the merger does go through, there's less transition for us because everything is covered by legislative bodies or manager. And that was the reasoning behind that thought process. It was just brought up to us. Thank you for that. Raj, I see your hand is up. Is it in response to what Greg had just mentioned or clarification? I know it's relating back to the Brooks Warner, but only if other folks are finished, I just wanted to add a little context. If you don't, so I can totally weigh if you don't mind hanging on what we had talked about is having the public hearing just for the public to really provide their input. And then once we get to the business item, then have the trustees and select board take it from there. Sorry, misunderstood. It's all good. And I believe there was somebody who had spoken up that they wished to speak. You may have been calling in again, if there was somebody who had wished to speak to the traffic and parking ordinance changes from the public, and that would be the time to do so. Go right ahead and just let us know that to speak. I'm not hearing anybody saying that they wish to speak. Nobody else in Microsoft Teams has raised their hands. Hello. Hello. Hi, my name is Seamus Walsh. I live at Eight Brooks Avenue in Essex Junction, right across the street in the park. Can you explain the process that is going to happen after this public meeting or public disclosure is passed tonight? What does residents do to watch this progress and then be able to put our input in the things that are happening? So if you are referring to the ordinance itself, right now we are receiving public input on any concerns, any feedback you have, positive or negative about the proposed changes. From this public hearing, what has already been mentioned is that the select board will have at least one more public hearing. The trustees with our charter, we could theoretically approve of the ordinance tonight. We could also choose to not do that tonight and we could wait until a subsequent meeting. So does that help to answer your question or is your question more so about if this becomes passed, what happens after that? Hello, Coller. Seamus, are you there still? Feel a bit like a radio host. Coller, you're on the other side. Yeah, that's one step. I think to have one public meeting to be able to pass the ordinance, I don't think that would be a great idea. I'd certainly like to understand what's the options for Pearl Street Park as opposed to making a decision on something that we can't have any input and a decision will be made without really understanding what the options are for the park. So I think in some ways I'm hearing some concern about the way that the ordinance is proposed in terms of restricting parking for residents like yourself in having parking passes and that you would desire there to be more public input provided on possible solutions. And if that is the case, if you have specific thoughts and things that you would like to see differently, we are happy to hear those right now. If you'd like to email them to us, you are more than welcome to email them to those of us elected officials. I would highly encourage you to email it to our municipal manager, Evan Teach, and he can help to make sure that the information gets to everybody if you are not comfortable or if you're not comfortable in doing so tonight. I no longer see him in the participant list, Andrew. Andrew? The call may have dropped. Oh, can I just comment? I mean he said something about the park, Pearl Street Park. Maybe he doesn't understand that that would be if he's pertaining to the park itself, that would be a town select board issue, and we're just dealing with Warner Ave, and I think maybe the mic, that may be part of the issue, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure either. I was trying to tease out some of the some of the details as to what he was saying. I think that I, I think I captured it, but only he can tell me whether I did or not. Should, if anyone sees Seamus join back in, if they could point him back out so we can have that clarification, that'd be great. In the meantime, why don't we go ahead and last Joyce. Right ahead. You'll mute Joyce. Joyce, if you can unmute yourself. Is it possible to remove the Warner Avenue, Brooks Avenue traffic restrictions from the current traffic ordinances you're considering so that we can look at other options and probably revisit this next year? I believe that that is something that is certainly on the table. I would look to Lieutenant Kissinger to confirm or conflict with that, but since it was just put on, I believe it's or since it is proposed to be put on, it doesn't necessarily have to be put on and that is part of the conversation tonight. Okay, and I have another question. I would like to know people who were concerned about parking on Warner Avenue, Brooks Avenue, how many of them actually live on either of those streets because in a conversation with other people recently, it wasn't just, it was from streets further away than Brooks and Warner and that bothers me. Thank you. Thank you. And so again, if there are any other questions, whether you were on the phone or whether you were using Teams, I'll go ahead and take a brief pause. So for anybody else from the public who wished to speak to this item, go ahead and let us know. Andrew, I just admitted somebody might be Shamus. Shamus, was that you joining us again? Yes, sorry, I got disconnected, but I actually was watching it on YouTube. So my concern is the parking ordinance. It's the Park Postry Park. I understand it's a separate issue. Okay, I appreciate that. Do you feel again, just to make sure, do you feel that I had summarized what your concern was accurately or was there anything that could change to that? Yeah, I just disagreed to a certain extent about that other streets are concerned. I mean, I talked to neighbors up and down during the summer months. And again, I think the biggest issue is summertime. And I think the other speaker is correct in the hours and typically in the late afternoon. But it's not an individual one or two or three neighbors, I think everyone is concerned for a number of reasons, the quality of life reason. And me personally, you know, I moved next to this park. I understand the ramifications of living next to the park. But there's some genuine safety issues that are important that need to be addressed on Warner Avenue in regards to speeders and regards to, you know, this was a park that was built for children. It has now become more of an adult playground. And there's adult activities that are happening there that really aren't appropriate for a children's playground. So we have to as a community decide, is this park going to be for children and adults? And then how do we take those adult behaviors and remove that so we're not influencing children? And there's other other streets in town that have, I literally look out my window and see children riding bicycles and cars speeding at the same time. And it is a matter of time before someone gets hurt. And it is not a parking issue, it is really a issue regarding, it is just a dangerous situation brewing that is going to eventually have major ramifications from someone getting hurt here. Because of the situation of the cars and the traffic and the volume of people. So the more we remove cars from Warner Avenue, the safer it's going to be for children, in my opinion. Thank you, James. I appreciate that. Joyce, is your hand up still from from previously or was there a new comment you wanted to add? Okay. Annie Cooper, see your hands up. Okay. The, am I in? Someone's talking. I'm not sure who that is right now. Joyce. Oh, Joyce, you're good. Okay. I want to remind the caller that that park is not just for children. Many, many families are using the pickleball courts and the and the disc golf. But I don't know what other behavior he's talking about. But traffic is an issue and that has to be addressed. Don't think by having the ordinance passed tonight is going to do that. We need more discussion. Thank you. Thank you, Joyce. All right, Annie Cooper, your turn. I'm glad that Joyce did speak before me because I agree with her that we need bigger discussion and I just, thanks to the fine art of online meetings, I just came from the bike walk committee meeting a few moments ago and we were in discussion about similar things. And so I'm really excited to hear that these discussions are taking place and that I happen to go to two meetings where they are in the past 10 minutes. And I would be very grateful for anything I can do to help foster this larger discussion in our community and anything I can do to help with that. I'm here for because I'm really, it's so, so, so important. And so thanks for this meeting and thanks for this opportunity to talk and thank you all. Thank you, Manny. And again, is there anybody else from the public who wish to speak to this? Or we will, if not, we can close the public hearing. So I'll take another 15 or so second pause. All right, Patty, I see your hand is up. Yes. I just want to comment on what Annie Cooper just said. Can you hear me? Can hear you? Yes. Oh, okay. That as an entire community, this is something we have in common that we can really stress that initial call or that kept getting cut off was talking about safety first because our population is growing in the village too because you guys have all this traffic. And obviously the town, safety like Saxon Hill, we don't have anything against hunters, but there's just so many people. And the park that he's talking about, he lives across from that caller, he's, you know, when you're there every day or you live right there and you're in the community, you notice that old, there's more and more older people biking, playing pickleball, walking. And, you know, it's great that the police station is right on our, but yeah, our community demographics are changing. And a lot of older people are healthier and they're, I know, I don't know them personally, but I know of people even from Essex town that play pickleball. So they must come hang out with you guys over there. And I think that's great. So as a whole community, Essex town and Essex Junction, we have the cops on our side, we've got to do something where the police in the town and in the village both stress the same ordinance safety first safety, whether it's cars or bullets, we got to have common ground here. Thank you. Thank you, Patty. Any other members of the public wish to speak to this item? All right. I'm not hearing anybody saying that they would like to speak. I am not seeing any hands up nor am I seeing any conversation in the chat bar. So I will go ahead and for the trustees go ahead and say that I will close the public hearing on this ordinance. Thank you, Andrew. I will close the public hearing on behalf of the select board. And so that will bring us to business item 6a, considering the path to speaking to. Lieutenant Kissinger, if you'd like to reintroduce this, you could, but I think since we just heard it, you may be able to let that one go. And so with that, why don't we turn this over to board member comments. And just to, I guess, while we're gathering our thoughts or before I see hands come up, just to summarize, we've had a couple of village residents express their concern to not move forward with the parking ordinance for Brooks and Warner Ave. And for that neighborhood in terms of requiring permits and limiting parking to residents only. I would also add that at a previous trustees meeting where this was raised, another resident in that neighborhood had mentioned that had again echoed safety and the safety concerns. And again, understanding that they live in an area that is right across the street from a very popular park and that they love that the park is popular and being used. And we're looking for creative solutions. This option was not provided at that point in time. But that certainly the person speaking to this had emphasized safety as a significant concern. Yes. There'd be no passing between these vehicles. And you see the gentleman on the right trying to walk his dog and the person on the left walking a stroller. There are no sidewalks on the street. It's narrower than most. So when you have this kind of congestion on a small street like this, pretty much every night that it's not pouring rain from spring to fall, that's where I think folks are coming from with this. The scene is often like this. The parking area is on the left is full. So that's why these cars are 80 yards down the road and often further than this. With this situation, if residents did want to park in front of their homes, again, you couldn't walk through it with another vehicle coming. You couldn't bike through it with another vehicle coming. And quite honestly, you probably couldn't get a fire truck through it if there was a resident parked in front of their own home. I'm not 100% sure resident only parking is the answer. But I think there needs to be some kind of mitigation to what we're seeing. And that's kind of what the concerns are that I've heard expressed. And that's the reason for the conversation. But again, I think putting this off because there was quite a few folks that couldn't be here tonight for this conversation wouldn't be a bad idea. Thank you, Raj. Dan, why don't you take it away? I agree with Raj to the extent that if you're just speaking to Warner Avenue and Brooks Ave, but you put off approving the whole ordinance as presented, if we could somehow separate the two and improve 99% of the thing because we have no issue with it and limit it just to the Warner Brooks Ave. I mean, I think that's what we should be doing just to move things faster and move it along. Thank you, Dan. Amber? Yeah, Amber, go ahead. I guess my question is for Lieutenant Kristen Durek. Where did these two streets come from? Why were they added, in your opinion? Amber, they were added at the last minute because of issues we're having when I talked to the rec department as far as what the air plans were for Warner Avenue were to put rocks along the parkside to keep people from parking halfway on the grass. That presents a problem with cars parking on the street and there is no ordinance to enforce them parking on the street. And the reason for Brooks and Warner Avenue were added together because if they can't park on Warner, the next closest to the entrance to the park is Brooks Avenue. It wasn't intended to penalize the residents. It was a way to hopefully help them, although I'm understanding that's not the case tonight. And I'm willing to assist whatever I can to help the residents out. We've had no parking signs placed on Cascade Street because they were holding pickleball there as well and they ignored no parking signs. The signs that were put up are not backed by the ordinance at this point. They are in the current package. So having a designated where you can't park within a thousand feet, they tend to ignore that one and Cascade Park has a bigger parking lot for the park users. They're opting not to use that and park along the street. So the intent was to try and help the residents out and it's clear it's not something that the residents want. So I'm willing to help any residents to brainstorm, to come up with a solution that best fits the village residents on those streets. Thank you for that. Raj, did you have another question or no? Okay. I guess before turning it over to Select Board, turning it to Select Board member comments, the only concern I had as well as with the Brooks & Warner Avenue portion, largely that it feels like it does punish residents as well as it restricts the access to recreation, which I know for many of the residents of our community, many chose to live here because of the recreation opportunities and the disc golf amenity has really helped Pearl Street Park to become a vibrant park again. That was my community park growing up, which was essentially in my backyard. I remember back when that was a wooden playground structure that we periodically would get some slivers in from time to time. And other than that, it was hardly ever used, minus a couple of impromptu littley games back when that field was maintained as one. But as such, as a park has garnered interest again in legal interest, we find ourselves with a great problem and that we have more people who want to use it than we have parking access for. And so to me what it seems like at that for Pearl Street Park is we have a parking problem. And so it seems like we need to address a parking problem and the parallel safety problem that has crept up because of this. I don't know what the solutions are. This is certainly not my area of expertise, but from what I heard tonight, it does seem as if what may be a nice next step is if either Lieutenant Kissinger or someone from the police department, possibly someone from recreation, maybe community development could have a conversation with residents or multiple conversations with these residents to help figure out a solution that would work for both recreation as well as residents. And also not forgetting that this is a great access point to the disc golf area, which I know we've been guilty of parking in that area multiple times ourselves. There are other areas and other access points to that park. I'm sure those who live on Kimberley Drive, as well as those who live along right behind whatever the childcare place is and the adult daycare in those condos, there's another option as well. Or can that parking area in the jug handle be expanded upon in any way, shape, or form without harming the stream that exists there? But with that, it doesn't seem as if there's any other trustee comments at this point. So while I see that, Patty, if you don't mind holding on, I'd like to turn this over to the select board. If the select board members have any questions, comments. Thank you, Andrew. Select board members, do you have any comments to make about the parking ordinance or excuse me, the traffic ordinance in its entirety? Andy and then Pat. Yeah, just a couple of things. The restricting of parking in municipal lots overnight, there is that one spot that's got a car charger associated with it. And environmentally and from a grid balancing standpoint, the best time to charge is overnight. So I'm wondering if for that specific spot, if someone is actively charging their vehicle, whether we can make an exception for that spot to allow people to charge their car before again, I'm going to work at six o'clock. Yeah. That's a suggestion. The other is in the town ordinance on page 12, there's a bunch of streets that are duplicated in the listing. I know there was some effort to remove duplicates, but there's still some in there unless I'm reading it wrong. I don't know if Greg, if you can pull up, it's the agenda item 5A2 on page 12. Give me a moment. Get there. And while he's doing that, Andy, it's Evan, I'm coming a little bit late to the party overnight parking, but we've had the one issue where that charging station is, is when we allow overnight parking in the lot, then we're not able to plow that lot. Now that space, we don't have signs that say no overnight parking unless you're charging. And what we end up with is a lot of people parking there from the apartments and other places. So it's kind of a balance. And we try to have that lot open by 7am. So that's why the restriction on overnight parking. So if we can eventually find a balance or something like that, we do want to encourage that charger to be used more. And we've even started talking about signage. So maybe when that time comes, we'll try to figure something out. But that's the reason why no overnight parking is in our lots. Okay. All right, so Greg, you slide down to 206 is Margaret Street and Sandhill. And then 211 is also Margaret Street and Sandhill. And then it goes Marketplace, Pinecrest, Duplicates again. So 206 to 210 are the same as 211 to 215. We can get that cleaned up. Thank you for the catch. Yep. Just a yep. And that was it for me. Thanks, Andy. Lieutenant Kissinger, did you want to jump in on that topic before we move on to Pat? If I may. Certainly. Again, it was brought to my attention about the no parking. We can kind of rectify that problem with putting a language in. And I submitted that to Greg after conversing with him that if the car is actually charging, then they would be exempt from that parking. However, they would not be able to park there during the winter parking ban from December 1st through April 1st. So it does, I think find a balance where we want people to use the charging station, but then we restrict it for public works when they have to plow. Okay. That sounds great. Thank you. Thanks, Lieutenant Kissinger. Pat, go ahead. I guess this is just a more of a mechanical question. I know that we are aligning ordinances, but right now, if one board were to pass, you know, the Warner Brooks Ave and the other did not that change. I mean, did the trustees have jurisdiction because that's in the village? Well, I'm just wondering really, I guess questioning, you know, who needs to be at the table when we have further discussions about this. So I'm not entirely sure myself. Pat, I believe the version that the select board would be approving does not contain village streets. It doesn't. Oh, okay. I was probably just looking at the village one then in my... If you look at the residential parking section of the town one, it's got all different streets. Gotcha. Okay, my bad then. That's okay. So that leads me to a question though. I just want to ask Greg, if the select board is going to do a second hearing, do you need us to vote to schedule that hearing? I do, yes. And there's language in the memo which I can pull up when you get to that point to authorize staff to schedule public hearing for December 7th. Okay. When we're there, we'll take care of that. Select board, any other comments or questions about this ordinance? Okay. I think select board is satisfied. So, Andrew, you want to take it back? Looks like there's some more questions on your board. I had a guess of question from what Patrick had mentioned. If the select board is only passing ordinance is related to the town outside the village, some of the streets that are listed within the town's ordinance are absolutely within the village. So I guess I would make a little bit of clarity as well on that. So I wasn't crazy. I was referring strictly to that section. I will let Lieutenant Kissinger and Greg take care of that. One of the things I wanted to mention is I'd rather we start aligning our ordinances and one of the issues about Warner and Brooks in this park is it's, I don't know, to my mind an oddity that you have a town park that straddles the town in the village. We don't really have, and I'll ask Lieutenant Kissinger, we don't have that pretty much anywhere else. It's just that this is right on the border of the town and the village. And I think it would behoove us to have unified parking enforcement for this area. So, and I agree if we aren't there yet, then let's move it off to the side, take care of everything else that we do agree. Meet with the rec departments, meet with the neighbors, meet with a couple of departments, hash this out and come back at a later date. But this is one of those places that are right on the border if there is such a thing called a border of the village in the town. And I would rather see us all on the same page. Rocks, go ahead. So just for clarity then, I'm a little, you know, I'll jump in Pat's boat, a little confused maybe. So village trustees are going to approve ordinances that relate to the village and the town is going to approve ordinances that relate to the town streets, traffic and parking. And any future moves we do, barring merger and a new board will still, that will still be the way it works, right? In other words, if we shelve this and we decide even on a different street in the village to do something different, we're not bringing the select board back in to do that together. That's correct for the time being. Okay, just making sure I understood. But where we are kind of trying to think is we don't want completely different rules and regulations if we can avoid it, if you can understand it, you know. So we're trying to standardize for our police department their enforcement as it makes sense in the village and the town. Yeah, that part I completely understand. I just think there's going to be cases where you have a geographic situation where you're going to have one-offs and it's going to differ between here and off of Sandhill. So I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying. Because if we can't do those things, that also presents a problem of not being able to be responsive. So let me give you an example like parks. We have parks in the village and we have parks in the town outside the village. And if you're going to allow parking on grass or places where it is not properly signed, we should have in our ordinance what we're going to do at those areas. And Lieutenant Kissinger, you're muted, but I'll throw you there. So people get confused when they're allowed to do something in A but not in B. And they don't know they're in the village or the town. They only know about signage. And if you disobey a no parking sign, you should, if the police officer goes through there, you get a ticket. But if you don't know where you are, village or town, nobody's going to read our municipal ordinance while they're parking. But yes, the village currently passes ordinances only for village streets. Andy, go ahead. Yeah, I'm among those that are confused too because I'm looking at the document and the town of Essex one has this parking restriction on Warner and Brooks in it. So I think the way I understood this is the village ordinance was a subset of the entire town ordinance is what I understood is what we were doing here. Andy, could you point out which section you're referring to in the town ordinance? Yeah, yeah. So if I can find the right tab here. So unless it's title drawing, the title of the document, it's 5A2 in our packet. It says TOE, which I assume is town of Essex. And section 7-2, which talks about parking, includes this whole thing about having to get a parking pass from the clerk and says residential parking only. There's a whole long list of streets there that are all actually, Warner's not in there. You're right. But there are other streets that are village streets that are resident parking only. It's on page 31, section 7-2-0, so it's 7.20.040, residential only parking. Yeah, Drury Drive is by the high school. So I can certainly understand the confusion at that point because even though Warner Ave is not mentioned in the town's version, there are other village streets that are mentioned in the town's version. So that's the clarity you're looking for, right? I think that's a source of some confusion. Yeah. Yeah. Lieutenant Kissinger, is it possible to address that? Are we just picking up on maybe a discrepancy or is there a particular reason about why these streets are in the town and not the village? And I see Chief Hogan's raised his hand. So can I jump in for just a second? Absolutely. So the reason why that's in there is because the town also includes the village. And when we started this process, we originally had both documents looking exactly the same because we were trying to bring everybody under one and be consistent. But what we realized is that the village does not have the ability to pass an ordinance that doesn't apply to the village. So we left everything that included the village in the town's ordinance and then pulled everything out for just the village so that they could pass their own ordinance that just includes the village. But the town also includes everything inside the village. That's the way it was explained to me when we started the process. So that's why it looks like that. Okay, I understand that and I really appreciate that explanation and it's towards the thinking we're trying to get to overall. But if that's the case, then why wouldn't Warner and Brooks be in this section of the town as well, of the town's ordinance? I believe go, if you scroll down that a little bit more, I guess I'm looking at a different version here. It's possible, we'd have to double check, but it's possible that the late edition of Warner and Brooks to the village ordinances, we forgot to make the addition here. It was down below. We scroll down a little further. It's on the right. It says Warner. Okay, you're in a different memo than we are. We're looking at the actual ordinance and so you're showing us. These are speed limits. Yeah, all right. I'll clarify. I think it's interesting so that you would like to clarify something. Oh, absolutely. Please do. So these were added. These are all being your memorandum dated November 13th, because when the Brooks Avenue was added and the other municipal parking, so it's not going to be in the original version. It should have been clarified in the memo sent to both the trustees and the slack board. That's where I think the confusion is. It's not in the current document. It's the one that's going to have to be warned for the December one. So that's why I think you're not seeing it in this particular one. It's actually in the memorandum. Got it. Village memo. Okay, so then when we, assuming we talk on December 7th about this, will everybody be looking at the same ordinance with all the same edits at that point? Yes, I have been working with Greg on this and there's a new document that's out with hopefully all the corrections minus duplications. So that should be the final document for presentation once it goes through both processes. We should have that final document the way everybody wants it to be. Okay. Andy, is your hand still up or is it? It's up again. It goes back though to the question that was asked earlier, is that if the village wants to change something, then it also needs to change in the town ordinance as well. And also the December 7th meeting is a select board only meeting so not everybody will be there. It's not a joint meeting. So we won't be, you know, it's probably not appropriate to be looking at both of them in that meeting. So, yes, our joint meeting is December 28th in that month. So, Andrew. How, another context question. Is there anything within the proposed ordinance that absolutely must be changed now? And the reason I ask is because we find ourselves where there may very well be a vote happening in March that could make this confusion just go away. And so is this something that could just continue to wait a little bit? Any immediacy? I would ask Ron or Lieutenant Kissinger, I know we've been working on this. There's a couple of things in there that we should address sooner rather than later, but not immediacy. Chief, you're muted though. Yeah, so I think the only things that were really immediate were just addressing the Cascade Street issue, Water Avenue, obviously that was a problem for us this past year. Those were the only real major things, but there were also some clarifying things with speed limits. And I also believe, correct me if I'm wrong, Lieutenant, but the Sandhill Road change, that's included in this ordinance, which we worked on a couple of weeks ago. So those would be the only things that need to be, that I can think of that need to be done. Chief, I'd also include the winter parking update so the fines are concurrent with the village. Correct. Correct. So to help ease some of the confusion, could we possibly have the current versions that we're reviewing now be put on hold, go back to the original, go back to the pre-changed versions, and only include those things that are absolutely immediate now, and then that could help to resolve the whole who's on first, who has jurisdiction over what, where, and how. And then again, that hopefully could resolve itself in a few months. I, I appreciate that suggestion very much, and I hope that is the outcome. I don't necessarily think we should be making changes to the ordinance dependent upon that, and we should be moving forward regardless. I really appreciate the suggestion. I'm not comfortable with it. Can I just clarify something one more time? Of course. I apologize. Somebody can come over here and whack me in the head if they want to. I could use the social contact to be honest. But, so if this happens, it's in both versions, right? Village ordinances are in both versions. So if we decide as village trustees, six months from now, three months from now, whatever happens in March aside, that we want to change something, even if it's an alignment with our overall plan. Do the select board, does the select board need to also change that, or does it automatically flow in to the overall town ordinance? And if it doesn't, then it would seem to me that it would take two boards to pass the village ordinance, or the village trustees would have to advocate their responsibilities to pass ordinances around parking and traffic. And I'm just trying to figure out where, what we're doing, because some of those scenarios I'm not really open to. And I'm just, it's something I've, as I try to reread and reread and reread all of these things over the past few weeks, thinking I understood it, but now I'm actually in this meeting becoming more confused. So, sorry. Is anybody with me on that, or am I alone? Am I, it's okay if I'm alone. COVID. I hear you Raj, and what I would say is that that was part of my intention of asking this to be put on pause, not necessarily in a anticipation that merger is going to pass, but rather in a delay of after March, we would know whether we have to go down this path at all or not, of having two separate, yet similar looking ordinances, or whether just one for a merged community. So that's the intention behind the suggestion of waiting. Given this conversation we're having now, I really feel that we need to wait no matter what, just to make sure we know what we have the capability of doing. The fact that we don't know the answer to that is kind of concerning, and honestly, slightly embarrassing. Can I open the phone for Dawn, who hasn't spoken well? You may not want to hear what I have to say. Go for it Dawn. We asked the police department, when they came to us before, we were talking about ordinances and the differences, and they agreed to align all of it for us, and that's exactly what they have done with this presentation. My other problem with this is, all along with this merger, the town inside the village has said the town controls us, and now they don't want the town's select board to have the only say on these ordinances. So I would agree that they could vote on the ordinances pertaining to the village, but that the select board actually have the overall say on the whole presentation, because it's all one town. I think we are all saying the same thing different ways. Pat, go ahead. Yeah, I think so too. There was my impression that the trustees control and make ordinance changes for the village. That's always been the case, and I believe that that should be the case going forward. If I may propose very friendly that we revisit this at our next joint meeting, I mean, I just feel that there needs to be clarification around the document, and then we need to come back to this, because I don't think the 7th is going to work. It's not a joint meeting. If everyone's okay with that, we can get a clearer document that has all of the changes that with appreciation doesn't include needing to add memos in addition to the documentation that we already have, and then figure out a way to go from there. Andy? I don't know. Should we consider putting together an MOU between the two boards to say that the select board will not stand in the way of any changes relative to village streets that they want to make so that we don't have any feeling that the select board is controlling what the options that the village has. I'm just trying to figure out a way to make it so that we're not pointing fingers at each other or getting mad at each other. I'm just a suggestion. I think that's an interesting suggestion, and I think I just want to remind folks of what current practice is. The village trustees have jurisdiction over the laws that are passed within their own community and within their own boundaries. Always have, and the select board has not interfered or approved or done anything of that nature. What this situation is is that we are trying to line up both existing sets, and that's why we're having this confusion and this overlap. I think once Lieutenant Kissinger and Chief Hogue come back to us with final versions of these ordinances for the town outside, the town of Essex and the village of Essex Junction, we will see the alignments that we're looking for. It's just super confusing for us right now, having two different sets of ordinances with tracked changes as well as to summarizing demos with conflicting information. That's more than our select board and trustee minds can wrap our heads around for a meeting. So I think we should probably just go ahead and not do the next public hearing on the select board side until we see a final version and talk about it again as Pat suggests at the next joint meeting, December 28th, and have a hearing at that point in time. Would that be... Can I clarify? I thought real quickly, and I'm sorry to interrupt. I just want to make clear I have no issue with the lining ordinances. I appreciate the work that's been done. If it's going to cause confusion and make this over this odd overlap, I say we continue the work and make sure the decisions we make are in alignment. They may be specific to a certain geographic area, but all of the other ramifications and considerations that go into those decisions can align. And then if and when the time comes to do something one step further, we just take that next step. But I think that so much work has been done that we can find a way to make these decisions in alignment, even if for some reason we can't put them all under one section. So I'm not trying to blow things up. I'm just trying to make sure I understand what we're doing. And sorry for the delay, and I really appreciate the work that's been done so far. I think it's a weird semantic, and I just want to... It's just... I think you're right. I think you used the right word there. It's semantics, Raj. And if the trustees were making their own changes to the village ordinances and the select board were not also doing it at the same time, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I think it's just the process of trying to align two sets at once that are incredibly similar. So Evan, how would you like to propose that we move forward, assuming what I proposed is accurate? Can we just finalize and confirm that and then move on? Yeah. I think and also if you want to call the public hearing for the 28th of December, staff could get this into final form and we can hopefully get it out to you at least a week or so in advance with the holidays. Chief, Greg, you think that could be done? Since you guys are the and Lieutenant Kissinger, you are the architects of this. I'll defer to the architects in terms of if it can be done in time and getting that update in place. I think procedurally we can certainly have the select board and the trustees take a look at the ordinances individually at their meetings in December and we can have a joint public hearing on December 28th. Architects can deliver in that time. And then we'll be removing the Warner Brooks Avenue stuff from this particular version and then we'll. So if we can do that, yeah, there's our solution. Yeah, so if I can if I can just say, yeah, we can definitely get that done. We'll come back with two set ordinances that are final versions. I will say that there that some of the problem tonight was that there were some things that were added after we had initially presented that that things that had come up that wanted to, you know, this is our chance to get these things in here and they were asked to be to be put in so that's what happened. So we'll come back and we'll have two final ordinance for this is for you to look at. We'll take those that parking ordinance out of there for now and then then the boards can come back and look at that again. I just wanted to also say to everyone that don't feel bad because this has been going on for a lot longer than any of you have been in the boards and this is some of the things that we were trying to address with the police department because we have an officer out there at two o'clock in the morning who's trying to determine what which ordinance is in effect and what has happened over the years is is exactly what Raj was talking about, which was the village would pass an ordinance and that didn't align with what the town had already passed and then and then things would never get updated. So we ended up with two sets of conflicting things. So we'll get it fixed. We'll come back to you guys with something that makes sense for you. Thank you very much chief. Thank you. Please clarify one thing chief. Yep. Winter parking. Yes. It starts December 1st. Yes. Restriction through through. Believe it's March 15th. I'll let Lieutenant answer that one. And if you park on the street overnight and you haven't gotten permission from the police department, you are getting a ticket. We start out with boardings and then and then after that we issue tickets. Yes. Okay. Just to make sure people understand there's still a parking ordinance in effect, the current one. That is correct. Which is a parking ban. That is correct. Thank you. Okay. Raj, your hand is still up. Did you have something else? Okay. And with the board's approval, we've had a very patient member of the public with their hand up for quite some time. So if you wouldn't mind opening it to the public. Patty, go ahead. Yeah. I just wanted to say that planning and community development is really my interest. So I'm just throwing this as an idea just as a just a human. Doesn't matter where I live. So there's this parking lot. So if you go down Maple, if I'm coming from, you know, Sandhill Road and I'm coming towards a junction and I'm on Maple Street. Okay. And I go, I approach five corners on the right. There's this sign right before five corners that says public parking. If you had a sign and it's always empty. When I used to go to El Gato for girls night out to meet my girlfriends, I made great Margaritas, by the way, in the junction. I would park there. And I'd only park there for two hours or three hours. This is just an idea for the police that are listening. What if you put a sign there that says all park users are allowed to park here so that it gets your traffic problem off of Warner and that other Brooks Road you're talking about. And it forces people to park there. I mean, if they exercise, whether they're old or young, they can walk to the park from there. I mean, I don't know what that area is slated for, but it's always empty. It's like a loose missing tooth. There's nothing there in that spot. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's like go for a mile away. Oh, they can do it. And it's very, very busy during breakfast and lunch. Oh, it is. Okay. I just threw that out there because every time I go by that spot, it's empty. And I thought parking garage. Anyway, that's just my idea. So I guess we're not voting today on having a hearing on December 7th, so we won't make that vote on the select board side. I think the same is true for the trustees. From the sounds of it, maybe you're ready to go to the next item. Okay, got it. All right, next agenda item is 6B, Introduction and Discussion of Cannabis Tax and Regulation Legislation. Another light topic. Taking away, Evan. This is actually going to be Robin. Oh, Robin is here. Thank you so much, Evan. So the memo lays out the land as the state has currently set it out. They started out saying it was going to be an opt-out event. Now it's an opt-in event. I think somewhere in the memo we wrote that it'd be premature for the town of the village to make any move on this because the state are going to set up a cannabis board. They're really going to set out the metrics for anything that happens with cannabis by selling where they can be. And that hasn't happened yet. This is really just more a background and an informational memo. Just a reminder that we should keep an eye on what's happening. The Vermont Planters Association actually have somebody who's working at the State House to see how it goes. And Vermont League of Cities and Tons are also keeping an eye on this. But this is sort of a holding memo. No decision of a made. The earliest that's probably going to happen is 2021. But I think it's important that we keep our eye on this so that we don't miss out the fact that Essex doesn't have a local option tax. Tells us that there's no fiscal benefit from this for us at the moment. But it's early days. And Robin, in your memo, if you can go back to the memo that's on the screen, the current legislation has restrictions on the municipalities where we cannot tell that growers, cultivators, warehousing, they can go where they are permitted. But we cannot restrict them. Is that what I'm reading? That is correct. We are working to redo the land development code next summer after the March vote. And that's something that we'll have to be aware of when we're working through that process. You can set up overlap areas that say it wouldn't be appropriate in this area. But you can't put a blanket policy out there, not at this point in time. Although we'll see what the state cannabis control board comes up with as they work through the process. Great. Please go ahead. Sure. Partially a question for Robin, but also for the boards. We wanted to bring this issue to you. I know it's been a topic in the past and I know some of the board members at least have been interested in where it's going. So thanks to Robin for pulling together the update. We also wanted some direction from the boards as far as how far you want us to start doing public outreach. Like Robin said, there's not quite an imminent thing. It's not an opt-out. Like I was discussed at a certain point, it's an opt-in so that the town and village do have some time to decide how you want to approach this. So I guess Robin, the question for you is, do you know when the cannabis board is set to be formed and take some action? And then based on that, looking to the select board and the trustees of how much of an effort and time do you want staff to start doing outreach to the community? To what extent in terms of getting their input as far as opting in or opting out and doing some of the zoning changes that Robin mentioned? I can jump in here, Greg. It looks like 2021 before the state will have something up and running. It gives us a little bit of time, but we should be mindful of what's happening because sometimes deadlines can close down, they can spread out, but it's just good to keep our finger on the pulse, so to speak, so that we're not blindsided by anything that may or may not happen. So Greg, I think what you're asking is how should and when should the boards engage the public and come to a decision amongst ourselves what we want to do so that we're ready when the Cannabis Control Council or committee comes together and starts asking towns what they want. Correct. That's part of it and just knowing that we have a busy plate as it is. How much of a priority do you want us to make this? And then the other thing I'll add, Elaine, is we just talked about inviting our legislators to a future meeting. This might be right on that list as to having them give us some information as to what the timing is. And I was not here for the business that went in along railroad, but we don't want to run into a situation where we end up having an existing business that came in before the legislation and then we just have to live with it. So I want to make sure that we're proactive for what the community wants or does not want versus having to live with something because the state legislature did it that way. And for those, 2021 is about 40 days from now. Right. So the legislation says that the Cannabis Control Board will create the rules for retail sale to take effect March 1st, 2022. So that's when the doors will open. So we need to have our decisions made well before then, I think. And since it involves a vote, we do need to have some public outreach, although I don't think we need to start doing it next week. But probably in the late spring, we should start talking about some public outreach. I'd like to hear from board members their thoughts. I think Pat's got his hands up. Hand up. Andy has his hand up. Raj as well. So Pat, Andy Raj. Thanks, Elaine. So I mean, I'm just thinking about this and looking, if you said March 2022 for potentially any business that may decide to come in, I mean, this particular form of business, I think that there are individuals that, you know, or if we do decide to opt in as a town, you know, this isn't necessarily as easy as someone coming in and renting a space and then being able to, you know, sell cannabis out of it, you know, the institutions that are currently in place in Massachusetts. They have pretty strict security measures, you know, to the point where they need to build additional facilities, you know, there's a lot that goes into it. So I mean, if a business is interested in opening like this, and it's something that the community is amenable to, they're going to need a significant time to construct, to come up with a plan for how they're going to allow customers in, how they're going to let customers out. You know, I've seen the dispensaries that are in Massachusetts and they're universally, you know, they all have a pretty significant amount of security that I don't think we have, you know, I mean, it's just not present at current time in any of the businesses that I'm aware of or the space that I'm aware of. I agree with Elaine that it doesn't need to happen next week, but I do think that we should be making decisions about this. I mean, not much later than spring of 2021, so that we get an idea of whether or not we're going to opt in, because if we do, then businesses are going to need to need, they're really going to need that time to kind of build out facilities. The second is that, well, I know that there is specifically without a local option tax, maybe no direct fiscal benefit to the town. You know, these businesses, at least, you know, from what I have seen in Massachusetts, they see a lot of traffic. So having a successful business in town that has, you know, potentially employment options for a number of individuals does benefit the community physically, you know, even if it's not direct and we need to be considering that as well. Thanks, Pat. Andy? Yeah, two things. In the memo, it says that the opt-in can be done by the elected officials, so we don't, we do, we are do not need to have a town-wide vote to opt in. Andy, I think that might be an error. I don't think the, I don't think the legislation allows for a legislative body to make that decision. Yeah, I was kind of surprised by that. That's why I was asking the question. And so given that, though, and the timing of the next two town meetings, you know, being March and March, you know, doors could open for businesses before we have an opportunity to have an opt-in vote unless we do an off-cycle election. So that's where I'm not sure we can sit on the sidelines necessarily for very long. The other is there's a clause in there about establishing a cannabis control commission, you know, for the town or for the village, whichever is appropriate. I don't know if, but, you know, I think that needs, and I don't know if you would need to do the opt-in vote first and then establish a commission. I guess there would be no reason to have a commission if you don't opt-in, which then, you know, means we're potentially, you know, even further out by the time we establish a commission and it has its rules and we figure out how to use it or how to run it. So I don't know. I don't know that the timeline seems tight to me. I can say looking at the legislation that the rulemaking for this committee, so once the committee is assembled and confirmed by the legislature, they're not going to start rulemaking until June of 2021. So it, I don't know that we have to rush to have something to vote on in March of 2021, but we might have to do something in an off, like an off November or the, and then March 2022 is, that's when it starts. So, yeah, sometime between now and November of next year, we're going to have to have this decision. So, Ross. Sorry, the other comment is, and I'm glad, I'm glad there was discussion about having our legislators come talk to us. There's no municipal representation on that cannabis control board. And so nobody's looking out for our interests. I know there is an advisory board that does have a VLC team member on it, but there's nobody on that cannabis board that, I mean, they're looking out for the best interest of the state for municipalities. That's concerning to me. Yeah. Ross. So I guess my approach to this would be urgent concern about where some of these businesses could be located. You know, Pat brought up a lot of traffic. I don't mean vehicular traffic. I'm thinking about the village and some of the more congested suburban areas where now students, kids, youth are out and about walking to school. I think there's, there's some opportunities here for Essex, especially if we get a local option tax through. You know, we do have some opportunities to offset some of our capital expenses that way, which would be great. But I hope we can start talking about any modifications or considerations around zoning and that much sooner than later. And maybe it's a subgroup of both of these boards. Maybe it's a subcommittee that sort of works with economic development and the planning commissions to, to kind of start really getting our heads around what that could look like and using, you know, science, public health, current knowledge approach to this. I mean, we, you know, there's, there's a lot out there about citing businesses like this. And the village, it's hard to do that without being proximate to high density walking to school areas and schools. And it seems to be getting to be sort of close to that in some of the town outside the village. So at any rate, I just hope we can start that conversation sooner than later. And while we don't need to make decisions right away, you know, thinking about the vote as well, if we have to do it off-vote and we're doing a mailing, you know, that that's not going to be nothing either. So thanks, legislature, for that timing. But again, I'm more concerned about how can we make it work, but how can we do it in a way that we're not going to end up with something that we didn't intend on. Public engagement in our community can take a long time. So, you know, we have a lot going on, so maybe right after budget season, maybe it's maybe it is a subgroup that just sort of tries to take this on a little bit and get started. Andrew. Similar to what Raj was just saying, I think that it makes a lot of sense to have at least staff have an ear to the ground as to what is happening within the cannabis control commission. I forget the exact name. So that way we can be in tune with what our capabilities are and are not. And at the same time, I think it does make a lot of sense if we could find members from either of these boards, possibly both boards, as well as members of our planning commission who may be willing to sort of help in that effort to help keep an ear to the ground and also to be able to relate those issues to our zoning ordinances, being able to relate them to our legislative capabilities. So that way some of us will be able to have a bit of a leg up, if you will, having the internal experts to be able to bounce ideas off of and to have some brainstorming sessions would be beneficial before possibly before we start reaching out to the community with options. But I think this is also something that as an opt-in we do want to we want to tread carefully on this. I think we do want to make sure to take our time and we don't want to miss out on the opportunities to to stay informed. So I think it's important for staff to at least have an ear to the ground as to what's going on with this. I think what Andy brought up about talking to our legislators, you know, that's also their job to help us understand what's going on at the state level. And so we can ask all of our reps to please keep us informed on a more more than usual basis on this particular topic in order to make sure we know what's going on. And also asking, addressing Andy, your question about like appointing some kind of commission or control board within the village or the town, we have the town select board serves as the town's liquor control board. So I'm assuming that that's a natural transition that this that liquor control board would also become the cannabis control board should the town vote to allow sales within our boundaries. I just took some notes on this and just making sure that yeah. Does anybody else have any questions or comments on this at the moment? This was just an info only heads up. Here it comes down the pipeline kind of a conversation and we're not making any decisions today. Okay. With board members, do you mind us opening it up to the public for comment for just a brief moment? Okay, so members of the public, if you have any questions or comments about this topic, very brief so that we can continue moving on with our meeting, there'll be plenty of opportunity for more public input on this topic because it's a very important discussion we need to have. But if you have any quick comments or questions at the moment, please feel free to raise your hand or signify in the chat that you'd like to speak. Okay, Annie Cooper and then Patty Davis. I just want to thank everyone from Robbin down through all the conversation has been great. I think it's a challenging topic for sure and you all have done a great job and I appreciate where you're going with it. Thank you. Thanks, Annie. Go ahead, Patty. I was just going to say that just a little heads up on my view of the planning commission here in Essex and why I really like them a lot. They include the public every stage of the way. They include the public in their ideas and when they're, you know, from the get go, we are involved. Every meeting and we're allowed to speak and I encourage whatever you guys want to do. If you include the public like the planning commission, you're going to attract more flies with honey than with vinegar. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so okay. So thank you for that public input and let's move on to business item 6c, consider approval of Civic Clerk administrative program. Greg, would you walk us through that? I'm actually going to turn that over to Tammy and Linda. Oh, hello. Sorry, you didn't realize you were here. Hello. Nice to meet you, Linda. Nice to meet you too. Everybody, this is Linda. Linda Monge. She's our new administrative assistant. She's awesome. Welcome. And not to leave Tammy out. Who's also here tonight. Who's also awesome. Yes. These are the two people very much responsible for putting together the packets. They tolerate Greg and I. They're awesome. So they have been researching ways to make us more productive and get our packets together. So they've been looking at a product called Civic Plus. I'll let them do that. Tammy, you going on camera or are you staying off camera? Oh, there we go. I'm sharing this memo here. I'll start out if Tammy needs to chime in. She will for sure. So I've been here about three months now and in this three months I was well informed that the boards had asked Evan about what he might need to make the administrative side of things more efficient. And so looking through the packets, agendas, and the meeting, the minutes rather, there's a lot of room for efficiency. And so Tammy and I created this memo. Let me see if I can get my mouse over here. And we did a side by side comparison of what we do and what the software for Civic Clerk would help to streamline. So this is for the agenda management, the packets, the posting and publishing, as well as the minutes. There's some important features. There's some optional features. I hope everybody read the memo. I'm going quickly through this. But the important features here are the ability to schedule agenda items and have a workflow process that begins with the department submissions. Because right now there's a lot of duplication in the process and it's email driven. This would make it application or software driven through a cloud based software. And it's already synced up with the Civic Plus, which is the website that we have now for agendas and packets for the town. There would be searchable component to this software. So that for me is totally exciting because it can take a long time to search through file folders and figure out was this through a joint meeting or a select board meeting or a trustees meeting and trying to find templates. This would create the template process and then create the workflow. The other important features that it would really reduce the amount of different posting that we do. Currently we use the Google Drive and the Dropboxes, which I think from speaking with Rob about this, the IT head there, that lends itself to a lot of security issues to use these different things. This would keep it all in one place. There's also a six minute demo. If anybody is interested in watching this now, I can click on the link now. Maybe some of you have already done that so you can let me know what you'd like to do. But I think about when I talked to Tammy about this about a year ago, she and Rob were checking into SharePoint to see about using this for storage of files. And then Tammy had found Civic Clerk and it does more than just where we're storing the files. It has the workflow process for creating these agendas and the memos that would come from the departments themselves. So she saw this and looked into it and then she brought it to my attention and I looked into it. And we've been doing a lot of research on it. We've asked other municipalities what has been their experience using this and it's all been pretty positive. So as I am explaining this to you, I'll reiterate that the current process is pretty inefficient with lots of duplications and that lends itself to a lot of error. So this would automate that workflow process and I should also say that what gets posted and how it gets viewed to the public will stay the same. This is more like the back-end administrative side to try to make that more efficient. And so I can open up to any questions but I can also, let me stop sharing the screen for a sec to see if there's, is there a desire to see the the little demo or would you like to just ask questions? Well I see that Greg's hand was up and then I'd also like to hear, I remember reading in the memo that it had, it also impacted how minutes were done so I was wondering if maybe Kathy might be able to share her input as well. I just want to really echo everything Linda said starting with this kind of goes back to when the board's asked Devin what what he could use, what administration and the town and village could use to make things more efficient. This is the answer, one of the answers to that to that question. It's really, Linda said that it's pretty inefficient to put the packets together and it's pretty time-consuming. She's being generous. It's really time-consuming. It's really doing two boards. We're doing a minimum of one pack at a week if not more than that and by we, I mean Linda and Tammy, Tammy particularly, I get involved as well and it does take up days each week. It's not a few hours, it's days. So Linda touched on a lot of stuff. She and Tammy did a really good description in the memo explaining what we do now versus what we could do. Linda if I'm repeating you, I'm sorry I missed this but the one thing I didn't hear was that this also connects with the town website, Civic Clerk, Civic Plus website, which that's another step that Linda and Tammy have to do. They have to go through and once the packet's ready they need to post it to our websites, get that information out. This does it basically automatically. It gets up there and they don't have to, that's one less step they have to do too. So that's it. I'll stop talking. We'll take questions and thanks for giving a consideration. Oh and sorry one last thing is the cost. The budget or the memo says that it would come out of surplus or fund balance. I'm talking to finance director Sarah Macy. She's confident we can find it in the operating budget of the money for this year. So if it's approved it'll be in the budget proposal for next year but we do think we can find it in the operating budget for this year too. Thank you Greg. Kathy I thought I saw your hand up. Did you want to contribute questions? Yeah I wanted to just say hi to Linda because we don't actually see each other ever but we do a lot of typing back and forth. I wanted to also say that Linda and Tammy are wonderful and I do see from just my very, I have a very small part in the process of this. It's one piece of a very complicated process and my small piece is that there are a lot of ways information is flowing and it and I do have to go to multiple places sometimes to see specific pieces of the agenda and I can only imagine the other side is complicated and probably could be more efficient. That's my assumption but I again welcome Linda. Thank you for being you and thank you for all of you pulling everything together every week. So basically it. Yeah thank you. I can also say about the minutes portion of this software is that a lot of this it goes into some of the optional features. There could be a roll call that's done through the application of the software itself. So roll call can be done, electronic voting can be done. You can set up things for because the template is automated, the minutes can have automated motions and for all you're putting in is the names of who's making the motion and who's second it. So it has the potential to make the note taking and the record keeping just faster because there's going to be less that's got to be looked at and reviewed and and then it would just save it for like the descriptions of what was in the meat of the discussions versus the template based stuff that has to happen and it would also streamline the template itself because right now we're doing things with different fonts and different we sign some and we don't sign some and so that has the potential to be consolidated. Thank you Linda. So Dan and then Pat and then Raj. Thank you. I think this is a great idea to streamline the whole process. So it's just one system. Just one question and a comment but as far as this software we're paying for the program or the use of this software the initial fee and then my understanding we have an annual fee of $75.60 a year and our records archived on servers that Civic Plus maintains or we archived the stuff on our own system and the other thing is as far as the cost I'm not really worried I've already figured that out it comes out to $20.71 per day when you divide it over 365 days in the year so it's really not a big deal and yeah that's it. I may have misspoke about the cloud-based portion of this because it would be housed on the website. Civic Plus is already the website that the town uses and all of the files that are there are uploaded and then they're maintained through the IT department so the same it would just be you know it's really like an add-on to the Civic Plus website. I hope that makes sense. It would be stored on the website and it would be searchable which is you know right now I think that that's me I think would be a great feature because you would be able to search by people's names as well as dates as well as topic you know it would be a better way to search through old minutes than what is currently happening. Thanks Dan. Go ahead Pat. I don't think we honestly really need to go too deep into the weeds on this one. We know it feels a pretty significant need. It's been mentioned you know for as long as I've been on the board how much time the staff has to devote to creating the packets for two different boards you know honestly I think we should vote on it and approve it 100 percent. Thanks Pat. Raj. So I guess I'm going to be in the uncomfortable position of being a little more questioning on it. Being in an Office 365 environment it feels like we're not really leveraging the subscriptions we already have. I mean we've got we're using Dropbox and Google Drive but we have OneDrive that we're paying for along with the expansion from what I understand the expansion of the subscription for the use of teams once the pandemic hit. I'm not a huge fan of the Civic Plus website and the functionality I think it's incredibly difficult to use. And I'm a little hesitant. This is I'm saying all this stuff with a lack of complete understanding because I don't do the work and an utmost respect for how much work it must be. I would assume I would just assume wait until we find out what's happening with our community before we embark on another process that may not continue. That's core phrasing but I just don't know where we're going to be on July 1st. The village has a budget setting meeting on December in December in a couple weeks a week and a half. There's just a lot out there that I have questions about I guess. Again I don't want to discount the amount of work everyone has to do for two meetings but I just don't want to jump into another expensive subscription without knowing where we're going to be in six to seven months. We'll have a good idea of what's going on in March, April and if we can find the money in operating budget now then come July 1st if we decide to move this way we should be able to find the money in the operating budget then to start then. And I yeah it's not incredibly eloquent but meaning no disrespect to the amount of work I just assume wait. Thanks Raj. Go ahead Andy. Raj you're not the only one. I'm also concerned about adding budget items off cycle. We've you know we added a headcount a couple weeks ago in one of these meetings and now we're adding a fairly expensive software thing and we you know we're approaching budget season. We've I think it should be considered as part of the budget rather than being added off cycle with the expectation that it's just going to be in the budget later. Looking in the the terms of the pricing it also says in there specifically that every year after the second year there's a five percent increase. So it's it's not the you know the one number was mentioned earlier but it is an increase every year of five percent. It's you know it's right there in the terms which is which is faster than our you know our tax base grows and are typically much faster than we want to grow our budgets and our taxes. So I've concerns about that and again I think we need to go through the whole budgeting process to consider this if we want. Also I agree that with with who knows where we're going to go with covid you know I don't know it's it's it's a it's a tough call to make off you know as you said outside of the normal budget cycle. The other concern I have I did I did watch the the demo video and there was a section in there that was that was a place for board members to type comments or to take notes and it says right there in the field it says private but I believe that if the town stores those on a server somewhere they become public records and so I just want to make sure that either we understand the whole ramifications of that and that that everybody's aware that although it says private it may be a public record and also I think the town needs to have a way to search those. I mean I have my little piece of paper here that I've got all kinds of notes that I've made on this was in my recycle bin right after the meeting oftentimes but if it's typed in and it's saved on a server somewhere I think we need to understand with this public record. May I address that? Certainly. I spoke to the account rep with with those two questions and the response was that if the if the back end is set up to make it public then those comments would be public. It would just be a matter of setting it up that way and then the the other part was the the five percent increase I had asked about that as well and he had spoken to his supervisor to ask about that it was a basically a cost of coal a cost of living adjustment is what those were for and he said that he would he actually did resend the quote with a three percent increase and then that would be the the the contract to use from for negotiating for future yearly contracts. So basically the subscription goes for one year and then it can be renewed there's a 60 day period to renew. Thank you Linda. Andrew and then Amber. Thank you and I certainly do want to echo the appreciation for the amount of work that you all put into getting these meetings together and making sure that we have the tools necessary to have informed debate discussions. So I really do appreciate that and so along those lines Greg I think you have mentioned that the current process takes about two days for each meeting. Is that more or less what you said? More or less try to run through it so so it's it's we've been trying to figure out the best way to do it for a while and it's just not efficient it's not time consuming but the the latest process is Linda and I will meet on Monday we'll go through what we have in our list of upcoming items we'll put together a draft agenda might get added to a little bit for a couple days we have our weekly managers meeting with Evan myself Sarah Travis Linda Tammy on Wednesdays. We generally finalized the agenda then we send it out to the chairs Andrew and Elaine as you know and look for feedback and input all through that whole time we're we're working on putting the materials into the packet sometimes it's for management sometimes it's from other departments we have a deadline usually for other departments or of the end of day Wednesday but that's to get something onto the agenda ideally it comes with with information but as long as we know it's going to be on the agenda we can take the packet materials in on a Thursday Friday if we're desperate but so we're compiling the information we're tracking down the information from other departments inevitably almost inevitably there's changes that come in towards the end whether it's a last-minute admission for a deadline something gets pulled off brought it up earlier tonight occasionally we make mistakes about thinking something's going to be on and then it's not so we usually pull it off in this case we made the error we didn't we got to swap out the other thing we thought we had so it's just a constantly evolving process and and yeah if I was to sit down and break up my schedule probably be about two days worth of work on the packets Amy and Linda are probably that much and the number of other people who get involved with it from the board members and the chairs to to other staff and other other people in the manager's office it is a lengthy process so and then and that gets into once it's posted we need to ship it out to the agendas out to the clerk's offices so they can post it in the libraries they can post it um Tammy and Linda have to get it up onto the websites we do front porch forum posts I mean it really we're working on it throughout the week so two days is a probably the right amount of time within that week-long process I appreciate that and from my recollection of when I first came on to the board of trustees pre-using electronic devices and we just had these giant paper binders it used to take used to take the village staff approximately three days for each binder packet to be completed and so we're at a place where we've lost the day so far which is increased staff efficiency to the best of your capabilities and what you know of civic pluses system here how approximately how much time do you think this may save and make staff more available for other tasks I'll guess I'll start and Linda and Tammy chime in I think a lot of what it's going to do is going to save us from having to track stuff down it sets a deadline and if something's in by that deadline it's in it gets combined if it's not in by that deadline people can still submit it but we have to make a decision as to whether or not to allow it in and that's going to be similar to what we do now just in terms of what is the item how crucial is it but we're going to spend less time tracking stuff down it combines the the packet automatically it'll post it to the website I'd say it probably would hide it by I hate to put numbers on it Tammy and Linda are more are more familiar with it but I you know very rough estimate I'd probably say it would save me a good day maybe you know overall maybe 25 30% but that's Linda and Tammy are more familiar so I'm just throwing out numbers and if they want to counter that number then they should I would love to hear from from Tammy and Linda on that I mean a lot of what I do is based on these minutes and so if there's a way to get the minutes up more quickly a lot of a lot of action items for me come from the minutes and I don't often see them until a week or more goes by and then I sort of have to remember and recall what did we do and what do I have to do so there's the potential for that I think we have on average schedule about 10 hours for the creation of the minutes and sometimes it takes more than that when they're four or five hour long meetings so the potential to reduce that is there the time for that I I won't know exactly how long it will take to do this I can tell you that a lot of my own I guess stressors in this is that because things come through email and there's lots of duplication and lots of changes and additions and amendments and things which is all part of the process having it happen through an email where I'm receiving easily 50 or more emails a day and Greg is getting like double that there's a chance for things to get buried in that email and each each Monday and Tuesday that these meetings happen I am constantly looking at this email going are there any changes or if I miss anything you know so it takes a long time throughout the week just to get this to be a finished product enough for for these meetings and I I can I think it would cut it by half if not more but again I won't know until I'm actually doing it so I think even using a a conservative estimate would certainly seem as though that the costs of this may free up more staff availability and more staff time where we would end up seeing a net positive in terms of a return on investment for that and may make staff more available to do other things similarly I just wanted to say that you know on the the three or five percent for a cost of living in for the annual subscription increase that's very common within subscription based services and the fact that you're able to continue to negotiate that I think is great should this go into effect now regardless of what whether merger passes or not we still have at least a year or two of of having two municipalities and so the same exact process would continue if we didn't go forward with that for about another year or two regardless so I personally am all in favor of it just a quick observation folks just to move this conversation along according to our purchasing policy this is considered a moderate purchase of between five to ten thousand dollars in our policy department heads are allowed to make those depart those purchases without approval by the boards this is point zero six percent of our total town budget somewhere around there and we as both boards asked Evan to come up with ways that we could help them the staff be more efficient and this is one of those ways we asked for this I just feel compelled to share that um amber and then rush hey linda it's good to see you again yes hello so my question is on the quote there's a line item that says it's a maximum of seven boards I just wanted to understand if that means to me board means us as a board so a planning commission d rb those kinds of board is that what that means yeah that means um so the joint board could have its own um established set of templates the select board can have its own established set of templates the trustees can have its own established set of templates if you wanted the zoning board to have it its own established you can have up to seven of those um and then the amount of templates for them would be however you want to make but we had to ask about that too because that was confusing and what happens if you want an eighth one or a ninth one yeah I already spoke to the account rep about that he said um you know it's a five hundred dollar cost and he said he'd be willing to waive it because he's he saw that we are two municipalities within one town and he was he had talked to people and said what can we do for these guys because um it it it most most municipalities he said don't go over that seven but he saw the likelihood of that possibly happening here yeah I think we probably would have given the the two municipalities and we do have a lot of boards between the two even just one of us has has a lot of boards so thanks linda yeah you're welcome thanks amber uh Raj did you take your hand down well just prematurely but just a quick just a quick comment I totally get what you're saying Elaine and I I get I I do some of this at work um you know vetting and helping um large organizations that um make some of these decisions and I'd be more willing to spend eight to ten eleven thousand dollars to have someone come in and tell us how to use office 365 that we already have more efficiently when I hear some of the things I've been hearing I I see the tools we have and we're not using them when you say you're getting the amount of email you're getting for one agenda submission and it's just we're not using the tools we have we can if you can do this I just feel like you don't usually come back out of a subscription like this I mean once we're in it we're in it we're not going to back out of it again and it just seems duplicative to me and to a degree I think there's efficiencies to be gained by spending this money in a different way if we don't need to come to us with this then that's okay and again I'm not disrespecting the amount of work that goes into this I'm just it's just seems I'm not crazy about it that's all Tammy please go ahead okay can you hear me okay yes we can okay I don't usually do these are from my phone but it happened to be on my phone tonight so I want to make sure and I just would want to say um I guess that as far as like using the SharePoint um because SharePoint was actually where Rob and I were heading and when I was looking to get out of Google Drive and um the draw boxes I I obviously didn't like doing the two you know especially if we have a joint meeting then I'm having to post this one and post this one and it's it's a little bit crazy so we were going towards SharePoint and the reason why I stopped going in that direction was because this particular program is is a real focus not so much on um storage and access to files and that sort of thing it there's a concentration on the actual workflow and um I would compare it similar to the new ReadSoft program that finance implemented um and what that did is that took um all of the uh invoices that we were getting that was going through interoffice mail um through emails through this all these different places um just to get to finance and get signatures and then send them to finance that finance could then put it into their NEMRIC system they actually have put that onto departments to upload themselves they now so now each of the departments has to take their own invoices they have to upload them into the ReadSoft programs themselves or the program themselves code it they have to put the expense code in and then they have signed a workflow to it which then it automatically goes to the correct departments um you know certain people don't even need to see it at least unless it reaches a certain amount so it actually filters through all of that stuff for you and then it gets to the end result um this is what this program does which I was that's the part that we're lacking and and even though it's it's you know it started out as an endeavor to get it out of the the different storages and put them into one spot it's more than that it's an actual process where we're going to ask our department heads to take part in some of the tasks and that we're not going to be pulling it from multiple emails converting all of the files putting it onto our shared drive then pulling it off and combining the file and then you know we're using several different platforms to get this one result and we're using just a handful of people to do it but whereas we can spread that out in one one process so that's basically all ahead thanks Tammy go ahead Amber Amber did you want to speak sorry that was legacy take it down you're all set okay thank you okay um before we open it up to the public I just want to remind folks I know that we are all extremely dedicated to making sure that we are doing our best by our taxpayers but we also want to make sure we're doing our best by our staff and give them the benefit of the doubt that they have done the suitable research necessary to make this purchase are there any further questions or comments before we open up to the public okay uh Annie and then Irene and then we're going to come back to the board thank you Eileen can you all hear me yes we can thank you um I cannot sing the praises of Linda man's and Tammy gets you'll enough um they are extraordinarily hardworking people that it's outrageous the level of work uh that both Tammy and Linda and Kathy I'm not but I happen to just have uh some working knowledge sorry and Evan obviously and all of you but everything I have learned about when Tammy and Linda do their homework tells me that I would absolutely follow their lead I happen to also know some about Civic Plus and and the fact that this program goes with it and when Greg was saying 30 and then Linda said 50 I was feeling like 70 I don't know the smartest thing that you could do is create an efficiency that involves Linda and Tammy if the smartest thing you could do as a town and a village and when you create that efficiency for them you will see more things getting done than you can even imagine you won't even believe what you see get done so to me um not only is this a good idea no matter what happens come July or whatever like someone said it's going to be a year or two in the making no matter which way we go with everything and COVID as Andy said before to me you're only ensuring your own future help as a town and a village if you make this move thank you thank you Irene and then Ken hi I also would like to applaud um the women that make things tick over there Linda and Tammy and Kathy and our other recording secretaries um I had to step away for a few minutes I did want to just double check and make sure that you have talked to other towns about what software they're using to manage workflow thanks thank you go ahead Ken there we go well I've been implementing and building systems like this for some 40 years so I think I have a bit of experience I can impart to you um what you're buying here even though it's a small cost is a process the process is built into the software so the big complaint I typically get from my clients is well this is not the way we work and you have to adapt so first of all make sure you fully understand the process they're buying and is everybody on board with making that adaptation that's really important otherwise you get a lot of disappointed people just talk to you about people soft and you'll find out what I'm talking about so that's first consideration um next thing I'd ask is what other alternatives were considered that's something to also keep in mind that there are other solutions out there I know that it's probably attractive to go with the internet service provider that's hosting the website this gives you good integration but there might be other alternatives that provide a better process flow that matches better with the way we work and finally very quickly I'll just simply say that you know if it's becoming very difficult and impossible to create and enforce a process with the tools that you have and offers 365 is a moldable product and that's one of the problems with it to some extent you have to create the process and implement it and enforce it um yeah maybe the problem isn't so much that um it's the software that's going to solve the problem maybe we need to look a little bit more closely at the process document it better and enforce a series of steps and deadlines better that's it thanks thank you board members if you don't have any further questions or comments are packet calls for a vote from each board on this topic so with that said um oh andy just put his hand up yeah we didn't we haven't talked about who's gonna pay for it either i can't hear you i'm sorry could you repeat that we haven't talked about who's gonna pay for it ah okay so we're having additional questions can you go ahead it might not it might not let you hearable there's like a weird echo thing happening i got you he's wondering who's gonna pay for it um so evan can you give us a quick overview or greg how um what the plan is for where in the budget this will come it will be paid for in the manager's budget in the town budget and in the administration budget in the village budget but you think actually sarah's renaming them so they're both the administration budget um question for the boards is uh should this be split 50 50 um we have two boards and primarily would serve two boards um should it be paid for all through the town so everybody all the taxpayers pay equally or some other sort of ratio um we can make any of them work uh but wanted some direction from the boards and uh would probably lean towards a recommendation of 50 50 split since it's two boards using it equally is that helpful andi did you have more a follow-up to that other than rather than adding to perception of inequity i would prefer that it be all out of the town budget so that everybody only pays for it once but any other board member questions or comments dan my thing is that i thought what linda said it would support up to seven boards and i know we're talking right now just the board of trustees and select board but as i see it we're looking down the road maybe planning commissions um zoning board i mean other boards so it's really not really going to be just two boards per se yes so greg are is your preference for us to also direct the how the budget is going to handle it so you need us to choose to to vote on two separate topics then we can take the direction of uh if i mean sorry um want to make sure i'm understanding you correctly we will try to pay for it out of the operating budget as opposed to fund balance we don't need that vote um but if we i guess we would like direction i don't think it needs to be a vote but direction as in terms of how to bill it and between the town and the village i agree with andi that it should come from the town operating budget i'm assuming you're looking for a consensus any other board members want to weigh in on that okay that sounds good to me cool okay andrew my other trustees may uh not enjoy this part um if this is something that we're going to be using that the trustees are going to be using that the village is going to be using and that our village municipality would have done irregardless of the town i don't mind us paying i don't see that as an inequity i don't see that as an us versus them i see that simply we if we need this to run our municipality of the village then the village would pay our fair portion so i certainly appreciate elaine and andi you too saying that um at the same time if if i need a pen if the village needs a pen the village is going to buy a pen um i see this in the same process i'm happy to compromise whatever works if staff think 50 50 is the best way to go that's fine we can certainly start out 50 50 if in the future um it's a small item in terms of the scheme of things we can figure that out um exactly exactly we just want to help get help staff get packets out once this gets uh brought through and i take ken's comments as well once we get our process down we will look to see you know move this into plan commissions other committees and commissions but one of the things as greg has mentioned we want to get out of the business of all these emails that go back and forth and have the depart the person who wrote the memo insert the memo versus it bouncing around um and waiting for somebody to acknowledge that they got an email um and so we would look to to spread this out to other boards and commissions after we get the board process down does that sound about right uh linda and tammy i think so great so oh pat go ahead can i make the motion i would like to do that i would move approval of the purchase of the civic clerk eight enhancement software so moves there a second i will second all those in eddie go ahead yeah i'm not in favor of adding on a recurring expense outside of the budget process when we're so close to starting the budget process so um i'm i'm you know i i i fully understand the work that the work that this is going to address but i'm more concerned about again adding a recurring expense outside of the normal budget process okay thank you um any continued discussion am i echoing gladly for others a bit i'm sorry no it's not you it's don whenever she puts herself on or whenever she's not muting herself then it creates some sort of feedback in whatever don's microphone is using okay thank you we have a motion in a second um don did you have any further comments no okay so all those in favor please say aye aye opposed nay nay okay we need you to roll roll call pat aye elaine yes andy nay dawn nay okay we have an uh even number of the board members present tonight so this motion dies given that just i was gonna say given that just died the select board it probably doesn't make sense for the trustees to vote on this unless heaven do you see any distinction we're probably not going to go on this alone i'm sure the trustees wish to use this for their business that it would work for them but again it would be separate systems um i think we'll bring this back at another time i think that that sounds good i don't think it makes sense for us to have two separate systems again because that's exactly where we are now no that's exactly what we want to avoid right linda and tammy i'd like to thank you for all the effort as well as rob in your office for doing the research to bring this to us we really appreciate how much work you're doing and greg and evan as well so our last business item of the evening before the reading file is 6d discussion of and potential action on improvements to veterans memorial at five corners evan or greg i'll jump in um you have uh i think you do have the memo in the packet uh i had a so we all probably have seen the deterioration of the memorial fountain in memorial park over on in five corners um the edges of the pool of the fountain are starting to show a lot of where what i am told is about i believe we're coming up on the 20th anniversary this year of that monument being in place that when they built it they said they would need maintenance and it would wear and so staff is looking into what it will take to repair the monument the question before the board is do you both want to work on funding that repair um and get it ready for next year probably by veterans day next year because of the weather we will not be able to do any work on it over the winter um but uh do you want to look at sharing the cost of repairing the thumb um because it well i'll give you my opinion it is the veteran memorial for the community um or a veteran memorial so just a question for all of you staff is looking at the price we'll probably know in a couple weeks um uh because we are trying to reach out to the um the people who built it for the community one to see if they're still in business two if they are to come give us a quote um and right now harlan smith from the uh villages park uh and rec division is taking the lead on this project thanks seven you're welcome i i just want to unfold disclosure i was the one who sent the pictures to evan and um i had attended the veterans day memorial service along with um tim german our former one of our former state reps and former trustee and we were talking with the folks from the lions club about the condition and the history of the memorial and they informed us that it will be 20 years old this upcoming memorial day um it seemed like a good idea to do what we could to spruce it up at the very least do some repairs and perhaps improve it for the long term and since the 20th anniversary is coming up and we might even be allowed to have a parade or at the very least in no next november perhaps we'll be able to gather and celebrate it but it's really starting fall apart and um it's a beautiful memorial and i'd love to see if we can figure out a way to bring it back up to the best possible shape it can be in don would we be able to get a cost estimate and time to build it into our budget likely probably within the next two or three weeks we could also into say uh the capital plan we could probably put a placeholder i just think that's the way to go and and i do agree that it is it's a fountain for everybody great andrew any further comments or questions i would just say yes whatever we need to do to make this happen um is absolutely important to our community it's important to our to the veterans of our community as a memorial to all those who've absolutely given the the ultimate sacrifice and serve their country um and we want to treat as such and not have it just fall apart i know when i saw those pictures from the lane it was it was appalling i know that's the condition that it's in um so yes i would love to see some some quotes for our four villages budget day okay that that was not a an action item that was a discussion item um at the moment i think it had said potential action but we need more research to be done um so great that um is unless board members have any further discussion oh go ahead evan i just want to if it's a verbal commitment the the town and the village will work together along with any other groups that want to participate but the town and the village will do this project together um to restore the the memorial andy um i hear comments from people that believe it or not 20 years later are still upset that that big tree came down um so there are you know there are there are there is concern about spending spending town tax dollars to fix the fountain that was put in by the by the by the village um i don't know evan long long before you were here right there was a huge beautiful spruce tree there that was you know decorated the christmas lights and or with with holiday lights during the season um but there are you know their large number of people that are still upset about that tree coming down so they're they may not be happy with spending their money to fix that fountain even though there's a new spruce tree there that's quite tall and and has lights on it now the tree was replaced um it's it's yeah it's not the scale but yeah i i i i i get the comment i get the comment okay it's a it's a memorial and it's in bad shape and if i read a lot of the text and inscriptions my two senses i don't think it's making a distinction between village and town residents who served and lost their lives any other board member questions or comments so um i when evan was asking about whether the village and town would work together on this i saw dawn nodding her head i'm nodding my head consensus of the select board we're okay with evan moving forward on this as a joint repair or okay pat okay andy i'm you know i i'd like to see the numbers but of course of course and this is not a vote to spend money right now this is just a consensus to continue moving forward together okay okay um that's it for the business items now we have the reading file and board member comments any board members okay go ahead evan um just just so that everybody's aware um and probably for the people at home it was the governor this last year who got some legislation to do mail-in ballot voting um that runs out uh december 31st and we have not seen any legislation proposed to extend that type of voting into the new year uh we are told that they may take up something in the new session starting in january um so that's one thing um so i don't you know i know town meeting is coming up in march and we are doing australian ballot so i just wanted people to understand this year and next year may be slightly different depending upon whether the state uh extends that legislation because otherwise municipalities are not allowed to just mail out ballots um however um people can um ask of their own uh to do absentee balloting we do that throughout the entire year uh the only thing you need to do is contact the clerk's office and for any reason you want uh a ballot sent to you you'll be put on our on their list and you will get a ballot uh mailed to you so you can either do that on the villages or the village town website or by contacting them um that's just it so there's uh some confusion about that um and um the other reason why i mentioned this is because um the candidates who are running for local office they too have a deadline and if the state this is some else for the legislators um it is going to be a tight window if the state doesn't change that in early january to be able to get ballots printed get things mailed out get things mailed back in update the listings so uh staff is aware of these things we are just hoping that if the state is going to make that change they do it sooner rather than later and for those who don't want to uh go to the polls in person they are available to apply for an absentee ballot we just cannot do a blanket mailing without the governor's approval so just to let you know that tonight don you're shaking your head are you agreeing with you're agreeing with me thanks uh then i know i got it right so just to let you know that thanks seven another thing we'll need our delegation to keep a close eye on to help us get a head start if possible uh we'd like to make sure our poll workers come this march are as safe as possible uh i thought november's election went very well it was well run the uh sneeze guards that we had at their polling stations i think put a lot of people at ease so uh and don thank you for all your help uh getting all those ballots into the right uh piles you you were a warrior thanks that's all i had thanks seven any other questions or comments from board members and we we have no other business so if uh select board member would like to move to adjourn i make the motion we adjourn thank you don is there a second and his hand is up though excuse me andrew please i'm sorry did i jump the gun we're wasn't the select board supposed to do something you guys had replaced uh six e or whatever it was or something else i thought we deferred both of those items to the december 7th meeting forget that it's okay thank you though we have a motion says yes seven do we have anything any comments from anybody else i just good good i yep get the motion any what can we do for you i was messing around sorry we have a motion to adjourn from the select board is there a second i'll second to adjourn all those in favor of adjourning the select board hi hi i opposed thank you good night select board trustees i move we adjourn second thank you dan thank you roge any further discussion on adjourning hearing none all those in favor second if i was saying aye hi anybody opposed happy thanks everyone have a relaxing safe thanksgiving happy thanksgiving take care thanks everybody good night