 It's seven o'clock so we're going to call the October 17 meeting of a select board and joint meeting of the effort and select board to walk. No, that's the meeting outside for order to start. First order of business is to approve the agenda. Before we do, I would like to amend one item. It's under managers items agenda for the 1020 meeting regarding ARPA but also just like to add a future meeting agenda to that as well. I will make an emotion to approve the agenda as amended. Moved and seconded all in favor. Any opposed. Motion passes. Next is to approve the consent agenda items consisting only of a minute of the October 3rd meeting. Moved and seconded any further discussion. All in favor. Any opposed. So we'll move on to the public comment section. This is a chance for anyone either on the computer or in the room to speak on anything that's not on the agenda. We'll have you say your name, and we're going to give each or anyone would like to speak two minutes to do so. Yes, sir. Just just before you start, I'm not sure whether it's like what notice or not. So many members of the public, but Mark Podge, what is actually directed by the service passed away. And it was very unexpected. And it's been lost in the community. I'm just. My thoughts go out to his wife and family. And it's, it's just, you know, kind of. So, I'm not going to go into details. Now I don't think it's my place at a public meeting. Just so you're aware. Thank you. Well, a summer note, but we'll transition back. Oh, thank you. Um, anyone who'd like to make a public comment. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Yeah, I'm a, I'm Breck Stewart. And I want to talk briefly about Airbnb's and short-term rentals in Waterbury. I raise this issue on front board forum. I also try to get on the agenda for the next select board meeting to discuss this, but I think the bottom line in front is that this 51 Main Street, this is where we're going to talk about rentals. And I think it's going to be a great opportunity for everybody in affordable housing and excess and housing, successful people in Waterbury. There's ongoing price, housing prices, nationwide, but also especially here in Vermont. And I think we're doing that in town as well for a lot of people to both are looking to purchase homes and looking to rent property. And I think that the, uh, having short-term rentals and Airbnb's and residential zone neighborhoods definitely presents a challenge for people who are looking to rent a house. I think it's going to be a great opportunity to draw a line between what I think is, you know, renting out a space that's in a commercially zone district or maybe renting a room in your house during the season or during winter, if folks that want to ski. I think there's a big difference than that. I'm leaving a house that a single family home or a multi-family home that's in a residential district, they can for a large part of the year while using it basically as a business to churn people through. There's hotels. We have the old stagecoach and we have plenty of places in the city that we want to go and enjoy everything that's good about Vermont and everything that's good about town here. But I think housing in special residential areas should be for folks that want to make water very home and want to live in our town. And I have a number of ideas about this. I'll try to address them. I have more time to talk about it. But I think that, uh, Burlington and other towns that kind of come up with ordinances and, uh, laws and suggestions about how we decide we're based on what things are, uh, and how we do that. And I think that's one of the things that we should prioritize for folks that want to live in town. They want to vary their home over, uh, using single family homes or generating fraud. Hey, I keep having technical trouble here. Are you kicking me out of this meeting? I. Oh, no. Thanks. You're going to talk later about. Can I jump in and say thank you. Megan, if you'd like to speak on public form, I'm going to wait for Danny, the chair to recognize you just for the record for everyone. I can admit all when folks are coming into the room. Glenn, I can't admit all when folks are coming into the room. So folks are popping out. That's not the reason. If you're interested in speaking, raise your hand. And Danny, the chair will recognize. So I'm going to go back to Danny. Thanks so much. I'm sorry. I just keep getting kicked out. I can't. I don't know why I'm getting all. Yeah. We hear you when I admit all when I can. So, okay. So I just want to be able to do a public address or raise my hand. Thank you. I just wanted to make sure I got into this meeting. I appreciate it. Thank you. I'm just following up. I was here a month ago and I asked about social media policy. I'm wondering what's happening with that. Yeah. Thank you. So that's going to be in that lot. One of those last items we were just talking about for future agenda that I'm going to take on that. 11 seven agenda. 11 seven. Okay. Because we just had another incident. Vice chair posting. Special interest group for our taking on the time of service. Right. So as we talked about last time, because we don't have a policy, there's nothing for us to monitor or inform. It will be on the 11th, seven agenda. The second thing I want to ask you. I had. I brought in a conflict of interest. And I was told that some of you can respond and say what the process was moving forward with that. And I'm hurting. So is anything happening with that? I don't know what the process is for a conflict of interest complaint from you. I wasn't hearing about me. Yeah. I'm just asking what I'm hearing. A process. Yeah, we do. And I apologize because I don't have the policy. Committee. I don't have it with me because I didn't know. There is a conflict of interest policy. I believe the policy speaks mainly to the boards. Like the officials in terms of their. Having to recruit. If there's a conflict. My guess is that there is. We are fortunate that that applies to staff. You know, There are certain things that staff might have a conflict with, but I don't have it. So. Probably apologize. I didn't read those minutes of the meeting. I didn't. Wasn't aware of it. I made a concern. You have a specific concern. I would encourage you to give me a call. I'll let you know. I understand. I appreciate you. Thank you. Megan Wright. Hi. Good evening. I just wanted to thank the gentlemen who spoke regarding Airbnb. We have a similar issue in our neighborhood. We're an association of five homes off of meal and flats. Recently, we had a neighbor sell their home to someone who is going to basically put a hotel next to our house. They're not going to be residents. They're going to be Airbnb, the property 24-7. We share a leech field with them. There are three out of the five homes that share a leech field. I have contacted the town. I've contacted the state. I've contacted anybody who will listen to me, but I would like to see something on the agenda regarding Airbnb versus commercial and residential. They are not residents of Waterbury. And I'd love to see something happen where we could prohibit a commercial endeavor happening in a residential neighborhood where we cannot monitor who is in our neighborhood and the shared cost of road maintenance and a leech field that should be permitted. They're advertising 12 people in a home that is residents for four bedrooms. There seems to be a conflict of interest there. I don't think there should be 12 people in one home when they share a leech field with two other homes that share a cost. So I'm just hoping that could be something that could be on the agenda in the near future. And I wanted to support the gentleman who spoke up this evening. Thank you, Megan. Megan, do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions? I would love it. Hi, Chris. Do you have an association? We do and our covenants, unfortunately, Chris, actually I'm a neighbor to the area that you put together in the past few years. Unfortunately, our neighborhood came to be in 1988 and our covenants are, they're still going, but we did not anticipate this. So we now need to amend our covenants, but unfortunately for us, the people who have purchased this home are two attorneys who I'm sure can outspend us. Yeah. Yeah, that was gonna be my, both my stuff. Both my subdivisions. We're in a world of hard work. The covenants in there could address all the issues you're talking about. Yeah, I mean, we can be, three out of five of us can vote it, but then our covenants say we have to litigate it. I'm sure they can outspend us. I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, I mean, I'd love for the town to make it so that that's a commercial entity. I mean, when you put 12 people in a home on a leech field shared with two other homes, that seems like an inequity we should not have to share. And I have no recourse. As I've said, I've talked to the town a couple of times last week, talked to the state. I've talked to anybody who will listen, but I have no recourse at this point, other than the covenants, and they will outspend me. Megan, listen, is there anything in the planning zoning records that don't claim to nothing of that sort? I guess I would just say two points for information while we're on the topic. We as a select board have created a Waterbury Area Housing Task Force. We actually had a deadline for applications. We will likely extend it, but for those, including those who have spoken today, I know I put this in an email to breakfast to say if you're interested, I think we've talked about that. Part of that group will be what the group is interested in, and that may be one thing. Obviously, Steve, our planner and zoning administrator is not here, but we have planning commission members here. And I would say right now, our regulations on the book generally do not even define short-term rental as a use. So in terms of regulating it, we're not even defining it. There is a rewrite going on later on in the agenda. We'll get there. And they are considering including it as a use, which then it would be a use that's potentially regulated, but current status is it's not defined as a use. I don't believe it's, I don't believe the town presently has the ability to regulate it, unfortunately. With regard to the reach field issue, not to pass the buck, but the town does not have a role in permitting on-site septic systems any longer. Back 35 years ago when I first came here, we did what the state has taken that over completely. The only role the town has with regard to on-site sewage is calling the health officer if they fail, and then it becomes a public health violation. I sympathize with both of you folks who've talked. The price next to me on Rickley Road just sold, but for the five years prior to its sale, it was pretty much Airbnb. And I had the same concerns. The leach field is, it's a separate leach field, but it's on my property. I would caution you, however, when you're talking with a state magnate, you know, if you've got a shared leach field, the leach field should have been permitting to handle the number of bedrooms that all of the contributing homes to the leach field make up. So if that house is a four-bedroom house, the law as far as public water is concerned is the first three bedrooms of any home are considered for double occupancy. So that's six. And then in bedrooms beyond that, you only have to plan for one additional person. So at minimum, the leach field should be able to handle seven persons living in that house. And I know 12 is five more than seven, but just be aware that, you know, that all factors into this equation as far as your leach field is concerned. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, no, I did talk to the state and they told me that the house as it's four bedrooms has, there's no rhyme or reason. You have four bedrooms that does not equate. You can put 20 people in there if you want. It doesn't matter. Unfortunately, if you're, I think it was MDR versus an LDR, there was no rhyme or reason, which I found crazy, but it is what it is. But hoping that maybe on the town level, we could take it up and go from there. Thank you. Thank you. Glenn, I know your hand was up if you have a good connection and would like to speak 10 now. Yeah, thank you, Danny. And I apologize, I didn't mean to interrupt to y'all. It might have been my air pods. I apologize if that was the case, but so really quick, just, you know, I missed what was said previously. You know, I did see that the agenda calls for, you know, an 830, I think, slot for Anderson versus the town. And I guess the question that I have is last select board, it was Grayson versus town. So I just want to be clear on the semantics. Mostly because it's in the Superior Court of Vermont right now. It's here with, I'm sorry, somebody interrupted. I can't hear. Thank you. That was a mistake, Glenn. So last meeting, it should have said Anderson v. Waterbury. It was my mistake. Okay. Well, yeah, so I guess I hear you now. I didn't, I know last week it was all about interrupting and I didn't want to step on anybody's toes. But I guess what I'm saying is, since I'm in two cases, if there could be more specificity in defining it as Anderson appeal of Grayson or DRB ruling or something to that effect, because it sounds like I'm actually assuming the town, which I'm not. And I just want to be really clear about that because there's counter claims with EFUD. And that's because EFUD sued me. So I just want to be clear about that. And then the only other piece that I just wanted to share, I might get cut out. So I'm going to try to stick around for that. But if, so long as that is something that we can address for the future, but also, we're expanding the farm. And I think Bill know, the Agency of Agriculture Foods and Markets here in Vermont has permitted us fully for what we're looking to do here. As part of it, the natural resources, people looked at the water quality and I looked at those issues. So I guess the question I'm looking for you guys to maybe help address is going forward. We have a few well sites that will be digging for those activities, inclusive of one location that's in a class two wetlands. So I know there's stuff with the disc golf and class two wetlands. I don't know what's permitted or what's permissible rather. So, if there's, it's easier for us and we're economical to site it in that location. So if there's no objection by the town, I suppose we'll do that. But ultimately, if there is, we could go to this other location. So that was just one thing I wanted to share with you. And that's it. I'll check back in if I get cut off. Thanks. I wasn't clear on a question on the second half, but I'm sorry, did you read? I think you turned about whether or not the town had any input as to where it built it well. Okay. I think the agency does it. The town has no real sighting where a private well so it's built or installed. Thank you. It's all up to you and see natural resources. Is there anyone else online or in the room that has something that's not on the agenda they'd like to speak to? Seeing nothing else, we'll go ahead and move forward to select board items. First is considering nomination of applicant for school board. So select board should have seen an email with Jake Pittman's letter and he felt the fear this evening. So we think we can come on up if you'd like to introduce yourself. I will also say that. Also, I remember what you were talking about. Yeah, we'll be sure. We're not going to, we won't have it, but we'll be efficient. Okay. Well, hello everybody. My name is Jake Pittman. I am a 2013 graduate of Harwood. And I hope to get a quick background on myself. After Harwood, I attended a student flat for New York where I got a bachelor's of science in the human development and relations. And after college, I lived in Burlington for a couple of years and then in 2019 I came back to Waterbury because I love it here. I love Waterbury, it's my hometown. I really enjoyed being a member of this community and I knew it was where I wanted to be now I'm here. I kind of wanted to start off my pitch for your recommendation to the Fisher School Board by just the main idea, the main reason why I like to be considered as a member of the school board is because I, in my personal opinion, have noticed that there's a bit of a disconnect from several entities such as the board and the administration, as well as the faculty and staff. I think there's been a disconnect with the student body in particular in the last several years. And recently I've become connected to the student body because I have been an assisting coach for the Harvard Class of 2013, starting last fall in Burlington. I'm in the second season of that right now. And I also was a head coach for the middle school track and field programs past spring, which I plan to continue doing. And so I was able to establish this connection with the students. And again, my main point of emphasis is that I believe I can offer just a much bigger perspective to the board on the way that younger people think about their education and the way that they think about the world in general, being that I have this connection with them through my coaching, as well as the fact that I am a younger person. It's been 10 years since high school. Feels like yesterday to me to be clearly honest. And through my education in my major team of developments, coaching really reminded me of that I have a passion for working with youth and adolescents. And I plan to be a member of this community for quite some time. And I'd like to be involved, particularly with the school board and help assist them in making decisions where they consider the, not only the impacts that it might directly make or indirectly make on the student body, but also just the perspective that the students might gain from certain decisions that are made. I've agreed with decisions that have been made the last several years. I've disagreed with decisions. I try to stay as level-headed as I can. I try to consider all scenarios for why a decision is even being discussed. And again, my goal is to just act as more of a liaison or the student body as a member of the district for it. I think that's been missing. I think decisions have been made case-belief and I wanna help bring more of a student voice to the board through my connection with coaching. And yes, that is my primary goal. And I will quickly mention that there is kind of just a natural conflict of interest. Technically, I am going far within our coach and I've spoken to a superintendent in mind about that reality and what he has graciously offered to do is contact Secretary of Education and she's just like, oh, for once, I'm not sure about that. But thank you. And they're requesting look of variance to be made on my behalf as a coach, which I know has been done in my case with the board members and we'll see where that ends up. But I think the pros rather than the cons of my connection, this is through coaching. The contrast is there, there are so many more pros. I have this connection. I get to speak to students. When I speak to students, it's very low-stakes because I'm not their administrator. I'm not their parent. I'm not their teacher. I'm kind of, I think I'm a peer for many of them, again, just because of my age and my relationship I get to build with them. So again, I made points that I wanna offer the student perspective to the board. I wanna help the board understand how if you push this button, this reaction is gonna happen. I think I have a good grasp on these generation students and I just wanna get involved in my community. And that is why I'm hoping you will recommend me to fill that lot of various spots for the school board seat. And I, if I enjoy it, and I think I'm contributing, I plan to run the reelection, which that's up in March. Thank you. Questions from the board? Where do you think the future of education is going and what type of perspective is coming from these kids that made you feel necessary to bring it to the table and number three, the cost of education and just a huge addition to a lot of people and how does that factor into your wanting to be on the board? Well, if there were three questions in there on the first, well, the state of education let's see, I mean, I just think that there's this elements of trust that the student body needs to have in its administration and its board. And I think that that is not recognized as much as it should be by our district at times. I think there has been a breakdown of trust between the students and the administration and the board all of these, you know, authoritative figures that have governed how their education works. And, you know, I came from a time of Hollywood where I saw that start to happen as a high school student and after high school, I saw it need to happen in the wrong direction. And I just hope to provide value to the board in helping them understand the way that students react to certain decisions that are made. Go into your third question about the cost of education. I'm not sure if this was along the lines of what you're talking about, but I thought about that a lot because personally, we talk about finances, we talk about money quite a bit when we're on the school board, the budget and all that that means. I'll tell you right now, I don't own a home. I don't deal with property taxes and school taxes. And I've never really been directly impacted by them. I've never had to come here and drop off a property tax chart that passes a dollar. That's not something I'm done for. And I want to just say that I recognize that and those are the types of conversations that when they happen and I know they'll happen often, I plan to listen, take a back seat for lack of a better term and just let folks who are more well equipped to have those discussions area out those discussions. Again, I can't relate to those taxpayers who have owned homes for maybe even decades who might be sitting on that school board or the many community members currently on the homes. That's an area that I'm great in. I've never had to do it. I'm currently renting in Waterbury. One day I rent a home, but again, those are the kind of discussions where I'd like to just listen before, certainly before I speak because it's not my area of expertise. Yeah, I'd like to just learn more as a member of the school board. Again, an opportunity to take a look at the proposals for school consolidation or the renovation of the high school and the position on that. Well, I'll be honest with you. I have not specifically looked at those proposals. I've heard a lot about them, of course, because that's a constant topic within the town of Waterbury. I know that's been a hotly debated topic. Obviously, all of the drama last fall with the bond votes and what that meant for the school. Again, I don't know much about it. I understand that approving something of that size is a monumental decision, and that needs to be carefully vetted and considered, and obviously put to a vote. People were very passionate about it last year, and I know they continue to be passionate about it. And I do need to do some more understanding those proposals more. I haven't looked at them specifically, but if I have names of the board, then I plan to do just that. I plan to get very involved in understanding what these proposals mean, how much money they're really talking about, what it means to the students, what it means to the taxpayers. I know those are things I need to consider, and that's what I plan to do. My understanding is there is student liaisons to the board. How would you envision your role or perspective? You seem to really be emphasizing student voice, like being different from that. Right, yeah. Well, I thought about that question too, actually. I'd like to say that I'd like to advocate for the students, but I also want to be careful when I say that because it's not that I want. This obviously is going to be some game where I'm just, a student listening to one ear and I just say what they say. That's not what I'm trying to do. I just want to offer a voice and a line of thinking that I think some board members have not considered when thinking about how the board's decisions will impact the culture of the students that are part of it. I understand you have these student liaisons. I know one of them very well. I've spoken with members of the team, members of the student liaisons, and also with members of the team to kind of understand how some students feel about decisions that are made. I want to give opportunity, of course, to those student liaisons to fill their role accordingly. But I would also like to assist them. When those student liaisons have topics they want to bring together, I'd like to be able to help encourage them to speak on those topics, speak clearly and with attention. And I just want to be seen as not to lack of a better term. I don't want to be seen as a scary figure to them. I don't want to be this authoritarian presence. I want to be seen as more of a pew for those students. And I think I can just accomplish that through my connection in coaching and, yeah, I mean, I just, I'd like to offer them help specifically as they, as we get new student liaisons as a transition. I'd like to help be at their side and help them be active members of the group. Have you been able to watch school board meetings or attend any? And I'm curious how you feel about sort of the other side of really stepping up to be part of those, as often in time for the conversation with the others in the room? Yeah, I mean, I, well, I had a blast with board meeting. This, well, I had interest in doing this before about six months ago. And then I did not realize I was in the big question that they were looking for a staff member of the library, but I was mistaken about that. But then it suddenly came to the attention that they were looking for a member and I was contacted directly because of something I had sent in six months prior. But that being said, this was kind of a, this was, I don't, I don't see it coming on me, but the opportunity came up quick. I didn't, I wasn't even considering this three weeks ago. I was just, I spoke to him recently about it. And while I've been in a board meeting, I sat in for the whole thing because I wanted to see how it would run. And it reminded me of the time when I was, not a student liaison, but when I was in college, I was sitting on a board for a literacy foundation as an intern for a literacy organization, my senior year of college. And it all came back to me. I remembered how the structure works. I remember how different agenda items are amended, how discussion is seconded and talked about, and just the structure in general board games and all came back to me. And on the topic of when discussions can get heated, you know, I'd like to think I'm a little bit of that. I'm pretty level headed. I know when to just, you know, sit back, let people speak or speak when I need to speak, because I feel passionate about something. And I know how to not laugh and better care and fly off the wall. You know, that's not something I'm going to be doing. If I am a member of this board, I'm not going to be raising my voice and going back and forth to people. And I've been in situations like that before. And I think I'm prepared to, to navigate that the best I can. Other questions. Just to make sure. We're going to live in water. I live on Philly Lane, in those apartment complexes on Blush Hill. Yes. Can you have to be both remind us? Yes, sir. Mind us of how the process. Yeah. So the process right now, even though water is part of. Consolidated school district, the school board actually has the authority to appoint. Someone to fill vacancies. They are able to have asked this board to make a recommendation and have input, whether it's the school board's. Just as an aside. The LCT town fair was just a couple of weeks ago. And the league's policy is to continue to. Advocate in the legislature to change this that, that it should be select boards who are able to fill vacancies because, you know, you've got a board that probably now when there's members from based in the Orange and Wingsfield and all the other five towns that will be. Helping to decide. I believe. Jake is the only applicant. So it doesn't really matter. Recommending not. He's the only one they've got to consider, but I'm hoping in the future, the legislature will change the law. And allow the municipality from which the vacancy encouraged to position, but that's not based on. Like their command, Jake, we're stepping forward and I'll move that we recommend. We have a motion. Do we have a second? I'll second. We have a motion and a second. Do we have further discussion? Yes. Yeah. You know, this short conversation. For me doesn't do this topic justice. I appreciate your passion and desires on this board. The meetings that I went to at the screen board were in my opinion as dysfunctional as possible. There's something very broken with the screen board system. I have huge concerns. I understand your desire to bring students concerns to the table. I mean, I've had people say to me that kids around the schools as it is. That's a little frightening. But I think it's not based on what you see me. Some of these schools across the country. You know, it's certainly not terrible. But I am probably going to vote no simply because it is a broken system and no offense to you. You seem like a great guy. I'm sure you'll get your opportunity to be on the board. I'd be curious to see how everything goes, but it's a difficult issue dealing with rising school costs. I hope these students aren't feeling shortchanged in the education system. I've seen things happen at that school over time. And we, again, I could really get into this conversation about, you know, everything you said before about housing costs, about this, that, and the other thing comes full circles for me because my first home, I built myself. My second home that I bought was less than a home. I completely rebuilt that myself. I'm on my sixth home now and I built everyone for myself. I'd be curious to know how many students come out of that school now and even think about doing something like that. Instead they go to college and they give a degree in college and come out with huge amounts of debt. I wonder how they're going to pay their debt off plus for their own home. And most of the houses that I built, I did at a fraction of the cost because a lot of sweat into it and effort and knowledge and talent to do that. And that's part of the reason why we're faced with such a housing shortage because there's so many people out there now that either want to do that type of thing or can do it. Anyway, I'd like to address. I'm one of those students, yeah. And I experienced a lot of that myself. We share a similar opinion on that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to acknowledge that my kids here. Hi, Mike. Raise a hand in terms of hi, Mike. Hopefully you're hearing us. I don't know. Yeah. No, we joined at seven 25. Thank you. But just so that, you know, for calling the vote. And if you wouldn't mind after this, asking you to put in the verse, but let's take the. Got it. Okay. So we have a motion and a seconds. All those in favor to recommend Jake for school toward. Mike, would you like, I just want to make sure that you are going to vote. I'm sorry. I was going to open up. Probably didn't see the. And I came. I don't feel. I have. I have. I have. Opposed. No. And that Mike as an abstention. So that is three in favor. So we'll send, do we then send a recommendation via email bill? Sorry. Yeah, we'll. Let this. Thanks so much. Well, thank you. I'd love to talk. Any time. I don't know if you know where I live. Okay. We will move forward to you. Discuss the middle of application of bylaw modernization grant and consider commitment for local cash. Matt. While our speakers come up. Is the four one seven phone number. I think it's star seven to one. You can just let us know who you are. Because we were able to chat. People on seven. That's Kelsey. That's my wife. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. Welcome. Thank you. So Katie Gallagher and vice chair of the planning commission. We appreciate the opportunity to talk again about the application for the bylaw modernization grant. So I think you all received. Almost finalized, but still draft version of the application over the weekend. So I'll give, I guess. A brief kind of update. Thank you. So Katie Gallagher and vice chair of the planning commission. I appreciate the opportunity to talk again about the application for the bylaw modernization grant. So I'll give you a brief kind of update since we talked about it already. And then you have any questions, please. Feel free to ask away. But again, this is. An application. To hire consultant to assist the planning commission over about a six month or so period. Next. Spring into summer to help with. Engaging the public. To talk about the updates to the bylaw revisions that we are currently undertaking related to phase one, which is primarily the village area. A big piece of this work is related to increasing housing options in this area. And so I think, you know, as we talked about last time, 51 self made, it's a good example of why we need to have transparent and open communication with community members and help them to understand why and what we are proposing. So the consultant that we would hire would have. Expertise and zoning in. Graphic. Illustrations mapping through GIS. Things like that to be able to more clearly and excessively illustrate the differences between our current zoning bylaws and what's being proposed. We can look, you know, at an image of the village. Area and see what like a bill. Development project might look like things like that. That can really help to. More clearly articulate what it is that we're doing. People don't have to look at, you know, the. So we are asking for from the town. This would be a town after $2,500 for the grant. Amount of 25,000. We have consulted with a potential. Consultant who was able to give us. Estimating costs for our. Quantity and confirmed that our timeline and. Proposal was kind of in line with what they would consider. And that the funding amount was an appropriate. Amount for, for the work that we were asking for. We're also hoping to have, you know, a good amount of support and engagement with the select board. And we're also hoping to have, you know, a good amount of support and engagement with the select board and with other community organizations to make sure that this is an inclusive process. So I think I will. Oh, I guess the final point, just, you know, in addition to the actual engagement and outreach, there would also be the consultant support with helping to summarize the feedback that we've done from the public in order to make the recommended revisions. Based on that. We'll need a better question. It's just part of a complete rewrite or just certain segments of the drawing right just pertain to how. So this is a. This is completely because essentially what we're doing is working town village residential or residential. All of our main districts. We're going to have one zoning by law document for the entirety of the town, inclusive of essentially fund and everything else. The way that it's currently split up. Is that we have a phase one area, which is everything south. So we're going to have a, we're going to have one zoning by law document for the entirety of the town. Inclusive of essentially fund and everything else. So we're going to have a phase one area, which is everything south of the highway. So like Katie said, essentially the village. Former village. And then the phase two area, which is north of that. And so right now the planning commission for the past couple of years have been focused on the phase one area. This bylaw modernization grant application would essentially. Help with outreach. Or P one. So what we're going to do with them follow, but the groundwork that we lay in P one is huge as far as phase two. Because a lot of, there's a lot of overlapping some of the zone. There's a lot of same uses that sort of thing. So what we're learning in this process, what we're doing in this process, both from a policy standpoint and from an outreach standpoint, we'll then feed into phase two and a third hope that phase two will go faster than, you know, the phase one process thus far. So that's a long way of saying, yes, it's a comprehensive. That'll completely, you know, the initial plan will have to be recognized off of that as well. Well, the plan, I think, you know, we're raising the, the zoning bylaws based on the, the current talent. But the specific grant is to. We're going to get that $1,000. Public input into the process. So we'll be able to move along to the next stage, which is particularly by the point of. Right, so it's all possible. The phase one process so that we can pass that. We can get those on the books and then also help with moving forward. Right. But the goal is to get the phase one done. So at least that will be up to date modernized and what the consultant brings to the table should be able to be carried through to the phase two and then you'll be public health and throughout once the commission finishes that. So once stage one is implemented. And then we'll be able to just carry all the zoning right there. We're currently in place or is there some conflict or overlap? It will that until stage two is, it will, it will simply change the zoning bylaws in the districts that are selfish. So in a way, thinking that like we can turn that time and zoning bylaws that came out of this whole process, but that would be, you know, you're looking at a certain gap for the entire thing. But it will be a permanent bylaw process. Right. So I guess the critical thing to understand is that while the zoning bylaw is to get it all done. You don't have to do it all at once. You can do it in phases and the planning commission shows this is just a little bit smaller capital to do it to work. And so, and so we both this through and sensibly we'd be looking at having a phase one bylaw in place at this time next year. Or by November. I mean, I'll speak for myself on the planning commission. I think others would say the same, but like I think he feels sensitive. We're trying. And we said 10% that's right. 10% man. I got under and that's, that's. It's pretty fun to go if we complete this work. Again, it might have two years to be right. Right. So the next year's budget. Bill, where does that go in the budget? It'll go with the planning budget. Other questions or comments. Okay. So at the last meeting where this was originally brought up. So I just caught up by reading the document, but I don't know from what I understand is that we were deferring to this meeting to make a vote to put this in the budget. Okay. Okay. So entertain a motion. To approve. To support this application. And the commitment point $500. The budget. Motion. Do we have a second? Second. Motion in the second. Staff. An amended motion. And a second. Okay. I just wanted to note that the planning commission does now have a page if you go to zoning and planning on our municipal website. That includes, among other things, purpose overarching goals and specific objectives for the bylaws, just talking about like why we're doing this, which these folks spoke to in more detail, but if anyone is not at all familiar, there's a broader sense around what they're trying to do in the whole town. And again, this is one phase. I have a couple of minor notes on the application and would love to chat with planning commission members later, but strongly support. I think in my view, it's a worthwhile investment of municipal funds because we know at a minimum rate, we have two hearings, the planning commission has to have one. I want to feel better or quick to answer the questions we get about why we're doing things and where it goes and what it means for my property. So to me, that's what we're investing this money for. And if that ultimately means we also happen to adopt a bylaw plan, I think that would be really, really good. But having to support that. So thanks to all the work of the planning commission members getting it done. Thanks for that. And but other discussion before we go. Well, yeah, the zoning rate has always been a huge. I'll call it convoluted. Movie target. And I'll be so impressed with you guys. I'm really happy to be here. And make this. It's not a year. Again, we feel it's very. We appreciate your help. Thank you. Great. All in favor. Hi. Thank you. Any opposed. Or any abstention. Excellent promotion. Curious. Thanks so much. Is there anything that we need to follow up with you on for that? Is there any action that we need to take? Yeah. Oh, I keep pressing up the wrong thing. Next is the local emergency management plan. It was an item in an August meeting that Gary had presented to us. And what he let us know is that there were no changes to the actual plan only revisions to the. Staff names and board names. So what I asked her to do is review the 2021, which is the link I sent. To the board. Since he said there were no changes, what we had said on August 15th is we would vote on it in the next meeting, but we never put on the agenda. So we didn't actually go on it. So our goal today is to vote to adopt, read up the emergency management plan. But because we don't have a copy of it. I recommend that we adopt it. Pending a review of the changes of staff and board names, just so we get eyes on that. So that's it. Well, if they look at it and then vote at the next meeting. So any thoughts from any. Members. Not. Oh, it's like. Well, here you said that essentially. It's going to make the same. And I did review the 2021 version seems complete to me. So I'll be willing to move forward. Yeah. So I'll go ahead once we make a motion to approve. I'll take on just getting in touch with Gary and reviewing the names within, because I think there's some changes, even then August 15th stuff. We'll need to make those up. And could you identify when you do that? The communicator is, I mean, that's my reading. One of the central roles is to have a big emergency. That there's one person passed. Providing communications for the town. Absolutely. So I'll entertain a motion. Approve the. 22 version of the emergency management plan. We have been second. Any further discussion. All in favor. Thank you. You get a lot of background noise going on there. Should I mute here? I'm muted. There you go. So shadow. It's a little scary. All right. Okay. We're going to be in the interest of time and efficiency. We're going to be wanting to join business. With each fight. So we'll invite commissioners to join us at the table. There. Is this you are in my best. Yes. Yes. When they call it. Just. Just starting the joint business that you'll want to call your. 730. That's how we talked with all 757 and the 80 game was delayed due to rain. Unfortunately. Call the meeting of the Edward priority building district for the viewing meeting with the water very select for here for Monday October 70. I guess. We've got the agenda there. We do. Okay. So, there's two items. Well, three items to discuss to an open session and then quickly the second session. I hope. The second item is the health insurance for 2023. This is the time of year that I usually presented the boards of recommendation for health insurance for the next year. And typically, probably since 2014 when the new format came into play. Probably presented it only twice before this joint meeting. The last several years it's been rather pro forma than pieces haven't been too, too significant, you know, two and 3%. So I would present it to the select board and then like what would say okay. I think this year it's one of those years where I feel it's important for a couple of reasons for there to be a joint meeting. One, if you read the memo, you'll see that. So no inflation is running. And also, there's been significant premium increases. My statement last year, suggesting that very low increases that we had a year ago. And actually decrease from who cross and less than a 1% increase for me would result in a big increase this year because by the time they did inflation is already starting to move up. And it's true. I've always tried to practice from, you know, I deal with with all of the elected boards and work for for you independently. Me down as far as employees and so I've always tried to model and preach if you will that we all work for one. So it would not be a good idea for the select board to operate this plan and the commissioners to offer that plan and a lot of commissioners to operate. Which is possible and it's legal, but I don't think it's wise. The third reason why I think it's important to do this collectively is that while I will be here to present this to the employees that have been involved in the next month. And you know, it's early November when they can start choosing plans for next year so it's timely. I'm going to be gone, retired after too long. And I think it's important to be able to communicate to the employees that this is the offering that the boards collectively made. I also gave you some information in here that I think there's without question, except for the, the year that the select that the highway department decided to form a union, and then a couple years later, the least department decided to form a union for the village. When they did that, the labor market was not anywhere near as volatile as this one is. We don't have a police department anymore so the police union went away when the police department was expanded along the village. The highway department. They entered into it. I think it was a two year contract and then they went through contract renewal. And after the first renewal of the contract they actually voted to, to be certified. So they, they said, we're not getting what we want out of the union except and do so and they decided they were better off as they had been before. We've seen more turnover this year than we have for a number of years. When I say this year going back to maybe July 2021, when the deal with my bakery. I was the zone administrator. I was on the administrator. Now we've had the time to work and appointment of utility building work that happened in August. Pre-pandemic would have called the office for that job and had four had to re-advertise. I just hired someone to that position today. I expect the problem to start next week. But long-time employer we thought started by the water treatment plant, the water superintendent has resigned to take a job at our union. And there's other wrongblings and challenges in the workforce here. This isn't restricted to water rate. I had three professional conferences in the last month. Two of them here in Vermont. The Montalans City Management Association meeting last week. And a couple weeks ago, the LCT town fair. This topic has been discussed with my colleagues and other board members at both of those conferences. It's a challenge. And then it's going to be a challenge for the taxpayers because obviously the taxpayers have to have the funds. So I made a recommendation to you that we increase the monthly allowance that we provide to employees by 10%. And recommended changing the formula by which we provide stipend to employees who don't take the health insurance. This year for those folks, they get $135 a month stipend, which is taxable. It's not an untaxed benefit. The health insurance is, which, you know, is worth to the people who have families. It was worth $2,000 a month. So I did recommend increasing that stipend for single employees to $145 a month. And we made it 10% of the monthly allowance for the people taking the two person, the parent and child and the family funds. I have not done a calculation yet about how much this costs for community because it's dependent upon who takes health insurance and he doesn't. I don't know that yet. If everything were equal, it would be a 10% increase, you know, everybody who took a plan this year takes the same plan that they took last year our costs would grow up. There's usually some movement between plants, you know, people whose kids get over 26 years old go down to a two person plan. Somebody who's had a baby ends up going from a two person plan to a family plan. It's, it's hard to pinpoint that. But anyway, I'll stop talking for now. That's my recommendation. And now when you ask questions and ultimately it's your choice. So this ends up being a benefit to the employee, like if you're looking at their salary plus benefits, this would be added on as a benefit. Yeah, so right now, you know, I, the person that I just hired with the billing clerk, you know, offer $12 an hour is to pay. And on top of that $22 an hour we're going to pay the employer's share of the time that's mandatory but that's a requirement that is theirs. And then this health insurance is a benefit that there, anybody who works 30 hours a week or more is eligible to take this. I think there's about between E-FUD and the town, there's about 25 people who are eligible to take the health insurance benefit. I think there's, I didn't work before I came to the meeting, I believe there's five people who are eligible who don't take it and those people get $135 a month right now. And, you know, I put some information in this memo and I don't know if you've all got it there, but in that little table on page two, you know, this is a rich benefit, there's no question about it. But you can see that the richness of it is declining here in that these plans right now, you can, if you approve this, you can see the 2023 percentage of the platinum premium, but once from 82.6% to 93.8%. And in 2022, the range from 90% to 102%. There's a couple of things I want to say about that. It seems like, well, this is a very rich benefit you're providing, you know, your recommendations 93% of a platinum plan, which is through for a single employee. But the single employee is getting a benefit that's worth in 2020, $910 a month, whereas if you have a family, you're getting a benefit that's worth over $2,200 a month. But that person is, you know, getting, you know, 82% of the cost of platinum plan is covered by the community. Not everybody takes the platinum plan. In fact, I encourage employees to take lower value plans, high deductible plans in particular because once you kind of rip off that bandaid, so to speak, and if you have it near and you can fund a health savings account, after that, you know, putting money into your health savings account allows you to have a higher deductible plan. And I think it works well for most people. But what you need to also think about, there's two other things to think about one, while the value of the plan in relation to the platinum plan, which is the highest price plan that's offered is dropping. The other thing that changes is that deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance, what gets covered is reduced every year by the insurance company. So the insurance itself isn't worth as much, it doesn't cover as much, doesn't provide as much first dollar covering. There's always a little shift for the employee to cover those costs. The other thing to remember in this, I just say that, you know, if you go in the other room, I can find you the VLCT compensation plan and it shows any municipalities who responded to the survey and probably, you know, no 150 pounds, respond out of the 250. You know, we're offering this benefit that is quite rich when compared to the platinum plan alone, and there's no way to deny that it's a rich plan, I'm not going to do that. But we don't offer dental insurance and we don't offer vision, offer vision care. So if you take a high deductible plan and you've got a health savings account, we can say, well, we're contributing next dollar to your health savings account, you can use that money to pay for your dental or for your vision work. So there's other municipalities, unfortunately with whom we're competing more and more often now. And Cindy knows this, it's not only just with all the municipalities, but it's with the state too. And to a lesser degree, the private sector. So anyway, I'll stop again. So in terms of other municipalities, what you know about where do we cut fall assist insurance that we offer enough to get the plan to somebody coming to Waterbury or we in the middle there. I would say we are certainly not the do not offer the richest compensation packages by any stretch of imagination and that goes especially for public works employees and we'll be talking about this at a different meeting but, you know, right now, there's a there's more and more of a call from our employees to say we want some real call, we want paid to be available to be in town when it snows or to respond to water sewer agency. You know, we don't offer that at all to our highly enjoyed it called out at night or on a Saturday or Sunday, we expect them to be around and they make up the work and they can we get over time to that but we're not paying a call pay for that on the water and sewer side of things. Our employees are required by our planet to go to those facilities every day. So they've got to go there seven days week. So there's, you know, to water operators and to sewer operators so every other week, they've got to go to the plan. We pay them four hours of time to do that. And it's at an overtime rate because they've already worked 40 hours in the money to fly the time thing. And most often when they go there for that or they get paid for hours that pretty typically probably therefore, two to three hours so we get a little bit of a bump up, but you've got other communities all around us that are, you know, paying $150 a week It's coming. Mike has his hand up her question. Me bill. I think so. Question. I know this is a difficult question but it's based upon your assumption. The total amount of budget authority that we would be occurring to to the red fence and based on our current taxes. What tax increase with Mike that in soul. Well, I don't know my head like I said a second ago. So we have that information, but so somebody. So as far as the tax increases concerns, there's this a lot. There's a lot of components that go into setting the tax rate, and I know we are close to being able to do that. Personnel costs are cleanly the highest expense we have in the aggregate in a budget across the board except for the capital budgets. The health insurance premium is really a small portion of the overall rate so a 10% increase in the health insurance rate will all things being equal make 10% increase in the health insurance line. But it's not going to be close to a 10% increase in the in the tax rate. In the general government, which is basically the office staff health insurance in 2000 22 was 93,500 dollars. In the recreation department. It was $7,900 parks department it was $11,000 planning department. $33,000 and the highway department. The health insurance and the highway department was $74,000 and the library was almost $10,000 I don't know if anybody. Around 300,000 altogether. Right. So $300,000. You know, that's about four cents. $70,000 for the two. Yeah, it's about four cents. That's right. The increase would be all things equal would be not quite half a penny. Yeah. I think we ought to be generous. We have a critical recruitment and retention problem. They're recruiting and recruiting and replacing people. It is very expensive. The insurance and retirement to have you buying employees to the job. That's the most effective way. And then, and there was a time recently when we were the employer. Now we're in the street seeing the employee of last resort. We had to compete for. Right. Absolutely. And, you know, I've tried to. I think this is a reasonable proposal. 10%, it's going to. For most of our employees, it will cover most of the increase. I mean, there's some plans. If you pick the right plan or the one plan that's gone up, you know, 22%, there's 52 plans that the class offers and 52 plans that and the office. And, you know, all of them go up based on their loss ratios for those insurance companies. And, you know, it's a, it's a lot, a lot of times it's a dog chasing its tail because if you have a small increase last year. And everything doesn't work out equally as well as it did last year for you, then you need a big increase just to keep up with where you want. So, you know, 10% is, it's a lot of money. It's a big increase, but it's not going to pay for the whole increase for a single person. That's probably life too. So, and I want to make sure that you read the part when you know I said at the beginning that when we moved to this when health connect. And I could have better term, Obamacare came into the workforce and all employees, all employers under 100 employees had to offer a plan through the health insurance exchange. We moved away from the paternalistic approach that we used to have saying, Well, here's three health plans. We're going to pick one, but we're going to pick one of the three that we offer. We decided to shift years and say we're going to provide you money and then let you be the consumer to buy what we want. And since we did that, we have waited inflation far to a far greater degree than we have waited the previous increases and we told the employees that, you know, we can't keep up with double digit increases every single year. We're going to have to take into consideration in the question. So I think our increases over the last eight to 10 years have been moderated and entered by that. But it's putting us in a position where, you know, if you, if you, I mean, if you just went with inflation, it's an 8.2% increase right so 10% isn't too much above that. Yeah. So I just found out that my health insurance program is $1100 a month with $11,000 deductible. So the side of all the inflationary issues there. My household and everybody else's health holds up against. Your solution to this problem of just throwing money at the problem made my anxiety a little deeper because unfortunately there's things that have come to me this summer. Within this municipality that if we're corrected and run properly wouldn't cost the taxpayers a thing because the inefficiencies. are made efficient. The savings alone would pay for this increase. Unfortunately, I mean I had planned on completely voting no on this tonight but the problem with that is, is it's if this insurance increase goes through or didn't go through, it would impact everybody in the municipality, and everybody's not to blame in this municipality for what I'll call tax and abuse of taxpayers dollars. I'm not going to get into those issues. I'm not going to get into the place in the public forum to do it. But I just kind of wonder when we're going to stop rewarding bad behavior by just once again voting pay or benefits through without at some point, saying enough enough, the taxpayers are owed. I respect to have things run the way they should be run. So, so you know you said you don't want to talk about in the public forum Chris, but frankly, the way you're talking it sounds like I should just offer my resignation, because it's nothing to do with you. Chris, they all work for me. So if something is so egregious that the taxpayers wouldn't have to pay a cent for any of this, if something wasn't happening out there, it's happening on my watch. So either don't talk about it or we got to talk about it in the public forum and I'm not, I'm not taking it personally but I'm just saying that. You know, it's a pretty serious allegation. If somebody's asleep at the switch. I wouldn't be if it wasn't so serious that it didn't piss me off because I feel like the taxpayers aren't getting their money. So I'm going to speak up and say that obviously there's an issue that based on the agenda won't need to get done is not going to fit in tonight's discussion. And then that you reach out to bill whether you have or haven't in the past, I don't know, and then decide if it's something that wants to go on an agenda for a public meeting, or wants to be talked about separately. That said, to follow up with you, you acknowledge this point and then went back this providing health insurance for the employees needs to happen regardless. So, that issue is something that wants to be talked about separately, but the increase is the increase and we need to provide health insurance it's it's not just not just about winning and recruiting and it is about recruiting and and retaining employees but it's also just people need to have health insurance. So, I don't have questions and favor. And if anyone else has questions or comments, is that your personal question. Thank you. Oh, now I thank you. Hi, thank you. I can't figure out the digital hand. I just wanted to add, just as a comment that I also feel that, you know, with this vital employment environment. It's really very respectful employees to to really be very thoughtful about this benefit. It's important that we retain all this investment we have with our employees and do the best we can for them. And I think the overall presentation of the history how we've come up with our formulas is very helpful. And I agree that this recommendation for the 10% is is appropriate. And as Bill said that it's not the Cadillac of insurance is insurance benefits among municipalities. So that's a note to be taken. We're doing the very best to try to be very respectful to our employees it's, you know, to help them perform and retain them because it's, it's painful for us to have to start all over. I do apologize. This isn't. No, no, I understand. I apologize for interrupting you. I think Bob said here. I think it's 10% given your time right now. I think it's fair to the employees and I think it's fair to the experience. I think Bob said everything retaining the employees you've already invested in their training and education stuff. It's small amount of space around there that's worth the effort. We're ready to do something if you vote. Yeah, both boards. Both boards need to vote. Who would say we'll get down to down. I think separate. I'm going to be adopted down the end of the proposal for insurance. Which is 10% Yeah, and then an increase in the stipend itself. Is there a second to that. Motion has been made. The motion has been made in seconded to adopt the manager's recommendation of a 10% increase in stipend for the insurance. Increase. Including. Those in favor say aye. Motion passes. Mike, do you have a question before we. Yes, I do. Mike, we can't hear you. Your service is cutting out. Can you use the chat? You can turn off this video if you can, Mike, or just wait a minute and start again, but we were losing you. My hand. Does that work better now? Okay. I hear loud and clear Chris's concerns, but I'm also a little bit on a different side. We're in a environment that we're going to see new employees come into our municipality and in order to attract them. We need to have decent healthcare coverage as much as we all want to put our head in the sand. Insurance costs are just rising. I hate it. I'm dealing with it right now with my step mom. You know, medical costs are through the roof and it's, it's, it's no fun. So I think we do have to support our municipal employees. And, you know, as much as it's a hard bite of the apple to take, I think it's a necessary bite of the apple. It's not that we're paying, you know, I don't believe that we're paying a Cadillac, you know, you know, premium price to employees. I think we're paying reasonable healthcare benefits, which I think our town employees are entitled. And the future, we're going to need that to incur to attract other employees. That's all I have to say. Thanks. Thanks Mike. So I'll take a motion for behalf of the town. I'll move to approve the recommended 10% increase and $145 statement because that was not taking advantage of the health plan. Have a second. Because it's not. You have that okay. Has been moving seconded any further discussion. Thank you to bill for having both boards. I think again, it's walking that line between, I wish none of us needed to be in the business of providing, but since that is discussion far beyond this table. I think this spares, we can be the bulk of an increase that I'm going to get but I don't think it's the right thing for our employees. We do appreciate the work they do for the term. Further discussion. All those in favor. I, I, I, any opposed. No. No, no. Yeah. Thank you, mom. And I agree with Alyssa. Great. This wasn't the problem of the boys. So the second item is really at the request of the board is but I kind of articulated it here. So you each have extended a contract offer to Tom Likes, the person who hired to become the municipal manager on January 1st. He will start working here on October 31st as my deputy. And as you all remember, the boards agreed that the town would negotiate the compensation package for the new manager and there'd be an MOU between the two entities to help recovery, to reimburse the town for time that the manager will work to meet by. There are other town boards that the manager will work for with the library commission and the cemetery commission in particular, but we've never done any kind of payment between those entities. It would be more transparency and budgeting just so you could see how much time the manager spent in the library or in the cemetery commission, but the town pays for all that. It's only U5, it's a different municipality. So the only transfer is from U5 to the town in terms of the manager's position. I wrote the memo that is here on the 41st of October 3rd and I attached to an old memo that was from 2009 just as an example. And I apologize because I know I confused some of you but when you look at the old memo thinking that that was the current formula, it is not the current formula. Cutting to the chase, back in 2018 after the village dissolved, the village was moving away from this, well, it moved away completely from having general government responsibilities. And it was only left now with the water and sewer departments and the U5, basically the three things that they did. There was no more police department, the street department had gone away longer ago, but it was really, it became an opportunity for us to. In 2017, when the village was paying and most money had paid to the town, it was almost 140,000 dollars a year that the village was paying to the town. After the village dissolved, police department went away. In 2018, the boards agreed that $100,000 was the right number. And then going into 2019, the E5 commissioners asked for a little bit of time stuck, if you will. So I had Karen in particular, who was the utility billing tax clerk, keep track of her time. She did it quite religiously, almost to the point of, for instance, old example of setting the lock clock every 15 minutes, it's over now when you've got a little accident in minutes. I didn't take as copious notes about my time, but I did track my time, I think well enough. And that's what shows up on this memo in the handwritten notes on the left hand column. Karen at the time spent about 55% of her time working for E5, and I was spending about 30% of my time. And then the bookkeeper was a nominal 20 hours a month, which is about five hours a week. And Carava, mostly as the E5 treasure was working basically an hour a week, about four hours a month. And from that, I used those percentages and then looked at the total compensation for all of those employees. So wages and salary, health insurance, retirement, social security, workers' compensation, unemployment insurance, all of that was monetized to a total compensation and then I multiplied Karen's total compensation by 55% and my total compensation by 30% in the small calculations to the other two. And when we did that, we came up with about, was it 98,000? It dropped down a little bit below that. And at that time, we decided that we then just, instead of having everybody keep this record of time, these people, that was it, once we've done kind of that, based on how we increased it by inflation. So it must have been 2020 when the payment dropped based on the 2019 time study to $90,000. And then from then on, it was increased by inflation. And the most recent year, while inflation was running quite a bit lower, even by the time we put the budget to debt in January, inflation rate between 2021 to 2022 had already bumped up. So we added 5%. So in 2022, the budget is $96,309. Now, the MLU that you talked about as far as Tom's new contract is concerned, you talked about having an MLU to capture what the manager's cost was. I think what I just described is better because it's not just the manager who is employed by the town that works for EFI. I think for this year, we're fine. And even if I did the math, looking at what my compensation is now, and I don't know if I put this in the memo or not, I thought I did, but looking at my compensation and the compensation that Karen makes and everybody else, if you multiply the 96,390 by 1.08, the 8% that inflation is running, that would be very close to actually doing 55% of Karen's time and everything else. So I think for 2023, if you just multiply the 96,390 by the rate of inflation, you're good, except you're gonna have two months worth of Tom's time in 2022 because this equation or this formula is retrospective looking. In other words, we keep track of time Bill Woodruff, Public Works Director keeps track of all of his time, how much time he's worked with the highway, the water, the sewer. At the end of the year, he tells me how much time that was. I applied a similar formula to this to his total compensation and say, okay, he worked 43% of his time for the town in 2022 and then I spread that across to various departments, but the town pays E5 that 43% in 23 or in the following when they're based on what it was in the current year because I can't predict how much time he's gonna spend working for the town. So the compensation in the hours is always retrospective looking. So if you just multiply the 96,390 by the rate of inflation right now, for everything as is, it would be fine. How you want to deal with the two months work of paying Tom's salary at what was it 105? No, no, the 115 starts to get to 110 for the two months. My guess is, I would suspect that he would probably mirror my time during that two month period because he's gonna be shadowing me and might give him assignments to do certain things. So for 2023, I think you can make it overly complicated or you can just say, multiply it by 1.08 96,390 by 1.08 and then pay 30% of Tom's time for November and December having fun, add that to the 96,390. So the formula would be 96,390 times 1.08 plus 30% of 110,000 divided by 1.08 divided by 12 times two times 0.3, right? So about 55,000. If I have any concerns to all 30% for Tom in July, I have a question and I probably didn't pay attention before there, but what is it that town clerk does for a fund that kind of isn't included when the town tax and... Yeah, so the town clerk doesn't even do anything for these funds, the town, the treasurer. So you've appointed the treasurer. So she does some work for EFUD as the town treasurer. She's got to balance all the... She's got to lay the EFUD checks or sign the EFUD checks. She's got to balance the EFUD bank accounts. She's got to balance the EFUD investment accounts. So that's not the clerk that we have appointed and we don't put that clerk's money in our budget? Well, I'll have to look at that, Skip. Because I thought we... You do pay the, that's... I'll have to look to see if you can pay the village clerk and trade with the clerk. The work that the clerk does for EFUD is normal, almost. So what you pay in terms of your annual meeting motion, you deal with that. But I've left that out of this equation now. This equation now is just... So I guess it's probably in the base there, but it's four hours a month for the treasurer's time. This is what went into that base equation. I thought we had our own... You may. Right. We appointed Karen Corkin. Correct. You did appoint her a clerk and treasurer and I can't remember if she pays for his clerk and treasurer if she just paid the clerk. But I think it's a demented this amount of money that you're talking about. But if you want to take that out, you can pay the clerk a couple of years on. Here was the town clerk was. The town clerk doesn't feel a no. If those could say the district clerk here. So Woody and as long as we have an engineer are the two EFUD employees that keep track of their time spent on the town. And so the department has, so Matt Jones at the wastewater treatment plant up until last week, Scott Gayette at the water department and Celia in the highway department. They keep track of the time that those people work back and forth for each other. And what I do at the end of the year for them is they'll send me information. This is the amount of... So Celia will tell me that the highway department worked 50 hours for the sewer department and 75 hours for the water department. And then I'll get from the water employees and the water department head and the sewer department head. We worked this many hours for the town highway department and what I do is basically say, okay, I just wash it out because I look at the amount of money but most of that gets washed out and in the end there might be 20 hours worth of time that you have to get paid for. And I include that in the next year's budget. So in the line item for the town to pay for the public works director, I include anything that is owed to the water or sewer department on the revenue side for the E-Fub. I make sure that goes into the right department and I do the same thing for the sewer. So all of the public work staff who work in the field keep track of time that should be cross charged. And I included in the memo every year at budget time and probably looked at it and moved on pretty quick. What's it says? It's a relatively small amount of money. I get my question, would it be helpful to write that that occurs in the assembly use so that future people would know that that needs to be cracked back and forth? Yeah, I can do that. See all of that could be eliminated. I said, was all under my... Ha ha ha ha! They made to us a valid point. Yeah, but the reason that it's not is because the town would not vote for it. Wow. It's not E-Fub's fault. And it's not the village's fault. The town would not vote for it. Back in the day. Back in the day. So when is your rub about that going to change? Well, you're sort of seeing like you're complaining to us. Well, I'm not complaining. I'm just making a suggestion. We're happy where we are. And speaking of that, and this is a little bit outside of this discussion, but there's some things, the town authorized me to hire my kill bar to do some work to update policies to deal with the comments given by the auditor and everything else. And, you know, in my conversation with Tom after he was hired, you know, I admitted to him that over time, the Charter of the Counts for especially the town has grown and grown and grown. And budgeting is a little bit more complex than it needs to be. Ideally, what would happen? And you could do this. The town could do it on its own for the town itself. But, you know, I've had thoughts that, you know, the structure of our budget with all these departments, those they are, would have to stay. But I think it'd be much more efficient in terms of explaining to the voters what we have to just have a personnel department. And every employee is listed in that personnel department. So the total wages of the town is on one line instead of having to add up 15 lives that would be not. The total insurance benefits, the total social security, the total health insurance, all of the expenses for personnel could be in that personnel department. And then there would be revenue to that personnel department from all the other. So the highway department would have one line that would say personnel costs. And the highway department would have to buy personnel expenses from the personnel department. And it would be much more, I think, much more transparent to the voters, much easier to see what they're spending. But I'll have that conversation with the next guy. Maybe it can be that question. So what do we need to do next? I'm going to pull this forward. I don't have a calculation for that. Not much. So if we calculate in 8% for inflation, then the new figure would be 104,101. And then we add 5,500, which is 30% of Tom's time for November and December. And that's a grand total of $109,601. That's funny. The formula is good, but the end product isn't quite good enough. So Tom is $5,500 for two months, but you've got to add social security and retirement and health insurance benefits to that in order to get the total compensation report. So if you can agree on the formula, 8% on the base and then 30% of Tom's total compensation for two months, then I can figure out the number. So are you, if we agree on this, you would draft an MOU that will come back that we would, yeah, it's fine. I would like to be able to bring that MOU back to each of the boards independently to spare you another joint meeting. I'll have to go to the manager. Thank you very much. Well, that 8%, that's, I'm understanding everybody, that's just for the ensuing year. Yeah. I mean, I don't suspect inflation's gonna drop to 2% in the next year. But even if it does drop, what you're doing is just to the 2022 costs for what exists now, you're just simply recognizing that inflation is running at 8%. And then if it goes to 16% next year, you multiply that by 16%. That's how the formula works. It's just how much they're paying you. At some point, it gets, it could get out of whack and every once in a while, you probably should have the time, so maybe the time to do that is next year, is first year here, but my expectation is first year here, it's gonna be a normal year. I would probably wait a year. But if you only adjust the base by inflation, that assumes that all of the ounce costs are being adjusted by inflation all the time. And in years when inflation has been really high, we haven't always matched the wage of selling increases to inflation. So they might be, so at some point, you probably ought to do a remote at the base. Is it practice to put in the MOU to be revisited in two years? You can do it. It just seems like it's one of those things that we'll say, yeah, let's revisit it. And then 10, 12, 15 years are gonna go by with what we do, but it might be prudent to have the wording in the actual document. Well, if the next manager, and I say this with a little trepidation, but if he is as anal about numbers as I like, he'll be doing it on his basis. And hopefully he'll try to be fair to both municipalities as I always try to do, to share all the information to try to make sure that everyone's getting a fair stake and not being taken advantage of. So I'm hopeful that he will do that as well. I think a more important part of this MOU is the percentages rather than the dollar amounts because people's salaries and stuff are kind of fixed. It's the percentage that we're in. Right, it's the percentage of time and you'll have to reestablish it based on that. It's again, 2023 will be an anomaly kind of year because the two people in the municipal office that are the biggest factors in this equation, the municipal manager and the utility billing tax clerk, both of whom are gonna be brand new, both of whom are gonna have to be relying on others to help them with their getting up to speed. So, all right. On behalf of the slot board, I move that we instruct the manager to prepare an MOU, recognizing that we would like the payments between municipalities to be the 2022 payment of 96,390 adjusted by inflation plus 30% of the total compensation for the visit assistant. Deputy municipal manager. We have a motion, do we have a second? I didn't, let me say you're gonna come back to us through the MOU. I don't know if you need to see a motion, I'm just trying to wrap up stuff. The inflation rate that's typically used is the inflation rate that I get in January. So the most up to date is 8.2% and that's, you know, September to September. But I think to be fair to both sides that the inflation rate that we use should be the one that's normally used when we're doing it. So when the budget will figure out the CPI at that time for the most recent fall. You're in. Thank you. We've been seconded for the discussion from the slot board. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed or any abstain? Thank you. I think more than necessary. A G. Well, you've got to say you're so moving. We need to read it out. Well, it's okay. That's our date time on it. I hope we are doing a little bit. If I can manage here, I'm gonna have a portion of the money for the discussion. Is there a second? I'm going to have been made second to authorize the town manager to prepare an LLU, the same numbers as approved by the select board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. I do have an executive session for an evaluation of a public employee that both boards, I would like to have both boards involved and for those who are interested in public employees. And because we have two people. We're going to have to stay in this room. That's going to be Lisa and Lisa. And folks on Zoom, I'm going to put you in the waiting room and back in when we're out. I don't need to make an emotion. I know that the select board and who's going to send me on with that report and their executive session. Hold on. You're doing so many things that you're doing great, but at the time. Oh, close the executive seven at nine. Yes. You got it. Thank you all for coming. I said, thank you all for coming. I appreciate it. I got three quick things before we take one. They took no action and after the session. I just said three quick things and then we'll get out of here one and I want to make sure all of you knew. We've got 95% of the planning for the open house. For Bill and Carla here. For Saturday, November 5, 1 to 4. So. You're all invited. To be here and. You've got it all. Ingrid has planned. You're pretty much keeping me on track. I think so. I want to make sure everybody knew that. I agree with Roger to talk about the sewer system on November 6. It's been overcome. It's been overcome by events with 51 May street and planning all of this. So I'm not going to be ready. So I would ask for the second meeting in November where never that is. So the 21st versus the seven. And the last thing is I'd like to. I'm thinking I'm going to plan another. I'm going to have a great breakfast. To give all the volunteers that have served on. Other committees and boards and kind of treated like their opportunity to. Thank Bill for all his time. And we would pay to put on that pancake breakfast. Chris is really good at making coffee. So I'm going to do it at the fire station. Or St. Leo's. No, it'll be the first part of December. In between Christmas trees. So I'll work with Bill to make sure it's a day that he's going to be here and that it's not going to snow. You can. You can guarantee snow or not. I didn't do it. Thank you. So this is. Yeah. Everybody who served on a board. Okay. So what used to do in the spring. You know, I was going to get closer here. That was an opportunity to say thank you to Bill. I was going to ask Ingrid to show her PowerPoint that she's put. Of all the people in the staff in the past. Here. So. Keep us posted. Keep us posted. Yeah. So I will do that. I'll do that. I'll do that. You know, we do them pretty well up to Irene and then that kind of interrupted things. All right. Well, thank you for your time. All right. All right. Well, thank you for your time. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. We'll do. So. Thank you. Yeah, we'll take that. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. No. Okay. All right, we're going to get on. We're going to put it the agenda for the 10, 20 ARPA meeting under manager. That was actually a list of suggestions that was on under select board items before, but I was hoping to get. You find people out of there. Okay. Just move. Thanks. That's okay. So my hope was to simply outline. A very broad agenda and then, you know, split it into it, but then have a little bit of direction for the next couple of days to prepare for the meeting. So what I had thought was. We're off to come. With our goals, ideas, priorities, obviously for you as well for the ARPA funds. As one part or piece of the meeting. And then the second piece of the meeting is thinking about how to solicit public feedback that's been something we continue to hear is that the public wants to input. So that part of that meeting would be discussing. The process of soliciting input. So that we can go forward with that. That's fine. Okay. At the present moment. Staff doesn't have any recommendations. You know, I thought the idea of the meeting was to allow the select board to have some discussions amongst themselves. With some input in the public. And then from that, we would go further. I mean, there are certainly things that. I think. We've talked about a little bit, but I don't think that's, I'm going to be making anything. You should do this or you should do that. Yeah. And to clarify, it's not to make decisions, but. Yeah. So that's sort of what I just wanted to address in terms of the 10, 20 meeting. And then just also make sure that we've all. It'd be great to come. As prepared as possible, knowing obviously it's going to be conversation and brainstorming session, but. You know, having some of those ideas and things. And I think it's going to be a great opportunity for us to have conversations with us at the time. Do you recall Colvin. The final number that's left out here. A couple of years ago. We only had one. Right. It's just. We didn't even send me 6,000. Something to us to us. Center. That wasn't. No. I don't think that was. Yeah. Because I wish that was, and then the 600 was each. That didn't go through. What was the CV fiber commitment. Center. And then you have 90 in the highway, which based on the year. Wasn't CV fiber 50,000. Yeah. So if we include the 90, it would be 316 out. Yeah. Yeah. So. No, 100 for the ice center 90 was. Potentially for highway. Or maybe we just. Right. Yeah, but we just say it. And then we're committed. Bill has the capacity to just write what we have committed. This morning. I mean, we just. Yeah. Or. No. No. No. It was for. Was for. And then 50. So one, I just wanted to clarify. I know we had discussed six, but that was under the premise. Lieutenant might can join us, but she cannot. So I didn't know. We all wanted to discuss. We had told Tom six. So before we change it, I would want to check with Tom because he's planning to attend. So I'm okay with leaving it at six unless anybody strongly wants to move it. And then we could check in with Tom. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I might or might not be there in person. We're not sure exactly. When we're back in Vermont. Well, it's going to depend upon what's going on at the hospital. But both of us need to get back for. Some various reasons. And we'll probably at some point. Come back down south again. So. We'll leave it at six then. And then whatever you're able to do, obviously you understand. And we're ready to even. Zoom. Zoom would be great, but I might be there. You know, we would. That was thinking about the, she had some things that she had to do on Thursday. So we might travel north. But I, I'm not going to guarantee that. Anything else about the Thursday meeting before we talk about our next. Meeting 11, seven. I think your outline is good. I appreciate that. We'll put in time on the calendar though. I wouldn't have picked a week with multiple other meetings. I don't want to kick your hand down. So I appreciate that we're doing it. And I appreciate that we have set time to kind of have that strategic conversation. You know, just put in time. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I appreciate that we have set time to kind of have that strategic conversation. You know, just put in time. My cards in the table early, like, I don't think. We as a sub board or we as a sub board, certainly at this meeting are going to be as a set in a place of like making decisions or finalization. I just think in terms of public framing, this is the beginning of the conversation in terms of. What, as you said, kind of that second part of like what the process looks like and what thoughts we all have our, and that there will just definitely a lot of, you know, just certainly maybe folks will come and provide. And I think obviously there'll be the opportunity as a public meeting to have input, but I think we've all discussed meeting a broader outreach for public input versus just the folks who can attend a certain meeting. So I want to talk about that. And then I just wanted to address for the 11, seven agenda and work to get in the habit at the end of meeting talking about the upcoming agenda, knowing that they do change. We originally had the deadline for the howling task force. Submissions. As today we were going to discuss it, but we've still been getting emails and expressed interest. So I'd like to recommend that we extend it through to the next meeting, which is 11, seven and then discuss the candidates. At that point. And I can forward any emails I get before that meeting as well. How many have you received today? Three. Two of them just came yesterday. So that's, I think if we repost on from porch form two, we might have some additional folks. I would propose we just have to deadline a little ahead of that meeting. Yes. And to clarify, this is we all agreed on the 10 folks for our, you know, set the planning commission, R.W. Selectory. And then these would be the six folks. We would be able to appoint. Did you originally vote somewhere from where to come in? No one has a perspective. Part of why I'm standing at this. So we'll. So let's do that. The deadline would be. I don't know the Wednesday before to give us. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know the Wednesday before to give us time to look at things or. That's a seven. So it would just extend it to Wednesday. November 2nd. Yeah. We said up to 10. Yeah. That was the reduced. Yeah. My general feelings is someone is interested and wants to be in the room. Great. The other piece is the social media policy. We're going to put that discussion there and I'll come with some, I'll send ahead of time and come with some. Documents and background ideas to have that conversation. And then we. On the seven. Yeah. And then I don't know what else currently is going to be. But knowing now that skip is not going to do this to your presentation. Do we want to include some time for the short-term rental conversation as broached by some members of the public today? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I'll add that to 11 seven. And then I can reach out to. Brett. I think we should also ask staff like. Yeah. Absolutely. Have a political policy conversation, but there's a piece around what we have the ability to implement and the political will to implement. And it's likely to resume. It seems like maybe. Alyssa, can you help create a list of folks who we should at least invite to the conversation? Like planning commission. That. And then we want to put, we want to leave room like 30 minutes on the agenda for that. Conversation. Like realistically. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's. I don't know. Question. Yeah. I mean, discussion, but if we don't have the authority to make any rules, what are you talking about? And the legislation has been rather. Violent. Thing about this issue. And Roger is right. We have only the authority to regulate what the state. We have. Some towns are doing things though that are worth taking a look at. They're doing things, but sometimes like Burlington have, have charters as well. Well, give them much broader. Right. Give them additional authority beyond what the state statute provides to. Sounds like hours that operate under general law. So. I've already made a note to myself to try to find out. We don't have any authority to regulate. Right. We received something. I mean, I haven't obviously looked at it, but. Yeah, I think the, you know, talking with planning commission about what we've done via. You know, those bylaws, et cetera. But if you also think of who else would be important to have in that conversation. Between now and the seven. I'll be getting. Yeah, I was like, Yeah. The LCT whether we have authority. And more likely I'll probably talk to Joe McClain. The only thing about adding it to the 21st, if we have some good. We're not on a good legal basis. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Other just, you know, I'm sorry that I was nervous. At the previous meeting where we had things, the other things we had penciled in or sewer, which we've set up to change maybe parks input, which is just to say the next year and committee meeting is on Thursday. And at some point we had the open house and I think they're going to present at one of our meetings. I don't know when that is Steve is in contact with the consultant, but just to say that will likely be a November meeting. The other one. I was always a little bit squashed man. No, so, again, short term rental seems like the place to go. I'm just sharing that information with you while we're on the agenda. You can move sewer to the first, because that's what he skipped with those. Anything else on that point? Manager's items that. So the next is. The Anderson appeal. I don't know the correct title. Do we want to move to executive session? Yes. If you want to talk about it. Chris. More or less. I sent that email last year. If the board wants to talk about it, we need to do it in the second session. And listen. I apologize. Emotions. Here are the motions. I moved to find that general public knowledge of the details of pending litigation involving the town of Waterbury clearly placed the town of the substantial deficit damage. That's a much. Second then. For the discussion. All those in favor. Hi. Hi. I know I have to copy the first motion. Oh, sorry. I moved to enter into executive session. Consider pending litigation involving. The grace and subdivision and related confidential attorney. My communications made for the purpose of providing legal advice to. Excellent. All in favor. Hi. Hi. Thank you. We will move into executive session at. 939 PM. 21 minutes. So we have an exited executive session at 1026 taking no action. I'll vote to adjourn. What we go. Anything else? Thank you. We are. Thank you. Thank you. We will move into the second motion. And then. So we have exited executive session at 1026 taking no action. I'll vote to adjourn. Except. What we go. Anything else? Thank you all.