 All right, then on that note, I will go ahead and call the village of Essex Junction Board of Trustees meeting for Tuesday, August 24th to order. Do we have any agenda additions or changes tonight? I do not. Okay, Amber. I would like to move what is now consent agenda, 6A to each FH. And then I just wanted to note that we didn't have anything in our packet for that rail council unless I missed it. That's out. We have something for it. So, okay, I'll share it, but yes, I can email it as well. That should have been an answer about that. Thank you. So it sounds like moving 6A to 5H as well as adding the material to support 5G. Do we have any other agenda additions or changes tonight? Hearing none, if somebody wanted to make a motion to amend the agenda. Move, approve the agenda as amended. Second. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Raj. Is there any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? All right, pass unanimously. Thank you. And this will bring us into public to be heard. So this is a portion of tonight's meeting where if anybody has anything you'd like to speak to the board about on something that is not on the agenda, then now is the time to do so. For those of you using Microsoft Teams, please go ahead and raise your hand and I will make sure to call on you. If you are calling in and I don't see any callers, so never mind on that one. Please be prepared to only speak once and if needed, I may limit time. So keep that in mind. Susan McNamara Hill, I believe your hand was up first. Yes, hi, I'm sorry. I'm not sure why I need to. If I need to be here tonight is the last night my four children and five grandchildren are here visiting from out of state, out of country. Is there something that I need to be here to address? I think that your portion is all within that memo about mailing ballots. I think with the first and second public hearings, again, that's all in our packet. So personally, I don't think you need to. Oh, awesome. Thank you. I'm sorry. Don't be okay. Thank you. Go enjoy that family. Have fun. Thanks for joining us. All right. Next up, Andy Champagne, go ahead and then meet yourself. Floor is yours. Can you hear me? Go ahead ahead. Yes. Okay, I just had some questions that I'd like to ask you if that's okay. Yeah, go ahead and ask your questions and then I'll answer them when you're done. Okay. If you're a villager, then you have voting rights on both the village trustees and the townspeople. Does that correct? So just to prevent a dialogue back and forth, if you just want to ask your questions, I'll go ahead and we'll answer them at the end. At the end of what do you mean? Well, at the end of what? Your questions. Okay. So you can, I got 10 questions here. So you want to do it that you want me just list all the questions and answer it that way. You're going to be able to remember 10 questions. I tend to write them down. If it's, I'll tell you what, it's easier. So are village residents able to vote on town select board members and village trustees? Yes. We are dual citizens. If you're a villager, you can be on both the select board and trustees at the same time. This has recently happened with Elaine Manny. Is that correct? Yes. Since you have to be a villager to be on the trustees, if the village have three residents on the select board, then they basically run both the town and village. Is that correct? No. The village has about a $5 million budget. The town has about a $19 million budget. Is that correct? If you're looking at the general fund only close, if you're looking at enterprise funds, it is significantly higher than that. Okay. The town manager directly reports the select board and the trustees. Is that correct? Yep. If we separate villagers will have no voting rights to the select board and not be able to serve on it. Is that correct? If separation is passed by the legislature as two separate communities, then yes, we would no longer, villagers would no longer be town residents similar to how Colchester can't vote for trustees or select board members. Whatever deals the trustees make with the select boards, what's to stop the select board from changing it whenever they want? I don't understand that question from changing what? Changing the deal. So you make a deal with the select board, okay? And then what's to tell them that they have to hold that for a month after they make a deal with it? If you sign a contract on something, there's contractual law that holds that accountable. Okay, so the only thing you got is the legal system after that, right? Generally, yes. If you have signed a contract that goes into a legal process. Okay. Do you like talking about merger and separation? Can we move this one? What's the intent of your question? I don't have any intent. I'm just curious if that's something you'd like to talk about or not. If you'd like to interview me sometime about what I'm passionate about or what I enjoy personally, I'm happy to do that outside of the meeting because I don't wanna take the time for my personal enjoyment. Okay, I don't understand why you're being difficult I mean, these are questions. These are simple questions. I mean, you've been here for nine years. No one's, you ran unopposed. I mean, so I don't see the problem with you answering the questions. You know, just, you know, simple. It's a simple yes or no question. So what I said is that I'm not going to take up the time of all the other trustees of other residents of our staff to hear what I enjoy or don't enjoy doing. That is a very personal question and I'd be happy to answer that on my own personal time and not the time of others. Okay. Do you think the time that you, that you, the board and the staff have spent on separation has been well spent? Again, I feel that you're asking me my personal question or my personal opinion on something which I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole. If you'd like to interview me about my personal opinions on something we can do that outside of the meeting. Okay. Number of select board members go to the Essex Poly Talk on weekends. I'm the only villager that goes. Why doesn't any trustees go to Essex Poly Talk? To be honest, I don't even know what you're referring to. Okay. So Ken Stengaro runs a group called Essex Poly Talk that the, that a number of people find and most of them, they're all, they're all, they're all town people but it's a group where people talk about politics, Essex politics and it goes on. And Andy, I hate to interrupt you. Saturday and Sunday, y'all can make between nine and 10 p.m. So you guys aware of this group? This is Raj, I hate to interrupt but we've got a lot of work to do tonight. We had a very late night last night. I'm having a hard time seeing the relevance of most of these questions. I realize they're fine questions but you know, we got to get to work. There's no. Hate to be rude but they're really not relevant whether we go to Poly Talk or not is not relevant to the business we're doing right now. Well, look, this is the part where I can come and talk is what I understand. You can talk about stuff that's not on the agenda. Is that, is that not correct? Two minutes. It is a point to raise concerns to the board questions or concerns to the board that have to deal with legislative actions. Our attendance at events is not at all related to really the business of the village. As I mentioned before, I may impose a time limit and I'm feeling the need to give you one more minute. And then after that, we're going to move on. Okay, you can go fuck yourself, you piece of shit motherfucker. Okay, goodbye, Andy. He's gone. Dad, he can't come back. He's gone. Dad has to stop. Yep. All right, I have muted Mr. Champagne. It would be great to see what we could do to make sure that doesn't happen again. The unfortunate reality, well, not unfortunate, but the reality is that the public with an open meeting of our legislative body is required to be allowed to participate. According to open meeting law, participation is not defined, but any kind of language like that is absolutely not acceptable. Should that happen, as I just did, I'm happy to mute the individual and we will move on. He has had his opportunity to participate. It's border, it's totally conduct. I don't disagree with that. No, you cannot use that language in public forum. Between a private matter, that's one thing, but this is a public forum open to anyone in the world, for that matter, this is being televised worldwide, so this is inappropriate. Not only that, I know for a fact, there are family members who are watching this as they're having dinner. I've seen that, not my own household, but I've seen that on social media as families are trying to pay attention to what's going on. So now we have younger individuals who are hearing quite profane language that is incredibly inappropriate and what I would say is not at all representative of who the village or what the village really is. So that, yes, it's disappointing that it came to that. But regardless, I think now let's, I don't think we have any answers to have to prevent it. Let's move on and get down to the business of the village. So I see no other hands up for... Any Cooper's hand, I thought it was any Cooper, but no, I think she didn't know. Okay. I don't see any other hands on Microsoft Teams. Since I'm not in the room, I have no idea if there's anybody in the room who was a member of the public and wished to speak to the board about something that is not on the agenda. If there is anybody, if you can raise your hand and let George or Dan know, so they can tell me. Nope, no one's raising their hand. We're on the agenda. They're on the agenda. Great. We're gonna be hearing from them soon. We will move off of public to be heard and into the work session on independence. Brad, take it away. Great, thanks Andrew. So only four agenda items tonight for the work session. We're gonna review the current status of the charter. We're gonna have a discussion about the proposals conversation you all had with the select board last night. You'll hear an update from our village, our voices, and we'll just do a quick review of the upcoming meetings. Thank you, Brad. So for members of the public, if you have questions, comments, concerns about the charter, about our proposals from the town of Essex, our village, our voices, or the upcoming meeting schedule, please go ahead and let us know your comments, concerns now. And we will go ahead and make sure you have the time to address the board. And this time we will start with members, we'll start with those in the room. So George, Dan, if you don't mind, if there's anybody who wants to speak to those items, could you please raise your hand so George and Dan can see? No, they're gonna wait until they're on the agenda. So they're gonna wait until they're actually up and it's their turn to speak. But they have no questions right now. Then in looking at Microsoft Teams, I'm not seeing any hands up to speak on those items for our work session. So we will go ahead and jump right in. Take it away, Brad, but you'll mute it. So we're on to the charter. I'm gonna try and share my screen. Are you seeing the charter? Could you bring up, are you able to enlarge it? I can, yeah, great. Thanks, Brad. So this is a little different than the version that's in the packet. In case anybody's following from home, we got a copy back today from the attorney after their review. This also incorporates some comments from Amber and a couple of changes from our previous conversations. So I'm just gonna kind of scroll through relatively quickly, but if the trustees have questions or comments, please just stop us. I just have a question here on the green parts. It talks about shall continue to have consolidated services and it's referencing services that we're not intending to have consolidated during a transition period. So things like clerk, treasurer, IT, public work, stormwater. If it's not something that we are planning to have in a transition period, does it harm us in any way by having it listed? Well, I guess I may not be understanding your question, Andrew. So my understanding is that the transition period would be the one year after approval by the legislature that July 1 to the next June 30 and that for that year, we would continue with existing consolidated services. I gotcha. When I was thinking of the transition period, I was initially thinking of that multi-year time period we had proposed for finance. So my apologies. Okay. So does that work for now? Yes, yes, completely for me. Okay. I'm gonna continue to leave this section green. It's something that still needs to be addressed and is kind of ongoing. Go ahead, Amber. I was just gonna ask the question. I'm assuming, I think you led, Brad, by saying that the attorneys have reviewed this draft. I had wrote a note to myself as we had in the comments, it also goes to the second, the proposals from the town, but there were some comments about the legality of us paying taxes to the town when we weren't. So I guess I was, and that section is in here. So I don't know if that's been reviewed by Claudine or she has any thoughts about that. There was a couple of different provisions in here about delinquent taxes and stuff. And I know we didn't really get to that discussion last night, but I did wanna kind of point that out. Yeah, I appreciate you bringing that up. So that's in part why this is gonna stay green because we're trying to sort that out. Claudine and her team are brainstorming the most effective and efficient and legal way to make this transition happen. We're also trying to work with Lori Houghton and legislative council to see if they have some ideas of the best way to phrase that language and to make it all work. So it's a great question. I will send you Claudine's response. So you have that and just continue to keep you posted as we learn more. The other piece, Brad, is there is a notation in the section above in 101 that talks about uncollected taxes and those shifting to the entity. So that's the, I think just make sure we capture that piece too in correlation to 102. Great. Good catch. Thank you. Great. Okay, I will begin the scrolling. You can see on the left part of the screen wherever there are changes, they're noted by this little mark. So here they just inserted the word of, inserted the word shall, capital C. So this language is updated to reflect the email that you got from Sarah a while ago that the village tax delinquencies should stay with the town because the town has already paid the village slash city in whole for property taxes that it has collected. So those delinquencies will stay. Sarah has reviewed this and agreed and it's been sent to Plotin for her review but I'll leave it there if you guys want to just read it for a second. Section B, I mean, I'm not quite getting this. It says within the city of Essex Junction shall be transferred to the city of Essex Junction. Isn't that supposed to be the village of Essex Junction? Shall be transferred to the city of Essex Junction? Yes. Yes. Thank you. Good catch. There are no comments or questions. I'm going to just continue to scroll. Yeah. Spelling. Again, this is a lot of, it's mostly word smithing. There's not really much significant in these revisions. The letter S, capital comma instead of a semicolon. Addition of the word otherwise. Amar caught this as well referencing, this is just referencing the wrong one in some of the changes that we made. So it references the correct section now. Claudine added this sentence in capacity, shall be determined by a vote of the council. Addition of the word city here just to give some context. Capital C and some spelling. Again, just some word smithing here. So if you see Claudine's note here, she's referencing this section that's highlighted in yellow. It says the manager shall be appointed solely on the basis of the manager's executive and administrative qualifications in accordance with the Vermont statutes. She's suggesting that we remove that kind of box as you all in to using those as the only two criteria. Are other people hearing me echo? No. I am a little bit, but it looks like it's coming from the two Lincoln room. At least those are the purple highlighted boxes when it happens. Again, a capital C here on charter. So I think this is a holdover section 805 from the merger charter and Amber, you referenced this also. We already speak to the Brown L library trustees in section 401 and I can scroll back up to that to show you, but I don't think, I think this is all redundant and unnecessary. And it was picked up by Amber and Claudine. Does anybody wanna see 401 real quick? I think it's fine if both Amber and our attorney say that it's redundant, it's good by me. Okay. Yeah, I think the only reason that I didn't delete the whole thing was it's the latter section seemed to speak more to like the terms. So it wasn't all redundant, but so it was really, maybe I made that up, but... I'm happy to delete it all. Yeah, if you just wanna double-check Amber, I read through it and I didn't think any of it was gonna change what 401 was saying, but if you see there's a sentence or two that might be helpful, we can add it up to 401. I think it may be important in our existing charter, there are some statements that I see are crossed out here such as the library trustee shall have the authority to establish any new policy for the operations of the library, which to me that says that the Brown L trustees are responsible for policy. If that's not spelled out in charter or in our charter, then we may be setting ourselves up down the road of do the village trustees or Brown L trustees have policy over the library? Well, I don't wanna get too nitpicky here, but it does, the Brown L library trustees are what they are and their judiciary legal responsibilities aren't gonna change, they're not the village of S ex-junction, they're just the Brown L library trustees. I'm not really sure it doesn't really matter what municipality they're the Brown L libraries in I think. So you could probably, I don't know, it looks to me like you could delete either one of these, but probably 805 is the one that you wanted to delete. You probably don't need this level of detail. I am personally not well-versed in library law. So I'm not gonna make that determination. So I'll put it that way, either way, or we'll leave them both in just for safety sake, I don't know. I think if Claudine's saying that we can delete it, then I think we're safe to delete it. I do think that they are not redundant completely, but if we don't need to put it in there, then let's just get rid of it. Yeah. Okay, I did send that question to her today. So I just haven't heard back, but I just sent it this afternoon. So we'll take a double check of that. Addition of the letter A, and Claudine has this superseding language that deals with the town of Essex Charter that she has added. 1403. 1403. Okay, so we don't have it. It's on our phone. I think it's in the one bright tip later. Yeah. Basically, there's something in the town Charter that says that no parts of the town can be annexed or become part of any other municipal corporation. And she's just writing in that the city of Essex shall be formed, notwithstanding the following language that's contained in that part of the Charter. Okay. So that's the end of the Charter. Thank you, Brad. Good job. Yeah. I think we're getting there. Just a couple of things to clean up and at the next, not your next meeting, we'll look at that schedule in a second. Yes. At your next meeting, you will approve the Charter on the 14th of September. So please, if trustees happen to find or think of anything else, let us know so we can get it reviewed by Claudine. We can have Claudine present on the 14th if you'd like, just in case anything else comes up. Great. So next is a conversation about the proposals that were discussed last night with the select board. I think, you know, you haven't had the opportunity to discuss as a group. I think it would be good to, you know, think about how things went, what's some expectations for the next time you speak. Are there any communications that the trustees would like to send in advance? The select board does have a meeting before the next joint meeting. So if you wanna send anything to them to consider, you could do that. Also, if you want any additional information or any other people present at the next joint meeting to help move things along or answer questions, you know, it would be good to get all that information. So I'll leave it to you, Andrew. Amber, you've got your hand up first, why don't you take it away? Because the question that I keep asking myself is how much of this do we need to have ink in stone before November? And I don't know if any of us know the answer to that, but I think last night kind of brought it to evaluation that it just doesn't, I feel like we've got a lot of work left to do. And even if we conceptually agree on these TA's as Bill was calling them, is that a sufficient enough to pass muster for November or do we have to be fully in contract mode, signed ink and everything? So along those lines, the portion that concerned me was the statement from Bill Ellis around, we need to have all of these TA's and other portions of separation finalized at one time and that they will not approve of individualized contracts. So what that says to me is if, or whatever it is we want to have finalized, we would need to have done by the October 12th, well, the September 27th meeting that we have, as that's our last scheduled joint meeting before we finalize that vote for November. So along those lines, what do we need in terms of a charter perspective? I think we're good unless I'm mistaken of anything. I was quickly going back to that list. I don't think there's anything that's in the, for the charter purposes we need where it comes down to our budgetary impacts. So things like police, finance, appraisal, any sharing where we either pay or receive money, we need to make sure those are finalized. Otherwise, we're gonna be going to the voters and saying we don't really know what the vote's gonna be. Or based on these tentative agreements we have, this is what we believe they will be pending a final agreement with the select board. Andrew, is this, can I jump in? Please. I think you're right. I just want to just develop it a little bit more. I think strictly speaking in terms of a vote, the charter is the only thing that's going to be put on the ballot. As I understand it, in November, you're not putting contracts and agreements on a ballot to be voted on unless I'm misunderstanding. You're only putting a charter on. And if the charter is 99% finished, which it is, it seems, and it doesn't mean we don't prioritize and need to push hard on getting contracts and agreements in place. But I don't think you're gonna be putting them on a ballot in November. And I think as long as we have a general sense that it looks like we're going forward, there may be some minor details, but it looks like on the major pieces, it looks like there's generally agreement. I'm not sure that it's really that big of a holdup. Again, we need to push forward and try to get it done, but I don't think it's something that has to be done before October. So I think we still have time to work on these agreements and these contracts. Maybe I'm misunderstanding and I don't want to buy or so lead anybody, but that's my take on it. But I'd like to hear someone else's thoughts. Where I think it comes down to, and the statement is not to disagree with you, George, what I think it comes down to is when we go out to the village voters and tell them, here's what separation means, if we want to have as close to a finalized budget as possible and say, so this is how much separation, or this is what separation would mean to your tax bill, then we need to know what that municipality will cost. So the fewer unknowns we have, the closer we will be to saying, here's what it would cost as compared to having a range. So in terms of a comfort level, honestly, I'd like us to get to a point where we have those items finalized by September. So that that way we are able to say to the voters, this is how much a city of S6 junction is going to cost. Otherwise, it's a little bit of a range based on assumptions which can lead to some other assumptions of unknowns and how the impacts of vote. I don't know how the T leads we'll read on that one. Right, but you're gonna, even if you had everything completely buttoned down, you are still gonna have to go through the ringer of the government operations committee and all of the things that happen between now and even if everything works smoothly, you're never, we're never gonna know exactly what the, and even in anything but ballpark figures, I don't believe what the budget is gonna be until you're actually presented with writing that actual budget. Because as long as you give reasonable and conservative estimates to people and you make it very clear that this could change, but we think here's the maximum range if everything goes sideways and here's the point if everything works out optimally. I don't think it's gonna be a huge difference but I don't know, I'm not sure just how much, how you're gonna get close to really having an exact figure even if by the time you put the charter on the ballot in November. Right, right. No, I hear you. Raj, why don't you go ahead? So on that note, it seems that we don't know what Bill means by what will be in the TA. Will the TA have figures? That's one question I have, I guess. Is their intention, if he's gonna hold to keeping a select board to only commit to these tentative agreements, are those tentative agreements gonna have figures that we can base a budget on? I don't know that we know. And the second part, I guess for this is who decides what a complete deal is? So we have the five we talked about last night. I mean, good. That's complete for me. If those are the money ones, then if we wanna communicate back, okay. This is hypothetical. I'm not advocating one way or the other but if we communicate back and say, okay, for us, that's complete. Let's take care of the TA, let's get it done. Where does that leave us all? And I mean that in a cooperative way. So I'd also wanna know that where they think, now, if they look at the document we sent a couple of months ago or whatever it was six weeks ago and say, no, no, all 11 or 12, then I think that leaves us in a place to decide whether and how much we wanna cooperate to be quite honest. Cause if I just don't think that their timeline that they're given us or left us with can facilitate that. So if we have to have numbers in that case and they won't do, they won't talk about what those necessary items are for a complete deal, then we may have to just pivot and go out on our own. And that's not gonna leave them in a great place either. That was the reality too. So. Thank you for that, Raj. So along that line, one of the things that I was wondering to help and expedite that process is to try and figure out, when does that separation end or when are the proposals finalized, if you will? It's really driven by us in terms of when we feel that we are satisfied that we have what we want then it's done. So I'm wondering if we could go back to those items and if there are things that we could just agree to take off as that may help to expedite the process as well as share some goodwill of, it's not that big of a deal, let's just move on. Sure, let's do it. So clearly police is going to stay on that list. I would be okay taking bonding off the list. I can completely understand that there's an emergency situation and they need to take an emergency bond. They should not be unable to do so. Yeah. I have to say it's reasonable in terms of the context of separation, but from their perspective, it's not reasonable to say we won't, we'll suspend our right to take out a bond for the next indefinite, maybe one year, maybe five years depending on how long it takes to separation actually happen. That's not, I can understand them not wanting to put themselves in that position. So I think, yeah, my opinion, we can. I do think there's also the valid argument that we are town voters as well. And if we are having bonded in front of us and we choose not to vote yay, then that is our right. So. I'm okay with the two. Okay. So we can take bonding off the list. Transition period, for now, I'd like to keep that on. Re-appraisal. So we've talked about that one. Senior services, I have to admit, maybe it's because it got late. I'm not really sure if they really left that if you've agreed that we're gonna go our separate ways or if we're gonna be waiting on a different counter proposal from them. But I think that one's staying on the list for now. Pat seemed adamant that they wanted to go out and find a fix and a solution on their own. I agree. And I'm gonna be honest, I'm a little in the dark about what some of what he was referring to, but I would love to follow up later, but I agree, Andrew, I don't know where that leaves us. I certainly don't wanna leave seniors with the worry of what's gonna happen to their senior center. I'd like to make sure that we have answers for that, regardless. We've, yeah, I don't believe that our board in any way would want to leave the seniors without some kind of, some types of senior services. We've, you know, the new development going in right next to Fort Pearl, or in that area where it's senior housing, there's certainly going to be a higher need already with the fact that we have an aging population. So I, yes, I have a long way of saying, I'd like to believe that our trustees are committed to providing senior services. So what if we, as a response to the select board, we could say that if the select board is adamant that you want to go, select board, if you want to do this on your own, go ahead and do it on your own. If you'd like to try to figure out a way to work together, then yes, let's keep this conversation going. Yeah, I would maybe take a slight, if I could just add Andrew, I might say maybe just a slightly more sort of positive wording and say, we will absolutely go ahead and continue to have operate our senior center here at Lincoln Hall, as it always has been operated. And we would love the town to join us if they want to, but if they don't want to, they want to go and create their own center. That's fine too. But again, just to go back, this is not really a big ticket item. That's going to have a huge budgetary impact on one way or the other. I understand if we had to start off our own bus eventually, but that would be expensive. But other than that, it's not going to really throw off a general calculation about the budget that you would want to present to the voters in November. So I would just maybe, as you said, just like them to participate if they want to, if they don't want to, fine, but just leave it at that. I'm good with that. George, could you just clarify? I understand you're saying continue to operate the Essex area senior center. Are you saying to continue to operate it as a town department? I would go, we would go back to having it the way it was before it became a joint town village operation. It'd be unfortunate if that happens, but we have every intention of, we want to give assurance at least to the seniors. And I would even go so far as to say, and town seniors would still be welcome to come if they want to come, but we plan to continue operating our senior center as it's always been operated. If you don't want to participate, you don't want to have your, the town rec department and you don't want to have the senior bus be delivering seniors down here, that's fine, but we're going to continue operating the center to the best of our ability as it was. And none of this precludes us from getting together again later, no separation and working together again. And that's, this is one of those items that is, we're set up to provide it, we can move on. Right, exactly. Great, great. So the clarity sounds to me like we're building a budget based on us operating the senior center and senior buses. And if they indicate that they want to share in those costs or share in those operations, then we'll deal with it after the fact. Yes, I would agree with that. Thank you. Um, tree farm, we'll keep on the, the list. Little ways to go on that one. Andrew, can I just make a comment quickly on that one? I mean, do we need that on the list because we have to deal with that regardless of separation. So I feel like that's a, that's a whole separate conversation. I agree it is. I can see that. I was thinking the same thing. It's a jointly owned piece of property. It's not going to go away no matter what happens. And it gives us time to really work on it with them and, and, and see what they want to do without rushing. Yeah, agreed. I can see that. I would just say that if we do bring that in house, there may be some, there may be some budget impacts on that. I would, you know, I would assume that they are relatively minimal with it being an enterprise fund and all. So it's probably not that. Yeah, probably. I think the budgetary impacts are going to happen regardless of whether we separate or don't separate. It's, it's driven by whether we bring it in house or not versus these other conversation, which they're strictly about separation. Yeah. I guess the only thing that would be missing would be a give and take, you know, which was the original proposal, which tied the senior center to tree farm and who, who would take care of the management, so to speak, right? And if we've already decoupled the senior center, then right, unless we try to couple it to something else, I think as we saw last night, this might be a little longer than we anticipated for a process and it really shouldn't hold up this. Yeah. So take it off the list is what I'm hearing. Yeah. And that'll play its course. Okay. Finance, we're going to be waiting on a, on the select board for that one. That was my takeaway at least from that conversation. Great. The next one being funds. I think we can, I think, yeah, I think we can take this one off. Yes. With the FY23 budget, this is something we're going to have to deal with regardless, I think that these components, yes, are budgetary related, but will play its natural course with a budget timeline. Yes. It is hard to take notes and talk. Assets, I think we can take this one off the list with the exception of a right of first refusal. I think that's still worth pursuing. Yeah. It looks like they already agreed. So that's kind of, you could consider that a TA and just ask staff and attorneys to write that up. Yep. I agree with that. The right of first refusal value is different than what our proposal was, but. I agree. It is different. Of course, I mean, the logic of, we've already paid 42% of it. So that makes sense to me that it should be less than 100% of fair market value. Given that unless it were to be used for some other, some other component of separation, I don't know how or why the select board would agree to that. I mean, I'd keep an open mind about, right, like you said, how that might tie into some other give and take later. But generally speaking, it sounds agreed. Okay. Indian Brook, it seems pretty clear to me that that one's a no go. We can take that one off. Anybody disagreeing with that? I think there were a little uncertain. I mean, I guess that's one of the few things I think might still be worth discussing with them. I wouldn't hold up too much of the work we're doing on it, but it seems a little bit in limbo. They seem to want to talk about it on their end. But maybe that was just my impression, it was getting late. I feel like it's still tied to the programming and not so much the actual passes. Yeah, I'm not. Go ahead, George, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off, actually. Go for it, it's all right. I would keep it in. I think it sounded like they still wanted to talk about it. There was still some uncertainty. So I think that we should try to pursue that, see if there's some trade-off. It sounded like they were interested in a trade-off, everyone was just kind of getting tired out last night. So I think there might still be something there. Do you want to trade-off of, do we want to make a counter-proposal then of some type? I mean, if we go back to funds, what are they gonna do with capital funding for this current, this next fiscal year? Are they gonna make a genuine effort to try to spend capital funds in the village? We're leaving a lot of money behind that they're gonna leverage, fund balance, capital money that, I mean, let's face it, they had very little intention of spending in the village in the first place. The select board seems very willing to address that, can separate. I don't know if there's a way to put the two together. What I think is just not tenable is to try to see the strange tying it to the access to childcare. Very weird. And sort of like, here are the two last things we have, let's just put them together. Well, is there something else we could tie it to some other program or some other benefit in the village that they might be able to, they might be willing to trade for that or something? I mean, I'm just thinking a lot of village residents like going to Indian Brook and I'd still be able to, but right now they have a bit of a privileged position. And so to be nice, if we could keep that, to see if we could find some agreement, something that the town might wanna trade for that. I mean, the... If I can add something, if the goal here is to, I know you wanna move things along and get to things. If the goal is what's gonna be a budget impact, you know, for the citizens, this isn't really a budget impact. It's not. It won't move the needle at all. So if that's what it is, it's not gonna move it at all. If it's for other reasons, then I would suggest, and not that I have any intimate personal knowledge, I would suggest there's an agreement to be made that won't take very long. Yeah, I think so too. The only potential budgetary impact that I could see is given that paying more for that access. So paying for the dam, the infrastructure, paying for the continued cleaning of Indian Brook and so on and so forth costs more than it does to just get a day pass. So for, in my mind, for us to be residents of the town for Indian Brook, we would need to benefit in some way through something else. So if we were to receive some kind of capital contribution on a perpetual basis or if we were to receive some kind of other payment to me, that would make sense. And that's the only way that I would see it having some type of a budgetary impact. If they wanted to couple, if they wanna take away the request for capital expenses on Indian Brook and just leave us as perpetual residents for the press purpose. And we said, yeah, sure, okay, we'll only, we're not gonna bill you 50-50 for the senior center from like a two Lincoln will come up with a figure that only includes the six hours the senior center is open four days or five days a week. We have that building to maintain no matter what. Right. You know, they're probably not apples and oranges, but it's something. I mean, and I honestly don't know where they would put a senior center that's gonna be. So again, I just don't think they're finished with that conversation. So those are a couple of the places that we might have a little wiggle on. But as I agree with Evan, these aren't, you know, it's not, people want it in the village. They want that access, but it's not a budgetary issue. Unless, as you put it. About this. Go ahead, Dan. Just looking at it from a perspective of the citizens of our community utilizing the facility. As we said before, Indian Brook is utilized by residents of the surrounding towns. Jericho, Unreal, Richmond, wherever, are going using day passes. They don't have excessive parking there. It's difficult to get use of it. It's accessible primarily during the summer and fall months when people are gonna be out there walking around. But in January, there aren't too many people running around there. And I look at it for the young people that are healthy enough to go out there and do that. That's fine. It's great, beautiful. There are a lot of beautiful places to walk around all over this county. The senior center is utilized by people year round. It's utilized by a lot of people. And so it's, you gotta look at it. That's why I look at things. I mean, people are passionate about their particular thing. They like to do biking, walking, hiking. But I look at it, broader perspective, say, how is the community as a whole benefiting? That senior center, that benefits everybody. Young, old, everybody can utilize. So that's the way I think we should be looking at this. One more thing we could go back to them and say is, look, if you don't wanna give us resident passes, but give us first buy at the non-resident passes for a month or two or something, like don't limit the number of non-resident passes we have. We'll pay the extra fee, but we're not gonna pay capital and all that other stuff. So then it's not the entire community paying this and a capital line item in the budget, all the taxpayers, it's only the people that wanna use it. Just to clarify. From our community, sorry. Sorry, I was just to clarify there, the new Indian Brook system, well, previously you could only buy a season's pass if you were grandfathered in as a non-resident. Now non-residents are only able to get in through day passes. They can't buy season's passes. Well, maybe they make a new village pass or city pass. You know, I mean, it's totally within their preview to create one for this purpose, just as we would have potentially, I don't, you know, something like that in the, you know. Mm-hmm. Why don't we, it sounds like there's, I mean, why don't we just, I don't know if we can get into the details and figure this out tonight and probably not worth it. I'd like the thinking of just, let's just leave this open, see if there's some agreement. And I'm also questioning, when Bill Ellis said transitional agreements, so does that mean once those are done, there shall never be forevermore any more agreements between Essex Junction and Essex Town? I don't think so. I think we could probably, you know, a year from now say, hey, you know, let's sit down together and work something else out too. So I don't see this, I don't want to, I don't want to, you know, gloss over everything, but this sounds like something that could be kind of just put aside and we can deal with it and bring it up. And we don't really have to have a firm decision about this right now. I completely agree with you that the city and the town can absolutely continue various agreements at any point in time after the fact. What I took away from Bill's statement was that they, the select board would be looking to approve of the separation details. And then those details would have to be all encompassing in one package and that's what would be approved of. In the interim, we can have these tentative agreements, but then ultimately it's that whole package that would have to be agreed upon, which frankly that's, it's a negotiation strategy, whatever, we can play that card for a little while. But there is no hard set rule that says what you have to do. So I like that, George, with what you're saying with Indian Brook. Are we good to, I like how you summarize that with Indian Brook. So are we good to move on from that? The last one was tax delinquencies. I admit, I don't recall up top of my head really what their response was. So I'm reading that at this moment. I also think we have council looking into that piece too. So we kind of have to put a pen in that one for now. So move on, pending our attorneys. Yeah. Okay, so I've taken some notes, Brad, I assume you have as well. Could we combine those thoughts and then I can relay that to Andy in terms of a follow-up of what we're going to take off and where we see things going from here. Andrew, could we just clarify where you all think the assessor slash reappraisal conversation ended? In my mind, we had agreed that the town would be overseeing and being responsible for the reappraisal, but that assessing would still be a city department. It's just that the reappraisal itself would be done by the town. Exactly. That's what I heard. And it makes sense because they've got the money, they've got, they're already gearing up to do it. It technically should be done well before any separate or probably mostly done before, except it just go ahead with it. It's not really something we have to deal with right now. So what I'm seeing then is that there was enough consensus last night for a police TA to be drafted by attorneys and staff, that there was enough consensus on assessor reappraisal for a TA to be drafted by attorneys and staff, and that on assets, first-writer refusal on 81 Maine, there's enough consensus for a TA to be drafted. And the other things then that are in the hopper is finance, Indian transition period and tax delinquencies. Exactly. And I guess senior services we can inform them of your plans. That aligns with my understanding in brick collection. Great, thank you. Yep. Thank you. Next up is our Village Our Voices. I'm not sure who's here to present tonight if they're online or in person. Lots of people. Do you wanna, do you, would you, if you don't mind me, Andrew, do you wanna come up and fill these seats here? Would that be okay, guys? You are down here, down, okay, down here, yeah, please. Do you want us here? Yeah, yeah, right in here. Yeah, that's perfect. My only request would be is if they can be somewhere where the camera can get to them, that would be greatly, he's going, awesome. Got it? I can sit on the other side. Yeah, you can just come over here and sit right here. Hi. I get to sit between you two beautiful ladies. Here we are. Hi, Andrew, hi, Brad, hi, Amber. Hi, Raj. So, Elaine Haney, our Village, our Voices, and Bridget Meyer, our Village, our Voices. Elise Serda, our Village, our Voices. And, go ahead, Jo. Jo, we're not you. Our Village, our Voices. All right, Jo. So we are just four of the many volunteers that have joined our efforts to educate and inform residents about the upcoming vote in November. And so, I'd like to just give you some updates on what we're doing and then entertain, answer any questions you might have, but then my question at the end will be how can we help you? So, first of all, I want to share with you that we have currently 23 active volunteers assisting us on a variety of outreach opportunities. And, another 15 or 20 are planning to join our canvassing effort. We've held some events already. We sponsored Swim Night on July 22nd for Village residents at Mabel Street Park. And, we have had volunteers attending swim lessons at Mabel Street to ask questions of the parents who are standing around waiting for their kids to get out of the pool. And, also at the July 16th Green Mountain Swings Concert at Mabel Street Park. And, upcoming events, tomorrow morning at 8.15, we have a coffee chat with Trustee Raj Chalba. Thank you, Raj, for being present for that. And, that'll be at the pavilion next to Nomad Coffee at Five Corners. And then, we're gonna do that again on Saturday morning. And, I think George is the trustee. No, no, no, it's Andrew. Okay. Surprise. I didn't have to get that volunteer, all right. Don't take away my coffee. Nope, nope. And, we're gonna have Let's Talk Separation and Essex Junction Tribune Night at Firebird Cafe on Wednesday, September 8th in the evening for Village residents. And, then we'll also, we had volunteers at the Dog Days of Summer. We'll have them at the Battle of the Barbecue and as well as Out and About. And, we have some materials in circulation. I'm just gonna show you one example, two examples. Informative, we call them leave-behinds or rat cards or palm cards. These are just informational cards about what is our village, our voices, where you can share your feedback. Why are we doing this? What are the village trustees doing to follow through on the vote from April? Just strictly informative going out to folks as we meet them at events. And, then we have a flyer that is very similar with a little bit more information on it. And, these things are also available, I believe, at our website. These are downloadable at our website. And, yeah, that's everything. Oh, we have business cards for those people who don't want lots of information in their pocket. So, we're handing just a few pieces of information out. The other information that we are sharing are large quantities of frequently asked questions, which I think you'll see another set of them in your packet at the next meeting. But, George has been incredibly helpful in vetting those questions. So, thank you very much, Doral, I really appreciate that. So, that's what's in circulation with the residents. And, we've contacted with those materials over 250 residents at this point. And, we do recall that when we first discussed this organization effort in the beginning of the summer, we were expecting to deliver a report to you of our findings of what the residents are saying. And, it hasn't quite gone that way, particularly mainly because everyone's busy doing summer. And so, the people that we're encountering are happy to talk to us, but it's not enough to give you a representative sample or anything more than anecdotal comments. And, I can say that anecdotally, the things that come up the most are, what are the numbers? What are my taxes gonna look like? What's gonna happen with the police? And, what happens after the vote? So, those are the three most common questions that we're hearing. But, we're gonna continue gathering information, particularly starting after Labor Day when our canvassing effort will begin. And so, we will be fanning out throughout the village and going door-to-door to inform voters with our handy-dandy note cards of what's happening, where they can get their information, are they registered to vote, can we help them get registered to vote? It's strictly an informative and get out the vote kind of an effort. The trustees, you know, you have all volunteered to be door-to-door knockers for us, which is wonderful. And, you're coming out to our coffee chats. Any other ways that you would like to participate in our upcoming events, we'd love to have you there. We would be happy to schedule more coffee chats as time goes on, so that you can come and talk to the public. And, we would be happy to do whatever else you might need to get the word out. We certainly don't wanna duplicate efforts. We wanna make sure that what you are doing is getting out to the world and then we can bring back to you the questions and concerns we're hearing. And, thank you for giving us the opportunity to do this level of outreach to our community. It's actually been a really fun experience. Brigida, Elise, or Joe, do you wanna add anything to that? No, nothing I can do. I think you covered all the bases. Just, I would continue asking everyone you meet emphasizing the importance of the vote and asking if they have questions. And, we will be doing that and getting back to you, but definitely you do it too. It can come both ways. It would be a, it's really informative conversation to have with people. Some so informed and some, I don't know what you're talking about. What is November 2nd? But, I start everything with, this is probably one of the most important votes the village will ever have. So, it moves you to be informed. That has lit some fires. Sounds good. I'd also add in that I am always surprised by the level of positivity that I'm hearing in the community. Regardless of where they are in the separation conversation, it's all been very positive and there's a lot of curiosity and opportunities to engage with our community. So, I really do encourage the trustees to think about where you might want to be involved and hear it firsthand. We're happy to of course bring back the information, but I'll tell you, if you ever want to know that the work that you're doing has value and has impact, it's the enthusiasm and the positivity that we're hearing in the community and just their openness to this discussion. So, I really thank you so much for your work that you're doing because I'm seeing it on the ground with our neighbors and with our community. Yeah, okay. John, do I need to speak? Please go ahead, Joe. Yes, please. Go ahead, Joe. Can I just? I'm over her. I don't know if I need a microphone or not. Please do, Joe. Please do. Here he is. Well, actually, my first question doesn't have to do with separation at all. After watching the meeting yesterday and what happened tonight, I just want to know if there's a way, I mean, the personal attacks and the language that was used couldn't have been any worse. So, moving forward with meetings, is there any way of permanently blocking a person that has proven what they've done tonight and couldn't have done any worse? There's probably not. Oh, I was just gonna say, Andrew, that because individuals can call in from any phone number and as you may have heard in previous meetings over the past year or since COVID, we did most meetings virtual. A lot of people called in, we've had spam calls where we got music in the background or some reported speech of some sort. So, it's difficult to identify. So, it's, you know, it's... Dan, I'm not sure. I think if someone has very clearly, publicly demonstrated they're gonna be disruptive, I think you can block them. And I think we should consult with the attorney about it. But I think you have a right to kind of defend yourself against someone who just wants to destroy your meeting. And it would then be up to that individual, if that individual feels that their legal rights are being violated, let them figure out how to overcome that. Let them hire a lawyer and figure out where. I don't disagree with George. I'm just saying that the potential ways of contacting the trustees, without even being identified, is Andrew saying it to me in the last night, please identify yourself. People are putting in as Indian Brook user or tree farm soccer player. And somebody wants to Skype in or to call in and do whatever. There's virtually no way. Sure, but as soon as you identify them, you can say, okay, no, it's you again. Sorry, click. Right, we can mute somebody, but just like any kind of thing in the computer world, once they find one, this way, this door doesn't work. There's so many other ways to go and do an end around. It makes it more difficult for them and we should do that, we should address it. As I said to you tonight, what was said tonight is criminal activity. Disorderly conduct is doing that in a public forum. This is a public forum. So, I mean, if anyone wants to take a chance at being arrested and facing legal penalties for actions like that, you may reconsider whoever, you know, is thinking about doing something like that. I should really think about it. Okay, it's just, it was terrible. And it was getting back to separation. And I've lived in the village for 35 years approximately. You know, raise the family, kids are gone. Not all of my conversations have been positive, especially with seniors. Frustration level is here. They're gonna vote. The ones that are not gonna vote, I'm going to have vote. I've found five already that aren't even registered to vote, that will register. I'll find a lot more. But I wanna talk about the legislature just for a second. And I was on YouTube not long ago and I stumbled across George's presentation. I believe it was at the high school and it was an overhead projector slideshow. And there seemed to be maybe about eight legislatures there. And after the presentation, the select board was there, the trustees were there. After the presentation, this microphone was passed around to the public officials, legislature, whoever was there. Everyone was positive about it. Everyone thanked you, thanked us. It all looked good, but something stuck out and one of the comments was, I don't see the state losing any money, so I'm fine with it. That's right. So now moving forward, I don't wanna be reactive, I wanna be proactive. I mean, I don't wanna ask the legislature to vote for separation. I wanna find out why they would not vote for separation. So I'd like to ask everyone here, can you think of any reason why they would vote against it with the timeline we have from the 1950s and the approximate 14 votes we've had that still have us in status quo? Can anyone think of any excuses why they would vote no? The unfortunate thing to that, Joe, is trying to get into the head of legislators isn't always a logical exercise. I agree with you logically. I can't understand why should it pass in the village, why it would not pass in the legislature. I honestly don't know logically why it wouldn't. I think that there have been some legislators in our history who have shown to not always act in a way that may seem that logically to us. So honestly, I don't know. I don't feel like I have a good answer for you and it's frankly a very unpredictable group at times. I think that's why it's important for us to make sure that we do this right. We do this well. And when it gets to the legislature, having our representatives really representing us there and doing the great work that they have been doing and will continue to do on our behalf, as well as there would be an opportunity for us to present the bill in various committees in the House and in the Senate. And so doing that, we need to make sure that it's a well-informed process and that the representatives and senators really understand what things have been like for the village and why a city is so far needed beyond just taxation. But the autonomy, they continue downtown development and what we continue to hear about how the village is vastly different than the town. The needs of those of us in a more urban area as compared to those in the suburbs and rural area, our needs are different. So by working separately, we are able to focus on our own needs. And so really having that conversation there will be important. It's a little bit frustrating having your future in someone else's hands that's not your neighbor. Yes. So every vote has its consequences. And I think the legislature should know from the residents of Essex Junction that their vote's gonna have consequences. If you vote against me, I have no choice, but to make sure if you decide to stay in politics, I'm gonna vote against you. Right. Actually against the wall, it's 35 years and I've spoken with people that have been here a lot longer and they've had enough. Yeah. Yeah. And to the people, to my friends that live in the town outside the village, I don't wanna see them cats increased even though they probably will, but they have to put themselves in our shoes. I mean, we have no choice but to do what we're doing. Yeah. Joe, if I could, I think also to go back to your original question. So you're saying is there some, but also is there some hidden thing we're not thinking of where the legislature might say, well, gee, if we go along with this, we could lose a big chunk of revenue somehow. And I think that's kind of what you're getting at. And I would say when it, I would use an alternative argument. I would say if you look at global foundries and you look at all the businesses in Essex Junction, but particularly global foundries, they get two tax bills right now. They get one from the town and they get one from the village because they're in the village and every business that's in the village also gets a tax bill from the town. But if they're interested in trying to encourage the development of this industrial park over here, which is in Essex Junction, they have to be, they have to consider that every single business that goes in there gets, right now gets two local municipal tax bills. Now, after separation, the village bill will go up, but the town bill will completely go away. So I think they could, you could also say, I think it's a very reasonable argument to say, this is essentially could be looked at as an economic development strategy for Chittenden County, because we are right now, the third highest taxed municipality in Chittenden County after Burlington and Winooski, and those two municipalities have huge debt. We don't. We're the highest taxed because we have the town's tax rate plus our own tax rate. So in my mind, that's another strategy. I think it's another important argument we can bring to the legislature. It is, I don't know, could anyone else think of any reason why the legislature would not vote for separation? I'm just curious while I'm up here. I know it's a tough one, it's the big unknown, but okay, that's pretty much it. Thank you all for what you're doing too. I mean, a lot of times it's a thankless job, and after what I heard tonight, it's totally unacceptable. So yeah, if there's anything that we can do to get your message out, to get information to you and to make your lives easier, please don't hesitate to ask. Yeah, Elaine Bridget, Elise, Joe, thank you all so much for being here. The other, I think you said 26 volunteers. So the other 24 volunteers, thank you so much because you are doing the work that speaking only for myself, I struggle with on a regular basis, really being able to help spread this message is greatly appreciated. The structures you have in place, the materials you have in place, those shirts, the events. It's all about the t-shirts. It is, it is. It's really appreciated. In terms of ways to help, you're doing it. The other thing that I personally, again, appreciate is inviting us to events. Making sure that we are able to be there is greatly appreciated. So nothing but, again, continued appreciation. You're doing the right things. Other feedback, keep it coming. And Elaine, Elaine, this is Raj. I promised mid COVID, if we ever got out of this, I'd try to put together a cornhole tournament. So if you wanna have in our village, our voice is cornhole tournament. I'm game. So to speak. So, figure something out. Really on. And wait, wait, the cinnamon buns. I don't have time for that. Yeah, well, the winner, the winner can have cinnamon buns. And the chicken costume. Yes. Yes. Yes. I had, whoop, what? Too many promises. I have no idea about this chicken costume. You're about to find out. Yeah, Raj. Thanks for your time, everyone. Thank you for your hard work on our behalf. Thank you all. So Brad, next up, we have Raj in a chicken costume. Is that right? We just need the action item to their content on the village website. A policy. Yep. I don't think that's a problem from what I just heard, but just wanna hear it from the board that you want an outside group putting content on your website. Yeah, I mean, it was developed in partnership with George. So we have some trustee eyes on that. I'm certainly not concerned with it. Given though that we are in a work session right now, we'll wait until we get to the agenda item. No, there's, I don't have any concern. Oh, you're already on seat. I thought we were there already. No, okay. Oh, we're still in the work session. We heard from. Okay, sorry. Yeah. Please. No worries. The last item is simply to just keep you abreast of the upcoming meeting schedule. There's a lot of meetings coming up to make sure everybody's aware of and a lot of warnings and different things that need to happen. So those are all hopefully contained in this document. The public, the publication schedule of those warnings is not in here. We've had a few emails go back and forth. So we are on top of that as well. I'll add that in, but otherwise this is mostly just FYI. Thank you, Brad. Are there any questions or concerns? Great. That's it. Brad, thank you as always. No problem. Thank you. So that would conclude our work session and will bring us into 5B, the consider approval of the warning for the first and second public hearings. Yeah. So you see the warnings are there for the two public hearings to take place on September 28th and October 12th. Amber did catch a typo at the bottom of both warnings under the voter registration section. We need to add the word up in the first sentence at the end or at the polling place for same day registration. I've added that already. But otherwise there's a recommended motion here to approve the warnings. Trustees, are there any questions, comments, concerns or if not, if someone would like to make that motion. I'll make a motion that the trustees approve the warnings for two public hearings regarding the city of Essex Junction Charter on September 28th and October 12th. Thank you. I'll second. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, George. Any further discussion on that motion? Andrew. All right, it's my hurry. I just want to say that one thing is that Susan didn't like super approve these. So I'll just make sure she makes sure there's no like small typos or something that she might need from the current perspective. So that was it. For that motion, would you like to amend it of pending review? I'll move to amend my motion to include the verbiage that was just brought up. So pending review from Edis from. I just want to make sure she finds something because she did have a very quick chance to look at these. I just, if there is a small thing, I don't want it to hold it up because we do need to get them out. So that was all. I just think she's not hearing it. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, I agree. That's why I'm just saying if it's pending the pending of other edits provided by the by the clerk. Perfect. Yep. I think that's what. In my second, I'll revise my second of that motion, of that revised motion. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, George. So the motion has been changed. It's been approved of. Any further discussion? Hearing none of those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Here we go. Thank you. Next up, the our villager voices and the FAQs. I will make a motion that we approve the FAQ documents and other materials provided by the citizen group, our village, our voices prior to posting those materials to the village website and prior to distributing those materials. Second. Thank you, George. Thank you, Dan. Trustee, is there any further discussion? One quick item, are we actually going to post these FAQs? Because if we are, can we just make sure that the mail and ballot section is updated before we post that? I don't have any problem with posting and I'm fine with the motion. I just want to make sure that gets updated. Yeah, I'll request the most up to date version. I think you brought that up last time and I think it's been fixed, but we'll get an updated version. Great. And so just to make sure that it will be, that yes, mail and voting will happen. The motion is on the table. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. The passed unanimously again. And now on to by D and what I had just referenced. Saw the overwhelming success or voter turnout by having mail and voting. I for one believe that this is something that I wish our legislature would have just allowed us to do as a proactive measure instead of requiring us to take this step of voting, but they did not do that. So now it's on us to make that decision. I would love to hear that motion to officially approve of November 2nd ballot being mailed to all active registered voters. I'll do it. I moved the trustees authorized the mailing of ballots for November 2nd to all active registered as extension residents. Second. Thank you, Raj. Thank you, Amber. Any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Passed unanimously again. Now we have our FY23 budget goals. And I think I saw Sarah's name. Sarah, take it away, Sarah. All right. So surprised budget seasons earlier this year, which sounded like a great idea in January when I was thinking, how am I going to give myself more time to work through these budgets to really get a good feel for them and then to communicate really just better to the voters? And I thought, well, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to move the whole thing up. We won't be so rushed in the last minute. And now it's sort of all coincides with the November vote. And you know what they say about the best laid plans. So I certainly wasn't intentional trying something new and just a lot of moving parts. So I wanted you all to know that to start with. And then the next thing is I wanted to hear what the trustees really want to see in the FY23 budget. Brad and I have met about this already, thinking through all the work he's been doing with all the work sessions and what the FY23 budget might look like, some of the moving pieces. So I do have some things written down. But I am here tonight to listen to the trustees and get a list of other things that she would like me to try to layer in or call out as we work through the FY23 budget. Thank you for that, Sarah. So first and foremost on my mind would be making sure that we have the financial resources necessary for separation, making sure that that is seen through tuition in terms of especially with any additional legal costs that we may need and any other related costs for separation. Along those different notes, one of the things I've mentioned to Evan is I personally would be intrigued to hear what it would take from a financial component to have our enforcement, our ordinance enforcement, instead of being a passive endeavor being more aggressive in nature or more proactive in nature. So whether that's contracting that out, whether that's a different person or a new person, whatever that may be so that way our community could have that conversation of as we've heard over the years that the enforcement could be improved upon and love to find out what it would take to actually do that. Other trustees? Andrew, I can. In the past when we've discussed, and I think you're making a very excellent request and I think it's a very reasonable request, what I remember in the past when we've talked about this to be blunt, you have to be prepared to go to court. You have to be prepared to take legal action. So it's enforcement, but it's really, as I understand it, it's also your legal budget because you try to enforce an ordinance, the person you're trying to enforce or the property you're trying to enforce resists, and then you have to be prepared to take legal action. So I would only add that that has to be, I think, maybe in your research or thinking about it, you'll find that I'm wrong and I'd be happy to be wrong on this, but I believe that that's a piece that has to be considered. Yes, I would agree. OK. Trustees, now's the time. If you want staff to do any kind of research of anything, cool, new, different, now's the time to bring that up. If not, and looking for status quo, now's the time to make sure that's heard too. One thing, as far as ordinances, in particular to Essex Junction in my time on the board and George, you'd recall, we discussed having a board that would address ordinance violations, code violations at the local level and deal with it in-house as opposed to having the person go directly, jump to the level of environmental court or what have you, to address something or at the district court level. And that never, as far as I know, never that board or that group that we, or committee that we talked about establishing never came to fruition. It was around the time when we put in changed ordinances to address the railroad avenue building that was burned down, has since been rebuilt, and dilapidated structures, vegetation growing up around houses so that the impact, the premise was that the impact on the community as a whole, neighbors, it brings down home values when you have neighbors that are not taking care of the property and doing so. So anyways, that's one thing. Go ahead, Raj. Raj, you're muted. Sorry. I had to run away from nighttime lawn mowing. So I'm now back in the basement. You're probably going to hear about this from the racial equity group. But there is an idea floating right now in one of the task force, one of the sub-task force to invest 1% of the budget. And this would be jointly with the town for an equity position. And that budget would include the position, training, and things like that. So that's under discussion in the racial equity group as a shared position. And I think the feeling is that can survive separation. That cooperation would hopefully stay. If we're going to be sharing some services, if we're going to be sharing police, we're still have a history together. So that's a thought there that I wanted to make people aware of. We just had a conversation about it today. The other thing I've been thinking about in the short time I've been on the board, we have community development that does a great job. This idea is not a reflection on the community development part positions. But we have people dedicated to working with developers and with topics like this. What we don't seem to have is a great way to have any kind of human development or citizen development. We don't have a go-to person for outreach. We don't have a go-to person for concerns that come in, communication, basically community development in the citizen sense, in the resident sense. Everything that you could think of in that realm that's not working directly with a developer to figure out how to use a parcel. And those are good things to do. Again, this isn't a comment on what community development does now. It's sort of, how can we look at this in a way to develop our community aside from them? And I've got some things jotted down. It's a little loose. To be honest, the task force today, we had a conversation about, could that be joined? And the group felt strongly that it was too much. They're not similar enough. It's different. And Andrew, to be honest, I don't know if some of that could expand a little bit into ordinance work. And that's certainly, you could sort of conceive a position where that might be possible, but I don't know if they're too different. I don't know the desire or the ability right now to add people. I get that. But we've got a lot of development coming up in the village. It would be great to have someone that could act sort of as an ombudsperson, to be a point of contact for people on that in that regard if they have an issue and to communicate for the government, for the board, all of those things. So that's one idea I have. Other thoughts from other trustees? That sounds interesting. I'd like to see that. Does anybody have anything else for Sarah or is that it? Could we also consider, I think, were we going to be talking kind of about a local option tax? Yes. I'd like to see us prepare for a vote to have a local options tax. How that aligns with the cannabis conversation. If I recall correctly, the cannabis needs to be figured out by town meeting day. So the village does not vote on town meeting day for our own municipal needs. So if we don't, then we are automatically opted in. At the same time, if we don't have a local options tax, there's really no real revenue that comes into the village to help compensate for that. So those are things that we would need to have resolved by this to align to really figure something out for this upcoming March. From a budgetary standpoint, how to and would we budget for or with a local options tax, we could possibly just let Sarah work her magic and provide us with some proposals? But I think that, yes, it's well past time to have that conversation. OK, thanks. Any changes in capital? Any other positions or initiatives? I'm sorry, since you bring it up. And since we're since this is a nice Christmas list and we can just throw anything we want, we're going to find the money to pay for it, which is great. Sarah's got a yellow marker. Yeah. I had in a discussion I had with Wendy Husko and when she came in here, she talked about the fact that they were very limited and kind of had a difficult time with COVID because of poor ventilation in the Browndale library. And I don't know exactly what that means. I don't know what it would entail to improve the ventilation in the library. It looks like COVID maybe isn't going to be going away for a little while. And given the global situation, we could have another version of COVID coming. So at least I'd like to maybe get a look at what exactly it would take to upgrade the ventilation in the library. So I'd like to basically get it. And this is a little bit far field for you, Sarah. You might have to investigate or have Wendy talk to you a little bit about it. But exactly how was it limiting to not have good ventilation in the library? And is that simply a capital expenditure that we could have? Some more fans in the attic or something like that. I don't know exactly what it means. But that might be something I think we might want to at least look into. Does that sound reasonable? It does. I actually already have that on my list. OK, great. Yeah, I was like, she's definitely looked at this, Sarah. So talk to me after. I know she's looking at it. Hey, George, stop talking. We already. No, OK. No, because there might be additional information that I don't already have. But I spoke with Dottie last week, and she gave me the rundown. OK, great. Thanks. They just have a very old HVAC system. It doesn't have any HEPA filter or anything of that nature. It's probably undersized for the additions and things that have been put on. They just didn't make good HVAC in the 1920s. They just weren't right up to speed. I think efficiency Vermont offers some kind of analysis that can be done as far as tax breaks. I don't know how it would apply to municipality. Our first set of work was to make sure the roof stopped leaking. Right, right. So we should have. Oh, certainly. A lot of those lines, though, given where we are with the pandemic, George, as you're saying, whether or not COVID is something that we just live with that society, we have other buildings and we have other staff who are required to work in those buildings. And so I think that that's a conversation we should have. We're not just the library, but for our municipal buildings, for our municipal staff. So we're not putting them in harm's way. At that same time, there's also the ARPA funds, which could very well align with that purpose. Yeah. Is there anything we should be looking at building-wise, space-wise, office-space-wise as we look to separate anything we should be paying attention to at Lincoln Hall, prepping for, budgeting for at this point, or is it too early? I wouldn't think it would be too early, but do we have a handle on it? Do we feel like we have a handle on that as a board? If I were to channel my inner budgetary self, I would say it's never too early to plan for an expense. I think that, yes, it makes total sense to have that be a part of that overall ensuring what we need for separation, whether that be a building needs analysis, whether that be funds to actually do some interior work. I think that that is something that Brad has already spoken with Sarah about, maybe? I see his hand up. So you take it away. Yeah, we should have an update on that at your next board meeting. John Alden's been working on some different options and some pricing. So you should have all that in the next board meeting. Thanks, Brad. Thank you. Any other wish list items? It's a brainstorm. There's no such thing as a bad idea during a brainstorm. Just the one you don't work. You just have to see only when you don't voice. Think we're all set? All right, I got some good notes. Thank you all very much. Thank you, Sarah. The rest of the evening. What's next? Next up, 5F, the Consider the Adoption of the Public Newsants Organs. And I believe I saw Lieutenant Kissinger and I see Chief Hogue as well. Hello, folks. Good evening. Evening. I think Lieutenant Kissinger is here. You know, he is. Yep, there he is. And I believe we went back through and we made the changes that you guys had requested the last time we spoke. I think there's only a couple of things or at least one question that we had. And that was in regards to the noise ordinance part of it. But we'll take any comments that you guys have first or anything that you saw in your packets that you might want to talk about. I think the only thing that came up and I know Roger raised this to me as well is that portion on sound and the time frame. Right. Excuse me, Rob. Rob. Yes. Can you turn your mic off? I'm going to trigger this. You're rustling a lot of paper. Thanks. No worries. So yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry, was that the timing of the ordinances and making them similar to what the other part was with the trash trucks? Is that what you're talking about? Yes. Yes, it's 7 a.m. Right. Give me one second and I'll look to see where we ended up with that. I'm sorry, now I'm having trouble finding the section on the trash. I'm trying to find it too. I'm sorry. It's 605B. Yeah, 605B. Section 6. Yeah, so we were suggesting, I think we talked about last meeting, making that 7 a.m. to align with other things. And on that note, I did find some definitions that also were 6 a.m., which were odd. It's not odd in terms of being 6 a.m. versus 7 a.m. when 7 a.m. seemed to predominate throughout the document. Gotcha. And it was, I don't want to just keep talking what you're looking, so you tell me when you're ready. No, I'm OK with that. And I think we're OK with however you guys want that worded, however the trustees want that worded. If you want to be consistent and make everything 7 a.m., that's fine. The trash removal, I guess we weren't clear on that the last time when we met with you, whether that was going to go to 7 a.m. because I thought there was some discussion about leaving it at 6, but that's, I'm possibly not remembering that correctly. I don't think it was something that there was a unanimous agreement on. So why don't we just solve that now? So if we can just go around the room, I for one am in favor of having them the time frames align, so that way 7 a.m. is a start for trash, construction, machinery, so on and so forth. Raj, I assume that's a year of the same opinion. Sure. Amber, just like you're clapping. George. I'm fine with that, yeah. Dan? Yes, I'm fine with it. OK, so we'll move everything to 7 a.m. OK. Appreciate that. Got it. Amber, did you have a question for us? Yeah, I have a couple. But while we're talking about the trash section, and I don't know how others feel about this, but I'd like to see the words utilizing mechanized conveyances removed and leave it general, but no trash should be picked up during that period of time. My concern is that there's still going to be noise that's emanating from these trash trucks regardless of whether they use the device to put the trash in the back or not. But if I'm in the minority, that's fine. I don't think we had a discussion about this. I think you did mention that last time. I don't remember how far it went. I'm fine with that personally. I kind of oppose the idea just because there are a lot of smaller operators that just have a pickup truck and they're picking up things and doing stuff. And I think we start going down this road. What's noise mechanized that are being lifted? Somebody's not going to come off the truck and grab a dumpster and dump it in the back of the truck. I'm opposed to that change. Thank you, Dan, George. I don't agree with Dan. I mean, I think you start to, you know, someone just with a pickup truck throwing a bunch of bottles in there, you know, it's hard to say exactly where it goes. So I think the, I mean, really, as I recall, the original intent here was the big trucks that are picking up the dumpsters and, you know, all that, all the noise from that. Isn't that correct? Isn't that what we were really initially going after? The additional complaints for the people that came to us were talking about the, those in the commercial areas with the dumpsters and the banging from the dumpsters. That's where the original complaints came from. I mean, I don't really feel strongly about it, but I think you're kind of, you could wind up being a little too vague saying, you know, any kind of trash removal is little, maybe a little too vague. I would agree with Dan and George. I think that the original intention here was about that the large dumpsters being banged around, as well as those who lift and slam. So I'd say if we could just keep that in, would that be appreciated? Is that OK, Amber? I said I might be in the minority, and it sounds like I am. So this is a democracy. It's all good. So the other things that I had questions about were 604C and D. So I'm all about not frightening horses and throwing missiles, but I guess I'm just used to where these came from. I do like. Now you've started something. I do like them. Thanks for the chuckle, Amber. Sorry. This has come up a lot. So I think we do have the difference. Sorry, go ahead, Chief. No, I guess what I would say about that is, no, we normally don't see horses on the streets, thankfully anymore, but it is always a possibility. And we do have that at the fair time, or it could be at the Memorial Day Parade kind of thing. So that's where that would come in. And obviously, frightening a horse does cause a pretty good public safety issue. So we have seen that at the Memorial Day Parade before, not intentionally, but yeah. That came up on screen. I agree with the Chief on this. And as far as missiles, I mean, that is just general language for any projectile. But anyhow, speaking to the whole thing of horses runaway, there was a woman who does the large draft horses, and her horses broke free and broke in a long long go. But that can be a very dangerous thing. So I definitely. I didn't mean to laugh. Yeah. And just to clarify that, missiles is a legal term for just about anything that can be launched or thrown or something like that. So that's why that's in there. So my son's going to middle school. Does this mean that he throws a spitball? That that's a missile? Yeah. Yeah. Nice. I guess. And we'll go. Only if he throws it at Amber. Yes. It's permanent record. Do we noted? We do have a nice definition of disorderly contact in 604A. But you know, I propose nothing. A couple more, I promise. I'll quickly go through these. In section 605D, the last bullet there, which is about the use of firearms. I guess I questioned this one being in here because I didn't. And maybe this is just me not understanding fully what the ability to use a firearm in the village is. But I didn't think that you could discharge a firearm in the village. So I'm even in a hunting situation. So maybe, I guess I'm just looking for some education on that one. Rob? Sorry, technical difficulties. You're correct. That's an oversight in my part. When stripping the village and the town as a combined document, this would apply for the town or it's not the village because you are correct. There is no firearms allowed in the village for hunting. So we can strike that out for whatever reason that I just slept my separating the two entities. Totally fine, totally fine. I think the last question that I had was more of a calerification. There's a there's a couple of references to like in section 610 about 610 F, what I think is F, a lot misrepresent misrepresent facts to the village clerk when getting a permit. And so there's a couple of references to the village clerk issuing permits and stuff. And I guess I'm just looking to right now, the zoning office issues those permits. Am I incorrect there? I mean, I think it's just language that I'm trying to get at. My understanding was that it was the clerk that was issuing those. I didn't think it was zoning. Well, I might be mistaken. The other thing is there's there are a lot of permits. You get a marriage permit, you get other things amber. It's not just building permits. It could be any kind of documents, I assume that could be mis, people could could lie or use false statements or such. So it's not just zoning. Right, but Terry, Terry Haas gives out zoning permits. So maybe you need to include both. Yeah, well, I'm just saying there's a lot. I don't think we have a village clerk, do we? You do. We do? Susan, Susan. I mean, well, I mean, yeah. My question for you, Amber, is would it be better if that just said public official? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think there's a couple of stated places in there. I did not mark them all, unfortunately, but where there is a reference to the clerk, so maybe just a fine replaced kind of. Is that the wording you were thinking is public official? Does that work for everybody? I think so. Okay. Do we need to then define what public official is or in your expertise in the legal field, is that defined well enough so it's commonly known? Now that might need a definition. Because technically we're public officials. I would hope or assume that you all would be able to use a definition somewhere instead of us brainstorming that right now. Yes. Yes. Awesome. While I was hoping we'd be able to pass this tonight, I'd rather make sure we do it right instead of passing it too quickly. Absolutely. The last question that I had was, I think it was more for Amber. So I think over the week you had a discussion with the lieutenant about the sound recording device or the sound measuring devices and what standard they should meet. I don't know. I'm not questioning that. I think it was just a typo. Okay. I don't recall unless I was, yeah. I don't recall having any issues with. I clearly have no purview over that. It was just a typo in the document. Okay. Our understanding was that we should change it from minimum to maximum standards. And I wanted to make that we shouldn't do that. Leave it as minimum. So we'll change that back and come back to you with that. So perfect. That's it. That's all I had. Did anybody else have any other edits, additions, changes to this ordinance? So pending one more review, the addition of a definition for public official and some of the other comments. I hope then at our next meeting, we'd be able to be at a place where it's a final review and get this approved. Andrew, can I ask a question? Always. I truly appreciate having a Chief Hogue here, but I'm wondering if we could just have it if, since these just seem to be minor changes, if it could just be put into the consent agenda. You know what I'm saying? And then we could review it, make sure everything's okay. I mean, if you guys like coming to meetings, that's fine. We'd love to have you. I just, you know, these are relatively small changes. Maybe we could just flip it into the consent agenda. All right. Just as a courtesy, I don't know just a little suggestion there. I would agree. I would agree with that, George. Okay. Meetings are always entertaining. However. Well, they are. They are. I want to say. I hear from the whole meeting Chief, but we was very entertaining right at the beginning. Yes. Yeah. I want to save you guys work too. So. Okay. So if there's nothing else, Chief Holt, Lieutenant Kissinger, I think we can, as always appreciate your time for being here. You continue to work on this and I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening. Very well. Unless, unless there's anything else you want to make sure we hear. I have nothing. Thank you very much. And I appreciate all the feedback. Thank you. Thank you both. Thank you. Thanks gentlemen. Thanks. Good evening. So we, I believe amended the agenda at this point. We have one before that. Okay. I'm wrong. No, no, we did amend it. That's not wrong that we asked. Yes. Down there. Yep. And Marguerite, I didn't have my email open. Did you send something? Oh yeah. Let me get that. Can you see this now? There we go. Yeah. So I think Robin is here. I saw him at one point. Maybe I'm wrong. No, I do see Robin. I believe he's unmuted himself. If you, Robin, if you want to go ahead and just introduce us. Hi. This came up when we saw Vermont real plan. The real plan is to reinstate Montrealer. But what they're proposing is that the train goes from Montreal to Springfield, Massachusetts. Then you get off the train, wait for another train and finally go to Boston. Now, in terms of people from Montreal, getting to Chittin' and Conture, getting to Waterbury and Skeen in Stoke, that's fantastic. But, you know, at the moment for folks, the Amtrak trains for Vermont, the state pays for those trains to come to Vermont because it's not a service that makes money for Amtrak. And it seems we're setting ourselves up for many years of paying for this as well because the way it's set up, it could take seven and a half hours to get from Essex Junction to Boston. Now, most people are probably going to get a bus or take a car if that's the case. There's another option. It's a heavy lift. It's not an easy lift. And that would be to go through Concord, New Hampshire. There is about 20, 22 miles of track there that was lifted a while ago, although New Hampshire owns the right-of-way, which often with these projects is the difficult aspect to get as you remember from the connecting road. If that track was reinstated, it could take about three and a half hours to get from Essex Junction to Boston, which would mean five hours probably from Montreal to Boston. Now, if you're in Boston, you want to go Skeen in Vermont, pretty sure you would take that train. That's probably a three-hour trip. But the way it works at the minute, and I'm not that familiar with the landscape in Massachusetts is most people, is if you're getting off at Springfield, you'd have to go west to go south to go east. I'm not sure how many people in Massachusetts or in New Hampshire are going to make that choice. I think there's an opportunity here to do something that's going to benefit us in the long run and save us money because we wouldn't be paying for this train. The real council, some people say they just basically rubber stamp what the state wants to do, but if that was the case, there wouldn't be so many people signing up to get on it. They do have influence. I do remember when Dave Crawford and I went one year, there was a change influenced and it was voted what the state wanted to do was voted on by the real council. And the state went back to the drawing board and did make some changes. I think as the busiest train station in Vermont, it behooves us to have somebody at voice at the table, to have somebody there to speak for us. I think generally speaking, the council is filled politically from a municipal perspective, people from the South and maybe Burlington. We really haven't spoken and given our status, no one's the busiest train station in Vermont, but also the only one in Chittenden County at the intersection of the Eastern and Western Rail corridor. And it's really something we should seriously think about. You can go online to the governor's website and apply to be on the real council. So if the trustees felt that somebody from the village could do some good there, I think it's something certainly with considering if not doing. Thank you, Robin. And I would wholeheartedly agree that it would be fantastic to get a trustee on to the rail council for the state, given that they had just approved with the state rail plan, either at their last meeting or a couple of meetings ago at this point, it's a little late for the existing rail plan, but that is updated on a regular basis. So getting somebody on that sooner rather than later would be I think very advantageous to the community. I for one don't have the time as they meet during the day. So that is a daytime requirement. Is there another trustee who may have an interest in this? I might be interested in it. I'm not sure. I'd have to look into it a little bit, but I might be interested in it. But I don't think is this restricting to the trustees or would it be someone we could appoint because I know some other individuals who might be interested as well. It's not, does it necessarily have to be a trustee? So what it has to be is it has to be a person and that person has to apply to the governor. And so it's not as if we can just ask the governor, we can always ask him to do whatever he wants, but it's not as if the governor is just going to hold a seat for us extension. Okay. So it does have to be a person. And this is something where if we want, we could use our network to try to make sure we find the right person if a trustee can't do it. And I don't mind being a part of that conversation offline at some point in time. Yeah, I can't commit to it right now, Andrew. I can, about Dan or Amber or Frosch, certainly if you're interested, I'd have to give it a little more thought right now. I can't just right now can't commit to it. I couldn't do it right now, but I think it's something we should definitely make sure, I think Robin's right, we should definitely make sure that we have a representative there as best as we can. Where, Andrew? They're hybrid meetings right now, or they're virtual meetings right now as state employees are still virtual. And the Department of Transportation from what I understand has not yet gone to fully hybrid. So I think where we can take this for now is if people want to think about it and if we have ideas as to who may be a good fit, we don't need to formally approve of somebody, although I think that it may be helpful for that conversation with the governor's office where if we were to involve our local representatives in this process, and then if we do find the right person for us to have a vote on that person, it may be beneficial in terms of saying this is who we as the village of Essex Junction as Robin has said, that this is a strange station in the state of Vermont, so on and so forth, would appreciate the appointment of this individual. So if you have thoughts, feel free to email me or maybe we could individually talk offline. Okay, thanks. Robin, I see your hands up. Yeah, thank you. Just thinking bigger picture, some or other we need to talk to our congressional delegation and have them talk to their equivalents in New Hampshire. Just to get the conversation going, I have turns out I know people who work for Bernie Sanders and for Peter Welsh, so I've contacted them, but I think we need somebody at a higher level than me to continue the conversation because I don't think people actually know the bigger picture and know what the possibilities are. I think we better to open the discussion a little bit further. I'm always happy, Robin, to be a part of any of those conversations. If you'd like to help make that introduction, I'd be more than happy to take it from there. That's great, thank you. Yep, it's an open invitation. Careful what you wish for. Thank you, Andrew. I know worries. Do what we can for the betterment of Essex Junction. Well, it's really for the betterment of Vermont. If we can get a faster train from Boston to Waterbury, it's going to help a lot for ski slopes. Yep. So I see Annie Cooper has her hand up. So, Bourne, if you don't mind, Annie Cooper, why don't you go ahead and unmute yourself and floor yours. Thank you, can you hear me? Yes, we can. I will happily be a placeholder at that table if you need someone to just launch the idea and then happily step aside if someone else wants it. So that sounds fun and exciting and I want to make sure that we do get a seat at that table. So if y'all are still working on it, you could roll me out or not. Appreciate your constant and unwavering willingness to do what is best for our community. So thank you as always, Annie. I appreciate that. Thank you very much, Andrew. Thanks, you guys, for all you do. Thank you. Any other trustees have anything else on that agenda item or are we good to move to the new 5-H? So why don't we now move to the approval of the Champlain Valley Expo events requiring waivers? Amber, you had asked for this to be pulled up from the consent agenda. It did and the only reason I did that was just because I was confused as to, I thought we had already approved waivers and so I was confused as to why this was coming back. And so maybe, I mean, after three years, I think I'm still trying to figure out exactly how the sound agreement waivers and everything with CBE works. So I just purely wanted to make sure that I was understanding how the process was working. I don't have any issue with the document itself. I'm not going to lie. I don't recall when we last did this. So I'm not going to try and guess that. Yeah, I couldn't either. So that's why I put it on there. Robin, I see your hand is up. I assume you can address that. And I saw Tim earlier in the meeting. Robin, now your hand is down. And Amber, there's no penalty for approving it twice. I thought the memo said that it was informational only. It was just FYI. This is because most of them are passed. It's about 50-50. Yeah, and what I was thinking was, was then when Tim came to us several months ago, we kind of gave him like a blanket. We're giving you these waivers because he was unsure as to what particular concerts we're going to be like. I think he planned them. This is my understanding of it. He's planned these things a year ahead, but because of COVID, he didn't have that ability to do that this year. And so I'm guessing that this is just, now we've got this underway. We know exactly what's being done. And so he's just, we're just getting the list. But again, I just wanted to understand. And it looks like Tim is here. I thought it was something to do with the, the actual fare itself. And the question is something that the waivers should, for all events, this is for all events. And the question was whether this was events outside of the fire and outside of some of the other. Tim, I was going to let Dan finish first. But Tim, if you're with us, go ahead. Great, good evening. Thanks for the opportunity to weigh in. Yeah, I think this is on the agenda and Evan and Robin could speak better than I because it's that document that outlines the waivers we've received for this year, the 21. Amber, you're right. We did come back in earlier in the year when we were discussing with higher ground about possibly doing a pod-like concert series. And we had asked for additional sound waivers, which you folks gave us, which we appreciate, but we don't intend to use. I think we were given, granted up to 35. This number right here is 21 and we don't need any additional. We typically have 20. We went over a bit this year because of the high school graduation. I think we had sound waivers for four of the high school graduations. Typically the 20 number works fine for us. And candidly, there's probably some events on there that we still monitor the sound that you probably don't need to, but we do just to be on the safe side. An example being during the fair, we have the demo derby. There's really no sound that comes out from that to our neighbors, but again, to be on the safe side, we monitor the sound as we do all 10 nights of the fair. And then the concerts we do, and events we do outside of the fair, where we feel it's responsible to measure the sound so that we can report back if any questions ever do arise. Thank you, Tim. Trustee, is any other comments, questions, concerns? All right. Tim, thank you so much. I think we have what we need on that one. I hope you're getting some sleep with the fair coming up on Friday. 10 best days of summer, right? That's right. That's right. Thanks very much. 10 best days of two summers at this point. You had the right to be cutting. So that brings us to the end of our business items and moves us into the consent agenda. I'll make a motion that the trustees approve the consent agenda. Thank you, George. Thank you, Dan. All those in favor of approving the consent agenda, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Passed unanimously. Thank you. And into the reading file and any board member comments. It was a late night. We just did this yesterday. Does anybody have anything else or? I'll just say thanks to Brad and Chief Hogue for including the follow-up on sort of an unusual memo addressing some comments on a Facebook page of all places. But did concern a number of residents. So it was nice of them to provide some clarification. People are wondering about Maple Street Park. It's a good explanation of this actual situation with some facts. So not to worry, our premier park is a very safe and inviting and fun place to spend some time. Absolutely. Thank you for saying that, Roche. Evan, Marguerite, anything else from you? If someone wanted to make a motion to adjourn. Wow, that was fast. Holy goodness, all right. Any, that's not debatable. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? All right, you have it. We're done. Good night. Thanks everybody. Good night. Catch up on some sleep. I'm miracle. We start from 10 to 10 and he is looking to update a position and was asking for me to potentially be on his interview panel. I said, we keep talking about going for a beer or a glass of wine. Is this ever gonna happen? Wow, maybe. And he said he was off this week. So he said. Well, you should, you should. Yeah, I said okay. All right. Yeah, tell him I said hi. I know that, you know, you were.