 Call a meeting to order officially and the minutes of November 4th, 2020 are here for your approval. Is there a motion to approve? Actually, I don't think you can. Actually, I can move to approve. I'm sorry. I don't want to steal your thunder. Okay. I've moved to approve the minutes of November 4th, 2020 with any amendments or additions there too. Second. Second. Page one. Page two. One thing on page two under item number five era, eras and emissions 2020. Under the discussion, it talks about the total a total impact to the town of $1,500, 34 cents and 34 and 25 cents. To reflect what that impact is. I think that's the impact on the taxes. You know, that's the grand list amount times the tax rate on the town should also identify whether it's a positive or negative impact. I remember correctly, it was a negative impact. It was a negative impact and it was for the divisible tax. And page three. So hearing no more corrections all those in favor of approving the minutes of November 4th, 2020. Raise your hand. One, two, three, four. And joy you're going to sustain. Yes. Thank you. Moving on to public comment. Eric, is there anyone in the, in the queue? I'm going to make it a public comment. I'm going to ask one more time, Terry. If anyone listening out there, if you'd like to make a public comment, please, please let me know by typing in the chat window or raising your hand with the zoom feature here. I'm not seeing anyone to like to comment, Terry. Okay. We can move on to interviews and appointments. If we have three candidates for the community justice youth panel. And if they're available, we can start to interview with them. Yep, I see two I'll get them connected. Chloe, Chloe and Ella, I'll get both of you connected here in just a moment. If we can do all three at one time, it would be helpful. I'm just looking for our third Jacob and I don't see him. I don't see our third student just yet. I'm texting him right now. He's trying to get on and find the email. Thank you. We won't hold it against him. I can resend it to him as well. If he can't find it. He's probably like really nervous, you know, taping the wrong thing and all that kind of stuff. There's nothing quite like that stress of trying to get to a select board meeting when you forgot to sign on five minutes early. Here he is. We have, okay, good. Welcome to our three candidates for the CJC, Chloe Silverman, Ella Bowman and Jacob Bronner. And we'd like to interview all at the same time, which would be helpful to us and perhaps to you as well. You've been vetted by crystal Lee and by the police department and you come to us highly recommended. So that's a plus for all of us tonight. And so we do have your applications in front of us. But I ask each of you to give us a little bit of, well, not for just for us but for the people that are watching tonight. I have an idea of some of your background. I know your students, but some of your background is to the CJC and why you'd like to serve. So I'm looking at the screen and I'll start with Chloe first. We're having a little, I'm having a little trouble hearing you sometimes. Sometimes if you turn off your video, it helps. Try that. Is it working now? Okay, it didn't work. So I'm going to go. I think that does work. I think we can hear you. It's better. Yes. Go ahead. I was going to go on my phone. Because that usually works better. So yeah. Hi, Chloe Silverman. Just let me know if it stops working and I'll stop talking. I'm a junior at CVU. And I heard of the CJC first because a senior in my advisory, William Pinter, he was a part of that and he did it for his grad challenge and he spoke really highly of the program. And so I've always been very interested in social justice issues. And I think that something, a mistake you make when you're younger shouldn't have such a lasting impact on your life. And instead of focusing on penalizing someone, it should be more about how can they affect the people who have been affected? How can they give back and how can they kind of make reprimands? So instead of just hurting that person more that made the mistake, how can they help the community as a whole? And so that's really important to me. And so I decided to attend the trainings and I find it really interesting. And yeah. Thank you. So Ella, you're next. Hi, I'm Ella Bowman. I live in Wilson and I go to CVU. I heard about the program from a friend to a friend this summer. She had mentioned that she was participating in Spoke Highly. And then I kind of forgot about it. And then I went on front porch forum, then we were on September and I saw a post and I was like, this is the second time I've heard of this. It must be something that I'm supposed to be involved in. So I emailed Crystal Lee. And as soon as I started learning more about the program, I knew it was going to be exactly what I needed to do this fall. And this year to get more involved in my community and the people I live around. It's so hard in quarantine because you're by yourself, but I just wanted to feel connected to other people again. And I built so many amazing connections, even though I haven't met some of the members I'm working with. And these trainings, I keep on seeing these people on the screen. And I feel like I'm talking to them in real life. And it's these connections that are making a big difference in my life. And now I want to make a difference in other people. So the training we've been doing, it's educated me. And I'm finding it so fascinating. It is important that people are not judged for their actions. And teenagers do make mistakes. Their brains aren't fully developed. And they should have that chance to learn and grow. And what I've been learning about is like, the CJC helps these people grow as individuals. And they keep getting involved in the community through their service rather than spend time in jail or doing something that's not productive. So I'm really excited about it. I think it's really beneficial and I hope that these kids get the help they need so they can move forward and have a future. Okay. Thank you. Jake. Yes, hi, I'm Jake bronner. I'm a senior at CVU this year. And I heard about the CJC through my neighbor, actually. Brandt Dinkin, who he's on the Wilson panel. And I've known him for years. He basically has been like a, it's kind of a second grand father to me. And we've always just kind of had a good connection and. They both just said reached out to me and said, you know, I think this would be a really good opportunity for you and to meet some new people. And, you know, they obviously know who I am as a person and I like getting to know people. And so yeah, and also I also was interested because I'm doing a grad challenge this year for CBU. So I wanted to get some community hours and get some experience as well. So yeah, I've just really enjoyed so far meeting everyone on the panel and it's been really impactful and a great learning experience as well. So I look forward to more meetings as well. Good, thank you. So board members, you have questions for our students? Joy. Thought that might be easiest for the hand raising. Hello, what is your potential major if you go on to school after high school? Oh yes, I'm a senior at CBU. I'm looking to learn about journalism, communications and English. So that's probably what I'll be learning about. I love reading and connecting with other people. So that's something that I'd like to do. You're very well spoken. Thank you. Jake, how about you? So I'm thinking of going undecided but if I was to choose a major, I think I'd do something probably in either social work or psychology. So something in like human interaction and face-to-face contact I would like to do. Excellent, thank you. Chloe. So I have lots of interest and they're really spread out. Some days I wanna be a molecular biologist, other days I'm like, I wanna be a social worker and some days I'm like, I wanna be on Broadway or something like that. But I do know for sure that I wanna be whatever I decide to major in and whatever I decide to pursue as a job, I wanna be with other people and I wanna know that I'm making an effect in a positive way on other people's lives. Thank you, everyone. I really appreciate the fact that you're willing to step forward and take on this kind of a position and definitely appreciate the backgrounds from what you're coming from. Other questions? No questions, just really happy that we have this interest and we have this level of talent. Yes, thank you. Jeff. Make sure. Make sure my mic's on. It's on. Okay, great. Hey everyone, thank you. My question is along the lines, I wanna make sure you understand what you are committing yourselves to. And so I'm hoping you can address that question and if you're looking for some guidance on where to go with that, from the concept that you may actually be in a position where you're having to work with, maybe even judge or evaluate a peer, somebody you know or somebody maybe you don't know but you feel uncomfortable being around. So I guess my point is, is you may be in some difficult situate, difficult circumstances that maybe a high school student normally wouldn't be exposed to. So I just want to hear from each of you that you feel you're prepared for this experience. I'm sure it's gonna be a good experience but it's not gonna be always maybe the most pleasant experience. And I just would like to hear from you about that. Start with Jake. Yeah, so as far as feeling prepared, I've really only done one sort of sit-on panel but just from my experience and my trainings with Brenna and kind of getting to see how that works, I feel like it's really just about listening and just being there to be understanding and after gathering the information and getting to know the person on a more personal level, then that's when you can start stepping in. And I feel like it's just important to realize that they're a person and that they're there for the betterment of themselves. They're trying to help improve themselves worthy. So I feel like as far as being prepared, I feel like I'm prepared for it and ready and excited to learn new things and be exposed to that. Chloe? I went into this knowing that this wasn't gonna be like a carefree, lighthearted kind of experience but I knew it was gonna be really rewarding. And so I know that this isn't gonna be something where I know there's gonna be hard topics talked about and I'm gonna probably feel pretty emotional after many panels. But I also know that I'm really determined to make sure that the victim or the person who I harmed caused them feels like they had their justice and feel like they have a conclusion so they can move on. And so they feel like they were served in a way. And I also think it's really important that the person who made this mistake doesn't have to have this be a burden on their life and prevent them from moving forward and doing so many amazing things that we need teenagers to do in the future. And so again, I'm prepared to take this on and take it seriously and I'm looking forward to hopefully making an impact on someone's life in a good way. Bella? Well, I just wanna thank you for asking this question. And I think it is really important to be prepared and to know that there are hard topics. And I feel like without the amazing training that Brenna and Crystal Lee did and the three observations I've done, I would feel completely unprepared for this. But because I've already observed on three panels of what I've seen has been hard and I've looked at it and I've been like, wow, this is a real life. I'm 17, it's time to grow up. It's time to see real life and real problems. You can't hide from them your whole experience. So it makes me more of an involved and engaged and formed citizen of our country to know what's going on. That not everyone leads the same life that I do and I need to be empathetic and understand that everyone comes from different backgrounds and has different experiences. But just because of where they're from or what they've done in their life, doesn't mean that that's who they are and they can become better. And I think what the CJC is trying to help is people move forward. And just like Chloe said, it's to have a great life and move on and learn from their challenges. And I know that the work will be really hard but it will be rewarding. And I understand that there are hot topics but hard topics are important. It makes us grow as people. I become a better version of myself when I'm learning about others and you can empathize with them. So I feel very prepared for this work after all the training we've done. Thanks, those are questions. Gordon. First, I want to thank all of you for taking this on. You're all very well spoken and I'm really impressed with how you wanna help educate yourselves but also give back to your community by helping others. And I think your responses to Jeff's questions were spot on because there will be times when the boat's gonna get rocked. And I think you're gonna experience some things that maybe you think you're prepared for but you will also learn from as you work through those experiences. But I'm just very impressed. You're willing to take that step forward and take this on. I hope you have a great experience with this. Further questions from the Lord? Seeing no one else, I think we'd be ready for a motion. I'm gonna throw one out there and I have to say, I'm sorry, someone else speaking. Thank you. So it turns out when Jake was introducing himself, he mentioned his neighbors, Brant and Marcy, who I consider a good personal friend. So I just wanna raise that to the board's awareness and see if you believe that that is a reason for me to recluse myself, at least from voting on Jake's case. No. No. Great, thank you. So I am looking for a motion. I think Joy, you were starting to make one. This is tough. I mean, you guys are all really, really well-qualified. I'm just going kind of from a gut instinct here and some of it is just from the direct way you answered. And so I moved to appoint Ella Bowman for this term. Did you want to make a blanket? Yeah, there are three positions open. Oh, are there three? Oh, in that case, all of you, I apologize. I missed that part. So in that case, you guys are all excellent. I moved to a blanket, point them all. Was there a second that? And we have a second. Sorry, discussion on the motion. I apologize to you. Any discussion on the motion? If not, all those in favor of the motion, raise your hand. One, two, three, four, five. So congratulations to all three of you. You're duly appointed tonight. And good luck in your studies in school and on the panel. Thank you guys. This is awesome. Good luck. Thank you. Thank you. So we'll move on to other business. And the next item on the agenda are the Black Lives Matter message installation and Eric has some information that he has shared with the board in a memo and I'll turn it over to Eric. Sure. Thanks, Terry. I want to update the board on some work here. I've had discussions with other organizations in the community. So I've worked to organize a coalition of organizations to focus on taking a community approach to providing opportunities for conversation and education on a topic of racial equity and social justice in Williston. This idea came to me after seeing a number of conversations already taking place sponsored by different organizations in the community. So thinking about community strength and collaboration and the work of the coalition will allow for sharing of resources to take place along with central organizing and communications to occur, how to participate in these engagement opportunities. It's looking at collective approach versus an individual approach for that organizations are taking on. So I had a conversation with Vermont Community Foundation about this a couple of weeks ago, looking to see if they had any grant funding available and they encouraged me to articulate it in an email for their funding board to look at. And I'm pleased to share with the community that we've received a $3,000 grant to support this work moving ahead here for 2021 and I received the grant funds this week. I've been meeting with this group every few weeks. It encompasses the town at the library, the community justice center, the Rotary Club, the Federated Church, the school district and my interfaith action with Debbie and Grum. And so our next steps we've discussed are continuing to look for other organizations and stakeholders to join this coalition and offer listening opportunities for community members to share their voices in order to provide input as the coalition further developed its focus and ultimately engage in opportunities for the community. That's kind of where we left it right now still in the forming stage but I think there's been a lot of good dialogue and collaboration here so far. So tonight we were requested to come back with some information for the group that had requested the Black Lives Matter flag to be flown. And I think this gives us a good chance to reach out to more people in the community to get their input to the matter and we can bring this back to the board when we actually have some information from all the organizations that have agreed to participate as Eric has said. Any questions for Eric regarding this? Well, Eric, I'm going to the memo and you list these organizations. Can individuals join the coalition? Yeah, we're trying to think of how we'll structure everything Jeff. We certainly want individuals to be involved in a volunteer role and we're trying to think about if there's gonna be some kind of steering organizing committees. We've kind of just got to it from the organizational stakeholder phase and then our thought after our last discussion Friday was to listen to the community and kind of think what the coalition will work to achieve overall and kind of what that would look like. So certainly there'll be opportunities for individuals and volunteers to get involved in this effort. Okay, okay, good, thank you. And then I guess my other question is more of a broad question for everybody is I think folks who've been requesting the town allow or fly the Black Lives Matter flag we're hoping to have a discussion about that tonight. And what I've heard is maybe we should put it off and wait for some input from the coalition. And I just want to throw that out there because from their standpoint they may feel that what we're doing is we're putting off a decision that ultimately if it's gonna be the town flying the flag will have to be the select board's decision. It will be absolutely as to whether we're gonna fly it and if we are aware it's gonna be flown. But we had a relatively small group of citizens who have worked on this and to their credit they did a very nice job. In my mind we'll get a lot more information from the coalition that has been developed and hopefully we can come to an agreement after that. Joy. I think the only thing I wanna raise before the board just for something for us to consider is whether this is something we should even be taking up. Our job is one of town governance not necessarily of taking up these specific causes and I'm wondering if we're overstepping what it is we're supposed to do. And I gotta just throw that out there for us to think about before we continue on with this discussion. Good point. Other towns have taken this up. We don't necessarily have to, but we've been asked and I think we do have to have the discussion. And we do have I think now the number of organizations that are willing to share their experience with us, Joy. And then I would throw just one more thought for that is if we are going to make a decision to pursue this conversation then we have to be prepared to make this for other similar types of things. So again, I caution us because our job is town governance not necessarily to get involved in this and I'm not taking a stand one side or another I'm worried about opening a Pandora's box. We do have some information from the League of Cities and Towns on this which we got a month ago or so which we should review as far as the legal ramifications of it as well. Just to follow up on, I know we're heading into budget season and things get very busy very quick. Is there a thought on when the coalition might be able to come back with a I don't know if it'd be a recommendation or just points to consider or I guess what I'm asking is for those who are interested in the select board making a decision, can we provide any guidance on when we might be in a position to do that? Eric, any idea on that? Yeah, I guess from a coalition standpoint the timeline that was outlined was taking December and January to listen to members of the community and gather information and just hearing from voices of different folks in the community about racial equity and social justice in the community. And then from there, our general timeline was then to work using that feedback to work on collective educational and engaging opportunities for the community from there. So that's kind of the runway for the kind of community engagement and listening piece and the real focus is going to be facilitating opportunities to for dialogue and education for the community around this topic. Okay, so it sounds like it wouldn't be till sometime post January before we would be addressing this again at the earliest. Does that sound about right? Probably true. Yeah, I, okay. Any further questions or comments? Is there anyone on the line that wishes to speak from the audience? I'll, and a number of folks listening, if anyone would like to make a comment to the board if you could let me know in the chat window or raise the virtual zoom hand. To the other bullets in the request. So request one is to communicate with the work of the chief of police and residents of Willisons to make legislative change regarding policing such as body camps, training, accountability, educate yourselves in a subpoena study and Eric has done a little bit of that, but we have not done that just because of time to educate ourselves on where racism exists. I think we all have received input on that to create a seamless process for citizens to understand how to effectively file a complaint and the responsibility to select board in that process and to support learning and growing together as a community to address systemic racism such as to include educational materials for opposing viewpoints, training all department heads, training on implicit and complicit bias, systemic racism, critical race theory, and to work collaboratively to restore the harm that racism has brought to our community. So some of this will fall to the town manager and his staff. The town manager and his staff. Okay. Let me see. Pamela Cowan's comment in the chat. Is it appropriate for the coalition to consider the six bullets in the September 10th request and proposal? I would think so. I can certainly bring these forward at our next meeting and share that the select boards asked the coalition to take a look at these bullet points raised in the letter. Thank you. That would be my preference. Mine too. A good cross section of responses I think. If there's nothing else on this subject, we'll move on to the lamp light, water line replacement loan application and Eric, I think you're taking care of this. There's one more comment in the chat. Oh, okay. From Danielle Dushat. Should I read it? Yes. It says, I believe there are a number of us looking for your conversation on raising the Black Lives Matter flag. We were expecting that to happen tonight. And I think that we're going to wait on that decision until we get more and more feedback from the coalition. Okay. So if there's no more chat room things and we'll move on then to the lamp light, water line replacement and Eric is going to talk about that. And I'm going to recluse myself because of my work responsibilities. Yes. Oh, I was muted. Sorry about that. Let's see if it's plugged by notes on this. So this one, you know, please to report that the bond for the lamp light water line replacement project was approved by the voters earlier this month by a three to one margin. The next step is going to be now we have bonding approval to apply for the loan funding through this Clean Water State Revolving Fund. You have in your packets tonight the application prepared by our engineering firm on this project, Aldrich and Elliot. It's asking for the board's approval to support this application this evening. And then what we would do is submit the application. It would then be under consideration through the Revolving Loan Fund. And that's when we would have a determination of what amount of subsidy that we would be offered for this project. We know from our preliminary discussions that we may be able to receive up to a million dollars in subsidy towards the $2 million project. So this would get that process started and look for a motion from the board to approve this loan application. Any questions for Eric before we have a motion? Things we've been around this quite a bit. So I'm looking for a motion. I've moved to approve a step three load application to the drinking water state revolving fund for construction of the Lampline Acres Waterline replacement project in the amount of $2 million. Second. It's for discussion on the motion. Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion raise your hand. One, two, three, four. And Jeff has recused himself. So it's a unanimous vote of those voting. Moving on to the Holland Lane acceptance discussion. And I think Bruce Hor is going to join us for that. Yep, getting Bruce connected right now. Yep. Happened for the next couple agenda items. Welcome, Bruce. You're muted. Yep. Hi. Hi there. So this is our second go round on this. The, and I asked for a little more clarification from Eric and me, pass it on to you regarding, pardon me, what really is the public part and what is the private part? And you've provided us with a nice diagram that shows the public and the private part. So if you have some more information to share tonight, that would be great. Well, not really. You did ask before, Terry, what that length of that private section would add. It's about 900 feet. Other than that, it's kind of hard to see, but if you took those two pages and put those together, you could see how that Holland Lane is a through road at this point. And I've been thinking and looking and trying to figure out if there's anywhere else in the town of Williston, where this kind of thing happens where you're on a public road and then it turns to private. And I can't think of any. So that's exactly what would happen here. We have plenty of private roads, but they're not like you're driving on a public road and all of a sudden you're on a private road. So the big question in my mind is when the plow truck is down Holland Lane, it meets the private road, do they just dump a pile of snow there? Absolutely. It depends on the mood, I guess. No, I mean, what happens is it's like anywhere else where you make a turn, they'd make the turn and go up Seymour, or if they're coming down Seymour, they would be making a turn and going down still water. It would be the snow off the end of the wing. The snow would continue with the truck as it goes around. But it does, it has caused an issue in the past where we've gone and plowed and I'm getting tons of phone calls. You didn't finish Holland Lane. You didn't finish Holland Lane. What's going on? Like, well, yeah, yeah, we did. That's a private section of road. It's not ours. So right now, all the Finney crossing are private roads, is that right? We don't own any roads in Finney as of right now. We have not accepted any of the roads yet. So the plan would be to, at some point, to accept all of the roads except for Holland Lane, which we might be approved before that. No, there are the private roads in Finney crossing. Maidstone's a private road that's on your plan there on the sheet that says original amended. You'll see Maidstone. That's private. There's some smaller streets there. Kettle Pond Lane is a private road, but none of them are, once again, a road like Holland Lane has turned into, that ends up being basically a through road on most lakes effort and goes from a public road to a private road. Remember the plan changed. It wasn't going to go all the way through like that before. It was going to come through and go to Market Street and Market Street was going to go up and come out at that intersection that exists today by Healthy Living. Now Holland is a straight through road. Yeah, Bruce Jeff here. My question is along the lines. So originally, the developer came in and only a very short piece of Holland Lane was to be a public road and that went through the DRB process. And then I guess they came in and modified that because of Healthy Living. And I don't know how to put this, this public is not the right way to put it. It's the only way I can kind of think of it. So excuse me, I apologize if this is an inappropriate technology, but was this kind of a bait and switch on the developer's standpoint? No, not at all. It was, this is a huge development, as you know, that's taken 10 years to build and their commercial end of the project changed. And all of this went through the DRB, Jeff. So, you know, those kind of drastic changes, those big amendments had to go back to the DRB. So the DRB was on board with Holland Lane going through there. I have no idea in the process when the developer was talking to Healthy Living. I mean, I don't know when they did this, if they even knew what was gonna go into that building. They just knew they wanted to put a building there and reconfigure this development. Yeah, it's just when, you know, every time we take on more road, we incur more cost. I mean, it is ultimately an expense to the town, maybe not a big one and maybe the benefit of that development outweighs the liability of the town owning the road. You know, I just wanna make sure I'm comfortable with that. Yeah, like I said, this wasn't even from the developer. This was my suggestion. I don't wanna say I'm putting it on the developer at all. Just looking at the configuration of it. You know, I've never made a recommendation like this before, but just looking at the configuration of that road and the way it's gonna align now, just didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to me that half a hones public and half a hones private. So Bruce, to make sure I got you right, you are probably the first public work director in Vermont that has said, I wanna plow more roads. I'm on your side, Jeff, as far as taking roads, believe me. I just assumed I had something to say, all roads are private from your own out. You're probably right. I have to say as someone who like currently resides over in that area, good call, Bruce. I mean, it makes perfect sense. It does, I'm looking at this and being over here traveling these roads on a regular basis, I'm going, it totally makes perfect sense. Yeah, I'd be surprised if we don't take it that you're not gonna get a lot of pressure fairly quickly to as to why not and be insane. You know, why didn't you take this road as part of the original development based on the alignment and the way it's built it? I mean, they're all built to our standards anyway. So, but I agree, Jeff, there's a little bit more expense for sure. Anytime we take a road, there's more expense. But it's got a public safety issue too though, right? I mean, if a private road falls to ruin, you know, if it's a private road that serves one or two houses, that's not really the town's problem, but this isn't that. This is gonna be a major commercial through, well, no, through, it's probably the wrong term. That probably means something is a term of art, but it's gonna be a major, it's a major use. And I just think that it makes sense to me anyway, that there would be a public road just so that we can maintain it properly and again, it's a public safety issue and to some degree a commercial issue too, in the tax-based type of commercial issue. I don't doubt that because the way this road is configured now that there may not be a point, I hope not in the near future, but in the future where Holland and Zephyr intersection actually becomes an intersection that gets re-looked at as far as the volume's getting high enough that it should have some other kind of treatment going on. Heria, I've got a request from Pam Cohen. She's the HOA president at Finney Crossing. She'd like to make a comment. Yes, please. Pam, I'm gonna connect you. You'll be able to be unmuted to make a comment to the board here in just a moment. Hi Pam, are you there? I am here. There you are, you're connected, there you go. All right, so I just wanna say that I'm getting a little taste of what governance is all about and my first comment is thank you guys for what you do. Appreciate it. I just wanted to say that this issue goes a little bit beyond just the issues you brought up and that is that we've been paying for the maintenance of that road and now we're seeing that the traffic is starting to build up. So that's gonna add cost to us that we're unanticipated. And so I just hope that you do take this, although it seems like in the conversation, you're very supportive of the idea, but I laud Bruce for going against what's supposed to be his nature and supporting this request because I don't think it's particularly fair. I mean, I know that you have to watch those developers, they don't bait and switch you, but it would be a bait and switch on us. Not on the developer, it's not the developer that's gonna benefit from this. It's actually the homeowners of Finney Crossing. So thank you very much for considering that point and for all you do. Thanks for joining the board tonight. Thank you. Any further comments tonight? Sounds like we are in agreement with Bruce's recommendations. I would concur. These documents won't come to you guys till January anyway. That's when we'll bring forth all the paperwork for accepting the road. So not just in Finney, but Hamlet this year, I think I already told you, we're looking over two miles of road. We're gonna be accepting, which is quite a bit in one year, so. So Bruce, I need to follow. I was gonna say, you got something to say, Jeff. Yes. We're not gonna see another dumb truck in this year's budget, are we? No, yeah. There won't be any surprises. I hope if you see surprises, there are surprises that we're trying to work with everybody on knowing what's going on in the world right now. Okay, good. And that was a, that was, yeah, not a serious comment. Yeah, no, I know. If there's no more comments or questions regarding this matter, we can move on into the winter operations during COVID update. And that, again, is from Bruce with a medal that he's written to us. Yeah, this is more just to bring you all and the residents up to speed on certainly what could be this winter. As you all know, we're all experiencing the same thing. We all got into this pandemic, really hearing about it late like March of last year is when they really started to sugar out on this thing. And we were lucky enough that we got through the rest of that winter. We did plow a few times after that and never had any incidents. Luckily to date, we haven't had any incidents as far as COVID amongst the troops are concerned. But this is just to point out that certainly if something, if we would get a case or people have to be quarantined, it certainly could put a dampener on our winter operations, mostly from a timing standpoint. You know, I was talking to Mark, the highway foreman today, and I say, well, you know, you've been down a plow before, it's not a big deal. We can, he didn't necessarily agree with that assessment, but certainly they can, you know, they will do their jobs and do it to the best of their abilities, but there could be times, let's just say we have them split up in shifts right now, four man and three man, so that if something does happen, hopefully we're not quarantining everybody for a time period. And once again, even under quarantine, unless they test positive, have a positive test, because just because you're gonna go under quarantine doesn't mean you've even been tested. If it came to a plowing situation, they could certainly still plow. They're in their trucks by themselves, we would work it out so that they basically don't even see each other besides on the radio or passing each other a wave or something. So they will do their due diligence when keeping things going, but instead of four hours or eight hours for a regular storm, getting around twice or whatever, it could be as long as a day. Hopefully not till we get to every road, we will at least go down the middle of every road and get things going. We would certainly be available for police and fire, but this is just to give you all a heads up. You're all intelligent, I'm sure you're thinking about it anyway, but we could get into a jam. Questions for Bruce? Go ahead. Just had a QRC, is this an area where towns might reach out and help each other out? Jeff, the problem with that is everybody's doing the same thing. Yeah. It's not like a fire department, you have a fire in your town, the next town can come help you because they don't have a fire. When we're plowing nine times out of 10, everybody around us is plowing too. Yeah, okay. And it's very dangerous to go in areas you don't know. Sure, that makes sense. I'll give you a real quick story. I've talked about it maybe too many times, but when I was in South Burlington, a state truck came off of 116, turned on a Kennedy Drive, went down Kennedy Drive, turned around, came back with his plows down, hit a manhole. It was a tandem. He hit a manhole so hard, the hole back into the truck came up off the ground. And that was because he was in an area he didn't know. The best part of that was the state sent us a bill for $30,000, which we immediately round filed, but they, so it's dangerous when you're plowing in areas you don't know. It's dangerous enough for our own guys to go on streets they don't know to let alone have somebody else come in and go on a road today. Okay, and that makes sense, okay? We would shut down sidewalks. It really came down to us. Doesn't mean we wouldn't get to them, but it may be quite a while before we got the sidewalks or rec paths because I can take those people or at least put them in pickup trucks with plows if we had to. I myself can go in one of the small dump trucks. So we'll do everything we can do and we got a water sewer guy that are able to help plow a little bit, but we can't take too many of them. I'm losing one of them. So instead of four, I'm going to be down to three. So if I keep pulling them and something comes up in their side of the house, we're in trouble then too, so. Okay. Any other questions or comments for Bruce? If not, then we'll move on to the comprehensive plan, go ahead. Yeah. Can I just real quick, one or two other real little things here? Yes, we'll go ahead. Okay. Just in case you all hear anything or any complaints about the bridge at Muddy Brook, our temporary bridge and the deck that's peeling. Absolutely correct. The deck's peeling. There's no way to keep that asphalt on that steel deck. I finally got the state to say that, you know, 90% of those bridges that they put in, they don't put asphalt on the decks. So the only way for us to really keep that safe is we're going to go take the asphalt off the deck and leave it as a metal deck. We will sign it as a metal deck. We'll sign it slippery when wet, bridge freezes before road surface, an advisory speed plate, but the people that it's going to affect the most, and I don't believe there's probably many walkers anyway, but we could certainly hear from some bike riders. During the winter it may not be too bad, but anyway, I just wanted to give you the heads up one in case you do hear anything about it, that that's what we'll work on with South Burlington. And do you know when the bridges or the culverts do to be replaced, bridges do to be replaced? We're hoping to go out to bed next year. So next construction season, it may not start before fiscal year 22, but yeah, they're hoping to get all the plans and everything together by March, Jeff. Okay. And then one other thing that Eric doesn't even know about, it's late in the day I received the message that we did get part of a tree grant that we applied for to help with the emerald ash blower. So we're going to get $5,000 a match and that'll plan a few trees for us anyway. So that's all I got. Thank you. Good. Thank you. I had money coming in. Good surprise, Bert, I'm nervous that person. Good. So if we can get Matt to join us, we can go on to the conference of plan progress report. Yep, I'm getting Matt connected right now. Hi, good evening. Good evening, Matt. Welcome again and for your first of two things tonight. So let's go ahead. Sure. So I prepared a memo and progress table for your packet tonight related to the town's progress, implementing the goals and objectives of the current comprehensive plan. I don't know that I wanted necessarily screen share that right now, Eric, unless you want to bring it up. I thought I'd just sort of mentioned generally how this implementation cycle works and then we might talk about a few of the items there. So our comprehensive plan was adopted in August of 2017 and it's valid through almost the end of August in 2025. It's an eight year cycle. No, you're frozen up, Matt. If you can hear us, you're frozen. I'll send him a message. Okay. I had that happen in a meeting today. Wonderful. Signed off and signed back in. It occurs to me that that would actually be a pretty cool way to fake it so you could get out of a meeting. You just have to kind of be a mannequin for about 15 seconds. I was going to ask you what the expression was at the time that you did that. It's funny. You say that because this was actually relatively benign, but I've seen, I've seen expressions that freeze that are just, you know, embarrassing, but there's nothing you can do, you know, you could freeze anybody in a split second. And it's going to look like they're expressing something. They're actually not, or they're terrible or whatever. I still think it would be fun to be on one of your meetings. Just saying. Always entertaining. I think Matt has to reconnect or reboot, but I'll hopefully get him back here at a momentarily. Well, we're running a little bit early, so it's okay. That would be the sign of a well run meeting. Terry. Thank you. You're welcome. If you'd like Terry, I can, I could do the manager's report. Will we wait for Matt? Sure. I don't have a whole lot in my written report this evening. I just wanted to remind the board, our FY 22 budget process will be. Already about time to get started here at the next select board meeting on December 1st. We'll present our first draft budget to the board. And then we'll start our budget review meetings. The first being December 8th. And I'm, I think that's usually our early meeting. And then we'll start our budget review meetings the first being December 8th. And I think that's usually our earlier meeting. I believe at a six o'clock start, I've included the schedule in your board packet this evening. And then another thing I'll flag to the board is with the, with the governor's announcement on Friday. Urging telework to the greatest extent possible. I spoke with all department heads Friday and we've come up with a plan and we. We've come up with a plan to the city. We've come up with a plan to the city. We've come up with a plan to the city. Transitioned a majority of staff back to a telework and environment starting this week. There are a few folks still here. Mainly department heads. We're all spread out in the town hall in our own offices. And we have some pretty strict protocols in place here. So we'll be, we'll be monitoring that and continuing our operations. But I just want the public to be. I just want to make sure that we have all town services as, as we normally do. If you have questions need to pay a water bill, a tax bill, have a question on something for any department. We're all available during business hours and we'll make sure. Town staff can connect with you and you get the services you request. And the only other piece I have not my written report, but it's to update the board on the health order at the Bevan's property. I've been looking at it for a year now. And my latest update from the attorney who's managing the estate and our attorney on the matter is the property is now vacated of all occupants. And the next steps are to continue to look at that property for compliance on the outside issues. For trash. I need to check in with our health officer on that piece, but I know this has been a long process in my health order. But it's, it's moved along for the interior safety by having all, all folks no longer in that residence. And I see Matt back. I'll get him reconnected. Okay. Thanks Eric. My apologies there. I'm going to leave my camera off for the moment in hopes that, that conserves a little bandwidth. We'll see if that, if that does it. So I've provided you with this cover memo and comprehensive plan progress chart. And I think. You know, that chart with the colors is an internal document we maintain at the planning office, which means some of the color coding is related to whether we see the task identified in the plan as one that the planning program takes a lead on versus some other town department. And then if so, is it something that we've completed that we're in progress on or that we haven't started yet? And the good news from the planning office is most of the things that we see as resting on our shoulders are in progress or completed. There's very few that we haven't at least gotten a start on. We're really happy about that. One of the things about Williston's comprehensive plan is, since its adoption in 2017, there have been two major amendments to it, both of which brought their own additional set of goals, objectives, policies, or in the case of the energy plan pathways. And so there's, there's the sort of proverbial sea of red highlighted items towards the tail end of that plan. Representing the goals and pathways, the town set for itself primarily in the energy plan. Many of which may not actually come out of the planning program, but rather from other, other parts of the town. So the town has, has aimed high, has taken on a lot of diverse and sometimes even competing goals. And this is our best shot at a sort of snapshot of where the town is at this third year in the comprehensive plan cycle. So I think I want to leave it there and just answer any questions folks have or any areas of particular focus. I have a few closing remarks about this that I just want to highlight, but I want to make sure there's time for a couple of questions if, if you folks have them. Thank you much, Matt. Are there questions from the board as to kind of a daunting list of stuff here. That was my comment exactly is I, you don't realize how involved the town plan is until you look at something like this. Yeah. Any further questions or comments for Matt. I don't see any at all. So Matt, maybe you can give your concluding comments on this. Yeah. Three things I wanted to highlight. Number one is in the narrative memo. I do mention that we are in the very preliminary stages already of thinking about the next town plan. But there certainly is some time and head room for the planning commission. To make progress, even as we make those preparations and then eventually transition into, you know, full production mode on the next plan. And so this is a great time for everyone. In the next, you know, six months or so from the select board to the planning commission. Gosh, we really hope. You could focus on this or get that done. Before we have to really set everything down and take up the next town plan. And, you know, there is always, as I say in the memo, some carryover from one plan to the next things that you, you didn't quite get done that you, that you still want to do. And you, you know, you're not going to be able to, you know, be able to do all of the things that you, you didn't quite get done that you, that you still want to do and you reiterate them in the next plan. Second item is, you know, in addition to what's going to happen between now in August of 2025 with the next town plan, there's the major work item of the TAF quarters form based code. That's really the big, the big lift for the planning commission over the next 18 months and ultimately to the board. So, you know, I think it's important to note that we've got a signed contract between CCRPC and the vendor on that, the consultant team. And you should be seeing some activity on that project before the close of the year. And lastly, there's a couple of items that I'm really glad to say are in progress out of the planning program related to sustainable transportation, mobility and connectivity. And I'm sure that you've heard about the project that's been working on the official map project and talking about intermodal facilities, which is a fancy way of saying parking, parking ride that also has a bike rack and maybe a bus shelter on it, depending on where it's located. And I wanted to highlight that just to note that there is a survey out for Willis and citizens to take if they would like to give us some feedback about how they get around in town and how they'd like to be able to get around in town. We released a special edition of the planners corner email newsletter today, highlighting that survey and with links to it. And it's also on our website. And I can certainly share a direct link, Eric with you to get to the slide board. But we'd love to have broad participation in that as we continue to develop that plan and that official map, which will be a regulatory tool. The town will be able to have in planning future transportation facilities once it's adopted. And I'll leave the progress report there. Thank you. Actually, I saw that survey that came on my email later on today. So moving on to the retail cannabis zoning regulations and this is again you, Matt. Sure. So this is a follow up to our conversation of about a month ago. So the context is that. Governor Scott has allowed act 164 to become law without his signature. This paves the way for retail cannabis in Vermont. And. Of the elements of a retail cannabis market, growing warehousing production and manufacturing will be allowed. Statewide. And the retail sale of cannabis will be allowed only in those towns where there is a townwide vote to opt in. I want to pause for a second, Eric. I saw a question about the energy plan come through in the chat. Do you mind if I back up and address that real quick? Go ahead, please. The question was why are so many of the energy plan pathway items highlighted in red on the progress chart? The answer is they're red because they are likely not to come out of the planning program, but rather through the establishment of an energy coordinator and committee in town. So, so we don't have any of those red items in the planning department as tasks that we currently have in our work plan. Thank you. Okay. So in terms of retail cannabis legalization, what I wanted to go into with this memo that you have before you is that there could be a townwide vote in Williston. That vote could end up on the warrant either because the select board decides to put it there. Or because there's a petition to put it there. So, you know, there's a certain element where it's a piece of legislation. The select board might not have total control over. And the way that the state law is constructed is that the only local standards that retail cannabis operations will need to meet are those that are contained within zoning. In other zoning, as I mentioned a month ago, retail more or less is retail. There's a little bit more to it than that, but suffice to say that the North America industry classification system, whose numeric system we use in our zone, to define uses of lands has a land use category for retail cannabis and places it under a category of all other general retail. That is a category that's allowed as of right in the Taft Corners zoning district. That is the only district. Along with a few lots in business park district or Blair park that face route to where it would be allowed outright. So, you know, as it stands, should the town vote to opt into retail, those are the places where if somebody came and looked for a permit from zoning to locate retail cannabis store, they would be allowed to do so under zoning. I'm sorry, could you, could you say that again? Which, which areas? Yes. So it would be the Taft Corners zoning district, which, you know, is maple tree place, Finney crossing. Most of what's in between Harvest Lane and Williston Road. And most of what's between root to a and the Allen Brook north of Finney crossing. So it's our sort of our most intense retail mixed use zoning area. The other area is there's a limited part of the business park district in which retailing is allowed. And this is only for parcels that have frontage on route to. So the post office building, Ashley furniture, the super store, the former back center building that's vacant, the nail salon, the gun store in the mobile station. So that's, that's just sort of the way it sits today. And there are a couple of options. The select board and planning commission might want to consider as it relates to the allowance of retailing cannabis. You could, you could leave that alone. And that would be the boundary. You could choose a different boundary or a different set of zoning districts or different zoning districts entirely where this would be allowed. What the law makes clear is that what you cannot do is outright prohibit the use in all zoning districts in town. So you, you can't use zoning to go around a townwide opt-in vote. You've got to, you've got to allow it somewhere. Should the town vote to opt in. In my memo, I talk about a couple of other zoning tools that might be worth the select board thinking about, including outlet density or spacing from schools, daycares or other people places that are attractive to young people, things like that. So that's, that's sort of the range of things around retail. There are some other things related to signage hours of operation, security planning, and or the requirement for a DRB hearing prior to the issuance of a zoning permit that would be strongly in parallel with what the town's bylaws currently say about medical dispensaries, which was an amendment made to the town zoning in response to the state law that permitted those. The other part of the memo discusses what I would sense as a place where I think some clarity would be really useful. And this is around the idea of retail sales as an accessory to an allowed use in some other zoning district. So, you know, because all of those other sort of growing manufacturing, warehousing, packaging and wholesaling uses will, will not be able to be prohibited in town or subject to local regulation. And they can go, you know, wherever, wherever they could go for any other sort of product. And I would, I would draw a parallel to, you know, permits I've signed in the last couple of years for various CBD manufacturers, packages, extractors and things like that that exist in Williston and, and, you know, operate in its industrial zones. The challenge that comes from that is our, our accessory uses provisions in our bylaw are a little bit difficult to interpret and apply even handedly. And oftentimes what we get is, and we had this with, with CBD a couple of times, somebody who, who found a spot in the industrial zone and said, well, I'm, I'm really a wholesaler. It's all online. But since I've got this building that faces Williston road with, you know, 13,000 cars a day, I can use a small piece of my space to have a retail counter and a big, highly visible sign. And I've got parking. And yeah, the retail area is a very small fraction of the building or the tendency, but it might be a large amount of the intensity of use that happens on the site. So one thing the select board might consider if you, if you don't want to, well, I'll be selfish. If you don't want me to have to be in the position of interpreting those things over the counter as I, as I sometimes find myself, you could consider adding some clarity to the bylaw around those sorts of accessory sales. And one way to do that would just be to say, you know, no, you, you, you can't, you can't have retail sales of cannabis as an accessory to these other uses over, which we don't have much say, or you could place standards around them. You might think of sort of the limited service eating places additions that were made around our beer brewers a couple of years ago, allowing for retail under certain circumstances and at certain limited sizes, even though those folks are located in an industrial district where we wouldn't normally permit those as a standalone. So that's, that's what this memo does. I tried to just give you everything I could think of that might be done under zoning. And the big asterisk on all of this is that the state cannabis control board hasn't been created yet. They will have rulemaking authority. It's certainly possible that that rulemaking could further limit what the town is allowed to do under zoning. We just don't know yet. So my, my, my last thought I'll leave you with is that if, if the board would like there to be something more in zoning than there is today around this issue, this is probably the time to do it. Because the town could be facing an opt in vote. Just as soon as somebody gets a petition in that's valid, or as soon as the select board decides to place it on the war for town meeting. So it would be, it would be helpful to me as the zoning administrator, if, if whatever the zoning needed to say it, it said before I started getting those permit requests. So Matt, you in your memo on page three, talked about next steps. And if the select board wishes to have the planning commission address the issues. I think that would be helpful. When is, when is the appropriate time to do that tonight? Or in the near future. Yeah. You know, if, if there's a direction from the select board, you know, I sensed a desire last time, I think, to maybe do something with the town's bylaws around this. And that would rightfully originate from the planning commission. So, you know, if I were to take this up, I would convey that to them. And, you know, I've kept them apprised of the memos I've been giving you because they really discussed the same things they might be thinking about. But what might be on to that, if there isn't interest in getting it to the planning commission to originate a bylaw change, the other feedback that would be really helpful is if there's any of the things I've identified in the memo that the board feels strongly about addressing. Or strongly about not putting into play, or if there's things I haven't mentioned in the memo that you'd like to explore within the bylaw, any sort of feedback like that, that helps me give some structure to the planning commission conversation will, will move their work along. You know, outside of that, I would just be coming to them saying, so here's Act 164 and what do you want to do about it? Since it's going to come back to you, I think it's a little easier for them to go back to that bylaw. But we have to make sure that they have a good body. Ultimately, if there's feedback now, we can just make that process. You know, a little more coordinated. Okay. Questions for Matt or comments. Matt Jeff here. How are you? Quick question under item number one, zoning tools available. I understand the concept of the N. A. system. What I wasn't clear about is when you were talking about if cannabis sales would fall under the category of all other miscellaneous store retailers. And I'm just trying to get a sense of what that means. All other miscellaneous store retailers, who else might fall under that category. I assume things like department stores have their own category. Home depot type stores have their own category. So what are the folks fall under this other miscellaneous store retailers? Do you know? Sure. You might have heard me googling there on my keyboard, Jeff. I just wanted to bring the category up because it's quite specific. So this industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in retailing specialized lines of merchandise. And then there's a long list of things that it is not because there are other types of retail that have their own code. And so it's retail, it's really defined by what it's not. So it's not motor vehicles and parts. It's not furniture and home furnishings. It's not electronics or appliances. It's not building material or garden equipment. It's not food and beverage. It's not health and personal care stores. It's not gas stations. It's not clothing and clothing accessories. It's not sporting goods, hobby book or music stores. It's not general merchandise stores. It's not florists. It's not office supplies. It's not stationary. It's not a pet store. It's not an art dealer or a manufactured home dealer or a tobacco store. So it's the everything else that we didn't come up with a category for category unsurprisingly as a new land use. That's where NAICS might put it. If I was trying to make a determination as zoning administrator how to categorize a use, somebody comes in and says I want to do XYZ and I want to do it in this part of town, can I or not? What I'm typically going to do is look for the best fit in the NAICS categories. And when I really can't find anything and let's say they're a retailer, this is where I'm eventually going to land at the bottom of the pile is into this miscellaneous store retailer category. Okay, great. And I assume other towns will the same thing would happen in other towns that are trying to do what you're trying to do here in Williston. I will say that Williston is one of the only places I'm aware of that uses the NAICS to this level of precision. A lot of towns are just going to have a zoning district where retail is allowed period just retail whatever. So we're a little more precise here and that can create some complexities but it also means it's a little easier to sort of divide things up sometimes. So you're looking for some input. Let me start with the absolute easy one which is setting buffer zones. I can't see that there'll be much much disagreement there. Beyond that I don't know how much I can offer. It's between establishing its own overlay district or the concept of where is this code you know the 453998 is already allowed which to me seems to be a fairly limit I mean it's a relatively big area but it's limited to the retail area of Williston. And if I remember correctly before and I think I agree with is the concept of don't try to hide this somewhere down you know not well traveled roads put it up in front as a way to I don't know what the right words are you know help monitor it maybe might be maybe that's not the right exact way to put it but you know when it's front and center it's I don't know there's some sort of natural I'm sorry I can't even choose my words correctly but monitoring that happens because of that. Does that all make sense? Yeah so one of the things I had said was you know in the town's history of dealing with these new allowed uses medical marijuana dispensaries the decision was well we'll put it off in the industrial district which was I think sort of a theory of keep it away from everything but you know the point I made about that was we have an industrial district that has some very high visibility properties and it's also a part of town that's that can be really kind of dead or unoccupied in the evenings and you know just kind of takes on a little bit of a different atmosphere as opposed to a place where there's eyes on the street there's there's stuff going on there's people around there's you know maybe a different sort of security concern things like that so that was that was my my thought for the board to sort of consider if you were going to put this somewhere in town where would you where would you put it that might be locationally a way that you could address some of the concerns you might have about it. Hence the newspaper quotes to get right in the middle of town. Yes I did see that which you know was a version of what I said it was part of what I said and I think the article did a good job you know explaining what I meant by that. So yeah you know I do think though you may want to take a look at the map of those areas if you're not familiar with it think about some of the properties it includes you know and in that buffering thing the state law around dispensary specifically called out schools and daycares you know some concerns I've heard from people as I've just sort of talked about this gosh all the teenagers hang out at Maple Tree Place you know it's a place I it's a place I drop my kids off to go hang out kind of like the mall and whether it's felt that it would be desirable there or what about being near a park or you know something like that and again big asterisk I have no idea what the rulemaking process is going to yield in terms of potential limitations on what zone it can do. I tried to identify the memo here are things we already do with other kinds of uses and here are things that if we did them it would be really new territory so spacing between outlets the idea you know where you might say no retail cannabis store may be within 2,000 feet of another retail cannabis store which is a tool some communities use to sort of prevent a strip of one type of use from dominating any any one place we don't do that with anything at Williston right now but it's it's certainly a tool in zoning that has you know withstood challenges in other places in the past. Very interesting very interesting your comment about Maple Tree place and being a hangout for teenagers so I'm told yeah well I can testify to that having teenagers myself. Matt I think what I'd say is that first of all I do note that this would require an affirmative vote by the town an Australian ballot affirmative vote but I my thought is you know the accessory use is hard enough to monitor and to to define and to regulate as it is so I would say my thought is take that off the table entirely no accessory use I think buffer zone I agree with Jeff I don't think anybody's going to disagree with that I I do disagree with the idea that we would put it right in the middle of town or that we would put it in Maple Tree place or any other place that is you know has a big green there's some irony in the use of the word green there I suppose but I don't think it should be near parks I don't think it should be at Maple Tree place I don't think it should be at Finney crossing I I understand the concept of you know we don't there there is an argument there are arguments on both sides on one side you don't want this kind of thing to be off in an area that's going to be creating a CD part of town on the other hand the fact that we're worried that this retail establishment might create a CD part of town I think speaks quite a bit all by itself and I I think that this you know I don't I do not think this is the kind of thing that should be easy to get to we're trying to have pedestrian traffic we're having you know form-based zoning that's going to be coming in the town is not done filling out it's not done growing I recently was going with my teenage daughter past Hannah Fords and I was talking about the roads that are going to be put in there and the frontage and and how it's going to look differently when she's older she absolutely did not care I gotta tell you and I was talking over her music but but that's what fathers do but in any event I I don't think that this should be a a thing whether it's going to be next to the yogurt shop or any future yogurt shops that are that are going to fill in with that kind of thing so I would I would say you know my input is no accessory use significant buffer zones if we need to create an overlay zone then so be it but I would I would not want a you know this kind of retail establishment to be uh in maple tree place or finny crossing and I might add that those those establishments are not there are significant establishments there that are parts of of chains but there are more shops there are more vacant shops now at maple tree place that are more locally owned and so what I'm the point is that that's the kind of thing where there's going to be I think for the foreseeable future turnover in those shops and I I don't I don't think it would be good for the rest of the businesses there who are trying to establish a family friendly situation if they also have to deal with you know signs in the window about you know sales you know one-third off in that kind of establishment and I I know I sound like a conservative when I say that um I I do you know we keep partisanship out of the out of the select board but I think people know which which political party I belong to um and uh in any event um those are those are my thoughts though I think we can we probably have consensus that we want the planning commission to take this up the question now is what do we want in it and do we need to have a further discussion at the next meeting take a look at what's been proposed by Matt and make a decision at that time as to what we want the planning commission is to look at I'm going to go the opposite direction if if if you don't mind I I wonder if at this point I think what Matt's outlined here you know is a good set of boundaries no no pun intended because he uses the word boundaries in there um and maybe have the planning commission come back with their recommendation um I have to admit I'm struggling with this a bit um you know on the one hand what Ted was just saying is is I think true but on the opposite side of the coin is um you know whether we agree or not like it or not it's now a legal product um it is it really that different than a store that sells alcohol or tobacco I I mean I'm I'm not saying I know the answer but um I I kind of sometimes I I wonder if because it's something new something we're not used to something we grew up knowing was quote unquote wrong in some ways now that it's legal are we over are we overreacting to the potential what we believe is the potential what it could turn into from a negative standpoint I I just don't know um so um I guess I could boil that down is I'd love to hear what the planning commission says and and react to that well I can certainly you know bring the summary of this conversation to the commission and and you know they're going to they're going to have sort of an informal start um it certainly doesn't preclude this this group from continuing to um work on it as well and provide that feedback the the last thought I'll leave you all with is again this is sort of the um the nervous zoning administrator in me who just has to make unpopular decisions from time to time and and then has to try to defend them um and so you know I I claim I claim that as my biggest self-interest in all this is um so keep in mind that in zoning um the the concept of uh non-conforming use as being allowed to continue is something that exists so that if the rules are um permissive at the beginning and somebody comes in and gets a permit under them um even if the rules become more restrictive later they can continue to operate under the version of the rules in which they were established and secondly that the context around retail cannabis is that it's it's something new I think we've watched the something new happen first with dispensaries and and then with hemp growing and processing and CBD and things like that so oftentimes there's a lot of initial interest in uh getting a foot in the door establishing a business um getting getting something up and running um and you know I would I would anticipate some of that um as as this sort of plays out in Williston and in other places um where somebody might be interested in having one of these businesses um so um you know my advice to you or anybody who asks is um whatever you do in zoning you can always um make it more permissive later um if you if you find that you've been too strict but you know once somebody establishes a use under a fairly permissive regime um they they are going to get to keep it um for as for as long as they stay in business um so that's just where where I tend to sit as as an administrator um in in all of this is I I expect a lot of initial interest and I know that um sometimes sometimes we we go back and we we back restrictions off later on um after we get feedback from businesses uh breweries with accessory restaurants is a good example of that um where you know the the world just kind of changed the breweries wanted to do something that wasn't seen as favorable in zoning um you know we went back into a process and and changed the rules ultimately uh to be more flexible around them so a couple things I'm thinking about yeah fair point so would we be comfortable then tonight to ask the planning commission to take up the uh under consideration everything that deals with uh cannabis and then as I come back was uh a draft that we can react to good okay is that uh good for you Matt that works for me um I'll I'll keep Eric and the board posted as they work on that and um you know if further conversations happen here I'm sure you or Eric will let me know about it and I can um bring that down to the planning commission as well good thank you very much for your attendance tonight and all the things you brought to us thank you good evening okay right so we're under other businesses or anything we need to discuss before we go into executive session if not to our viewers uh happy Thanksgiving and um I'll lead a motion to go into executive session which is uh on page three so moved or do you want the broader I think we can I think we can deal with the uh so moved is there a second I'll I'll second but I was waiting for a long soliloquy from joy on the motion but yeah I'm referring to you on that one sorry we're trying to keep on time I will do it but it'll take a long time all those in favor of the motion raise your hands one two three four five okay we are now in executive session it'll take me a few minutes to get uh connected in with Eric coming to do that I'll be uh I'll be back upstairs there to get this webinar and if um we'll get everyone uh logged in here shortly