 So I have 630 so I will call the meeting to order and tonight we are doing something a little different and they need to have an executive session. We're going to do it. First thing so I'd ask for the motions to be made to put a sense to executive session. I'll move to find the premature public knowledge regarding a contractual agreement and attorney and client communications would clearly place the town at substantial disadvantage. I'd also move. That we enter into executive session to discuss a contractual agreement and attorney and client communication under provisions of title 1 sections 313 a. 1 a and f of the Vermont statutes and invite town manager Eric Wells public works director Bruce or town man town attorney David rough and representative from the Ocala states homeowners association to join. Is there a second second discussion on motion. Not all those in favor of the motion say aye. The opposed. So we are an executive session we would like to return about 7. The executive session for now on to the regular schedule. So the next item on the agenda are the 3 sets of minutes. So we'll be looking at the minutes for June 15th, 2021, 1st side of the motion move we adopt subject to modification. Is there a second look at page 1 page 2. June 15 June 15 June 15 page 3 no corrections and all those in favor of approving the minutes of June 15 2021 say aye. I oppose we have done it unanimously and moving on then to June 22nd, 2021. Is there a motion? I was not present still make a motion. Move. Move. We adopt subject to modification is your second second. It's only one page page one. Hearing no. Corrections all those in favor of approving the minutes of June 22nd, 2021 say aye. Aye. Sorry, I abstain. They oppose the one abstention. And then the minutes of June 29 2021 your motion. Move we adopt subject to modification. Is there a second second. We're at page one and page two and hearing no corrections on that. All those in favor of approving the minutes of June 29 2021 say aye. Aye. Any opposed and one abstention. Ted absent and that is cure of the minutes. And we're moving on then to public comment. Certainly you work to anyone on the. Outside of the building that we should make any public comments, Terry put a note in the chat. I don't see anyone who'd like to speak remotely on zoom at this time. Okay. Anyone in the audience who wishes to make any public comment tonight. Nothing in the chat room. Nope. Okay. Then we'll move on and to the resolution for service to Williston Eric and Bruce. I think we have something to comment on this. Sure, I can kick this off. Paul's joining us this evening. Paul the trail. He's retired earlier this month after 17 years of service and Wilson highway department and the chair would like I can read the resolution for the record resolution. The Wilson select board, whereas Paul retired on July 1st 2021 after serving the Wilson community for over 17 years in the highway department and whereas Mr. Paul the trail served as assistant highway foreman acting to oversee operations of the department in all seasons and conditions. And whereas his steadfast work ethic dedication to the Wilson community, epitomized public service and whereas over the years, he served as a mentor to numerous members of the highway department for by training and assistance on the job. Now, therefore be it resolved. The Wilson select board hereby recognizes and thanks Paula trail for as many years of service to the Wilson community, which is in the very best in his retirement. Up this 13th day of July 2021. On behalf of the board, we certainly appreciate your years of service and we had the opportunity to sign the resolution just now. So Eric will present it to you. Did you want to do a photo or anything? Congratulations Paul, actually make the reason make a motion to adopt the resolution. I'll move to adopt the resolution recognizing the service of Paula trail to Williston as presented second discussion on the motion. All those in favor of the motion say aye and the oppose say no. And we have done it. Thank you very much. Paul. Thank you, Paul. Thank you. Moving on then to interviews and appointments, which tonight we have a candidate for the cemetery commission and drew Nelson is here. If you come up to the table, please, that would be helpful to us. And we do have your application in front of us and you'd like to give us a very brief description of your background and why you wish to number of the cemetery commission. Well, background is from the army to business and then my wife and I have owned a couple of our own businesses. On each community where we've lived or worked, so they always tried to make a commitment to that community. And for the last four years we've been here in Williston, we're retired. I have the time and would like to serve on the commission and why the cemetery commission. I really actually grew up in the cemetery. So my father was a retail monument. So from some of my earliest years, I remember going through cemeteries looking for monuments. Cleaning them, cutting them in some cases and then one summer actually doing some restoration work and repairing a great interest in them. Thank you very much. There is a organization in the state called the remote old cemetery Association. I don't know if you're aware of that. I'm aware of it. I do not belong. I've been a member of the 251 club for probably 30 plus years and last year gave up my board seat there, which I had had since 02. So in those travels, we've gone through several cemeteries in Vermont as well. There are some interesting people very famous one. Any questions for the board? Just idle curiosity. What's the Stanford executive program? It's a two month program at the Stanford business school. I did it in the summer of 88. There were 180 of us from really all over the world. It was a terrific experience. I'm still in touch with some of the people in the group with me. Well, I'm sure that trained you well for the cemetery commission in Williston. Actually, just a super anecdote. My brother, Tim, a year older than me and I mowed two of the Catholic cemetery lawns in Richmond, Vermont growing up in the church lawn. The cemetery on Cochran Road has a whole bunch of civil war dead in it. We were using push mowers at the time. We were in middle school and that was our job. And my brother interrupted me to tell me that he had just stepped into a grave that the crypt must have fallen. His foot went straight down to his knee with the lawn mower. The funny thing about that is that the movie Carrie had just come out where at the end the ghost comes through the grave and grabs somebody. But that didn't scare us at all because we were so used to being in cemeteries by that time. Anyway, so let's hope your service here makes it so that nobody falls into a grave. It was not supposed to. Your cemeteries are very nice. You really have a jewel here. I brought copies of the fall 2020 very life magazine. Eric has one. Sarah Mason has one too. And I bought enough copies for the board members. But the front picture is the chipmunk. And then there's a nice two page article inside. So I thought you might have. Thank you. That's a real jewel in the cemetery. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We appreciate that. Any other questions for Drew? No. Then a motion would be in order. I'll move to a point. Drew Nelson to the Cemetery Commission from unexpired term through June 30th 2025. Your second. I'll second. That's our discussion of motion. If not, I'll send in favor of the motion and say aye. Aye. There are no negative votes. So congratulations. Congratulations. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. I'll do this. Should I just pass these? Yeah. Great. Great. Thank you very much. I won't give a day of reading out. Oh wow. Very grand. Association's office is at the same level. Thank you. Thank you. Nice. Nice. We won't per chair. And you know about, yeah, do you know what the meeting tomorrow. Okay. Yep. And the Gizibor. They might be in the church. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. So moving on to the noise ordinance variance request. And. We will have Jake. Organson. Organson from the USDA with us. Remotely, I believe. Tonight we have a member of the conservation commission. Laura Meyer. Who is here. And if we need to have questions. Regarding the fire chief, I think we can have him on remotely as well. So Eric, if you want to lead off was a. A little bit of history of where we're at and ruin tonight. Sure, Terry. And I'm just getting a jake connected here over zoom. So the board took up this request originally at the May 4th meeting a few months ago. It's from the United States Department of Agriculture to use pyrotechnic noise making devices as a matter to the community. And the state is currently working on making the noise available to the community. And the committee interprets from the facility on Avenue B in town to prevent conflicts with a flight path for the nearby airport runway. The noise emitted by these devices exceeds the limit in that zoning district of 90 decibels through the town's noise ordinance. And thus would require a grant of variance granted by the select board. After the May 4th meeting of the select board, additional information has been gathered and shared with us this at their meeting in May and provide a memo, which Laura can speak to this evening. We also have comments from the airport. Chief Collette has provided a memo and I've also provided a memo that looks at how sound level could travel over distance. The select board also held a special meeting to witness a demonstration of these devices from many different distances in June. And as we mentioned, we have Jacob Borgasen from USDA with us this evening and Laura. And I'm going to turn it over to our presenters. Thank you. So we can get Jake on the line and have him do whatever presentation he has. And I think we'll have questions for him as well. But Jake, I see I've got you as a panelist that you'll just need to unmute and we'll get you on the TV here. Can you hear me okay here, Eric? We can. There we go. Okay. Can you hear us? I can hear you guys just fine. I'm at my house here remote. So I just want to make sure you can all hear me. That's all. Yeah. Good evening. Good evening, Jake. And so you would refresh our memories about what the request is from USDA and go into specifics. Hopefully if you can about the frequency that this has occurred or the days, the time of the days that it would happen, the number of days per week and the length of time you might expect us to go on. Sure. Eric gave a pretty nice brief description on what the original request was and why we're attempting to expand our efforts at the Castel of facility off Avenue B primarily for bird abatement measures for the, you know, flight path of major aviation traffic at Broads international and the Vermont international guard, as well as to assist Cassella with their ongoing, you know, increased bird hazards and bird nuisance that they've had at the facility ongoing now for, for several years, most notably in 2021, especially in the spring of 2021 we saw a notable increase in gull activity at the facility, primarily believed to be from the additional handling of, of increased food waste at the facility for the guidance and regulations under Vermont composting laws and invariably they've been dealing with more direct food waste management in a direct hands-on type fashion. And I think as a result, we have seen the gull numbers kind of steadily increasing with that adoption of these new techniques. Now, as far as frequency and timing of events that we would predict for pyrotechnic use, I've explained before it varies so much throughout the year and gulls tend to have a somewhat predictable timeframe as far as increased activity, especially, you know, on the airfield and in the vicinity of the airfield, namely Cassella and other areas within the Champlain Valley that we know of. And that, that the most prevalent or the most increased hazard that we see for gulls tends to be in the spring months right in the heart of spring, typically, you know, once migration has begun with all our neighboring Champlain Valley birds. And that carries right through till most of those birds are actually sitting on nests on Champlain. With gull chick rearing, there's a variety of food sources available at that time. So it seems like the gull activity and the numbers tend to decrease. Now, not to say that gulls won't increase their numbers for other reasons periodically throughout the year. I mean, there's so many other factors that can come into play that can come into play for that. But I mean, I would say the primary use of these pyros would be more geared towards the spring months. And that's, that's kind of where this initial call for the variants occurred in April and into May of this year. Now, as far as pyrotechnic use at the facility, it would, it would be rather sparse to be honest. And it's hard to say how rapidly those gulls will respond to pyrotechnic use. I mean, as far as history goes with, with us at other facilities and other projects, gulls harass rather well with pyrotechnic devices. We've been using these devices for a large number of years in Vermont as well as nationally as far as USDA goes. So the exact number of pyrotechnics in a day, it would, it would probably be somewhat limited, you know, at any given event, it couldn't be as many as two to three pyrotechnics discharge to get those birds to rapidly disperse effectively in the allotted time that we would have between air traffic and any bird dispersal there is going to be performed in direct contact with air traffic control tower, which under our ongoing project at the Burlington International Airport in Vermont and International Guard, we directly communicate with air traffic control tower under live ATC frequencies daily throughout every initiation that we do there. So, like I said, I mean, just to kind of briefly wrap that up, I would say most of the activity would be springtime into early summer. And our efforts are Monday through Friday, typically we're not weekend warriors and the Kasella facility is, is not having normal operation hours on, on Sundays. On Sundays, however, anyway, so it would be Monday through Friday, typically during the day. You know, we may be there early in the mornings, if the birds are prevalent and we know the hazard is relevant and bird increase numbers are there. And that would kind of run throughout the course of the day. And, and like I said, to shed light on how effective the pyrotechnics will be, I have good promise that they'll work well in conjunction with other methods of, you know, non-lethal methods at the facility that are being used already. This would be a definite added tool for the box to move these birds on and, and as far as where we stand right now with gulls at the facility, their sporadic gull activity there, however, the numbers now are, are drastically lower than what they would have been in the spring and that, that is the no cause of pyrotechnic use at all. You know, simply, these would be, you know, used sparingly as we feel necessary throughout the year to disperse those larger numbers of birds. Thank you, Jake. Questions from the board members? Jake, how would you all measure the efficacy of the, the noisemakers on the gull population? What would be the efficacy of that? And to, to measure that and to, you know, again, to determine that this was an effective strategy? Yeah, I mean, we would probably just perform ongoing continued point count surveys, numbers there with, with gull numbers, to try to match that up with some of the historical numbers that we have seen. We've been, you know, doing ongoing observations at the Cassella facility now for quite a few years. And in, to effectiveness of the pyrotechnics, I think it would be best to, you know, delineate Cassella as an off point hazard survey. We do ongoing bird surveys at the airport and I think this would just be a good spot to add on to that list as an additional point count to essentially observe, you know, how those gull numbers are responding to these devices as well as, you know, other techniques that are being utilized at that facility. Can you review briefly just what the other techniques are that are being utilized right now there? Sure, sure. Yeah. Historically, Cassella keeps a pretty clean facility as it is. And with bird issues in general, the first and foremost method is to keep those birds to the best extent possible from accessing the food resource. Now with birds like gulls and other birds like blackbirds and crows, it doesn't take a lot to get large numbers of birds to congregate there. So that's the first step is to keep a clean tidy facility, which they do. They're noted for that. The professionals may do a good job at that. Secondary is, you know, some other methods that are being used there are audible distressed vocalizations that they have recorded. If any of you have been to the Cassella transfer at any given time, you've probably heard the audible device that's playing in the background. They will use that as bird numbers increase. We have been flying kites there to simulate both gull, both eagle and peregrine falcon effigies. You know, natural predators of ring-billed gulls, primarily on Lake Champlain, peregrine falcons being probably one of the most prominent predators. As well as they've begun to grid some of their rooftops, they've installed some wires, some anti-perching devices, as well as a device called Daddy Long Legs, which are stainless steel wires that basically have a center attachment point and extend eight feet in all directions, which in turn keeps the gulls from being able to actively roost or perch on the edges of the buildings most nearest to the actual transfer station floor where the active materials dealt with. And when gulls typically can't perch like that, it puts them away from the food resource a little bit further, and that starts to dissuade them a little as well. Cassella has also been very receptive to these techniques. There has been conversation with Joe Gay there as well as Mike Cassella to possibly install a grid system above the facility to discourage birds from coming down similarly to the Green Mountain Compost Facility off of Redmond Road. So all of these in conjunction, I think with the limited use of pyrotechnics should have a relatively strong effect on dispersing some of these birds from becoming overly habituated to the facility with which they already are. Another question from the board. Jake, I heard the alternatives and the different things that are used. Are there any circumstances that are similar to this where pyrotechnic noise makers are not used at all, but there is another effective solution? Typically with us, of all the work that we've done statewide and on a national level, pyrotechnics are one of the number one tools that we use. We use them right at the neighboring airport daily as a matter of fact for all birds, dispersing birds from the flight path. So I think like I said, one of the best methods we've ever found as an agency to disperse large numbers of birds like this, gulls being one of the more commonly species that we deal with on a regular basis is pyrotechnics. As far as being one of the most effective non-lethal techniques known in the book, pyrotechnics have been around for a long time now. All right, thank you. Any other questions from the board? So, Jake, if you can stay with us during the course and we hear from the Conservation Commission and also we may have some people in the audience remotely that may have some questions or comments that you could respond to. Absolutely. Thank you. So, Conservation Commission Representative Laura Meier. Hi. Thank you. Laura Meier, I know I haven't met Greta yet. Hi. Nice to meet you. The Conservation Commission, I am now acting as chair of the Conservation Commission. And as Eric mentioned, you have a memo from Melinda. And we on May 19th met with Jake and also Joe Gay from Cassella. The members of the Conservation Commission expressed concern about the location of Cassella's food scrap facility just being near the airport, but barring moving, the Conservation Commission does recommend the select board grant a noise ordinance waiver for a trial period. And Melinda has stated in her memo what the Conservation Commission was concerned about. As Joe mentioned, he's doing point counts, so they'd like to understand and document the effectiveness as well as the effects of the devices. He also talked about the different techniques and we wanted to see that documented what the long-term mix of techniques to be used are and documentation of monitoring of target as well as non-target species. The commission was worried that there might be other songbirds. One commission member was worried about a bat colony that's near the airport. To this date, the data on how noise affects bat behavior is kind of scarce, especially loud behaviors that are just once in a while and not just background noise. I think Melinda also put that at the bottom of the memo. The commission also recommends further investigation into mitigating the source of the problem which I already mentioned. It sounds like Cassella does keep their food scrap facility very neat. The main concern was the location of the facility. I think that was really it if there are any questions for the conservation commission. Thank you, Laura. Questions for Laura from the board before we continue to respond? How long a test period were people thinking was that discussed? I don't know either. Maybe I don't know. So if we were to there tonight or some other time soon agree to a waiver, would it be reasonable they'll be looking to work from now into the summer which summer is here. A few months. Well, it sounds like spring is when the pyrotechnics are most needed. So Jake could probably answer that question about how long of a trial period would make sense. Other questions from the board before I ask Jake? Jake, you heard the request from the conservation commission and your response to it? Absolutely. We'll take any time frame that we can get as far as a trial period. I'm totally wide open as an agency for doing that. Not sure how much we're going to be using them right now, but honestly with even moderate gull activity there, I would still like to even just utilize them periodically to see the initial effect these gulls may have on pyros at that facility. So in response to time frame, yes, I think like I said spring is by far the most needed time. However, at this point, I think we would be definitely willing to entertain any granted time frame here. And just to jump on the back colony nearby as well, I have reached out to our small mammal biologist with Mott Fish and Wildlife and chatted with her about this as well. And just to concur that her feelings on it are the same. There's not a lot of studies and there's not a lot of information there pertaining to the primary disturbance of bats via loud noise. Her agreement is just this hours with other projects that we perform in the area is tree disturbance and building demolitions tend to be the point causes of the detriment to bats on a local level. So the other thought process is with spring, summer, and even early fall months, primarily as we know bats are active mostly in the summer time and bats can easily move and respond to disturbance levels at that time to readily move themselves. It's more the bats tend to move themselves. It's more the bat hybromaculums that they're primarily concerned about. So she agreed. There's not a lot of information there pertaining to it. We obviously know these bats reside within close proximity to an active airport where there's a lot of noise already. So I find it unlikely that pyrotechnics would really have any effect on a limited basis of the bats down below. Thank you. Looking at Melinda's mental, there was some concern that they're not sure that the bats even exist there at this point. And would there be any way for you or for the Vermont Fish and Wildlife organization to make a determination as to whether they even exist there? I mean, that's something certainly to bring up with a list of Bennett and the rest of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife team. We work with them collaboratively on most all our projects anyway as one agency to the next. But historically they have done acoustic monitoring as well as misnetting down in the neighboring property to the north and west of the Kisela property. And I believe they did a study in the last handful of years down there, which still documented some sort of bat presence in that area. I know some of that work has been performed by Vermont Fish and Wildlife as well as some private consultation in the actual Vermont International Guard part of their ongoing natural resource management plan there on the facility. And we've been involved with that to some extent over time as far as our partnership with the Vermont International Guard. Thank you. Any other questions for Laura? Anyone on the chat line that wishes to ask questions or speak? Yeah, Terry, I have Courtney Howard had a question or comment. So Courtney, I think you can hear me from home. What I'm going to do is allow you to talk here. You'll be unmuted and you can speak with a select board or ask a question of any of our guests here. Thank you, Courtney. Excellent. Can you all hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Great. Hi, my name is Courtney Howard and I have, I'm the mother of a child who attends EJ's kids club. And that is a daycare center, which is really tight to the radius of where these pyros would be dispersed and actually just wanted to bring to your attention if you weren't already aware. That there are two daycare centers. One is within quite a close range. And what I mean by close range is 1800 feet and 2200 feet. So that would be the Williston enrichment center and also EJ's kids club. And so I believe from what I heard from the last meeting is that the pyros might be discharged. Upwards of 20 or 30 times a day. So my obvious concern is how does that impact learning? And the sleeping and napping of the infants and the young toddlers at these daycare centers. And then my second concern would be, how do you ensure or test the noise levels, the decibel level of what would occur at the daycare centers just to ensure that they're within safe, you know, safe for the children's hearing and so forth. Thank you for doing it. And Eric has done a memo regarding noise and how far noise travels. We also did an onsite meeting with the select board to see how the sound goes from the current location on Redmond Road out as far as a mile. So Eric, would you want to talk about your memo? Sure, Terry. So what I tried to do was learn more about the science of how sound travels. And what I put in the memo is this idea is called the inverse square law. Basically, when sounds emitted from a fixed distance, when that distance is doubled, it decreases by six decibels. It was the piece that I found. But granted, this is not real world tested in every situation, but just a principle of the science here. So what I did was try to map out the approximate location where these would be. And then I took a high level of 120 decibels, approximated, say that was three feet away, and then carried on from there in the chart I put together. So really from that approximation, just based on this formula, when you got to be about 96 feet away or so from these, the decibel level would reach the ceiling of what's allowed in the zoning district based on this formula. Granted, this is done from a formula in a book and not a real world test. But from analyzing it with this perspective, as you start getting to those distances of 1,400 feet away, 2,900 feet away, a quarter mile, half mile, your decibel levels are likely going into the 60s just based on this model. But I'll promise that it is a model. OK. Yeah, I'm actually a scientist and I drew out a radius too. So it does look like it's going to be 66 decibels. But I would like to see some real world testing and see if that's accurate. And then also, I'm not as familiar with zoning and what the noise regulations would be. But I'm curious what is the noise zoning for areas in which there are other schools in Williston and is 66 decibels in an appropriate noise level that would be considered OK. Some of your other schools like Williston Central. I can consult the ordinance. I do know when the ordinance in this district in town, the maximum is 90, which is the board considering tonight. But I can certainly court me on the question for the other schools. Yeah, it would be great to just hear, especially if there is a test period, how that is going for the learning and the well-being of the children because there are two daycare centers, quite large ones within the vicinity. Or if there's any creative thinking that could be done in dispelling them at off times or around nap times, I don't know, that could be a logistical nightmare. But just voicing a concern from a parent. Thank you for hearing me. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks. Anyone else on the line? Let's see anyone in the chat right now. Oh, here we go. Hold on one second. Just catch up here with the. Okay, there we go. Hi, Christine. I see you in the chat here. I'll get you connected here in just a moment. Hey, can you hear me? Yep. Yes, we can. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm another parent at EJ's kids club. And I just had a follow-up question to. The couple of questions that Courtney just asked. I also had listened to. The previous recording and I thought it was mentioned that the similar noise ordinance was granted in. South Burlington and maybe some other towns. So. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know the projection based on the. Sound traveling, but from some of the other towns where the ordinance was granted. And the, the pyrotechnics are being used. Is there no real world. Testing or the sound. Monitoring that has been done that could validate those ranges. But now it's actually started. I, I think we have, we've been out to our colleagues in South Burlington regarding this subject matter. And I didn't hear anything back from them. Regarding any concerns. The Debti manager at the time reached out to their department heads on this. So I wasn't able to obtain that level of information. I certainly, we have a opportunity with the. where those are let off or work with USDA to take a reading as well if the board grants a variance here. Those are just some possible suggestions to look at noise levels. Okay. Yeah, and just if we are to, if the board is to grant the waiver on a temporary basis, then I would just hope that as, you know, part of the follow up that you may check in with, especially these day care centers that are located so closely by, you know, and unfortunately, as you mentioned in the spring when everyone is first getting outside and the kids can, you know, really be spending a lot of time out outdoors. And, you know, if these things were going off up to 20 times a day. I also have similar concerns just on, you know, the safety for the kids and, you know, hearing concerns, and just making sure that we're doing everything. So, you know, a potential option without impact, first to, you know, manage the birds before resorting to this current approach. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else on the, on the chat line. Yep, I see a Terry Marin Terry I'll get you connected right now. Hi, can you hear me. Yes, we can hear you. Great. Okay, my name is Terry Marin, resident Wilson. And I just I spoke last time at the last meeting. And I just wanted to relay my, you know, thoughts about the situation there and I would just like to see the board maybe asks Kasella to try alternative methods to using the pyrotechnics or an accommodation. And I just think that the filament netting down on the red this see a UD down on Redmond Road works great. I go by there once a month at least, and do not see a lot of go activity, and it just and they use large equipment. So I think that the height of the filament is high enough to where it actually works. You know, also, you know, there's a plenty, there's a significant amount of noise over there in that area. The airport in the up 35s and just adding more noise, especially at random times is pretty disruptive to people's lives and businesses and the folks that spoke about the daycare facility and also there's a dog care facility close by. And, you know, I think that, you know, maybe this is just maybe the wrong spot for this type of facility. I think I don't know why I said who wasn't done before it was set up, and that it didn't realize that having food scraps right next to the airport wasn't going to create a hazard for air traffic, and that that should have been, you know, realized and maybe put in a different place. And also the other thing is that CSWD apparently has plenty of capacity for more food scraps. I don't know why that wasn't entertained that Cassila bringing that the food scraps to the CSWD facility on Redmond Road. That makes it into compost. So they're, they're already there. And I just don't think that this will be a short term solution at all, as long as that food is at that facility. Those birds are going to keep coming back. So this is going to be term solution, which, you know, is just going to be constant. You know, every spring, they will come back, they'll remember, and they'll try again. And the bat population was spoken about. And the biggest part of that would be winter hibernation where the bird bangers and extra noise would bring those bats out of hibernation. And that would be great to see if that population is still there. So I hope Fish and Wildlife follows up with that. And lastly, I think that I read the memos about the fire department and the fire chief there had some really good points and maybe a site visit with the Williston fire department should be set up. So he can, they can look and see if there's hazards and dangers and maybe some education for the people, you know, going to be setting those off. So I just want to urge maybe the select board to definitely, you know, do this on a trial basis, but also request that they try the filament technique, because I just think it really works well on Redmond Road and I do not see a lot of gulls hanging around that compost pile. So thank you for hearing me out. No, thank you. Anyone else on the channel? I don't see anyone else. So the question is, do we have enough information to make a decision or do we need more information? There's been a couple requests for more information from residents. I guess my question for Jake would be if Kasella is planning as a couple of people have mentioned and I think he mentioned that maybe they were planning or thinking about putting a grid or I assume that is the filament that he was speaking of if that is in place or if plans to do that would be stopped if this noise ordinance variance was granted. I can certainly follow up with Joe and Kasella on what their long term plans are. Like I said before, I know Kasella is very receptive on all of these techniques and the initial conversation with Joe, I believe at our conservation commission meeting was to sincerely give the monofilament gridding system an honest look at. So I will follow up with Joe this week and make sure that that's something that they're still wanting to entertain in the process of doing this here. Excuse my dog, she is barking at me here in the background. So but no, I will follow up with Joe this week and see if they have already initiated plans to do that. I know we've chatted about it offline a couple of times already and as I said, they're very receptive to want to do the right thing there. And I know to mimic the system at Green Mountain Compost I think is a good idea that has shown some effectiveness there. And just to kind of piggyback on Terry's comment earlier to they keep in mind that they do use limited pyrotechnics at the Green Mountain Compost Center as well. I just want to stress that a little bit because they're able to utilize that technique in their toolbox to assist with keeping those goals at bay. So as I said before, it's a bunch of techniques to create a rather dynamic environment there to dissuade or reduce the bird numbers as best as possible. And it's definitely going to be a concerted effort of a lot of different techniques. So thank you, Jake. Any other questions for Jake? If not, it sounds to me like we, if we get more information that was requested tonight, both from Jake and from Eric, we'll get some more that we can pick this up and hopefully have a resolution next meeting. Terry, if I just to just be clear, it looked for me to gather some real world decibel data with with using these devices. Is that what the board would like just just so I have my. I'm sorry. Oh, should I be just to recap to collect some data using these with a decibel meter to understand what the what the reading is for a for a real world trial here. I think that's right. And maybe to follow up with South Burlington and see if they have collected any of that data. Okay. I'm sorry. Could we add something to that? The monofilament technique that's used in other facilities, I wondering if we could have contact with those other facilities to see the extent to the problem they were confronting and the extent to which that problem was addressed by. The monofilament. I'll follow up and form the board. Great. Any other requests? If not, thank you. Thank you, Laura. Thank you very much. So, I know there's a bunch of people waiting out in the anti room. We can get the police department folks come to come in. Well, good evening. And tonight we have a report on the police data that's been collected. We have Chief Foley, Lieutenant Moore and Sergeant Shepherd with us tonight to present a report to us. So if you could pull up another chair to the table, that would be good. We'll get the technology here set up in just a moment. We're going to get that laptop connected in just a moment. So welcome. Good evening. Thank you. And you should have a link just a moment, Sergeant Shepherd. And what I'll do is if you can join the meeting and make a panelist that you can share your screen, it will come up on that screen. Just need to make sure you mute your, like, if you share screen at the bottom. It'll work. Look at that. So I can, I can do a brief introduction when it's here. So we're, we've got our police leadership here with us this evening, Chief Foley, Lieutenant Moore and Sergeant Shepherd. And they're going to be giving a police data report this evening. This is the second year we've done this. And what we do is a way to share what the activity has been in the department for the past year and share some things to think about moving forward. But I've shared this with the board ahead of time in your packet for possible initial review. And Sergeant Shepherd will go through the presentation this evening and everyone's here to answer any questions the board may have. So I'll turn it over to Sergeant Shepherd. Good evening everyone. A few of you have seen the presentation from last year. It's going to be very similar to this one. Obviously with the whole insect range in the works. So we'll go over and we'll think and give any questions about how on this. Like I just said, as a disclaimer, everyone knows 2020 is not the year of the storm. A lot of stuff we couldn't do to the code. Those of you who don't know, we're authorized 17 sworn full-time police officers. We're currently full. We have the chief who tenant or to my left. There's four patrol sergeants, 10 officers and a comfort dog officer. We've got two full-time dispatchers right now for seven day a week coverage and we have a third one that's coming on board. That's going to give us our overnight coverage on the busier nights, which is going to be awesome. That's my shift and that's going to be a huge, huge change for us. A positive change. It's supplemented by three part-time dispatchers and administrative assistant. On the sworn side, we have quite a variety. We've got two female officers, 15 male officers. We've got a wide range of backgrounds. We've got three who are EMTs. We've got two with Coast Guard experience, a couple of with degrees in criminal justice. I have a degree in computer science. I've got one person who volunteers as a firefighter who's actually a captain with a firefighter agency. We've got a wide range of law enforcement experience. Everyone from, we've got brand new people to the chief's got what, 45 years chief? 45 years. So that's a long, long time. One thing that we're sort of looking towards right now, this is not necessarily affecting us now, but it will. There's some danger on the horizon. We've got fewer people graduating from the full-time police academy and there are a larger number of officers leaving the full-time service. So this year, there's only going to be 23 graduates and that's fixed right now where once this class graduates, that's it. And there's projected to be 144 people leaving and it's going to exacerbate the number of positions versus how many are filled, which is the next slide showing that we have right now there are 875 authorized full-time officers in the state of Vermont and only 745 of those positions are filled. And I suspect that gap is going to increase quite a bit. So this is just a food for thought as we move forward into the next several years because it takes quite a while to train an officer, hire an officer, the whole nine. One of the driving factors in our police resource usage is the amount of businesses and just sheer call volume. People that come to Williston to workshop and dine, businesses generate calls for service. We've got retail theft, fraud, vandalism, crashes. Unlike smaller towns such as Jericho Richmond that may not have the business population. We have it and that generates a huge amount of calls for service, crashes, everything you name it. That's what we get it from is a lot of that because of that. We've got a unique need. You see 10,000 and you may say you don't really need that much and then turns around you look at all the businesses that are here and you really do need that much. We've got some of the busiest retail stores in the state and also several of the business busiest state controlled intersections belong to town of Williston. That includes a lot of the to a and to corridor. Everyone will know that everyone hates the traffic, the monotrap. So what do we actually do in 2020 and we handled almost 5400 calls for service. That's directed patrols agency assist alarm suspicious person or circumstances. Those are the top calls that's down 6.6%. And to me that's actually surprising for the for the amount of services that were put on hold, you know, townwide in terms of businesses and whatnot to be down 6.6% says that there's still a lot going on in this town. We arrested 269 people for over 401 offenses, mostly DUI retail theft and driving with a suspended license to name a few. Those were at the top that's that's down 45% in terms of the number of people and 61% in terms of the number of offenses. That's a huge drop. But keep that keep in mind that, you know, everything was down 61%, but domestic assault and retail theft were only down 23%. So what does this say about what's going on in our in our society as a whole. We made 1937 motor vehicle stops. And I'd like to hammer this home the most serious action taken an 81.7% of the time was a written warning. So over four out of five drivers left with just a written warning as a result of the interaction. We issued we did issue 376 civil violation complaints or tickets with the most common being speeding and that I hope that comes as no surprise to anyone who's been Williston for a period of time. We issued almost 2000 written warnings again, most common speeding shouldn't be a surprise. Traffic stops were down 55%. And again, the pandemic was a huge, huge reason for that. The people receiving only a warning increased 7.3%. We like to break things down, get some demographic data by race. So who are we stopping 90 90.19% of the drivers that we stopped, we selected white as the race, and then it goes down percentage from there. I am proud to say that unknown or blank is 0.0%. I worked really hard and we all work really hard. I spent a significant amount of time going through and taking the data that we had and fixing the errors issues. You know, when you go from one ticketing system to our records management and then batch that out when you enter data, there's a lot of issues. I spent a lot of time cleaning that up and I'm proud to say that out of like 32,000 entries, we only had seven blanks and they were like, wasn't anything of what I would consider significant. So that's awesome to all of us. Let's look a little deeper into that greater than a 55% reduction in stops. And you've got the basically you have the percentages from this year and then 2019 everything was fairly on par fairly close in terms of the percentages. My big thing is how are persons who identify as multiple races being classified under law and Vermont criminal justice training council standards the officer conducting the stop must use their own discretion to select a single race and we cannot ask the person we must select that. So how are we capturing that data. We simply can't there's limitations to this and we're bound by law and by rule and by training to do us do it a certain way. We only searched three vehicles in 2020. Again, that should come as no surprise in that we're trying to we were trying to maintain social distancing. It was one and 222 stops. There was a search conducted and it was one and 645. Two searches were of white operators and both of these searches yielded contraband or evidence of a crime. One search was of a black operator that search yielded contraband or evidence of a crime as well. So is race an issue here if I draw a pie graph you'll see 33 and 66%. If you look at the numbers it's not statistically it's not an issue. There's one your sample set is so small you just can't draw any conclusions from three. So were there any searches were no contraband or illicit things or evidence was found. There was not. I'm assuming these searches were were were they consent. I don't do not know if it was consent or a search warrant. I didn't break it down on that I do have the raw data that's available for that. Just curious. One of the latest thought processes that we should be relying on the race of operators from motor vehicle crashes to figure out who's who's the driving public. That's the driving public where we are externally called on to interact with these people removing many or most of the possibilities of implicit or explicit bias. Again it has a shortfalls because it still requires our perception to classify people and the data is readily available which is awesome. So if you look at this. This is the chart comparing the web crash data. The biggest problem with the web crash data to me is that 4.85% unknown or blank. But if you remove that our percentages are barely spot on with what with what I would expect if you were to just randomly select it. If you see black is just about barely spot on Asian is actually were small quite a bit smaller Hispanic were a little bit larger but statistically again that's an insignificant number. Native American we had 0.0% but again statistically a very small number. So as we compile our data annually I always look at anomalies you can look at this data 10 ways to Sunday but you know where where are the issues. I noticed in 2020 or outcomes by race we see black drivers being arrested at a rate of 8.2% as a result of traffic stops versus 2.9% for white or 3.7% for Asian zero first Hispanic. So let's look at why so do we have a problem let's take a look at that. So what was the root cause of these motor vehicle stops there were nine of them nine represented 8.2%. They three of them came out of citizen complaints for erratic operation and they all resulted in DUI two for drugs and one for alcohol with a BC of greater than 0.2. It's about two and a half times the legal limit. There was a crash car versus pole they were doing 140 and they were arrested for negligent operation 97 and a 6592 and a 6575 and a 5573 and a 55 and then one for defective equipment. So when you drill down into that data. Do we have a problem based on that. Not on the police side I don't think I don't see anything about any of those that really stands out as you know we are doing something incorrect. Do you have the criteria that the department has for when you. When you'd make an arrest for a nag up from speeding. As a general rule we try to 30 miles more than 30 miles an hour over the speed limit that's typically the threshold that we use. Which is the excessive speed. It is in fact it is excessive speed that's what we rely on to to judge negligent operation as we rely on that excessive speed statute. Do you know were there any. Non African Americans that were arrested for negligent operation do solely to speed. Yes there were do I have the number in front of me know I do not but absolutely there. There are a large number of persons that are always arrested by Wilson police every year for 31 or more over the speed limit. Unfortunately it's just the volume of traffic that we have. And I can I'm happy to get those numbers if anyone needs that it just there was a 40 something people that were arrested that have to pass through that were traffic related that would be relevant to us. One of the things we do to combat bias racism import data training is collection is try to me is training. As I read the slide at the same time all of us have multiple trainings related to these topics all of us we host in house trainings we are constantly refining our data practice collection practices. But we are bound by state law and we do have bias free policing training that is required by the criminal justice training council. We always welcome community involvement. We've got the neighborhood watch program that we do regularly chief fully is also hosted coffee with a cop unfortunately on pause because of COVID but I'm assuming we're going to get back into that when when permitted. And the speak carts are massive. Our number one complaint from Williston residents is about speed and traffic in general. We publish that data on our website. I think transparency is key. And I love to post that because the residents can say does my resident you know does my neighborhood have a problem. You tell me what you think on that. In addition to regularly documented neighborhood patrols by all of the uniform patrol officers. We maintain a rigorous speed monitoring program is part of our level one in response with in concert with the traffic traffic calming policy for the town. We've got two speak carts and we have one. I call it a covert monitor that we can put out that way we can see what people are up to without influencing their behavior doesn't track people individually it simply tracks the date the time the miles per hour that's it in the direction of travel. So we can take a look at it and see do we have a problem. I put the carts out and we've got two of them that I put out just after the snow stops in April ish. And I leave it out as late as I possibly can until the solar the solar charges for either. There's not enough light for it or the snow hits. I don't want them getting in the way of public works. I just can't have that happening in 2020. There are over 320 days of activity and that's between the two carts together. We counted almost half a million vehicles and that's huge because we put these devices a lot of times in the neighborhoods. So that's a half a million cars being counted in neighborhoods a lot of the time. A lot of these neighborhood complaints are satisfied through the use of the carts plus us sitting out there. We do have a number of pass through rows that require constant maintenance but we find that the neighborhoods are generally that the people that live there are generally the root cause of it and our presence sort of calls that generally. I included a table and I won't necessarily go through it but this is our covert speed study where I can sit here. I've got quite a bit of metrics that I can look at. I like to look at the number of the percentage of people going more than 10 miles an hour of the speed limit and the people that are going more than 20% or 20 miles an hour of the speed limit. Those are big to me. Those are the big numbers and it shouldn't come as no surprise to you that the hotspots for us are 3188 South Brunel down by the horse farm. 632 River Cove Road that's by the pump station and Governor Chitton Road. It had a higher percentage but a low actual volume of that. That may come as a surprise to some in our speed carts that are actually marked that we have out there that the radar speed feedback signs. Those pretty much show the same thing you know River Cove Road is sort of at the top of it old creamery is always a problem in Oak Hill Road. Again, if you've been in Wilson for a long period of time those those roads should come as no surprise to anyone. And that data again is available on our website and I'm happy to have a discussion with anyone that has it any questions concerns or wants the cart out by means reach out and I will add it to our long list of places where people would like them. Our comfort dog program. Obviously you guys have been surprised of all that. That's deeply rooted in community interaction and relations. So that's another way we are interacting with the community. One of the mission statements of the program is to foster dialogue and communications between the police department and the community we serve. So much like the speed cart program. That's another community involvement community engagement where there's feedback and discussion. Let's talk about the arrests 269 arrests over 401 offenses switch gears a little bit into this. 225 of those arrests where the person was was listed as having a race of white or Caucasian 19 were black or African American three were Asian five or Hispanic and zero were Native American. We've got 17 that are unknown due to expunge or seal records. That's a problem for us. I don't like the unknown. Keep that in mind the expungements are a great thing but unfortunately with expungements comes a loss of data that we just simply can't get back. Is this representative of the population in Williston. I don't know and I can't answer that question unlike web crash where we've got data of the driving population. I don't know how people are getting to Williston the bus the either walking however you know their passenger in a car. We can only tell so much because we're interacting with a lot of people that are not most in residence. So let's let's talk about what we picked people up for. 65 were for DUI. That's that's a problem. That's a lot of that's a large percentage. 55 for retail theft again that should come as no surprise. 43 for driving with a criminally suspended license and it goes down from there. And these are just a fraction of the various charges. There's usually about two pages of various charges that we cite people for. There were 27 non-white arrests for 2020 for a total of 40 charges again 10 for DUI 5 for Larson your theft or for driving with a license suspended. That's really close to that list I just read off. So again pretty common theme here. What does this say the numbers are similar in the percentages of wider Caucasian arrests and offenses. So do we do we have a problem. Do we have an issue. I don't see one in the out of that data at all. The only notable exception in there is that in 2020 there was a slightly higher percentage of arrest rate of non-white persons for DUI or non-caucasian. It's 37 percent. But again what is can you explain that what what is the 37 percent of all DUI arrests were. What does that mean. So we had 27 arrests in 2020 that were non-white or non-caucasian. In 10 of those 27 arrests were for DUI. So we try to look at that and say are we are we disproportionately arresting minorities or non-caucasian people for certain offenses. Or are we are we doing something. Are we doing something that we can improve upon. And in this case DUI is a non-negotiable offense in our book. So we have no latitude on that offense at all. Does that sort of clarify that as best I can. Yeah. You have data similar data for for white arrests in terms of the number of DUIs. Yes. Yep. And actually if you subtract it that means we arrested 55 persons who identified as as white or Caucasian for DUI percentage wise I'd have to do the math on that. I don't know the percentage in total. I can provide that certainly if that's what you're interested in. So the state of Vermont has been pushing for criminal justice reform in various ways and shapes and forms. One of those reforms is the ability to steal and expunge records. Well it's excellent. It also makes it impossible like I said for us to report on that data. It may require some legislative adjustments. This is a working process. Somebody needs to go back and say what are what are we now missing out on. Even a few expungements are significant because we're looking at numbers where you know you look at searches three expunge one of those and now we have two and it's 50% or 0% and 100%. You know this is this is significant for us. Obviously this is just a quick snapshot of what we what we do. There's the metrics are all available on our website. We've posted all of the data up there. You're more than welcome. It's an Excel file. Anyone can take a look at it. I have the Excel sheet. Apparently I can't. I'd have to end it. If anyone wants to see any particular metrics file means I'm happy to provide whatever it is but there are just so many ways to analyze this data. I just can't simply come up with everything that everyone would care to see but I'm happy to do that for anyone that needs that and you guys are also more than welcome to download the data and do whatever you see fit with that. It's already there. Absolutely. I made sure that it was there and available prior to this meeting so. Thank you very much. I was a very comprehensive report. I appreciate the breakdown of the diversity. But when I come back to the bottom line is if you're following the law, you're not in the data. Exactly. That's what we look at. Any other questions I can entertain. You mentioned that the data, you know, the breakdowns in terms of race for like traffic stops and things were not statistically significant compared to the population out like a breakdown of our county. You know, it doesn't quite correlate with our population by race by county. And so I just wanted to know kind of what would be considered statistically significant in terms of that variation. Well, if you have to look at a couple of things, you have to look at both percentages and raw numbers because the minority population is so it's such we were talking like 1% in some of those categories. So having that go from 1% to 2%, you might say, wow, that's double. And then you look at it and realize it's four stops total. So we have to look at both of that. And if if I saw it double or I saw, you know, a percentage of 50% jump, again, I'd look at the root causes of that and say, do we have a problem? Well, if it went from four to six, I don't see a problem with that if it went from four to 20, you know, we might need to take a look at that data or if it went from, you know, 100 to 200 or 100 to 150. So we may we may need to look at that. But when you go from, you know, 1% to 1.4% and I look at that and it's a difference of, you know, five or six stops. I just don't see the statistical issue with that. Thank you for the questions. Thank you very much. Thank you for the report. Thank you. So we'll move on then to the police dispatch supervisor position. In the description. And Eric here to talk about that. Yeah, I can introduce this. We have. Chief Lieutenant here as well. Any questions, but the organization, the third full time. Dispatch position last month and where we're in the process of hiring that. Candidates that we have a good candidate and I think that person's likely going to be starting in August sometime. August 14th. Okay. So here, but as we're looking, now we have 3 bath in that police dispatch department and I spoke with our leadership here about having 1 of those 3 play a supervisory role and I believe a lot of that works already. Occurring with at least 1 of the members of the department. So by we don't have a formal position for that. So the request for the board is to create the formal position with the intent that it's a promotional opportunity within the departments and. Chief Lieutenant can speak more about some of those descriptions and the job description I shared your packet of how that would how that would settle within operations here, but I'll turn to the board if they have any further questions. Any questions for the chief or Lieutenant on the job description. Not in the job description, but when we when we talked about the position, a rich last time about creating it, you know, you had mentioned that you were disclosing obviously the potential temporary kind of nature of the dispatch because we weren't sure at the long term plans for dispatch were. So, so thinking about, you know, this supervisory position in terms of the long term plans, how have you been a factor that in our crew over there right now they're kind of in a. You know, it's uncharted waters right now because they have secure jobs right now, and the crew that we now have are very, very good dispatchers and I would say that they're some of the best in the entire county. But at the same time, you know, for me, I oversee the patrol division as well as the dispatch positions. I'm fortunate to have for sergeants on the road for the patrol side. I really need somebody in the position of that buffer for me when it comes to dispatch. But that, you know, they're fully aware of what's going on. The whole regional discussion is just it's so in limbo and it's been like that for decades. So, you know, our approach is we need to move forward. And we're not going to wait for another entity to try to figure out what they're going to do for what we need right now this is what we need right now. And they understand it, you know, and if you're your supervisor now, the regional does open up. It gives them the benefit of going into that they do decide to go there as a supervisor. You know, it's not just the answering phone that's dealing with the public and all that. And, you know, we feel confident in having somebody there. And it gives us another buffer to do the offices and all that stuff to get a work. Other questions? If not, there's a motion suggested. Move to create the position of police dispatch supervisor. Is there a second? That's a great discussion on the one. Very none allows him to hear the motion say hi. Hi. Yeah, four eyes. So thank you very much. Thank you for all your time. And I'm sure everybody heard it. We have made an offer to the newest dispatcher. He's begins on the 14th of August. He's got some in-house training to do with us, but he's a certified dispatcher from another agency. And so we look, we believe it's a benefit for the community to bring him on. And we did get a couple certified dispatchers that put in for it. So again, but it wasn't like, you know, knocking down the door. Like we talked at the beginning about law enforcement and policing that, you know, that's that's a dilemma. We're facing knock on wood that we are at full strength now, both in the patrol side and dispatching. But, you know, we got to keep our eyes and ears open that, you know, it's going to be a struggle for every agency here in Vermont to try to find. They're applied and responsible and recruits to run law enforcement. Yeah, and a testament to the department of the town. We're fully staffed now in the patrol side of things. And now with dispatch and every agency is looking for dispatchers and police officers and we're continuing to get very, very good ball fight candidates. Full staff, I don't recall the department has ever been. We have never been. And I've been on the board for a long time. Well, the staffing of police departments has ever called that became an issue. I think back with the Iraq war that a lot of the people who would otherwise be police officers were in the military and then choosing other professions thereafter. And it seemed to be like an inflection. What do I know? And the other thing is, you know, I would, you know, if you're interested in spending a couple of hours out with the troops out in the field. We encourage you to do some ride alongs with us. So you have a better perspective that without us coming here and presenting but you see first in how we operate out there. So the door is always open. Great. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. So let's move on to the community justice center by law amendment. Ericsson leave lead off with that. But Crystal McSweeney and Bob Stafford, who's the board chair will join us as well. Welcome. And just just to recap for the board, you might recall early this year, earlier this year, we, we brought the subject forward and there was consensus for the board to to explore. An amendment to the bylaws of a governance structure of the community justice center board. So, um, Crystal Lee and Bob are here this evening to walk through this. They've done a lot of work. It's quite the governance structure to wrangle with, I'll say with a lot of moving pieces. So we've, we had a couple of conversations along the way. And I think we've got a good, good draft tonight for the board to look at and provide any feedback to the staff as we move ahead here. So I'll turn over to Crystal Lee and Bob. Thanks Eric. So hello everyone. And first off, I want to say thank you for taking the time to look through the documents that that we prepared as Eric said, we did spend a significant amount of time, both drafting and redrafting quite a few times, but also really thinking about the rationale for making this change. And as all of you I believe are aware, the former or the current structure that we have really mandates that all of our volunteers are considered to be board members. And with the growth of our center and the interest of volunteering and the other towns that have now really, I would say, you know, kind of bought into restorative work. It has created, I think, a really difficult model for us to imagine that currently we have about 40 volunteers, which doesn't seem like a sustainable model for us to to get work done in an efficient and effective way. So we created a work team through our current membership and we sat down and went through our bylaws and really looked at what what we felt was working. And what we felt we needed to make some some changes and include some greater work around thinking about all of the towns that we serve and wanting to make sure that we have good representation from all of those towns and then including the opportunity for a youth lead. Our youth panels have grown quite quite substantially as well. And in addition to that one of the things that I think is really important is to recognize that as we really value all of all of you and your support of the CJC and interviewing all of the people who are working with us and we know how much of a time issue that that can be and recognizing that through coded things have changed but we have people who have signed on to be volunteers who have gone through their training and went through the the background checks who have been waiting for 11 months to volunteer and have not had the opportunity to yet. And that also includes some youth who went through the full training and never got to sit on a panel. So that that that's a little discouraging to us just to know that we have such passionate people who who want to be doing this work and the structure is just making it a little bit difficult. And then the other piece that I think is really significant about why we really want to think about making these changes is the amount of cases that that we have continually heard from us that are our case numbers are continuing to grow and some of our volunteers are getting tired and we have to rely on the same group of volunteers when because our pool isn't as big as we would like it or need it to be. So looking at making some of these changes would allow I think for greater work on on a board level expanding our membership and I think just just bringing more representation from the towns that that we serve. Do you want to add anything to that. Thank you. This was a great process. I think for us to go through because I think it was time for some change, especially with the growth that crystal is responded to. And to be able to assemble the team of workers that we did with the consent of the regular board. I mean the regular board consented on this because we asked for volunteers then to spend the time and to think about how to make this organization more efficient. I think we've done that. In these bylaws, I could go through some of the highlights but I think you've read it and we're certainly open to questions. So thank you for having us here this evening. We're kind of excited about this change. And we're not trying to take away your authority or anything but we're trying to leave the board of some responsibility by us. In fact, not only recruiting the general membership but also approving them. But then again, the board would be not necessarily recruiting the executive board but but would be approving the executive board members as well. And we think that's very important that you still have a role in what we're doing as far as the leadership team. It looks to me like you streamlined it very nicely. I like the new wordings on mission statement and other things that are in here. I just had a couple of things on the on page two of the of the new document. Number two is misspelled. Sorry. So that'll be correct at some point in time. The other question I had is on page four at the very bottom. Page two F member is not satisfied with the remediation plan recognition to the select board to terminate membership. So it's actually us that would terminate that but do we have and I don't remember if we have a procedure in in writing about how to do this do we have a hearing with the person and then make a recommendation is there any appeal from our decision. Great question from my from my knowledge what we have in place and I believe all CJC is have in place is the opportunity for any member to go through a restorative process to make amends for any any infraction or harm that might be caused and if if that's not done to the satisfaction of a panel that would hear that then we would make that recommendation to the select board for termination. I believe that we actually have not had to terminate anyone in all of the years that I've been a part of the CJC even when I started out as a volunteer. Generally you know I think when we have had very minor issues it's been very easy to correct them and use the restorative plan and that's what I would hope that we would we would be doing. Otherwise we wouldn't be living up to our mission and vision of restorative work. There is a provision in the town's conflict of interest and ethics ordinance that outlines a process removal of a town volunteer I think it involves a subcommittee of the BCA to begin and then a final recommendation so that that becomes kind of the final the final step if there's not able to make a restorative process to start out with. I remember that now. Other questions comments. Question on page. Or D terms of membership to all other members will serve at the pleasure of the town's as deemed appropriate of the town as deemed appropriate. The town in that context meaning what So again thinking in terms of how the towns in which we serve which are highlighted through our grant. So wanting to make sure that we have people from those towns but at this point the select board really the Wilson select board is the governing body. Okay so pleasure of the town which town. Members would be not the executive team it would be the the other members that the other volunteers. So we're hoping to have a nine member executive team and then allow for up to 50 volunteers that are comprised from all of the towns that we serve. Okay, so like the pleasure of the town of Richmond. It would be if that person came from Richmond. Right. Yeah, that's okay. I just as a lawyer. When I read that I thought, you know, like the whole town, like all the voters, the school, I mean, but that makes sense in context so I won't be as animal retentive as my instincts. Do you have any recommendations for how to clear that up sponsoring town. I don't I don't think it's a I don't think the I don't think the pillars of the Republic is going to be shaken by by that. I'm just not sure I can't imagine somebody on the board as a member under D2 is going to say, wait a minute, I serve at the pleasure of the town and there was no, there was no town vote to get me off this board. Only the select board of Richmond kicked me off. I don't see that happening. So I don't think it's a big issue out of how about if we describe it as service area towns, because we on the first page we speak to service area and then we define the town. Sure. We describe them. Yep. Does that make sense? Yes, it does. I just want to commend you for, you know, working really hard on designating the core values of the CJC. I think that's imperative. And, and, you know, very thoughtful in the way that you've gone about doing that and important, obviously to the work that you're doing. In terms of membership. So you're, you're hoping to boost it up to 50 I assume you can probably meet that now with, you know, volunteer requests. What are you doing in terms of recruitment for like other towns you want you said you want representation. I know historically that's been kind of an issue getting members from other serving communities is that not no longer. Yeah, so we took on a really big efforts. Bob was really instrumental in helping to make this happen, but we went into all of the service area police departments to train all of the officers in restorative justice and have held community. Education forums to educate community members about the CJC kind of the breath of the work that we do and how people can become volunteers. And I feel terrible because Eric's email tends to get bombarded with people who are interested. And volunteering and I think I've shared that we have a very, very long wait list and have worked with the high schools as well to reach out and let folks know that there is opportunity for high schoolers to join the youth panel. And also to reach out to the private schools in which many of our, our residents would would be attending and have had great success in all of those areas. That's really crystal. We, you know, it is a change and it's the board doesn't get to meet a new member necessarily when they're interviewing and being appointed just for the sheer volume here, but get an arranged an annual kind of, you know, a mixer or a, you know, a picnic or some way for the board to still meet some of these new volunteers and have a presentation so it's certainly something we could look at. Thank you for mentioning that I was going to also offer similarly to what she fully had had presented. We would love for each and every one of you to come. I know you've got experiences of former volunteer, but I would really love for all of you to come and really see what the CJC does. See how a panel or a circle operates and then really get to know some of the people who are who are doing this excellent work in our town. I think it really is is impactful. And I think you would get a lot out of it if you came. And I think our volunteers would really appreciate getting to know you as well differently than just tell me why you're interested in volunteering. So your executive board then that you're going to will be nominated from within your existing membership, and then you envision that then they would come the executive board nominees would then come before us for final approval. We've already identified those three great. So process standpoint I thought should the board before these bylaw amendments and the next at next meeting potentially we can bring forward a slate of individuals who've been appointed in the past and that the board's discretion may or may not need to interview all nine people but could have have the slate as recommended by the by the director and the chair here. And who knows I may get voted out. I mean voting me out. Other comments or questions. There is a motion suggested that probably be a little bit modified with because for recommending a small change. I'd move to approve the amendments to the Community Justice Center bylaws as presented and amended. Second. Thank you for your discussion on the motion. If not, although it's in favor of the motion say hi. Hi. So, thank you very much for all your hard work on this. Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, thanks for listening to us and your input. That's important. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to the coronavirus local fiscal recovery funding. So the board likely recalls our local coronavirus relief funding through ARPA that was passed earlier this year. So we're in a process of formally accepting that funding. So we're in a process of formally accepting that funding like any other federal or state funding that's out there. But in further conversation with VLCT and the regional planning commission, they've recommended since it is this federal money with a lot of specifics tied to it that the board for the record memorialize that we have formally accepted this funding and designate the administrative side of it. I don't have a further update on the final dollar amounts. The county money aid is still best in flux. We don't have any further guidance from at the state level or federal level with our delegations at this point. I can say our allocation that we are aware of that we are accepting right now is just over a million dollars. I believe a half million is going to be deposited in our account if it hasn't already. The deadline to formally accept it is July 15th and what I would do tomorrow is submit the last form that I have to formally accepting it and we're well within the time frame here. So these are really more formalities unless the board would not like to accept this funding. I would recommend it, but the conversation we can have. You'll see a series of motions in the board. Any questions for your art? We do have three motions that need to be made tonight. I want to take a breath. You want to prove them individually or can I? Maybe maybe for the record. Yeah. Okay. I thought they would federal funding the chance there. I move that the town of Williston accept its allocation of coronavirus local fiscal recovery funding from the US Treasury along with the award terms and conditions and assurances of compliance with civil rights requirements that are requirements of accepting these funds. Is there a second? Second. There's a discussion on that motion. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. If they have four. So we've approved that motion. Next. I move that we appoint town manager Eric Wells to serve as the town's authorized representative as required by the coronavirus local fiscal recovery funding from the US Treasury to sign the award terms and conditions and assurances of compliance with the civil rights requirements. Is there a second? Second. Is there a discussion on that motion? Very none. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. I move that we name finance director Shirley Goodell Lackey to be the contact person for the town's coronavirus local fiscal recovery funding award from the US Treasury. Is there a second? Second. A discussion on that motion. If not all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. If they have four ayes on that as well. Well thank you very much. We'll move on to the money. Robert bond financing documents and Shirley is going to talk about that tonight. I thought I'd just take you through the purpose of the main documents. Before some of you I already know signed the documents, but. So there's the resolution and certification. Which has attached to it. The document from Sarah that talks about that they're assigned I should say is the clerk that talks about that we posted it with the vote was. So that is the certification part of this document saying that the voters have provided authorization for us to move forward with the bond. And the resolution. That is contained within the same document is just outlining the high level needs or requirements that we have to meet in order to move forward with the bond documents themselves. The loan agreement is some sure most of you know lays out the terms of the bond in terms of interest rates repayments maturity. It also has a bit about the trustee and how we make how we make that repayment on the bond. In this transaction. I'm still getting familiar with the bond bank so what actually happens is this loan agreement is our agreement and bond agreement our agreements with the bond bank. Who takes those and then sell that and they pull a bunch of towns together so whoever is applying for an application because they have two fundings a year. And then the bond bank sell those bonds on the open market so they have pulled a bunch of communities together to make a big package financing and and that's put up amongst the town whoever's applying for. For funding so the last major document you have are the actual tax certification. This the bonds from the bond bank are tax exempt and there are certain things that the town needs to do or that we are committing that we do and annually we have to certify that we are following the rules in order to keep this. That tax exempt and so that's what the tax exam certificate does that lays out what those conditions are that we have to follow. And that is really all it was going to say unless you have questions. Questions for Shirley. I need a motion to move the resolution and certificate concerning the financing for the money broke over project and the attachments there to be approved. Is there a discussion almost if not all those in favor of what you say. We have four eyes on that one as well so thank you very much early. And energy report. Yep, I throw a whole lot this evening just out on the money broke the culvert project that. Or may recall where where the big came in we are a little bit short on that and staff we did get the other structures grant from the trans but staff will be coming back later this summer with some options to consider the final financing piece of Shirley Bruce and I will bring that back to the board here. The next month or so. I shared in my manager in my written report and in your packet hard copy of the draft vision plan for tap corners. I think that Ted and great I left you a hard copy tonight in case you want the hard copy. Just to preview that's going to be on your agenda for July 22 July 27. And the planning commission will be meeting jointly for that portion of the meeting to discuss the vision plan. So certainly it's a large document you'll lecture time with it if you have any questions or want to chat any further with myself or Matt beforehand just just let me know with that coming up here. I think I'll have a busy meeting I'll be brief tonight. Other business we do have a catering permit to take up. They got a catering permit this afternoon. Good timing for the meeting tonight. Here is a two cocktails it's for a wedding reception at the Oak Hill at the Asian family barn on July 24. That is no objections to this permit. It's a it's a location that we have approved for an event like this. I've been the board to approve this permit. Any questions for Eric. Looking for a motion to approve the moved. Is there a second? Second. A discussion on motion. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. We have four on that one as well. Any other business we need to talk about tonight. That and we're out adjourned. 9 10. Right up top there.