 Okay, I will call the October 16, 2017 Select Board meeting to order and invite you to rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, and indivisible, and justice for all. I'd like to welcome everyone to tonight's Select Board meeting and just remind you if you have a cell phone, you could turn it off or turn it, at least, to buzz or silent. That would be greatly appreciated. And I know many of you have signed in, and though anyone out there has not signed in, we need that for the record, so please be sure you do sign in. Thank you. Okay, first up is, or next up is the Agenda Editions and Changes and Pat's not here tonight. Correct. Many of you probably know that he's doing jury duty as of the past little bit, and the jury was given the case to deliberate tonight, so he won't be able to join us, but we have Greg to help us through. Okay, so do we have things? Just a few items to add to the packet. First of all, there's an e-mail from Don Jutton to Travis Sabitasso, it has a list of people who municipal resources has interviewed for the manager recruitment search to help inform leader on discussion of key identifying community members to interview. So that can go with item 5K. There's also a member random to go with 5K for executive session, it's just a couple words that were changed from the memo that was in your packet. Okay, and lastly to go with item 5H, some proposed language for the computer use policy, which I can speak to when we get to that item. Okay, what item number is that? Oh, that is 5H. 5H, okay. Irene? I also have some statistics that I got from Greg this morning from Ali about the senior bus, so I'd like to also distribute those if I could for the discussion. Sure, yep. Okay, and that would be for executive, what? 5J. 5J, okay. Okay, anything else? We have the minutes, but do we include this? I guess we do that when we get to the minutes, right? Okay. All right, do I have a motion to approve the addition of the item for 5H on computer use and then the two items for 5K, which is the selecting the people for Don to talk to, and then we have the item for my read for 5J. Thank you. Okay, any further discussion on adding those items to the agenda? All those in favor signify by saying, I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. how we handle that. So then moving on to our business items, we have a lucky to say we have a number of interviews tonight, which is great. It's nice to see people step forward and do this. And the way we do it, we go down in order on the agenda for the interviews. And when we have two people interviewing for the same position, what we do is we have the first person there will invite them to the table. And whoever else is going to interview, we kindly ask them if they would step into the foyer so as to allow the first person to be interviewed and not give an advantage to the second person after getting to listen to the first. And then when that interview is done, we'll have Greg or somebody bring you in and we'll invite you to the table. OK? So first up for the interviews tonight, we? Next. Oh, yes. I meant to bring this up during the question about additions and changes. I thought we had four people who have requested to be on the Essex Rescue. There were two other prior volunteers that we've never interviewed that they withdraw. We've had a few people ask about it, but there's only been the two on the agenda tonight. Well, there were these two sitting here at the table with us that will also volunteer. Yeah, I think the discussion was, hey, let's see if there's so many else out there that would like to. OK, it wasn't clear to me that you two had withdrawn. Yeah. OK. And we're happy to see we have two. Thanks for the clarification. Yeah, no problem. Thank you for asking. OK, so first up on the interviews is Silvio Mazzella for the Zoning Board of Adjustment. And I'll invite Silvio up here. Full discretion, Silvio and I know each other. Also the owner of Jules on the Green. Yeah, oh, thank you, then Nick stepped out. Thank you. OK, is the door shut? No. Oh, well, don't latch it, just pull a little bit. First of all, Silvio, thank you for being willing to step forward and being on the Zoning Board of Adjustment. So what I'd like is for you to give us a little bit about your background, yourself, and what your interest is on being pointed to the Zoning Board of Adjustment. Sure. I'm an Essex resident for 15 years. I've been an entrepreneur at the same amount of time. I've been a developer with commercial and private properties. And I'm currently an owner of a business here in the town. And I think I could offer a decent amount of knowledge to the town as a business member and as well as a resident. OK. I have a background with non-profit as well. I've served on different boards, mainly, though, for the past eight years. I had served both as a board member for the American Red Cross in Vermont and then was a chair for the Vermont Red Cross Biomed Division and then served as a chair for the Northern New England Biomed Division for two and a half years. So I believe I've offered services above and beyond on that part, but I no longer hold those titles. OK. Thanks, Silvio. Appreciate the background. Any questions I'm happy to answer? Yeah. I'll open it up to the board for questions for Silvio. Mike. With all of that experience, which is impressive, have you volunteered within Essex for any other committees or commissions or anything? I have not. This is my first. My first time putting the hat in the ring. OK. I have, over the past couple of years, in developing businesses here in Essex, I have been part of the needings as a both an investor for my own business as well as a resident. And I do continuously monitor how Essex is developing, and hopefully I could offer some knowledge and assistance to others as well as the board to offer ideas and suggestions. Yeah. On both sides of the table will be experience that will be useful. Thank you. My pleasure. OK. All right. Have you had experience in other jurisdictions with zoning? I have. What have you lived before? I've developed back in New York, and I have worked with both the Planning Commission and the Planning Boards down in New York City when we were developing some businesses out there and rezoning from private to commercial and or developing areas that were at one point wetlands and then reclassified. So I've worked with both civil engineers, engineering development, and had a lot of knowledge with bringing that forward to continuing the structure of what the town and or at that time the borough was looking for as well as advanced development for bringing in new business and growth. Anyone else? So the zoning board of adjustment, how often does it mean it's like twice a year? No. Is it more? Yes. It's on an as needed basis. I've served on it for three years, so I know a little bit. It's usually as applications come in, it's not unusual to go a month or two without having a meeting because there are no adjustments that are needed. OK. And I know you're busy with your business, so I really appreciate you stepping forward to want to volunteer. So the other question. So what we'll do, we'll end up going into executive session to talk about the different interviewees that we had. And have a discussion that will come out to make a decision. And then somebody from the office will contact you tomorrow. Turn down. You're welcome to stay, but you're welcome to leave the meeting as well. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. So Nick, thanks for waiting out there. Thank you. First, thank you for wanting to step forward and volunteer on the zoning board of adjustments. That's wonderful that people want to volunteer like that. So what we'd like to do is ask a little bit about your background, a little bit about yourself, and what your interest is on serving on the zoning board of adjustments. And then we'll ask questions. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, members of the flight board. I appreciate you hearing me out and considering my application for the position. My educational background, I guess I could start with, is in social services, I'm a bachelor's in social science, and then I have a master's of public administration. Through my graduate schoolwork, I found that public planning was my favorite subject. I liked those classes very much, especially much more in public financial management and those kinds of classes. That was more of a challenge for me, but planning was great. It was a lot of fun. And then in my current work, I am a program director for a nonprofit locally. And I've been in that position for about 16 months, give or take. And before that, I've worked in the city and county government and the library field. And so I think I have good experience in serving the public. I have also been a commissioner for a commission like this one. It was called the Administrative Review Board in my hometown that's out of state. But I've noticed that there are a lot of same nuances, same procedures and policies. And so I think that the transition would be relatively seamless. I think some of our most controversial requests from the public or from applicants was one that was a personal friend of mine, as a matter of fact. There were only three commissioners, myself included, on the board that evening. And the issue was addressed. And as it came forward, I offered my silence. I let my other commissioners know saying, this is a personal friend of mine. I'm not going to be able to comment on any issue tonight on this particular issue. And so it went forward. And they requested my issuance because we needed a majority vote for one way or the other. And so what did I do? I pleaded present only. I thought that was the appropriate thing to do because I didn't want to be biased one way or the other. So I think that speaks to my integrity. And so this board is important. I know that it operates in the municipal governance that public needs that guidance sometimes, where there are different perspectives that are required. And so I think it's important to do this kind of work, giving back to the community, especially if you benefit from it. It's always important to give back. I will entertain any questions that you all have of me. OK, well, thank you. Mike, can you tell us just a little bit more about the administrative review board that you served on? Right. It was part of the zoning department. And so we would review cases when it comes to variances and issues of that. So it wasn't the public zoning commission. It was the administrative review board. And so it was a decision-making body. Any appeals that would come from one party or the other would go to the city commission, or city council, rather. And they were the only power that would be able to override the vote of the commission. And so we received a lot of, I would say, a lot from commercial interests, sign sizes, parking issues, variances for building close to the street a few fee versus the required 15 fee, those kinds of things. I would say that was the majority of the cases that came forward. Variances and stuff like that. Correct. Thank you. Sue. I'm curious what brought you to Vermont, YouTube Essex specifically, and when you arrived here. I thought there were no hardball questions. That's a tough one. No, my fiance wanted to continue her education. So she applied to UBM and transferred. Luckily, at the time, I worked telecommutely so I could work anywhere in the country. And so I just transferred here. We found Essex through the university. They had apartments that were available to students that were nontraditional students. So we landed in Essex that way. And we've been here a little over three years. We just closed on a house a few weeks ago. So we are longtime residents. Planning to be anyway. Congratulations. Thank you. Any other questions for Nick? OK, you might have been in the foyer when I gave this field. But we'll go into executive session later, have a discussion, come out, and make a decision. And then somebody from the manager's office will contact you tomorrow on the results. So thank you again for wanting to volunteer on this zoning board of adjustment. We really do appreciate that. Thank you very much. Thank you, Nick. Can I ask another question on the process? Is it only when there's more than one person, is it only the first person that goes out or does the? If there are three people and there's one opening, or even if there's two, then the first person on the list comes up for the interview and the other two would go. But then after you interview, you can be here for the other person. Yes, once you've interviewed, then you're welcome to stay. Yeah, because it's their part's done. Next up, we have Bob McEwen, looking to be appointed to the Burlington International Airport Technical Advisory Committee. Welcome, Bob. And thank you for wanting to volunteer here. So same deal. You could give us a little bit of background. And I know it's pretty extensive related to the airport and the reason of why you'd like to be appointed to the TAC. Well, I'm a product of Essex Junction. Essex Junction school system. In fact, I went to the first grade in the little school house Essex Center, which is the historical society. University of Vermont, civil engineering, University of Alaska, public administration, engineering management, and Syracuse Public Administration. I've spent 20 years with the Federal Aviation Administration, including 10 years in Alaska. And we moved back here from Alaska when our oldest daughter entered the sixth grade, because that was a promise we had made so that they could be raised around their aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and all that stuff. So we came back. While working for the FAA, I was involved about half the time in the airport playing and development, including chief of the airport's division in Alaska for a term, a period of time. And I started work at the Burlington Airport as a consultant back in 1990. And I've spent 25 years there as a consultant, employee, slash, and then retired after 25 years. And I'm now back there as a consultant two days a week, helping with different things. While there, the last position I had was chief of the airport planning and development, where we were involved in lots of things, including land acquisition and several noise studies. And I'm very familiar with technical advisory committees, because I headed one when we did the last noise study. Why do I want to be on the committee? I think I have something to offer. I have a certain amount of experience in the area. And I think I could represent Essex. OK, well, that's it. Quite a background. Thank you, Bob. I'll open it up to questions from the board. Anybody? I think. You've been there and done this already from a different perspective, it sounds like. You had a different position. How will that affect how you approach it as a representative of Essex? Well, this is the way I feel about it. OK. This study is very important for the region. It's very important for the airport. And I think it's going to set the tone for where the airport is going to be going with respect to things that could be done to mitigate noise. And just exactly what that noise is. How will I look at it? I'll look at it very objectively, because that's what I am. I'm a planner, I'm an engineer, and I know what's important. Thank you, Bob. Other questions from Bob? Anybody? OK, I think you heard the spiel. How we do it? So you'll hear from somebody from the manager's office tomorrow. Thank you. And I'm sure you'd like to stay for that item that's on the agenda. You might? All right, awesome. OK, next up is one opening for the Essex Rescue Community Advisory Board. And we're fortunate to have two people actually looking to fill it. So Ramona is first on the list for the two. So Jean, if you wouldn't mind, waiting in the foyer. And then we'll have Gregs or somebody come get you. OK, thank you, Jean. So welcome, Ramona. Hi, good to see you again. Yeah, nice to see you, too. I don't need to have a play still if you don't hear me. Remind you? OK, we'll go like that. First of all, thank you, Ramona, for wanting to volunteer in this capacity. So as you know, the question will be, tell us a little bit about yourself. I mean, many of us know you, but for the record, you have a background on yourself and what your interest is for being appointed to the Essex Rescue Cab. I'm from California, Los Angeles area. To get to some place green and quiet and not seem friendly and safe, and I landed in Essex. I don't know what. And over the last few years, as I think I'm going to be retiring in about four or five years, I wanted to increase my community service and working in the community, because otherwise, I'm a workaholic, so I never had time. As you all know, in March, I volunteered for the select force. That didn't turn out well, but I've been monitoring the Front Forge Forum in the town website trying to see if there was something that might fit with my skills and that I could still feel comfortable doing and that I felt as if I was doing something too. And a few weeks ago, maybe four or five weeks ago, I saw the Essex Rescue. And I think I could bring something to it. I have worked with a lot of groups, worked at committees, worked on teams, worked on some volunteer boards, have a degree in accounting, a degree in medical studies. I worked well with advising boards. I know this is not a governing board, so we're just really getting a base on between the town and Essex Rescue. John and I, of course, are supporters of Essex Rescue. We've also used their service a few times. And I just think it's a very important component of the community. And I'd like to leave it to them as they meet their new challenges and grow. OK. All right. Thank you, Ramon. I appreciate that. Open up to questions. Ramona from the board. Mike. Have you done anything with Essex Rescue prior to your application here tonight? Other than, you know, I'm the finance director for the town of Underville. And they are always there making their annual shift. And I usually have communicated with Dan Mance when I have questions and just running out what's going on and where the budget is going and where the resources are going and that type of thing. Sure. Just on the financial aspect, finally, not on the operations. OK. Thank you. Other questions? Sue. Can you talk to some of the mention that you've been involved on other boards and volunteering other capacities? Maybe can you talk to a specific friend? I'm not only a professional board, but I'm an amazing board at financial offices. And I'm not at financial offices. What I do in California, I was a member of the Enhance Chamber of Commerce, and I was on a board that was to try to determine if it's a problem that happens some years ago that's still happening now, of how to track people and give them affordable housing and get skilled labor force into their businesses and economic development. So it was really a housing and a partnership with Salesforce. I worked in the capital industry for a few years when I came here, and it's set up in a team structure. It's not necessarily a board, but a team structure. So I was on a training team, or a training team with William. I was on an international accounting board where we researched and we discovered the aspect of international accounting and the population throughout the front. I was also on the RRG team, which is the rest attention groups. And those are all made up of different people, so it's kind of a nature of this. I did do a little work for a short period of time at the board for women helping to change their name now. Toe. Yeah, women helping to change their name. And that's weird about all I could think of right now. OK. Andy? Hi, Andy. Hi, Ramona. You mentioned being the liaison between this board and the Essex Rescue. How do you envision handling the communications between the two groups? You know, I looked online to see if you had some requirements of how that was done, and I couldn't find any. But I don't know for sure. I know how to do it and I don't know how you would do it. But I would imagine that you maybe would be quarterly or whatever. I would tell you what was happening. You could tell me what needs the community is looking for there that I couldn't even bring to the attention of their governing board. Just some kind of quarterly meeting or maybe just a little bit of a report or hopefully we would have something to do. How do you do it now? We don't. We don't have a good process. That's part of what I was asking the question. Yeah, it really is. So you just end up having this funny board we go over and it makes me watch once in a while and it's not really a confident anything. Very. I would say the importance of that because as far as I can tell the minutes of those CAB meetings are not available online. So it would be very important to hear from you as a rep. I know just what's going on and maybe even if you sent us their minutes it would be better. And I would assume there are some of these and once the community has that this governing board would want to bring forth there that way. Okay, other questions for Ramona? Okay, you heard the spiel? Yeah. Okay, thank you so much for coming in and wanting to volunteer in this position. Appreciate it. Hello, Gene. Thank you. Thank you for waiting out there. No problem. Welcome and thank you for being willing to step forward and be considered beyond the Essex Rescue Community. Thank you for the opportunity. Full disclosure, you're my insurance agent. Yes. So that is your business. You've heard the questions too. So if you could give us your background. Sure. A little bit about yourself and what your interest is on being appointed to the Essex Rescue Cab. Thank you. Born and raised in St. John's very. Allen and I, my husband moved to Essex in 1976. I worked for 18 years for the lock room of Downs Brackland and Martin office manager and litigation paralegal in 1989. My husband convinced me to leave that position and join him in the insurance agency that he's had for 45 years here in Essex. Essex Rescue has been a client in the agency and I have worked very closely with them helping them through their insurance. So they asked me if I would help them with fundraising back in the 80s, which I was very happy to do that. I actually ran their fundraising for years. Essex Rescue Super Party, I don't know if any of you have heard of that, but that was a six-front planning process and so enjoyed raising, helping them raise money. Once they started charging the insurance companies, we ended the fundraising. A couple of years after we stopped that, they came to me to ask me if I could get my committee together to help them because they wanted a defibrillator in every first responder and every police cruiser. Nobody on my committee was available at the time and I thought, well, give it a try. I raised $10,000 in 30 days when they were able to accomplish what they wanted to. Last year, Essex Rescue, this year Essex Rescue asked me if I would serve on a small hiring committee so they could find the committee and we didn't get that accomplished this summer. I'm a big fan of the organization. I feel so blessed that we have a squad with that skillset, that expertise, that dedication here in the community and if there's something that I can do to help them, I'm more than happy to do that. Thank you, Jean. Can I open it up to questions from the board before you go? Anyone have questions for Jean? I saw Andy's hand first and then I read. We currently don't have a good process for communicating with the person who sits in the seat that you're looking for. Any thoughts on how to develop a two-way discussion in our community? You're saying you don't have that with the current board? We don't have an official process how we do that yet. Probably should, but we don't. I just feel like I really know the insides of that organization since I've worked so closely with them through the years. I remember all the people that first started March Gephardt, all those people. I've seen them transition through the years. I feel like I have a real understanding of how the organization is run. I honestly don't know what the board does. This board does. I haven't had a full description of that. I guess it was more along the lines of how would we establish communication between this board and that board? How would you handle questions that might come up in either direction? I'm assuming you get together and meet face to face with that board? You never have. Oh, you never have? Usually once a year around budget. No kidding. It shouldn't be that way. I think it should be more public. More hands-on. So you're wondering if she has ideas on how to do that? Yeah, at least you wonder if you have any ideas on how to do that. Once I find out a little bit more about what their responsibilities are. Okay, other questions? Other questions for Jean? Mary? Are you aware that there's already a seat set aside for us, a junction on this board? No. Okay, and that is filled. So if you were not going to be appointed to this, it might have something to do with the fact that the Essex town seat is the one that's open, and I just wanted that to be disclosed in public before it's talked about in private. Sure. Other questions? Okay. And you heard the spiel. Yes. Thank you so much, Jean. Thanks for coming in. Appreciate it. Okay. That wraps up the interviews for tonight. So we're going to move on to the next item of business, and we're going to move this Lutz up and to talk about improvements to West Sleepy Hollow Road. Welcome, Dennis. Good evening. Good evening. Maybe this would be a quicker one than some of the prior ones that I brought to the board, at least I hope so. You got a memo back in mid-September about West Sleepy Hollow Road. As you all know, it's a class 4 town highway. We've made issues in the past, so we had flooding out there and a lot of other things. But it is a class 4 town highway, and it's reached under our town highway ordinance. The intent was to make progressive improvements to the roadway as more people lived out there. And so it's gone from a couple of houses, a shared driveway to a gravel road of X width to a gravel road of Y width, and it's kind of expanded, but it's still a gravel road. Under our town highway ordinance, it basically says we can't accept any new additional gravel roads. And I know the people who live out there have a long time expressed an interest to have the road taken over by the town. Because it's been a progressive improvement to the roadway, the last few houses that got put in out there, their own property, had to pay a substantial road impact fee to about $60,000, which is in the bank. There's some indication that another house might be sold shortly, although I don't know that for sure. That same impact fee would apply, so that $60,000 might go to $90,000. So the real issue in the association up there, West Sleepy Hollow Road Association, John Somerville came to me and said, can we use some of that money to do road maintenance? And we looked at it, and part of the reason for that high impact fee was to ultimately get the road paved. And so I talked it over with John, and he brought it to the association. And the association came back and said they would be comfortable if we were to utilize those funds. So it's not town funds, it's developer impact funds. And be the party to, in fact, improve the roadway. Starting at the bottom near 128 and making our way back. It's narrow down there. Some of the ditches have disappeared. There are some trees that have to be cut. But our intent would be to go close to the roadway starting at 128 and move as far as we can with the dollars that we have. If you're familiar with the roadway, about a quarter of a mile in, there's a fairly steep hill that you have to go over. We would not go past that. But also under the new stormwater regulations, even whether we have to work on a class 4 roadway or not, which has not yet been decided, there is a portion up there that's more susceptible to erosion. To fix that ditch, stone line it down a portion, but then take that lower portion of the road and widen it. Put new base in and pave it. And bring it to a point where the road would qualify to be taken over as a paved section of that road, just that portion. As a class 3 town roadway. Association was in favor of that. Obviously, at some point, about to have the whole roadway taken over, but we're not there yet. There's a point in the roadway where obviously all the cars from up above, it's a one-way road, that's where all the cars from above travel over. It gets the most traffic. In our view, it's the right thing to do. We would, are there some other town costs involved? We would do the engineering, we would do the inspection, we would hire the contractor, we would do that as part of our normal business. That's, in my view, we don't deduct for that cost of doing that. And we have time during the winter to plan this out and get it done so that we can construct it. The reason why I'm bringing it to the board, we probably could have stepped ahead and done this anyway, I think, for the part. I don't think that if you read into the way the ordinance is written, public works could have just done this. But the bottom line is that if we do this, it then qualifies as a next category road to be taken over by the town, that section. And I didn't feel comfortable stepping off and doing that without getting your permission to start this process. It's a small section, it may only be 300 or 400 feet of roadway that's paved. It's probably one of the areas the road that needs it the most. The upper portion has got some fairly good, stable rock base on it. This lower portion is the area that needs the most maintenance. But if we fix it, it would require a lot less maintenance because of the fact there would be stone lined ditches, shoulders, pavement, and we do enough of a base that it's going to last. Maybe as good as any of the other Class 3 roads we've gotten, and maybe better than some that we've got out there. So that's the idea. So I thought it would be wise to come to the select board and request your permission and answer any questions they have as to the process of what we're doing. Okay, seems pretty clear. Questions from the board? Sue. Is there a precedence or does this set a precedence for using those fees directly for the project? Plenty of commission will routinely collect impact fees from developers and we have routinely used those impact fees. In fact, the sooner we can use them after we collect them, the better. And there are those funds that we've collected we have utilized to put together with our projects in the numbers. I mean, it's Susan Wilson Road, Kellogg Road. We've done a lot. We've done a lot up in there. Up by the shopping center, we're going to do more. So it's in our purview to basically use those funds. They can put into the capital fund, they go into an account and then we use those. We try to use those. We have a gravel road impact fee that we use kind of throughout the town. And that we use, I'll use that first when we're starting to put gravel down in the road away, again to use up those impact fees before we start going into the capital funds that are set aside for that. Because there is a window that just goes to utilize these funds in the six years. So there's no real it doesn't set a precedent we're doing this. I think the only precedent would become one that it might lead to a higher class of roadway. That is there now. I guess what I was asking specifically. So these impact fees were for houses that were on that road and then the residents asked you to use those impact fees for their road. Is that a unique scenario? No, because the impact fees would go to that road. And now it's just a question of and we only have a couple choices on the three choices really you could let it sit in the bank, collect interest and wait. We could turn it over to the association and say we'll put it out over a number of years at three or four thousand dollars a year and use that to help augment your maintenance to put more gravel and do dish work or we can improve the roadway. I think that third choice in my view is a smart one. Mike? In your dealings with the board Dennis, do you know are they taking it upon themselves to set money aside? Do they have some kind of a monthly fee a portion of which goes towards the road maintenance and the they do. And there's been some difficulty with that which we didn't envision when we drafted the ordinance but it's the nature of the beast and that is we've had there's been some existing houses from day one then there was a major subdivision that came in then there was a couple of lots that were subdivided. Under Vermont law you cannot make them join the same road association. I live in a development south point and it has five associations associated with it. So I pay for the community pool and I pay for the flowers but I don't have a grass cut. Each one has different requirements and it's crazy but under Vermont law you cannot require them to join that major association. So in the past there's been some issues among the residents about who pays and who doesn't pay and what value. Hopefully someday we get away from that and maybe by going forward this and getting it to a point where the road eventually years down the road if we can get to the top of the hill the problem will go away. They have a lot of money and they do utilize that money and they have put a substantial money into the roadway especially when we had floods back I think it was track of time five years ago when we got the FEMA floods there was a large gathering here at the select board over three or four meetings to try to get work funded up there and the select board in the end decided not to fund to leave it the way the ordinance states that it's their responsibility and we basically go back to them this time of year and we write it and check it and if it's a good shape then we agree to plow it in the wintertime because the number houses and there's a turnaround the school bus goes up there and if they don't then we get on the phone and say there's a few problems we need to fix before we're going to plow at this winter. On some of our class four roads we've had to do that a couple of times we haven't had to do that up there. I think that's what we're talking about and that they put back in are purely a maintenance issue that there's no sinking fund for. There's no sinking fund required and none put in to improve the roadway. If they're doing it they're doing it on their own. To get it to a point where they could then have the time come in and do another 300 feet or something. Right there are like I said there's at least there's activity a little not for three or four extra lots at the top so if you start to to build this process and build the roadway there's enough capability of empty lots up there that at some point down the road I can see that whole road being a class three with a turnaround at the end but it's going to be a long time I probably won't be here at the board I'm not sure you guys would be here either it's going to take a long time to get there to be quite honest but I think this is a long place and I'd rather see the money go towards a permanent improvement than just blown away every year but putting more gravel on and ending up with the same problem It also sounds like this is the worst part of the road. This is the worst part of the road. If you're out there today it may not be but in the spring if you're out there it's the worst part of the road. Thank you Dennis. Other questions? So we're talking about 250-300 feet of roadway? We'll stretch it as far as we can. And that's the only part you would then, once it's been built and you inspected and accepted that it would need to be maintained by the town. And the only caveat to that would be if for some reason the board approves this tonight and all of a sudden someone walks in tomorrow to do another lot we would have additional money we would probably carry the road farther with the money that's available but right now the money is actually in the bank so it's really, and that would probably be something we'd come to in a consent agenda just to let you know that here we've got the money ready to continue it. But I think the whole concept is is this acceptable to utilize this money and improve the roadway because at some point that portion may become a class-free town. Okay, and the cost for doing maintenance, additional maintenance on It's really minimal. We plow it anyway. The lower portion is relatively flat. I don't even think we'd put salt down on that paid portion I think we'd probably just plow it off and we'll send a truck up there anyway to plow it out in the wintertime so it's not like that's an issue and I think if we construct it correctly with enough depth, the right material the stone line ditches I'm not worried about the maintenance on it I mean eventually yes it would have to be repaid but we're probably talking 15 or 20 years down the road and by that time hopefully we'll further up the hill and overlay it to it. Okay, all right, good. Thank you. Okay, what's the board's pleasure? I'll make a motion if you need one. Okay, sure. Do you need to ask if there's any public comment? Anyone from Wesley Behalo? Want to make a comment? Okay. Mike? I move that the select board approve the expenditure of up to $60,000 in collected road fees to improve a section of the sleepie hello road to the accepted public works paved road standard with the result that the improved and paved section of the roadway may at some future date be reclassified into a section of class three town highway. Thank you, Mike. Do I have a second on that? Second. Thank you, Sue. Any further discussion before we approve expenditure of the 60,000? Hearing none, all those in favor signify with saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you very much. Is that it for you tonight Dennis? Lucky one. Quick one. Next item is business item is 5C and that's to further discuss the MOU between efficiency Vermont and the Essex Energy Committee and we have Will and I'll chair of the Energy Committee. Hello, Will. Welcome. Please do join us and thanks for coming back with more detail. Yes, thank you. I won't, since we spent time on it before, I don't want to take up too much of your agenda but essentially we are trying to, the Energy Committee would like to participate or make Essex a participating community in the button-up campaign which technically runs from September 15th through December 31st but we're just going to do as best we can but we would try to start by hitting the ground running and just as a reminder what the button-up MOU with efficiency Vermont would require us to do includes implementing at least two engagement activities such as home energy parties, workshops and tabling events to distribute free LEDs to residents in exchange for getting some of their information to efficiency Vermont in order for efficiency Vermont to in turn encourage adoption of different types of energy projects and the part of this that I think is the most important is we would be trying to teach people how to use what's called the Vermont Community Energy Dashboard which we spent the better part of our last meeting on and which basically talks about what your community is doing and what you as individuals are doing to save money on energy costs and while I think a lot of the benefits of energy you know reduction in energy use savings are obvious. One that might not be so obvious is how our community looks in relation to others and the Vermont Community Energy Dashboard is kind of like the clearinghouse of all the information through the whole state of you know which communities have active energy committees which ones don't which are making progress towards the goal which ones are not and up until last week we literally had nothing on our on the Essex page of the Community Energy Dashboard now we have a couple of stories we're all starting to figure out how it works and the button up campaign is kind of the key to start really populating that with information and using it actively so that's a that's kind of an overview I will say that I don't know Greg do you want me to explain about the issue the one issue with the MOU I can jump in the other Don Attorney has reviewed the draft MOU he had one suggested change to strike out one section in there otherwise he was okay with it he had section 6C and haven't had a chance to bring that back to the EIC or efficient even lot yet don't think it would be a huge issue but if it is we can reassess or just not go into it I don't want to go against our town attorney's opinion so thinking that we give this to them and say this is how Essex would participate I frankly think that they'll take it they seem excited to get us in I don't know for certain but I'd be surprised if that's a deal breaker Okay, very good Questions for Will from the board Thanks for running this to ground again I mean it's fine we like I say we really do want to make it happen and I feel like we've got some traction we have a great committee I mean I don't know when the last time we went for like two and a half hours last time but we got a lot done or a lot of ideas germinating but we got to start to show some progress but to really keep the momentum This seems like a fair piece of work for two weeks since we saw you last so thank you for that effort The answer to my only question was about that I was struck so that's a good question I had I have a couple the period of performance for it begins September 15th so it was that put us at a disadvantage now that it's mid October it's a good question one of the things that we're thinking about is if the select board were to approve tonight we have an event that's on Wednesday which is the open house and we were thinking that that would be a perfect place to start giving away light bulbs assuming some people come to that open house so with your permission I think we'd like to again assuming you approve put out a table in the hallway with the light bulbs and try to get some people sign up as long as we can do it so that's why I say we want to hit the ground running the other thing is that we've already been in contact anticipating that we would be improved with some of the contractors and the contractors are the key to figuring out who has actually done some type of high performance energy audit getting their information so that they'd be willing to host or provide information for purposes of energy party so I don't think we're going to be at a substantial disadvantage in any way so go ahead I was just going to add out having had experience in this world but their goal is to motivate the community to for awareness so I don't think starting a month late is going to be held against the community their goal is like Will's saying they're excited to have another community be a part of it and spread the awareness thank you sir in section 4 under participant Will I guess it's a 1, 2, 3rd bullet it says that you record the name and address of all individuals who receive a free LED and provide this list to efficiency Vermont my only request there would be that before they take the LED lot that you let them know what you're going to do with that information when they sign their name and I forget if we went over this but I think when we talked about this at least I think when I spoke about it with Greg our plan is to say once it's sent we're going to destroy it there's no reason for us to hold on to it purely in efficiency Vermont's hands but they just need to know that their information is going to be disclosed to them just to make sure that they understand it and then it's the 3rd, 4th, 5th bullet on that same area says then you prepare a brief narrative report at the conclusion of the program with information on completed activities and results I think the select board they can correct me if I'm wrong would like to get a copy of that and maybe even a presentation to see how it went is that would you like to see I appreciate that and I had the same thought as I was ready to get to we would offer that to you it seems like the right thing to do that was the end of my questions so what's the board's pleasure on this one I'll make a motion I'll make a motion that the select board authorizing the municipal manager is Greg able to do that and hack and sign it when he gets back in the office okay authorize the municipal manager to sign a memorandum of understanding allowing the Essex Energy Committee to participate in but not Vermont thank you Sue, do I have a second Andy okay, thank you any further discussion about signing allowing Pat to sign this MOU with efficiency Vermont hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed, okay pass the 5-0 good luck with it, thank you so much for what you do of course, appreciate that one okay we're going to move on to business item 5D tonight we have presentation presentation hard copy okay, so we don't have to fire up the okay, and it's from Sandhills Solar LLC and tonight we have Victor and Will okay, brothers okay since this is too much for us to read through you're going to have to give us an executive summary if you would yeah, this is two parts real quick, my brother and I are solar developers, we work with Green Lantern development Sandhills Solar LLC is the special purpose entity that's been set up to undertake the permitting that we're going through right now on our Sandhills Solar project, which is a 500kw net meter solar array that's going to be located on an old sand pit that is currently owned by Hector and we are well into the permitting phase of that project I guess about 30 days ago you should have received our 45 day notice package that package was sent to the butters all state agencies the select board planning commission as well we've recently taken a meeting with the energy committee as well to introduce the project explain Green Lantern as a group and how we develop projects we look for community support where we can get it and really believe that this is a well-sighted, good project that can benefit the community in more ways than one and that leads to my second part of our presentation here which is to present a letter to the town offering a project to the town to become a member of a net metered solar array so there's two parts in what we do when we develop projects we locate good properties generally sand pits, brown fields and net negative properties that are out of sight and out of mind this property is perfect there's literally no view shed from any budding neighbor property there's very few butters to that point there's good access both for equipment trucks and upkeep which is very minimal with a solar installation about twice a year the grasses will get cut and twice a year there would be semi-annual inspections when the project is actually under construction a system of this size has a footprint of three and a half acres 2200 panels running from 13 rows east to west takes about 8 to 12 weeks to construct from the beginning to end it's a very low impact method of construction it's again going to be a fixed ground mount post array there's no moving parts there's no trackers it's silent and mother nature does the work to clean it so if there's been some people are like oh do you have to go up there really the rain and snow cleans the panels throughout the year the good news on our permitting accomplishments to this project specifically is we have gotten through wetlands there's no wetland issues there the state has delineated we've done the RTE study as well within the growing season which is study for rare threatened species that would be on site and there are no negative impacts there's no deer wintering habitat up there and there's no trail corridors that are impacted so on the overall first piece of environmental diligence it's passed with all thumbs up from all agencies our electrical engineering has also gone pretty far we got through the fast track analysis with green mountain power the interconnected with green mountain power all projects now are failing criterion 3 of the fast track which is a technical thing that they failed based on that failure we went to what is called a modified system impact study which is really just a short feasibility study and we'll be having the results of that probably in the next two weeks on October 31st we will be within the 45 day period to put forward our full application your board will be receiving a copy of the full application between now and then is the best time to contact us directly or make any comments or recommendations to the project as presented if there's any concerns or questions this is another part for us to answer those questions directly and that's why we're here as well it's not really in the rules that we have to be here but we like to be here to introduce ourselves and let you know what's going on so diving into after the project is fully permitted and constructed which will be sometime next year around the same time it takes about a year for the permits to be achieved again 8 to 12 weeks for it to be built and maybe another month to work out interconnection issues with green mountain power this project will be producing three things electricity renewable energy credits solar net meter credits the electricity will go back into green mountain powers grid and get distributed to the biggest load within their circuit the renewable energy credits under the new net metering program will be retired to green mountain power which means that this project will be a true renewable energy resource by vermont standards and the way the rules are written for renewable energy because again the renewable energy credits which is an intangible get retired to the utility and then those go towards the states tier 1 and tier 2 tier 1, 2 and 3 requirements for renewable portfolio standards going into the future this gets to my part of the presentation where the town can join as a member of the net metering group vermont has a great program it's not completely familiar with it it's virtual net metering meaning that any off taker within the interconnecting utility can take place in a solar array or renewable resource that qualifies solar qualifies my brother and I did a really quick look at your electrical usage based on your annual report from last year which has buildings and grounds highway and streets, library, police parks, your swimming pool all of that totals roughly $93,900 in annual dollar load and what that equates to is 630,000 kilowatt hours of load at $0.149 and the reason I'm giving you that $0.149 number is that is the statewide residential retail rate at which the renewable energy credits will be credited to the account based on the production from the solar the net meter credits I'm also trying to not take too much of your time because I know you have a long agenda so I'm speaking kind of fast so with that kilowatt hour load that you guys have every year just considering it that it will stay average at 630,000 kilowatt hours we're able to offset 80% of your load and the reason for that number is we need to leave a window of efficiencies and you have a great energy committee that's working on a host of different programs to become more energy efficient not only in the community but maybe in your buildings as well so that 20% window leaves room for plenty of future efficiencies and we would be able to offset 500,000 kilowatt hours of your annual electric load and the solar array will produce about 900,000 kilowatt hours of net meter credits so what I did was I put together a really quick pro forma for you that shows a 35 year value with the first 20 years highlighted and the reason for the 20 year highlight is that the initial term of the agreement will be for 20 years that runs concurrent with all of the systems that will be in place and work product along with the land control agreements and leases that would be in place for the life of the project so in year one using the retail rate factoring and adjusters for a project of this nature in a sand pit which is considered a preferential siting location and a total net meter credit rate of about 17 cents we would be allocating 500,000 kilowatt hours to the town which would have a net meter cash value of roughly $85,000 in this example here in our initial offer which is by no means a fixed offer this is just to get the conversation going you would see a year one savings of $8,500 year one and that would be pretty constant for the first 10 years and roughly average over 20 years and in the initial term of the agreement at no cost to the town you would see a overall savings of $163,000 approximately in the payments you made to Green Mountain Power it would be really clear we're not providing electricity you do not disconnect from your utility and another really big takeaway of this offer this is a true no cost offer to the town of Essex it's a service agreement you're not no liability in the field it's just a service agreement with the net meter on the net meter inside you wouldn't share any ownership or obligation in the operation maintenance of the facility worst case scenario you go back to paying and we will also Green Lantern as a group will also cover the reasonable attorneys fees to go through our documents for the town so that if you do enter into an agreement with us we will cover those costs and that's our customary practice to make sure that this really is a no out of pocket endeavor for the town we try to keep these projects to benefit to the town first yeah that's been our practice as well we're cited in the town we go to the town first and then we go to the schools as well and that carries through to you guys are the best offtakers as well on the benefit side the town will benefit local community will benefit we obviously benefit this is our job and what we do on a full time basis the landowners will benefit as well to have a long term lease I believe personally that the neighbors also benefit by having a quiet low impact neighbor that doesn't have constant traffic or stormwater issues you know and it's not a residential project that really truly is a work for the public and our letter is very straight forward and simple it outlines what I just shared with you and then our 45 day notice on the permitting side is another detail letter that you previously received on the overall project and that outlines exactly how we are going through our permitting process like I said October 31st I believe is the 45th day pretty shortly thereafter we'll be putting in our complete application and I believe it'll probably take 6 to 9 months to get anything back from the public utilities commission and we will be building next year with everything working out as planned at this point can you ask us any questions if that's answered them questions from the board? can you tell me a little bit about Green Lantern and where you're located we're local my brother and I are from Jericho originally Jericho now our CEO is Luke Schulenberger he is also local he grew up in Jericho as well business is out of Waterbury, Vermont business for over 5 years now we have 40 individual projects of this nature that are metered throughout the state of Vermont we're one of the larger companies that does everything in-house you'll commonly hear people say DC which really means engineering, procurement and construction and we also do operations and maintenance as well for the life of the project and it's a Vermont owned company by Vermonters we used to play hockey and we ran for the mighty nights and the company was started with a focus in the financing and working with municipalities ownership of projects where they were not able to easily raise the money based on some of the tax implications when the program first came out and based off of that knowledge base Luke started building, owning and operating more facilities my brother and I have been in this business for the past two and a half years focusing on Brownfield redevelopment with solar so we and Green Lantern is in for the long haul they're owning and operating these they're not flipping them to outside vendors so their business plan is to make them and keep them under their control so that they know they can operate the program fast all of our our workers too are Vermont based as well and we hire locally how many employees do you have time right now some contractors who are close to 75 we have five different projects that are being built at once Irene had your hand up did you have a comment you mentioned Hector earlier I think you mean Alicinical at this point they've switched does Hector still own that piece just checking great does Hector get a benefit as well or is he just leasing a lamp to you yeah we have a land control agreement with them for a long term okay great Andy? yeah so I'm trying to figure out how you make money in this so I think you're getting a credit from Green Mountain Power and you're charging us the regular rates you're taking the difference between the credit and what you're charging us for yeah so we give you so in a net metering arrangement where the off taker keeps ten percent of the net metering credits there was a hundred dollar bill and you're going to receive a hundred credits your bill's zero you keep ten percent of those credits so now you have ten dollars that you're keeping and then you pay the system owner ninety dollars so in effect you're no longer paying Green Mountain Power a hundred dollars you're paying the system owner ninety keeping ten so your bill for that month would be ninety instead of a hundred and that gets calculated on a monthly basis throughout the year I guess maybe I phrased a question wrong I understand how we would pay less but how do you make money where's your profit in this come from it's not just a pass through yeah the state set it up as so you're basically the way the state set up net metering virtually is the trade off by being able to have a commercial business whereby a portion of the net meter credit is kept and paid and they allow for that transaction so you turn net meter credits into dollars by placing them with groups like schools businesses municipalities and that creates the cash flow relationship because you're now no longer paying the utility and then based on financing and the number one driver where everyone's making the money is the ITC tax credits which is still at thirty percent the other question is you said it would be likely a twenty year term you figured the savings for ten years is it a fixed rate for those ten or twenty years or does it go with yes the initial term of the agreement would be twenty years the rate is fixed so up front we would agree to the discount say that's ten percent while it gets negotiated to twelve or fifteen that discount rate would live for the life of the agreement and the initial term is twenty years the way that the rules are currently written with PUC is that net metering will last forever will it last forever we don't know but we are guaranteed ten years of adjusters meaning that you get a positive or negative for the ten years of the project and then every year after that the negative adjuster stays with the project and under version two point out of net metering no we're not yeah, version one under last years there was a twenty year life of the program so now there's a longer life this is two point out of net it just switched in July so it's a discount rate it's not a fixed fourteen point nine cents for twenty years it's a discount from whatever remount powers rate goes to yeah so and then this is how the PUC figures it so every two years they will adjust the incentive tracked to the statewide residential retail rate for electricity and right now that's fourteen nine one nine and then you'll see in the performer that I put together and I'll get your digital copy there's a every other two years it'll increase by two percent which we kept at a real conservative case and that just goes up based on the rates raising from GNP and it gets tacked to that initial retail rate sorry, last one and it's a seasonal thing that how much power this is going to generate so it'll be is it the case that we only get as much power as you generate during the winter months and we're paying the balance to remount power at the regular rate so there's two different ways to put the for accounting purposes and we've had off takers choose either to make it really simple we average it out over the year and that's the same bill every single month all the production happens in the summer months and then we do an annual true up at the end of the year and adjust for any over allocation or under allocation or you can go to actuals and go on a monthly basis for actual and it all comes down to what is the preference for your and on the billing side we try to match it with your cycle so it all comes down to different fiscal year and fiscal years whatever they are so if you're on the actual billing there could be months where you're also getting a bill from your own power or you're paying their rate for some of your power because you're not just to be clear you'll always get a bill and we can't offset 100% of your load so just based on that you would still be getting a small bill as well I would just show up as a credit it's a another line item that shows how many credits are being allocated to the media alright thanks other questions I'm curious maybe not a question for you but you said you spoke to the energy committee I'm curious what their reaction was for the energy committee so I don't know if you guys are on the floor I'll speak for mine we had five guests that night you were two of them and it was just lots of information coming as like a fire hose and we took a lot of notes and asked a lot of questions we hadn't seen the list I did afterwards to try to get a handle on what's going on here because it's brand new to me it's the first time I've had to dig into something to this degree so you haven't supplied your comments to them yet then we have not, no as a committee and I think at our next meeting we'll be able to sort of digest bounce ideas of each other this is a great one for the energy committee to look at and comment and then I think there's luck for if we have some great but I think the energy committee would be the right place to really have a dig into it and this is the initial offer by no means are we asking for any agreements or anything here we're introducing ourselves introducing this opportunity and we would look to follow up and if we were asking for anything it would be to work with the select board and then the energy committee to actually perform an energy audit we would take a look at two years of the towns bills from GMP give you a full report in a couple weeks tell you exactly what you're using and where and then that would perfect the number and by no and it's a free service on our part we do that if you guys choose to do that tonight we'll work on that as quickly as possible because I was only really working off of your annual report from last year and things change one more question if we as a municipality don't choose to enter into this agreement you then look to sell to develop what are your next options for schools and municipalities what about residents is that too difficult no this is not a community solar project the way that we're going to be able to give back to the residents through this project is by working with a municipality in the school and reducing the tax burden from an energy perspective okay I'm just curious about this October 31st does that impact us or is that just something you're meeting because I don't want to feel rushed what's our timeline there is no rush at all honestly the 45 day notice is part of the permitting rules so we have a window of 45 days to notice everyone and they can make comments and work with us officially unofficial even if you don't comment you're still a party to the petition and it's done at the PUC level and on the 45th day you'll receive a very big thick packet of all the information for a complete application okay something to look forward to we get excited about something we are what's the lifetime of an array like this 20 years is what they're guaranteeing so as far as the panels go is that what you're saying it's going to be interesting I think 30 to 40 years it's going to be where they're going to start but it might be panel technology it might in 10 years be completely different but as far as this project I would dare say if they kept it up 50, 60 years the panels from the 70s are still operating my question was when it goes past its useful life whenever that would be what happens part of the we will testify within our application that at the end of the useful life of the solar array the property will be returned to its former state so in this case they're ground mounted racking is literally pushed in they'll come out and pull it out it takes less than a week to remove a solar facility and then it will be scrapped is there a fund or something that you put money into just in case you're not around these are such small projects the cost twice what it costs to take about $15,000 to remove and you have about $45,000 in scrap so you have incentive to take it out actually the most incentive to put it in yeah and keep it running if it goes past its useful alright very good so I think this is a wonderful thing for the energy committee to really look at and then provide comments that maybe we can see sound good? and then I guess my only ask of the select board would be to work in coordination with the energy committee and get permission to review the bills so we can give you a better a better savings estimate and energy report so to get real data to be able to do that okay is there any reason we can't make a motion to do that now Greg? I have the sense of the board to have the energy committee provide comments back to the select board we can put it on a future agenda to discuss some more depth I would like to grant you the ability to look at two years more of our electrical data is that something that you're okay with us making a motion as a select board? I'm not really okay but I'd rather have the time attorney review Can you ask him that question though just so we don't stall waiting for the energy committee who's going to forget to ask you that because that's not really something they'll think to ask you because you're not arguing okay if there's no other questions we want to say thank you for coming in sounds like a pretty cool project it sounds like you found a really neat spot as well it was thumbs up all around on that one I'm sure it doesn't always happen though because not only when I come here and live here I drive by these things I want to have some I want to have some ownership over the years okay very good, thank you thanks guys, thanks for coming in okay, so now we're on to business item 5E and that's a discussion of the city of south burlington airport resolution and I think last meeting you got a copy of that resolution and it was decided to put it on an agenda so we can have a discussion about it so it was in our packet we have a lot of information that came with it so what I propose is that we knock it around some talk about it and then open it up to the the public here because there's a bunch of people that would like to add some comments as well so I'll open it up to the board to see where you want to start with this um Mike are we a couple of people have introduced themselves as members of the airport from Burlington are they going to be available for questions before or after? well I was thinking we can ask with the information that was provided and if we have additional questions we'll see if there's somebody here that can help us with those okay yeah anybody want to start? we saw that this went to some other municipalities including Colchester and Williston and both of them voted it down Winooski I believe passed it similar they're asking our thoughts on it it is the airport I guess has been in business a long time about a hundred years or something like that and it's kind of a weird situation where it's an asset of Burlington but it's located in a different municipality it's located in south Burlington so let's start we're talking about regionalizing other functions and I think it's perfectly appropriate to be thinking about how do we share governance of some larger entity and in this case the larger entity already exists in the case of the regional dispatch it doesn't exist yet and that's part of the hang up I think is trying to envision what a regional entity looks like before you join it when you don't have those assets already set up for the procedures being the second largest town in Vermont I think a lot of us do fly in and out of the airport because there's a structure that's a construction that's like borders very close to the lands near the airport and I think the noise factor pollution and other things are impacting us whether or not we're aware of it and to be able to have a say in that type of governance is definitely worth having a conversation and I think that's what Wunewski stressed when they voted for it was they want to have a conversation on a regional level Mike I'm struck by two things in reading all of this the thing that I find the most curious was that I believe the advisory board to the airport had made a suggestion of doing this three or four years ago if I'm not mistaken and it didn't get acted upon that would seem to me that would just seem to me to signal some hesitancy on the part of the airport to agree to at least discuss this method of governance so to speak I just I think I think it's such a unique asset to this area and this state that I'm just I'm struck by why it never went anywhere from three or four years ago and I think the thing that I'm seeing missing in here if you want to do it through 60 I see this is just a 180 it's only half the story I don't see any voice from Burlington to answer your question I feel really one totally lopsided on this where I'm not comfortable with the decision because there's certainly not enough information from me because I haven't heard the voice of the asset owner I just heard the voice of somebody who does do not own the asset and that's very true I don't get the sense that there's a great deal of agreement on the other side of the table and it just makes me wonder if we're having this discussion where it's going to wind up sitting again and not going anywhere I I look at I look at the numbers of inclination at the airport I see them going down I see Bletsburg making some noise about becoming Canada's Vermont airport and that competition scares it doesn't scare me but it certainly makes me sit up and take notice of the fact that this only seems to be coming from one side of the table just makes me real curious to hear from the other side of the table I feel like I only have half the story yep Sue? I read through all this material and I still don't feel like I have enough information I felt like there were some things that were just vaguely referenced like the is it inclinements? yeah so there was reference to dropping and kind of an inference that was because of Bletsburg and what was going on over there but I don't think there was like a clear I like to see clear analysis but I didn't see and then there was also some other reference and some of the other material that Bletsburg's inclinements were also dropping so is this just an industry trend and something else is going on? I don't know so those kind of questions the other thing struck me on this slide which is you know I think an attempt to show the region is not the town of Essex I almost feel like we're in afterthought so how were we brought into some of the language that's in here references Colchester-Wilson Manuski and other communities and some of it spells out all the other communities and then I guess the other question I have is what is the state of Vermont's position on this and what role could they or would they play that really didn't show up anywhere right didn't show up anywhere it's a good point sorry lots of questions I don't really no I understand a lot of questions left open there other other concerns, comments alright 2013 BIA strategic planning committee recommendations for the city council and for them to include this work step I don't know if they've reconvened since then maybe that was an action step that they passed along to the Burlington City Council and maybe they've been busy we certainly get busy and forget things for years at a time I wouldn't point a finger at anybody in particular and say well they obviously drop the ball for a reason maybe they're just busy priorities and maybe it takes this is about equity this is about taxation without representation we're taxed our error is taxed the quality of our our noise levels are taxed by having an airport nearby so shouldn't we be part of a governance structure I think it's always a timely thing to ask ourselves should we not be part of a regional government for a regional entity like this and not necessarily assume that there was a reason that the ball got dropped with that extended things like UVM then because they're they're an asset as well to the community a huge asset and we pay taxes to help support it as well well last I knew they were in Burlington so I don't see the same type of disconnect I mean as far as Burlingtonians are concerned they have as much noise pollution and air pollution as Essex residents do and yet they control the airport and South Burlington's in the middle actually hosting the airport Burlington's got all the control on this side Essex is on this side equally benefiting or not from it but having no say in the operation so I do think that a little more of this equitable governance is something that should be thought seriously about and for example as a consent agenda as originally was posted and that's why I wanted to bring up as a business item it doesn't have to be decided tonight but I would like people to think seriously about us dropping the ball while we finally have a chance to weigh in I'm sorry Mike I won't disagree with a lot or by whatever you said I'll disagree with some of it but I guess the major the major piece for me is you can't have regional governance if the main party isn't at the table and again for me that is the biggest question mark I've got is to if they don't want to play then just come out and say we're not playing let's have that voice in the conversation I'd love to be at the table for it but the fact of the matter is we're not driving and so sure we can tell them that we'd like to do it that we'd like to be a part of it like to be invited I don't see how you have an effective regional governance without everybody particularly with the asset owner without everybody wanting to I mean to me that's the key the towns want to I don't see that same I don't see that same enthusiasm from the from Burlington I'm also not sure I think there's kind of two actions one is being interested in being engaged in the conversation and opening dialogue and hoping everybody comes to the table and having a discussion as a region and then there's this other action to approve this resolution and I'm not sure why a resolution is required in order to have the discussion that's a very good point why do you need a resolution for the conversation plus the resolution I think would need to get vetted before you think of signing something like that to see how accurate it really is we write the resolutions that we sign but in the review we should make sure that it's accurate if that's something we want to end up doing I'm sorry Andy Andy I'm trying to get a word and enjoy it just to comment on the fact that this was a work item or a recommendation from the group that talked about this before made this recommendation I can't put my finger on it I'm not sure if it's actually in this packet or if it's on something that was given to us online this was one of many I think recommendations that group made and there was no indication anywhere in the packet how all those various recommendations were prioritized or not may still be on the list of things that they plan to look at I don't know I don't know if at this point we could ask for that comments on that from folks in the airport or would we rather not open it the board would like us to open it up to public at this point okay so who would like to speak on this topic okay just raise your hands I just want to see how many okay so when we start here we're sure you can work together you want to come up here by the mic I think that would be yeah yeah we'll bring him he'll talk with these guys there the other gentleman hello welcome if you could just again say your name for the record and your positions with the airport so Gene Richards director of aviation and my name is Nick Longo I'm the director of planning welcome thank you for being here tonight thank you I guess if you don't mind me just starting with a few comments and taking questions first of all I've heard what you've all said and your concerns your comments but they're built on somebody that wrote a document they didn't facts check it they didn't check with the source and I would say if somebody wants to have any kind of a relationship with me they should start by talking to me and discussing the information and making sure the facts are true and you know you talked about implements implements are not down, implements are up and then if you say implements are down from 2008 sure they are, but they came up from 2005 because we had an amazing staff that thought of a brilliant technique to go to the Canadians and advertise to them when the exchange rate was well when the exchange rate changes so doesn't the number of people there willing to come to the state and spend the money and if you check any marina the state, the Canadian depend on Canadians, they too are having that issue and they didn't tell you that Platsburg's down 15% but Platsburg's worked hard they're not a competitor, it's not bad to have more air service it's great to have more air service so Platsburg does well that's not bad for Burlington that's not bad for you, that's great for you that means better pricing and you want competition and you want Platsburg to do well so I think it's important if you're going to have or build a relationship and this is what we've told South Burlington it all starts with number one making sure that the content that you're going to build this on is correct and it's accurate there's nothing that's in this resolution that's accurate or has been fact-checked by the airport and it's insulting that they went forward without even asking and then they made a lot of assumptions about this last study I think one of you mentioned that nothing was done and that we fell asleep or something absolutely not we completely, Karen Paul, a city council from the city of Burlington as diligent as diligent comes we had Ed Kaladney who ran the University of Vermont in the hospital we had a great team and US Airways I mean we had major massive people on this that worked very hard to go through this and this was an initiative not asked from South Burlington it was from the new mayor Merrill Weinberger said please look into all the opportunities not just regionalization but privatization and our current status we ran around the table we invited all the communities to come and have a discussion and it came down to an interesting comment that Ed Kaladney said he said if you don't want to put anything into it that means money okay and you probably shouldn't be part of this organization going forward so if you don't want to put money in then we're probably not going to regionalize the city of Burlington has spent 100 years building this asset most of the airports that are in the state of Vermont were started about 100 years ago so I think you'd have to ask yourself is that failure or is that success to have this airport in this condition in this area it's actually success they've done very well and you can look at what other state airports have done and they fairly have made it I mean we're very lucky that just a few years ago we had somebody that was very passionate about looking at this and this gentleman came in and he brought those airports back but otherwise they probably wouldn't be here today but Burlington never had that issue they've had good leadership for 100 years but the city of Burlington has invested their tax dollars up to 1977 and investing in this how would you like it if somebody came to you say self Burlington or Wenduski came to you and says you know we like your library we should regionalize it matter of fact we're not even going to ask you we're going to go to Burlington and tell them we want to do we're going to go to state and see if we can pull you into it that's not very cool and that's not the Vermont way 25 years ago this was asked during Bernie Sanders time I think it was Bernie Sanders and one of the senators was Skiff and they tried to do it then and it failed and it failed for exactly the same reason nobody wanted to put anything into it but you get nothing in life for free and you can't steal in this state from people you don't want your property stolen nor does the airport and the city of Burlington we do serve the region I think quite well I mean we've recently taken on Atlanta we've recently taken on Charlotte and we've had many requests in there that's amazing service for a community this small so before you start criticizing you should really understand the aviation business and I would recommend that you maybe would come talk to us like we're doing today and maybe visit and so we could speak with you about what we're doing okay great thank you for that did you want to add anything real quick I think I can share Gene's frustrations and it was very difficult for us just to be approached by the city of South Burlington later Winooski on some of these these resolutions and these facts in the presentation even with our logo on it without our permission so it was extremely frustrating and a lot of that frustration it appears to be coming from a few issues F-35 coming to the airport in 2019 and the noise compatibility program the acquisitions and then what we're transitioning to is sound insulation for many many homes in the South Burlington community these are all FAA regulatory functions so even with regional discussion these changes are not going to change because of the regulatory process behind the FAA so there's many fact-check issues with this resolution but there's also many omissions that also show a clear picture or lack thereof I just wanted to share questions for them just a comment though isn't it kind of a unique scenario that it is it is in the bounds of South Burlington and governed by the city of Burlington it's not abnormal but it's not do you know what I mean every airport a third of the airports are regionalized some are privatized some are municipal and they all have different configurations if you think about 100 years ago there was no self-development there were a bunch of fields and there was very little and so much of where we're at today has to do with poor planning and building right up to the airport and not necessarily thinking that's an airport industrial around it so I think the answer to your question is I think from my understanding is there's a very diverse mix of ownership and also where airports exist just a clarification because I think I think you might have misunderstood my comment when I said that this was made that this was brought forward three or four years ago and didn't appear that anything happened with it there was no accusation that anybody fell asleep at the switch I was merely curious as to why it didn't get acted on and of course there was nothing in here that said anything about why or why not so to me I think you mentioned it and Mr. Watts you did as well there were many issues in that strategic plan not just with governments but with finances with staff and each one of these under the leadership of Mayor Juan Berger and Jean we've accomplished so many of these actually we succeeded succeeded and with every one of the goals that the committee gave us we exceeded within 18 months and today if you've been into the airport recently just walk around it it represents a state of Vermont in every way I mean I we hope anyhow that's what we strive for from the food to every advertisement it is Vermont is reinforcing Vermont it is your airport and you know the only question I would ask is what would change with regionalization and the reality is I don't control FAA I don't control I have really no control I don't control the guard so you speak about noise I don't control the noise I can't say a word to them you know the thing I can but the reality is they're managed by the Pentagon and not by Burlington International I read your question I'm wondering if this airport strategic planning committee from 2013 has reconvened or they still meet or the membership has changed it was a one-time project and they gave a report to City Hall and made the recommendation and it wasn't at the time regionalization because nobody wanted to participate but just so you know if somebody does want to have that discussion we're willing to have the discussion if you have money extra money and you want to give us two million dollars a year each community I will do that all day long I would love to have money to put back into the airport but that's not what people are offering you want something for nothing and that's not the way it works is that we need to be able to with straight face tell the people as you would other people of Essex say we took your investment and we know we're not giving it away we're getting something in return and yeah we'll put that back into the water or some other infrastructure in the city but it just can't be taken for free and then your trouble you would have is you'd have to go to your taxpayers and say something you're getting for nothing we're now paying for and that would be the interesting conversation my understanding was the Burlington the city gets the percentage of the income that comes to the airport see they're not being told the truth so where do you get your money and where do you get your operating expenses the city of Burlington gets not one penny from the airport it's an enterprise zone all the money must stay there anything if we were to sell something it would go either back to the FAA or back into the infrastructure but the city they only get reimbursed for police services anything we use we get reimbursed but they take absolutely no money out at all and so they're putting in money you're saying that it's not reimbursed no I say they have in the past they've invested for 77 years without you know I mean 77 years of investment sure well I'm not asking them to go back to 77 I'm saying from now on today it's absolutely not it's FAA it's an enterprise zone it runs itself $18 million budget we spend within our means and if we had more money it'd be a nicer airport it'd be a bigger airport it had one TSA but we don't we're mean and mean we're basically we're net zero at the end of the year so I'm not sure why Burlington has 100% authority to make decisions as the owner or whatever the correct word is why is there governance controls seated in Burlington and not shared with South Burlington or other entities through regional governance if they're not making money or we're not making money you're putting money into and I guess I just don't understand why Burlington they also have the financial responsibility of the airport we have about $40 million in bonds that we've signed up to so I think it's a staggered thing first of all there's ownership I mean if you had money you wouldn't give it to your neighbor and say let's share the decision on how we're going to invest this and run it will do I'm just saying it's an asset that belongs to this city but the liabilities belong to all of us and I think that's where like I said there's noise that affects all of us there's pollution that affects all of us and just because these externalities are not things that you can put on a legislative sheet or that you haven't doesn't mean that they don't affect us and that's I think where some of this insistence on taking part of a regional governing body comes from it's not all about dollars and cents because life isn't all about dollars and cents I mean they built your community you wouldn't have an idea if it wasn't for an airport so I'm going to go to Sue Andy then Mike okay now go to Andy I was just going to say trains are louder at my house than the planes are so yeah yeah yeah they are here I know there are communities that are impacted and certainly Winooski's are ready to line with the runway and I know part of the discussion part of the discussion has been at least having a seat on your advisory group from Winooski I know somebody there's four seats from Burlington one from South Burlington I have no say in the matter at all but it just seems that Winooski ought to have somebody there but but yeah if we do something about the train noise too yeah I was just going to remind Irene that the tenants of that airport that they have absolutely no control over and when you talk about the noise you're talking about the guard for the most part and they don't have any control over the guard so I was just going to remind you and then that is exactly what Thomas Chenin said he goes I am pro-guard you can't do it that way because the guard is what makes the noise so you can't be pro-guard and then also not like noise because they are the noise most of our aircraft are very modern and you don't do them just curious does Burlington or do you have any intention of responding to this and maybe doing the fact checking and providing they have it resolutions jumped all over the place we were fortunate enough to get it from my side from somebody who handed it to us even when new skis it wasn't fact check they voted on it without even fact check so if you're going to vote on it I would say check it and then I think once you've checked it you're going to say that's not worth doing so we have sent them a corrected copy I don't think they sent it to you it's definitely evolved there's been changes in these skis there of course don't already change their resolution and we spend a fair amount of time this goes back to the tax issue where South Burlington tax the airport double without any backup and just so there's some bad blood there but we spend about 60 hours a month returning questions and answers to South Burlington the communication is quite good it's just they don't like the answer and the reality is we don't control the answer FAA makes decisions and the Guard makes decisions and the airlines but the airport doesn't so when the conversation eventually happens whenever that is I don't see a resolution being required in order to be invited to that conversation is that right? just so you know every time we have a community discussion like the one we had five years ago and you're always invited we always reach out to all the communities and invite everybody as far as St. George you know I mean we go way out and because they even could be potentially on the flight path we really try to be sensitive to the process and to the noise you know that we are making and if there's different ways for us to do it we just spent five days in Savannah at a noise conference trying to better understand the noise and how we can be better stewards and again we were one of the people with the least amount of real problems compared to the bigger airports and that invitation is open that's from a noise committee which you discussed with Bob McEwen today to a master planning process which we're going to start next year again the ATA is our regulatory agency and also our funding agency those programs are there but always the invitation and personally to you I'll come in and you be there for her and I would come in for a tour if you get time just for us to better explain things one last question before we move on to the next in an ideal world what would be the ideal solution for the airport? I'm happy the way it is I would not in any way be upset with the regional size government if people wanted to participate in the financial manner so that I could look at the taxpayers and say I got to return your investment so I'm open to both ways I don't think either way is bad it doesn't mean there's nothing in life for free this resolution is a big part I mean it's poorly written it's not thought out it's not sensitive it's a mind that I don't get at all because you can't steal from people so the answer is both ways are good and privatization is good so I would be open to any one of the three and I got approval from the people of Burlington if they wanted to do it I don't make that decision I'm just here discussing it I think all three ways have problems and I don't know if one is better than the other I know this one's worked for Vermont for a hundred years okay thank you I appreciate that okay if you want to might as well come up to the table here by the mic and state your name your position where you represent please welcome my name is Paul Sarn I'm the communications coordinator with the city of Burma Jesse Baker our city manager wanted to be here tonight to talk about this resolution but we're also having our city council meeting they did send me with the letter I think you're all pretty versed in that so I just want to emphasize just a couple of key points so you know essentially Jesse and Seth wanted to extend their thanks considering the resolution they couldn't be here like I said just a couple of key points regarding the resolution that they wanted to make really all we're asking for is a conversation on how it can strengthen incredibly important asset regionalization looks like we think a similar joint resolution with the town of Essex would be immensely positive from an economic development standpoint Essex is one of the largest communities that benefits from the airport it sounds like you guys are pretty versed in a lot of this stuff we believe that there are many excellent regionalized models that can be inspired by regional dispatch CSWD, Green Mountain Transit but I think most importantly the city of Winnowski is advocating to give voice to our residents and surrounding neighbors through this process regarding both positive and negative implications to your point about whether or not that conversation requires resolution I think officiating with resolutions is certainly a good place to start that conversation I think they're both very open to different aspects in which we can do that thank you Paul thank you so much a second in case there's questions that the board has for Paul anybody no, okay not at this time, thank you thank you Bob, I see your hand up before did you want to well with your background experience is there anything you'd like to share with us you don't have to but I thought I'd like to say yes, we do have many things more to do Gene alluded to it, Mike alluded to it to the airport as a property management organization it's an enterprise fund as a part of the city of Burlington but its responsibility includes lots of things including managing the property okay and that means it has leases with the airlines it leases the area to the guard, it has a number of tenants around the airport that it has leases and contracts with that's a really large element of the airport's responsibility managing property okay, it doesn't need to have a committee to do that as far as I'm concerned the idea that's come up with by South Burlington is more of an individual vendetta, sorry where I feel about it when the time comes that Burlington in South Burlington agree that we should look at a different kind of governance remember, what are we governing we're governing property management then maybe it's time to talk about it in a more regional aspect but right now it's not necessary it's working, why change it what kind of power would a different governance have that they don't have now they have the opportunity to complain you have the opportunity to provide input but the airport still has to manage the operation the FAA controls how you spend your money the Air National Guard decides how much noise to make we don't have any control over that that won't change regardless of what kind of governance you put into place that's it any questions for Bob my understanding was that Burlington was buying up properties and knocking down houses in a South Burlington neighborhood I'm guessing that that is something that would be changed if you had a different governance structure let's go back to that I started the land acquisition program in detail back in 1990 why, because the residents in the area adjacent to the airport were impacted by noise because the land was built up in houses during the life of that period, right up to the street across the airport, who saw it the FAA had a program that allowed people to sell if they wanted to, to the airport and the airport would buy the houses and take them down because you couldn't use the land for residential development what was taken down if they were in a certain noise impacted zone, those properties all were and we bought all those properties and guess what, with the agreement of South Burlington now, what's changed the governance of South Burlington different people different decisions on how to approach it and when you have three people on the the village council on the city council of South Burlington that are anti military you can do anything you want in South Burlington, as it relates to complaining but that's not going to solve the problem is there anybody else that wanted to comment on that hearing none I guess I would just like to offer to Jean the opportunity to correct this because you said it was rubbish or that there were not facts here and I may not know the airport as well as you but I believe that Burlington International Airport for example serves a critical component of Vermont's economic development and transportation infrastructure I don't think that's false, but maybe you do so if you could just go line by line with this and submit it to Greg at your convenience I would love to hear your counter to all these things that to me sound perfectly reasonable and I'm very willing to be educated but I don't want to hear you trash this without having the opportunity to take your time and present your side of what these wear-as are, thank you I'm asking you, so if you don't mind that would be great is there somebody who could do you thank you it's best you come in and have a real discussion it's just so important for the public to be able to access this right I'd love to, I've been there many times I would love to come back and visit with you I think we'll have Greg contact you and then work it out that way, okay, so more information sound good? ready to move on? appreciate everybody coming tonight thank you all, appreciate that very much okay, then we're going to move on to business item 5F and that's the MOA for a trail mapping project with University of Vermont students Greg? so you've seen this before you gave a letter of support probably about a month ago for some UVM students to come in and do some trail mapping in town, they are ready to go they've met with Ali, they've met with Shannon from the GIF mapping standpoint, they've met with Darren from the planning standpoint and all they need is a select word to agree to the MOA to let them start doing it the plan is to focus on some town owned land behind the End of Essex to start with and then also the town forest which is across the stream and the circ if they get through those two parcels they can look at some other ones I think they're going to reach out to the Essex Westford school district which butts the town forest and see if there's potential to go on to there if time allows basically great service for the town we'll have some updated trail maps which I think Ali has been looking for so we just need the final approval to let them go do it Questions for Greg on this one? Mike? I'll make a motion I'll make a motion that the select board authorize the town manager to sign the memorandum of agreement with the UVM student consultants in NR 206 to update the town's trail maps Do I have a second on that? Mike? Any further discussion on that? So how we fix with staff time on this because it says they're supposed to communicate frequently with the town on the progress of the return and there's some materials involved in this and so on can you just briefly comment on that? Materials are the GPS units that the town already has to be letting the students borrow those that way Shannon knows she's getting good information and they believe she's taught them how to use it so it's going to be accurate There just need to be some town supports there would be no cost other than staff time that's checking in with Ali, Shannon, Darren as needed The staff's good for taking on this Yeah, okay Any further, any other comments? Discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of authorizing town managers to sign the MOA with the UVM students C5 is saying hi Hi Opposed? C5-0, that was a quick one Alright We're going to move on then to item 5G which is adoption of rules and regs regulations for orderly conduct of business Greg So ongoing discussion about revising the rules and regulations of orderly conduct of business Since the last meeting there was a section under motions and votes number 5 to talk about conflict of interest basically it struck that section out just refers to the Select Board's The other discussion point of the last meeting was adding some language about the chair acting impartially during a meeting I know I tossed out some language at that meeting did some more research into that looked into Vermont League of Cities and Towns checked into Robert's rules of order and basically VLCT is silent on the matter doesn't really say anything for or against about how a chair can remain impartial or offer opinions during a discussion Robert's rules of order says that for larger bodies we're talking about parliamentary size bodies that chair should remain impartial but for smaller bodies like yourself that the chair can be expected to make motions speak on issues So I ended up not putting in that language as I had mentioned at the meeting I just think it's getting down to slippery slope of once you say a chair has to can't have an opinion prevent that chair from speaking in the future I think there's nothing to prevent somebody from recognizing that they want to turn over gavel at a certain point for a certain issue but hesitant to actually include that language in the rules and regulations just for fear of stifling a comment from a small board Comments? My impression was that the ability of the chair to make a motion or to speak on an issue was not the problem we ran into a year ago it was that the chair was shutting down input from people that had counter views and that's a very different thing and I would like to see that language that you proposed last time which is in our minutes lines 327 to 329 inserted on that motion about its page as number nine I would actually concur it wasn't the we were not trying to censor the chairs from having opinions it was the role of the chair in managing the conversation and ensuring that everyone was given equal opportunity and every both on the select board and in the public that the conversation was managed in a an open and unbiased way and I admittedly struggled with that's why I went back to the LCT and Robert's rules to try to figure out was there some model language that exists of how a chair can have an opinion, have a voice and still act impartially and didn't come up with anything like I said your language that you proposed I think was a good way and maybe you want to send it to the LCT to encourage them because it's a whole new world and I think maybe they need to be our languages adding it to their model language Andy? Mike? Oh boy I'm concerned about how you determine when it's appropriate I will reassert what I've said before that it's a personal decision of the would have to be a personal decision of the chair and not a something that it could be brought up I'm concerned about forcibly taking the gavel away from the chair I think the chair needs to have enough integrity to recognize when there's a problem I don't want to stifle any opinion of anybody on the board I think if we see it happening you know I it's easy for me to say now I think we should call it at the time it doesn't help what may or may not have happened in the past but I'm concerned about arbitrary use of it the chair does need to maintain control of the meeting but yes and we do have it does say and I already say in here that the chair needs to be impartial during the discussion I'm ok with the document as is written I think that if we want to add additional language it needs to be further vetted we could consider it in a future time but I'm not comfortable putting it in without additional review from others outside of this group I agree with Andy I'm going to add a couple of other points I think you know we elect the chair every April and I think if you make it possible for a motion or some other parliamentary move the gavel away from the chair I think number one it demeans the entire process of electing a chair in the first place second of all I just think it would turn meetings into utter chaos and quite frankly I think you would spend more time worrying about who's supposed to have the gavel instead of taking care of the town's business and that that's the bottom line that's why we're here we are here to administer the town's business and I think anything that tracks from that and I believe it's my opinion that this would anything that the tracks from that is to be avoided so I'm fine with the language the way it is I'm glad we had a couple of iterations through it but at this point I'm happy with the way this is written now just to Andy and Mike's points both of them no one's forcing anyone to give up the gavel the language that Greg proposed last week was last meeting was if the chair, it's in the minutes signs 327 if the chair does not believe he or she can act impartially he or she may allow the vice chair to leave the discussion on that item on the agenda there's no compelling anyone there's no forcing anyone it's merely a check and balance that everyone is aware of so that we don't have to go to the steps that we had to last time of having people yelling from the audience you're not being fair you're not calling on me because that to me is incredibly disruptive Mike I'd rather have an internal procedure on the board where people are highly aware of just what happens when the chair is notified that he's being impartial and he can then act accordingly and either admit that he has or say that he hasn't but then clean up his act but there's nothing in Greg's language at all do you have this in front of you Mike because I don't want to be putting words in anybody's mouth it's in the minutes of 327 to 329 so this is what we agreed on last time as a board and then it was asked for Greg to just double check and see if Robert's rules so now I see this backtracking all of a sudden it's not okay with people because they feel that it's compulsory and I just want to reiterate it's not compulsory it's not making the chair do something they don't want it's not upending the order it's strictly just prescribing what happens so people know the process I don't believe we agreed to any language in the last meeting we did not agree to your statement that we agreed to this in the last meeting it's not true at all there was a suggestion of some language and I expressly said that I was uncomfortable with proving language that was just thrown together off the cuff in the meeting we did ask Greg to go look for some other corroborating references or whatever that might have suggesting suggest a language that might be appropriate he didn't find any so I'm I'm considering that I like your idea of going back to the Vermont League of Leasing Towns and asking them hey we got this question how should we or is there a recommended language that could go around this I just I don't think we did not agree on any language the last time it's on the video too so my point of view so what you said Andy and I said it very eloquently about the integrity right and this is just kind of a reinforcement of that integrity and I just think that this document is our document for how we think we as a board should be conducting our business and I just I I feel it's valuable to document or formalize that assumed integrity in the role and I'm totally with you that I don't think there should be anything about forcefully taking I don't think the gavel is part of it at all I think it's the the method of facilitating the conversation and that's talked about this last last time I mean it's a role-based integrity that needs to exist I understand I understand the points all of them I do I guess I guess the point that I was trying to make was I think this group can govern themselves so if we want to go back into the past again then if there was if there was a problem at that time then it should have been brought up at that time I I trust anybody that's elected to be chair to step back if they don't think they can be impartial we have that we have that written and it's a responsibility of the chair as well as a responsibility of any one of us so I just go back to my earlier point we're now spending time debating this when we should be taking care of the town's business that's all what's the board's pleasure on this then I move that the select board adopt amendments to the rules and regulations for the orderly conduct of business making my drive a second make any further discussion on adopting the rules and regulations for the conduct of business as presented hearing none all of us in favor signify by saying aye aye post motion passes three to two thank you all for that discussion we'll be on to item business item ask that we do the follow up that Andy recommended with the OCT yeah I'll put that in the to do this for people great thank you okay we're on to business item 5H and that's adoption of select board computer use policy great so this is an agenda addition in your packets proposed language in there following up on the last meeting took some of your comments back and revised the proposed ordinance a little bit mostly just number nine using conduct during meetings trying to match that up with the rules and regulations for the orderly conduct you have the minor changes in there there's some questions that came up during the meeting and tried to answer those if you can't get to a meeting 10 minutes early to have the updates to happen you can postpone those updates and it'll update at the end of the meeting before you leave before you shut down basically in terms of how long packets will be stored online months if not years it's going to be a huge database and the packets are pretty small in terms of how much space they would take up you will be able to take notes of packets on the tablets and tablets can be connected to home printers now what I thought about some more in terms of the select one meeting packets and this is just today's language so that's why it was not in the packet earlier I'll adjust for that but trying to use the transition a little bit in terms of printing and printing basically the paper packets as opposed to the electronic packets in terms of what's going to still allow him to have some more free time to focus on more HR work and other responsibilities that he has and also to help Sam out because we have to give Sam some more thought in terms of how she would get electronic packets and hadn't quite gotten to that point yet so to start off proposing and this could change in the future depending on how things go but basically allowing people to pick up a paper packet once they're ready they'll have to come to the town offices to do it they're not going to be nicely collated with different staples and different sections for individual packets that's what takes Travis a lot of time but once that PDF file is merged and ready Travis can hit print and you can get a whole bunch of stuff like that so still electronic is the preference from our standpoint in terms of saving on printing costs but again to help use some of those concerns that we heard last time can make it available to do the paper packet sort of an interim you know it's a big change for us so this might be a way to help use this into it did you have a hand up? Yeah I'm curious where that goes on the policy Number six access to separate things Thank you, I got it Okay other comments on this? Yes, alright It says any political activities on number ten there's a lot of things that we do here that turn into political activities so where do you draw the line there was a lot of wreck district stuff last year that was discussed here if we were unable to read it on a tablet we're going to vote on something it has a political change sometimes so I don't know can we further define any political activities that's why that means I can't remember where I took this language from but I think it was from personnel policy or somewhere else but basically no campaigning your tablets and then the packets are going to have information and business that can turn political but the idea is that nobody's sending emails from that tablet encouraging people to vote yes or no or developing promotional materials for or against certain things it's strictly informational that says the intent the next very next sentence defines it defines it for the purpose of a sex partisan but there are non-partisan non-individual issues for the purposes of this policy this is the definition of what it says it's with the sentence I understand that I just can think of outlier things that have just happened where the personnel policy you just based this on was breached and therefore I'm concerned that this can be breached I want to make sure that we're all clear about what this means and so it doesn't get breached again right these turn into living documents we change them constantly so we're looking for sort of a good place to start and if we think this is a good place to start we know we're going to be doing updates particularly after we start using these things and we'll be reviewing it again in April so yeah I didn't see any other hands up did I no so number nine it looks to me the way it's worded now that one could bring a personal laptop and use it to access the internet is that true it says town devices will be able to access only certain web based things the way it's worded now yes I suppose you could technically do that this was dandy's point at the last meeting of you know what happens if he needs to check his phone for an emergency call or I think you made the point of what if I want to use my calculator and pull that up we talked about wanting to use the tablets only allowed certain access so that if there's a question to pull up something on Google or a map and do some research that I would be able to do it on the tablet or on my tablet or on that computer so everyone can see it so is there anything preventing you from bringing in your own laptop and surfing the internet I guess not but also trying to match that language up with the rules and regulations so we're here aligned any other comments, questions okay what's the board's pleasure on this one Andy move that the select board adopt the select board computer use policy thank you Andy second thank you Sue any further discussion all those in favor of the select board computer use policy as presented signify by saying aye aye motion passes 5-0 that says as presented that includes the six update correct okay and then question the budget binders we're going to do those electronic attempt those or we're going to do them both ways to see how we're comfortable with that one since I got from the last meeting was that some of you still wanted the paper copies and so we can try doing both this year and see how it goes be my recommendation for that if you wouldn't mind Greg this would be a good introduction to the Travis cool thank you I'll break the sad news to Travis Sue for Greg in my papers to sign the town of Essex select board computer use policy and a draft of orderly conduct is that supposed to be? I'll probably have to take the watermark off of that so we can bring it back to you at the next meeting and I'll have to update the computer use policy as well with that number 6 so we'll sign these next meeting then in other words okay we're on to business item 5 I know that's preparation for a 2019 budget capital plan articles Greg budget preparations are coming up so you saw the timeline last week one of the items on that timeline actually two weeks ago was for the select board to provide staff with suggestions on the capital budget and plan articles and overall budget considerations so you'll be getting much more detailed reports in a couple months from all the different departments but this is a chance to sort of give some direction to the town and to staff at this point that I can pass on to the different departments and kind of get them going in a certain direction if there's a direction you want us to take very good okay we would like to start we already have suggestions I'll see Andy's and then I'll be so it would be nice to have a co-wreck in this room yes how'd you say that that line codes over there on the floor come on the other thing and we may talk about this more the next item is that our age distribution is changing this is one of the things that came up during the town fair that I attended it was the last week before I can't remember how long it was where the age distribution used to be a pyramid where you had a lot of kids at the bottom a few older people and I was starting to more look like the Empire State Building where you have uniform age distributions I just want to make sure that we're considering that and the statement that the speaker said was that it's not going to change it's not going to go back that we're considering as we're looking forward that maybe we need to have more I have no recommendations around this just the question of how do you deal with a smaller population of younger people and a larger population of older people that people that retire at 65 get 30 or 40 years of runway left there's different infrastructure like they needed for that I don't know what to suggest on that but that's something that we can consider the other things that have come up affordable housing we've talked about there was some possible money set aside this year for that if it doesn't happen this year I'd like to see that happen we also had discussions about a conservation fund there was a community survey that was done around that I think that needs to be seeing a proposal pretty soon it's not to buy land actually it's to help pay the legal fees support the the process the other thing there was an article in 7 days recently about South Burlington where development trends and I see it here too development trends are moving toward more toward apartment just make sure we're thinking along the right lines do we want to encourage that discourage that as opposed to sprawl thank you brought up the discussion about the six floors as opposed to paving farms just make sure we're having those discussions good thanks Andy anyone else target around 3% we have them that's a good target to shoot for I think that's one of the people with stomach I also heard something on marketplaces I was zooming over here about some new state of California regulations that allow people to put very small dwellings in their backyards and they're solving their housing crisis with that so I'd like to see that kind of we're thinking here too I know we don't leave but California's already led maybe we can we are accessory apartments are required by a state law right okay anything else? okay I was thinking about that there'll be a new manager coming and maybe money for some team building with the staff and the new manager somehow might help to coalesce that working relationship so I don't know how much money that would be and possibly for the select board trustee a retreat or a meeting for goal setting and it would probably be good to have a paid facilitator to help us through that process and kind of on Andy's point with the aging population and the use of the senior van going up I know we use grants and stuff to money to match the grants so think about what the additional cost might be if we were to get a third van if that made sense and if that's something howling in the right direction for our population I'd like to at least give that some consideration if I could just comment on the 3% we'd have to say what services we'd be willing to cut if we want to really cap something we'd have to say what we'd be willing to give up in order to maintain a three if they come back and say it needs to be four and a half that's why I think it's up to us to say what we need to do to get down there so I'd hate to hamstring them and say 3% when we think that would actually degrade the service that we provide okay Andy? I forgot I didn't write it down but last year we had talked about taking some of the content out of the Tom report just putting in links for the sections that are not actually town departments but our outside entities that we've allowed in the past to I guess it's rescue just link to their they have to do an annual report anyway if you look at theirs it's the same every year except different numbers in so save that for me and we'll take out that other page that was a controversial last town meeting that had the services, the villas in the town I don't think we need that this year I think that was is everybody okay getting rid of that? okay anything else for them to consider it's hard to believe it's coming up the budget yeah I guess if we come up with others we can fire them your way what would be the deadline Craig? it's in the middle of November I can't remember the timeline what we said for we need to submit budgets to the manager I'm going to say end of the month and I can check the timeline when we need to we need to submit budget requests to the manager I don't have it in front of me and I forget 11.16 department had to submit budget to the town manager November at first guess alright good so we're going to move on then so maybe leave it a little bit short of the 16th just so if there's something late getting in that the change can be made and department heads can still keep their deadline thanks so like a week before then like the 10th sure so we're going to move on to business item 5J do you want to that's something that we need to talk about the Essex senior van operation? just to prep it a little bit the select board has gotten a I guess I can call it a complaint concerns about the operation of the senior van back in the summer it was late July early August town manager said he would investigate the matter he has and it involves personnel so happy to share the results of that with you but recommend doing so in the executive session and Lou Ann are both here to help hang in there okay then and that was a two part complaint as far as I recall and part of it was about the service in general because there was just one van on a Thursday so what I got from Greg and Allie today as well as Lou Ann I believe are the statistics on when the van is actually running and when it hasn't been running and I think it's just important for us to know that and to talk about it publicly I don't believe that that has to do with personnel it is sort of a level of service conversation and if the food shelf is on how many Thursdays one month maybe perhaps we could run the van on that Thursday if that is one of those things that we're running into an issue with or potentially could run into an issue with because more and more people are using food shelves more and more people are aging in place and just looking at the schedule of these buses looks like both of them are in play a lot of the time so perhaps Max's suggestion is to thinking about the purple bus or whatever the third one would become is also something else we need to talk about during budget season but if there's anything publicly that either of you need to say I think this would be the time to say that about the bus service itself right it's not about personnel the buses Allie and Lou Ann can jump in if need be I think a lot of that conversation is worth having during the budget session in terms of what the van is doing and providing in terms of specifics and I believe this was in your consent agenda one or two meetings ago the van has been short staffed past couple months but that's just from normal staff turnover the drivers who do the driving have filled in extra shifts they've made sure that there's no loss of service as of late so four weeks maybe the Sunday shift has stepped down and they haven't found anyone to fill in those shifts but apart from that all the shifts have then staffed and have adequate coverage at this point but certainly worth the discussion putting the budget session to see if it's going to be worth expanding I know Lou Ann is adding 5-10 riders a week continuously since he started in the past three years right right Joshua Way I think I've got probably 28 new riders in two weeks because of things in the department about the scene of the van that's a huge asset for us and that's the reason why some people come to me and said we moved to Essex because we have free transportation for us that are over 60 within the village and town and we can get to our doctor's appointment so we can get to the grocery store it's very important so as trends grow or we have more housing I think there's going to be more impact as well of more new riders but every day I get at least one car on the fed that's a good thing and we do lose some riders as well we tend to present growth kind of things because we do have people that for health reasons or they're just spouses so we move to another town with their their children or something or they die we lose riders as well to natural causes so it isn't just only growth we do have an effect but the growth definitely is greater than a loss I know we refer to the van drivers as van drivers but I think we've all seen them in action they're more like ambassadors for our community I've seen them get out of the van to help load groceries in help the people into the bus make some some simple jokes too to make the people so we call them drivers but they're much more than that it's amazing to watch them in action it's very cool I was really so happy to see that Allie? regards to the food pantry since January it's in the first answer of the paragraph and we can get more into this later but there have been a total of four individuals who have been transported to the pantry on a total of 10 occasions whether that July 28th day was three of them out of those 10 trips or they were individuals the other six months it's very minimal so it's not right now the need is not being shown to us with 12 riders needing to be at the pantry for the two o'clock opening it's pretty sparse so and again we can go into it more later but the priority for us are medical appointments and if we were to extend the service on a particular day those priorities would stay priorities with everything else falling down the list and at some point you have to have a cut off of the time of day your service is complete just like we have the issue of town meetings starting at 7.30 and CCTA is finished by the time we would be out for in our community so there has to be a cut off time and it goes along with any other appointment made to have alternative transportation methods if you are to run late so something to look into we're open to looking into improvements but every suggestion should be taken into action based on our capacities so more discussion later on the other piece then we're on 5K and that's to identify key community members to be interviewed for management recruitment Don had asked for a total of 10 I think we divided up 5 from the select board 5 from the trustees and we're going to talk about those lists in executive session as we whittle it down Irene we're going to executive session about that I would just like to ask if the select board would consider appointing 5 outside the village residents because I think it's highly likely that the village trustees will appoint 5 in the village representatives and I'd like to make sure there's some parity there I view residents of the village as fully my consensuance as those outside the village I have by no means do I support doing an exclusive appointment based on where people live 20,000 Irene Fairness and equity has been a real hallmark of negotiations for consolidation and the reason that people have wanted to combine the town and village for a really long time we always hear the word equity and what I have to remind myself is that representative equity is also very important and when we consistently have committees that have representation that is not equivalent from both halves of the population it makes it really difficult for people from outside the village to feel fairly represented as we just saw recently and I questioned Greg about it because this doesn't come up very often but it came up then UMACS were asked to sign off on something for outside the village only census taking so there are indeed instances where we as a select board have to represent just the half of the town that is not the village and I would suggest that this is again one of those circumstances where if we have village folks that we think should be on this then we could talk to our friends on the trustees and urge them that we think that so and so from the village would be a really good representative for talking to Don Jutton but I think that because the village residents have no one else to speak for them that we as select board members should give due consideration to doing so other comments yeah I just want to touch on some procedural stuff for this so first of all there is a new executive session memo that goes with this spoke to Bill Ellis about this some more town attorney and originally I think the language said public official appointments would take is a reason to go into executive session speaking of Bill this is actually part of the recruitment process so it would be public official employment is a reason to go into executive session and then in terms of appointing the people or naming the people who you'd like municipal resources to speak to that will have to be done outside of executive session just to make sure that's clear when we identify who they will be of course Colin because we'll be discussing why we don't think somebody is the right person to be on the list so we don't want to slander accidentally anybody not that we would but we're going to have to call the list we have to say what it is about that person that we don't think should be top on our list okay and that's we never evaluate anybody like that in open meeting so also can you touch on why it's a public official employment are they I mean what is your definition of a public official I guess this is part of the process to hire past replacement so it's part of the employment process recruitment process for the new town manager so as opposed to being officials to be part of that it's a nuance but you know they're not appointing people to a new board they're going to be naming people to help with that hiring process so yeah so my understanding of me is that you're discussing the employment, the evaluation or there's a third one I'm not remembering but I you said it's a nuance and I agree but I don't see how this falls under the executive session employment of a public official and so this is part of the employment process so when the select board has 20 different names they want to keep around to keep people in the community to speak to and wiggle that down to those five people named in public session and in the interim like Max said they don't want to accidentally land or criticize somebody who's just under consideration of this appointment but it's all part of the employment process to higher path okay Irene? when we talked about this joint meeting with the village trustees it was suggested that each person out of the ten of us could name one person and I'm perfectly comfortable with naming somebody in public and that being my candidate and I'm fine with anybody else naming one person as their candidate and that keeps it out of executive session we don't have to judge each other's contributions we can just name someone and they can be appointed Andy? I don't recall it at all that we're each going to be the opportunity to name a single person the way I remember it is that we as a group we're going to select five that didn't mean to me one per I think it's appropriate to have a discussion about it so that we can all understand why each of us think and the interesting thing too there's the list that we got today of people that self-selected some of the people on my list are on that so I may not even have a person suggested at this point because they may have already been talked to I think you just look at those two lists and reconcile them and have the discussion I agree that I don't want to be saying bad things about people and accidentally saying bad things about people why we think they're not where are they being on that list Mike? I don't recall just one either in fact I thought we were to put a list together that didn't have a particular number to it at all that it was just a list of people that we thought should be contacted and that it would be called down at some point later on I remember a little bit different than that Andy? That's fine we also have to cross-reference it with the trustees list so we point the same we can get in and point the exact same people right? not for appointing sorry excuse me let me finish please I think we need to cross-reference those two lists too so it may not be necessarily that we come up with five tonight that is the final selection if there's an overlap of our list and the trustees list if we truly want to have that or there's an alternate right you reminded me my wife suggested told me this too and I thought of the same thing right we could have a prioritized list and say okay the other thing too is the people that we ask to do this we're not necessarily appointing them to do this we're asking them to do this if they say no so you're right I think what we need to do is that's a big part of the discussion prioritizing the list saying these are the first five then use the next group and to be able to have that discussion about why you think somebody is worthy to be in slot whatever versus I'm going to take that I think you got to be careful and that's not something you want to do accidentally in public and say why you don't think Joe blow is worthy of being on this list and that's why I didn't think it was a set number the other comment I wanted to make about the representation question is these people aren't going to be selecting the town manager they're only we're merely suggesting them as folks that could contribute to the the process that our recruiter is using to develop the essay questions that the folks who have applied to the job will be asked to write so it's not I think the representation question I'm less not concerned about it okay Colin sure I don't see the memo the memo was apparently an agenda addition so it's on the packet but from what it sounds like it's discussing the quote employment of a public officer it would seem that that would be only in regards to Pat's actual employment that doesn't cover you choosing a group of five people to then go talk to the recruiter I just been wondering how that falls under that category well when we had those interviews today with both the governor one position open on the zoning board of adjustment we're going to talk about them certainly not in public no no we won't choose all these decisions of who is chosen for these things are always made outside of executive the discussion about how we get there but we will always come out of executive session to say what those appointments are and this list will be no different and we're pointing them sort of to I guess you call it an ad hoc committee in a way I'm not a lawyer I don't know and I would have to ask Greg because he spoke to I would just like to clarify because it seems like we don't really have a clear definition of what a public official is for this question are they going to be subject to public records request do they have to I mean so we're still talking about to get to the names council looking for some clarification are they really appointed officials to a committee not really they're helping to inform the hiring process so I guess my understanding of the meeting law is that you can discuss the employment so that's what it's being categorized as the employment of Pat but wouldn't that just pertain to Pat's actual employment not a process under which if that's the case couldn't the whole recruitment process be thrown under executive session because it's Pat's employment I mean it kind of is could it all be under executive session a couple points so I believe the board the advice the board has from the recruiter is that the recruiter is going to narrow it down to 10, 12 6, 8 candidates that's still going to remain confidential once it gets to probably the final 2 or 3 finalists that's when it'll become public this is for job security reasons for the people who are searching for their jobs and advice from the town attorney that yet at a certain point it has to become public I know this is so many of these people I guess I still don't understand what they're getting appointed to so can I ask you a question would it be similar to the rec governance where people were interested in being on that committee and were interviewed similar to the energy committee and things like that and then maybe I could make this similar to to consider would you be willing and I think we sent them already to Travis but what we did not include is maybe just a short blurb or prioritize them or a little explanation of why we think you know they should be considered and leave it up to Don to select from based on what our comments are and then it's avoids this whole potentially it's just an idea I'd say we have to do it I'm part of the reason in speaking to Bill Ellis that the recommendation is to do it this way is to keep some public aspect to it and to name those five people as key individuals publicly to keep some more transparency to it it's really just the discussion of the other 15-20 people names being kicked around that is not being named publicly so the ones that would do get the ones who would be on the list in interviewing with Don would be public just like the people who have signed up for focus groups and will be at public focus group meetings where it is also public I can reach out to the Don attorney and try to get clarification or clear reasoning I'm confident that we're here now but if you want me to try to get something more specific for it when does Don need these by 25th when he starts you said right towards the end of the month and this is the last meeting before we're going to meet on the 26th 24th as a joint meeting right? at the end have if it's deemed to be okay to have that executive session at the end of that would that work once we get the feedback from Bill to make sure we're not violating open meeting law that's not something we ever want to be accused of what do you think? that's going to be good for us as a board to that our I'm not saying do it as a joint I'm saying afterwards we'll have just a select board meeting if it's proven to be okay to be executive session to do it Bill has already said it's okay to go into executive session for this as part of the employment process as long as you tame these people and he updated the thing accordingly then there you have it so are you comfortable with that? okay sorry if we couldn't explain it but you might have to talk to Bill okay we're going to move on to the next business item which is 5L and that's approval of the minutes of September 26, 2017 and October 2nd, 2017 so let's start with September 26 do I have a motion? I'd make a motion that we improve the select board minutes of the joint meeting on September 26, 2017 makes my read select board members correct so these are not numbered? yeah that was one general comment I had yeah that's at least the number of the pages okay we'll start on page second oh I'm sorry Irene made the motion and who seconded did I get one? nobody did who will second? catch yeah second okay we got Mike thank you Irene and Mike okay we'll start on page 1 and page 2 Irene the page number is at the top we're just looking in the wrong place my comment is on page 3 okay anything on page 2? page 3 but the lines are numbered which is a real pain in the neck under D management recruitment brochure instead of there was discussion there were comments about errors in just still not been rectified but that's a whole other conversation awesome at the top where it says the following joint meeting schedule was discussed and also in the motion I don't think we agreed to November 6th during the meeting it was discussed that November 6th was the same as our meeting and so November 8th was proposed and there was going to be a follow on a request to confirm that that was a good date that's true so what should the motion what should that say? I said something about 11-8 was proposed and a poll on availability would follow and that the motion only contained October 24th December 12th with 11-8 as proposed but not confirmed right okay great you have that Tim? okay I think the motion was I didn't go back and watch it but I thought the motion was just for the two days that we were in agreement I thought we approved it with the 8th in there and we're going to go back and amend it if we couldn't do that I think we what I recall is we assumed that we're going to go forward with it and then check with everybody to make sure everybody can make it and maybe it's so instead of the 6th say the 8th yeah maybe some comment about pending people checking their calendars or what pending confirmation is that okay sir? okay anything else on 3? page 4 okay all those in favor of September 26th 2017 board minutes with corrections signify with saying aye aye most passes 5-0 I have a motion I read I would move approval of the October 2nd 2017 minutes thank you and do I have a second on this one? second page 1 page 2 page 3 page 4 I just wondered if criteria 4 could be worded differently it wasn't so that it looks like a fee will be assessed no matter what here's my I'm sorry the words that are put here was not the intention of my words so I strike from so that it doesn't look like a fee will be assessed no matter what and replace it with as it seems subjective and difficult to support thank you the else on 4 Irene 189 reading this over even though I said it I couldn't parse 2 weeks later what it was so I look back at my notes and after level of service if we could put in parentheses sidewalk miles per 100 bedrooms because that was what they had on their chart at the time okay page 5 down towards the bottom 242 and 243 I just wanted to clarify 511 vt as the website and then on 243 well it starts at 242 miss cook that the mailbox replacement fees were reviewed my question was had they been reviewed and strike miss cook pointed out and replace with Mr. Lutz explained thank you page 6 7 so this is the conversation we just had but row 308 just some minor modifications the should address the issue related to insert the word the strike the word strike the letter s at the end of shares and not moving discussions forward and it's managing discussions in an unbiased way thank you anything else on 7 and we're on page 8 bingo some of you have gotten the corrections in purple this would be the time to pull them out and have them 346 and Sam has copy as well right I asked how many tablets were purchased from the select board as well as how many packets were printed per meeting so I'd like that information included at the end of that sense at the beginning of 346 and then this was on the video Andy I think you would want this in there but tell me if you don't Mr. Watts asked about 9 the use of access to site from town village websites or file storage sites I thought that was important and was left out but if you don't want it in there I won't it's in the policy I don't know so would you want to include it in the minutes or not any issues asked so add it let's see just a little word changes on 353 354 this never happened unlike other presentations made by purchasers such as Mr. Lutz small word changes on 366 367 372 cost of the select board learning are being less efficient or less effective as policy makers viewing screens is the one word change there or the phrase change 372 bringing a policy makers viewing because the fact that we're doing policy it means it's sort of abstract thinking end of 373 who was opposed to the use of tablets or packet distribution that's what we were talking about not just electronic devices Mr. Watts mentioned that he was in favor and would print out what he needed Mrs. Cook at one point said that she was ambiguous but I didn't want to put that in there because maybe you did say you were in favor but I did change it to curious because you did say you were curious if there was a way to highlight that is that okay with you soon the word I used was ambivalent ambivalent thank you but I don't know where that fits in here but you're saying that Ms. Cook was curious if there was a way yeah in favor doesn't make sense there I guess I mean you said ambivalent I'm willing to add that in too I just didn't want to add more than it wasn't in this it wasn't in this sentence I mean it you wanted to know if you could highlight I think you could just say Ms. Cook wanted to know if there yeah asked if there was a way or whatever yeah it wasn't in favor so that's why I took out the in favor because you did say ambivalent not there she is yeah I was ambivalent to the yeah so Ms. Cook asked if there was a way to edit is that okay that's fair yeah that's perfectly fine thank you in 1976 you have the star that takes you to the bottom so there's that whole long phrase which I was supposed to base on the data she found which confirmed her experience with online packets at the regional level the humans learn to retain complex information better when it's read from paper including the inscriptions but um finally 387 after mild day at the beginning Ms. Renner wondered what the first mile might be Greg will look into it I appreciate that you did okay that was page 8 anything else on 8 page 9 10 and last but not least 11 all those in favor of the select board minutes of October 2nd 2017 with corrections the signifier was saying aye aye opposed okay most passivizer on to consent agenda do I have a motion to I move approval this consent agenda with select board member comments Irene do I have a second okay so comments um yes question on the first check 1 October 6th there's a number of these tax payments in advance is that money in or money out I believe it's money in but I can check on that would that be a negative not a positive yeah wouldn't it wouldn't that be a negative Irene I'll have to look into it and get back to you I was just confused on that one okay other comments on the on the consent yeah I privately thank dandy but I wanted to publicly thank Andy for the excellent notes that he provided and for representing us at the town fair and annual meeting yeah here here I will agree to that thank you very nicely documented thank you for being a wrap thank you you Irene we got a copy of what's being called the final municipal manager recruitment brochure um somewhere in this packet yep which contains erroneous information about the school merger um on page 2 the date that the applications are due and on and on and on so I'm not happy with the fact that some people on this board and the other board submitted extensive changes for example Norwich University is 93 miles away and he still got included on a list of seven colleges that are 40 miles from here so just there were a number of errors the first round that he had handed this out to potential candidates and I'm disappointed he thinks this is final because it's not in my estimation at all so it was still the reference to the eastern seaboard yeah I know Lake Champlain State yep other comments on looking forward here we did get an invitation to tour the Habitat for Humanity project around Park Street folks want to go as a group or whether you're an individual they did say that their volunteers are there from Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8 to 3 so there would be people there at those times at different times you know this is somewhat of a preface preface preface is the word I was trying to say to another request for funding for human service funding because I know that those packets should be going out soon to folks but they did want us to go over to get a tour so if we could go at different times then we can avoid the risk of accident and they have an underwater need to have a discussion about anything yeah would it be okay if you call to make an appointment just to confirm that it would be a solo oh you mean I know what you do each individual call if you want a tour you can just ask make sure that it's now with another select is that reasonable we don't want to great can I continue there are the town fair that I attended I really enjoyed doing that I wish I could do that all the time is that sarcastic that's sarcastic no no I did it was a good time but there are a couple of things I want to highlight in the memo with the subject is the town fair I did attend a number of sessions there was a session about how to interact with the legislature and they did say that the LCT is there every day and is always available to our legislators but they are often much more swayed by what we say than what they say so if there are topics that we have that are of interest to us they highly advised us to reach out to our legislators and talk to them and I do have a unfortunately we have so much paper here I can't find it a pamphlet that they passed out which is available online and if folks are interested I can send it out it has links in it to the it has advice on how to do this it has links in there to the legislative calendar what is coming up they also VLCT publishes a weekly legislative report this is what is coming up this week and then there is also when there are specific bills that may be of interest to municipalities they send out an alert notice that said within the next 36 hours or 48 hours they are going to be talking about this on the floor our legislators now and kind of thing I don't know if I get those notices I don't know if others do but if I will if everybody is ok with it send a link to this document so that everybody can have access to it and make your own decision whether you want to do anything else with it or it's just FYI it's just an FYI discussion there other things that I already talked about the change in the population distribution that was very interesting very well done the keynote address was about that they also talked about the fact that millennials are the me generation they are not the me generation they are the we generation because they are so interconnected and they have all been told they are special as they were growing up as opposed to us who said what do you think they are special and so and I see this in my own boys I have three boys that certainly are millennials and they do certainly value everybody's opinion and it was interesting to hear this talk and say hey I actually see that the other thing when we were talking before about budgeting in my boys right on top of this too they want everything within 15 minutes they want to be able to find something to eat something to do and go home they want to be very everything they want to do locally thoughts about well that's in Burlington you can go to Burlington to do that that may not work for the millennials they want to just do it stay close to home is what the guy said interesting hey there was a I went to a thing about managing social media and I know we're going to have if we have a social media policy we'll be looking at at some point so reserve those comments to them during the document that I gave out also talked about talking to the press one important thing they said is that no comment sounds like you're hiding something so part of voice saying no comment I thought that was interesting and then I went to a presentation by the Rutland young professionals and they were really well organized group and I know Greg Morgan has talked about trying to how do you engage young people and I'm not actually familiar with whether there's a young professional organization available for this area or not Burlington national so I don't know I don't know if there's somebody we could somehow encourage folks from Essex who are in their 20s 30s 40s who fall into that demographic to participate in that group or not it would be a benefit to the community and then the VLCT annual meeting policy I won't go through all the comments in there because the meeting is going long but there were a couple of questions specific that were asked to me to follow up on one was about track changes I asked about that and they said well we wanted you to read the whole document not just the changes that was that was their response they said that if asked specifically they will provide a track change one so next year I will track change one to share Mike you asked about the Vermont communications board that's the board that is part of the Department of Public Safety and they make sure that there's the interoperability of emergency communications so I asked that question and they got that response from them and then I also commented about the short time frame that we have and it actually makes you the document so they're going to look at their process to see if they can get it to us earlier because it is a very short window was there other support for doing that from others? I think in the meeting where I brought this up it was actually as a meeting was forming that I brought it up there were only a handful of people in the room at the time and they all kind of nodded their heads to that it was a short time frame there are some I will say that there are some select boards that provide a lot of feedback back to the point of asking that they remove man made from their statement about climate change I mean they're suggesting edits they're they're our select boards that are very very into providing feedback and I know our feedback was fairly limited and a lot of it was maybe challenged by the fact change my copy to tell what was different but anyway I'd like this to I don't know if there's if we could take it more seriously that's the right word for us to use I don't know there's a lot of interesting things that come up that I don't think about that maybe don't apply to us like farm vehicles driving down the road yeah that was fun anyway I enjoyed doing it I appreciate your and I agree with what Sue said thank you for doing that and for documenting it so well sharing it with us any other comments on consent Mike? I just want to quickly draw the attention I'm sure you all read it but the Vermont Convention Bureau there's some really some interesting data here and some really heavy duty numbers relative to the impact that the Convention Bureau has on the town in terms of the money that is generated by people attending conventions here and if you haven't read it in detail or you skimmed it I suggest you go back and look at it again because there are some serious numbers here and I just want to make sure that we don't lose sight of the Convention Bureau and what they do for our town one quick note the other thing that deserves close review I think are the obstacles and I'm struck by number one given the earlier agenda item that we had here limited direct flights influence mid-sized to large groups especially the corporate incentive travel groups so anyway maybe that is something that we can ask Mr. Richards about because I don't know the answer to that but number two during the last three months Chittenden County realized the loss of approximately 9,000 room nights due to rates this equated to roughly 5,000 attendees and an economic impact of 2.8 million dollars that's just sad and it's eye-opening the organizing committee many events require one we don't have very many and there's not a lot of interest in participating in one I don't know the answer to that one but I think it's something I'll think about anyway and then the last piece was the chamber's work last year in stopping a proposal to add two dollars per room that night fee for lodging properties in order to fund various tourism and hospitality initiatives local marketing I think can definitely take care of that without a legislative interaction any other comments on consent hearing none all those in favor of the consent agenda signify saying aye opposed consent agenda passes five zero now we have the executive sessions to deal with and there are two that we need to do three are there three motions we need to do? appointments personnel and who wants to I got them all here go ahead Sue motion number one I move that the select board make the specific finding that premature general public knowledge of the select board's position concerning the proposed public official appointments would place the town at a substantial disadvantage motion number two I move that we need to do each one yeah so this is public to go into an executive session yeah so Sue you did the motion one that's great we just need to you made the motion we need a second okay let's go I didn't know all those in favor of motion one signify saying aye okay now we need a motion two okay motion two I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss a proposed public official appointments pursuant to one BSA three one three A3 to include the manager and the deputy town manager I guess just the deputy town manager okay thank you Sue do we have a second for motion two yes that's the one for the interviews that we did I think this is I think you're doing this I think you said the wrong word I thought I heard it wrong the first time and then I just thought I heard it wrong I said appointment not employment I'm not on that one yet I'm only on the one for appointing the people that we interviewed tonight those are the wrong motions according to I believe right needs to say a public official appointment right to appointing anybody these are from these are the people that came tonight that we interviewed yes thank you, I'm sorry to interrupt we want to make sure we're doing okay so I'll second that okay so Sue made the motion for motion two and he seconded it and for the discussion none all those in favor of motion two signify saying aye okay I move that the support enter into executive session to discuss the evaluation of employees in accordance with one VSA section 313A3 and to include the Deputy Town Manager, Parks and Recreation Director, and Senior Services Coordinator. I move that the select board make the specific finding that premature general public knowledge of the select board's position concerning the proposed public official employment would replace the town at a substantial disadvantage. I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss the proposed public official employment pursuant to one VSA 313A3 to include the Deputy Town Manager.