 August 6th, 2018, select board meeting to order and invite you to rise and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. So welcome everyone to tonight's select board meeting. I just turned my phone off. If you have one, please at least put it to silent. I would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Okay, we're on to agenda additions and changes. I don't see anything at our table. Okay, awesome. So we're going to move right along then. So we're going to go to item four on the agenda, which is public to be heard. That's a time for the public to address the select board on topics that are not on the agenda. And if you're here for the firearms thing, that is on the agenda. So public to be heard is for other things that again are not on the agenda. Is there anyone here tonight wishing to speak during public to be heard? I just like to mention that there is an election coming up next Tuesday. If you can't vote then fill out an absentee ballot. Okay. At your local town clerk. Thank you. Public. Service announcement. Service announcement. Okay, thank you. So if that's it for public to be heard, we're going to move on to our business items right away. We have business item five a and it's that time of year where we set the fiscal tax rates for 2018 2019. We had town meeting. We kind of know what the budget is for the operations piece. We just heard back from the state on what the education rates are. So Lauren, could you give us some more details? Sure. The assessor has given us an amount of $26,258,301 as the grand list for this year, which is the 1.6% increase. And we use that to calculate the all the rates except for the town highway rate is calculated by using $165,000. And it comes out to a 1.0110 for the highway tax for the town of village town outside the village only. The general fund tax rate would be 0.4932. Our local agreement rate is 0.0019 and that's made up of money that we have to make up for the school for exemptions that we voted our capital tax 0.02. Now these are recommended rates. We did have to take the bottom line on our budget. We added 45,000 at town meeting and we also added had to add 15,000 in for the conservation fund in order to figure out the tax rate. And so the total is the general fund tax rate is recommended to go up 3.2%. The capital tax is flat. Town highway tax is going down 0.9%. And the local agreement tax going up 5.56%, which is really very tiny amount. And then the homestead tax rate is, these are given to us by the state, is going down 0.29%. And the non-residential tax rate for education is going up 5%. And we're asking that you approve these tax rates for next year. Okay. Again, the general fund was discussed back in March and we just heard from the state. There's really not a lot of negotiation that you do with that. That's a number that we get from them. We used 150,000 in fund balance on the general fund tax rate too. Right. Okay. So questions from the board for Lauren about our duty here to set the tax rate. Anybody? Okay. I see Andy's hand. Andy. Yeah. I'm concerned that we're still have this highway tax that's town outside the village only. I'm concerned that we don't have, there's no such legal entity really as town outside the village. And I'd like to get rid of it so that all town taxpayers are paying for town assets that we're using that money to pay for. Yeah. And I believe there's a plan to do just that. There is. We would like to do it next year. In the village there is a, we have a separate department for capital transfers and the rolling stock fund gets funded from there. The thought is to take that transfer next year, put it in the street budget. So it'll be like what we do in the town. So they'll be aligned and then eliminate the highway tax at that time. And they will balance each other off. Other questions? Do you have a follow up on that, Andy? I was just wondering why we can't do it this year. We've had concern expressed recently about representation. In fact, there's no, there's no, I mean, we, of course, the select board represent all residents of the town. But if we have this subset that's being taxed differently, that town residents that have a different tax rate than some other town residents because of where they live. I don't think that we have the, we should continue to perpetuate the practice of having a separate tax rate for those individuals. And we agree we want to get that down to zero and we want to do that in a, in a, in a, in a smart way. And I think we have a path forward to do that. So we're in agreement. We want to get rid of it. So that doesn't answer the question of why we can't do it this year. Because I don't think, I personally. Well, if we did it this year, I did look at those numbers. At this point, you know, where we're at right now, the town outside the village, the people in the town outside the village would pay $24 less. And the people in the village would at that point pay $6 more because they're picking up part of that $165,000. So that's the effect that it would have. And at this point, we've already set the village tax rate. We can't change that budget. It's already a done deal. So that's the effect that it would have. So the recommended town general rate would go from .4932 to .4955. Any other comments from the board on that particular topic? With the highway tax, do you want to entertain, do anything different than the plan that's already out there? Mike? I would say no. If there's a firm path forward to do this next year, and in order to do it this year, we have inequity. It seems to me that we're trying to create two wrongs making a right. And I don't see how that works. I would rather leave it the way it is. Lauren and staff have a plan in place to get this done next year. I would say leave it and we'll fix it next year or we'll be even across the board and we can move on to something else. Any follow-up? Yeah. This chart I got from Lauren, thank you very much for sending these numbers. I don't know that everybody else got it or not, but it seems to me that if we were to get rid of the 011, we would make it more equitable, not less equitable. Because then everyone in the town would be paying the same tax rate. And I'm also concerned with the legality of such a tax. Elaine? If I may, I think perhaps the equity, equitable reference that Lauren's making is not so much to the tax rate, but to the fact that if it were changed today, village residents would get a $6 increase and town residents would have a reduction. I'm really happy to hear that staff has a plan to eliminate this and we've had it for so long. One more year is not going to kill us, but I understand what you're trying to accomplish here. My understanding is that this tax has been in existence for decades and it was initially established by a select board long ago, well not established, but charged to the town outside the village by a select board long ago in order to offset the fact that village residents were paying additional taxes to the town. So I think at this point because we're moving forward in consolidations and so many other departments that this is a great way to continue that path forward. And it's the first time we're talking adjusting taxation in a long time since we did the public works budget, we moved the village public works to the town public works. So we need to keep chipping away at the different tax rates that we have and I'm really satisfied that staff has come up with a good path forward. Thank you. That's really good news. All right. Do you have any? Any? It's a difference of $2. The village tax rate would go up by $6 if we were to eliminate it today. It would go up almost $4 if we eliminated it next year. It's a difference of $2 per average household. So I don't think it's that big of a penalty for anybody. And in fact the town outside the village, it's a difference of over $20. So I'm in favor of getting rid of it today. I think I heard Elaine said no. It's fine with me to leave it. Mike, same thing. Do you want to? You don't have to. I think there's a lot more inequity that we need to study in the next year than just this. I'm all for eliminating it, but if we don't add the representation and the ability for outside the village residents to have representation on their outside the village issues, we've got bigger problems than the amount of money extra these residents have been paying for 50, 60, 70 years just because they live outside the village. So I'm not happy about having it, but there are other things that need to get fixed in context and to change this right now only, I think, leaves other things on the table. Related things. So leave it as is with the plan that I have. Okay. Okay. So I think we're going to, thanks for bringing it up, but I think we're going to leave it as recommended. Any other questions on the tax rates? Hearing none, I would entertain a motion. The tax rates, Mike. I move that the select board set the tax rates for the fiscal year ending 30 June 2019 as follows. The town general fund will be set at 0.4932. The town capital tax rate will be 0.02. The town highway for town outside the village only will be 0.0110. And the local agreement tax will be 0.0019. The total municipal rate for the village would be 0.5151. And the total municipal rate for the town would be 0.5261. The homestead education rate is set at $1.5360. The non-residential education rate set by the state is 1.6539. The town rate for the town outside the village homestead tax is 2.0621. And the total rate for the town outside the village non-residential is 2.1800. Thank you, Mike. Do I have a second on that? I'll second. Thank you, Irene. Any further discussion on setting the tax rate? As Mike described. Okay, hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Nay. Okay, motion passes 4-1. Thank you all. Thank you very much, Lori. Appreciate it. Okay, we're going to move on to our business item 5B, and I'd like to invite Jennifer Nour up. As you know, we're working on the firearms ordinance, looking to see if any changes are needed. We decided we do have a lot of information, but we wanted to see if we can get some more. We hired Jen to talk to our, the board decided to keep it local, getting the input from the local community of our Essex residents. And we have a report, and we knew that we were not going to have any recommendations. This was merely just trying to gather the thoughts and hopes and dreams of what people had out there regarding firearms ordinance changes, which we take very seriously, as a lot of people should. So today, you're going to go over sort of a high level of what, how the report, what's in the report and any other comments, and then we can open it up to the board. And just to let the public know once the board is done with their discussion, asking Jen questions and on this topic, we'll open it up for comments from the public. And depending on how many people want to speak, we may have to put some time limits on it just to keep things moving, but we'll just want you to know you'll be included once we get to that point. But for now, Jen, that's yours. Thank you. So my objectives today are to fold, to officially hand over this report and close my phase of work with this project. And sure that you can easily find your way around that document, because ideally this should resource your next steps in the most efficient and, you know, durable way possible. So I'll give you a little highlight for what the process included and what the report includes, but really if you have questions about it, that's where I like to spend the bulk of the time. Does that make sense? And I'll go quickly over this, because I feel like it's information you're probably already aware of. So the process itself had several elements. There were two public forums, a PlaySpeak online site that had interactive maps and a survey and discussion forums that ran for seven weeks. There's three information pop-up booths. Those were in-person events in local places, public places to answer questions, and self-guided tours. And the self-guided tours are really to give folks a chance who weren't familiar with the land to just get a sense of place and space and distance and the geography of this decision impacts. So here's what was interesting is that the public comment period had two objectives to it. One was to provide information because this is a pretty dense topic. There are a lot of nuances to it. And then the other was to get input originally around the recommendations or the options put forth by former Chief of Police Chief Rose. There was also a wish or an ask that if there were other ideas brought up, could those also be collected? That really spans a huge scope of information. So do you have any question about the process before I move to then how that information got condensed into the report? Can you just address, Jim, for the scope of the participation and how many people and what percentage of our town residents that represents? You can figure out the, or Greg can probably tell us what percentage of the town, but if on one of these pages where it has a different process element, it lays out how many people participated in each. So my memory tells me that there was about 70 participants in the June 5th forum. The objective of that forum was to provide information and kick off the meeting. So get people aware of what all the different elements were and get a little bit of input from folks. At the pop-up booths, there was about 40 people overall. The farmers market definitely had the bulk of the traffic. We didn't collect input. The objective there was just to be present. In particular, that's if someone had a question of me that they didn't feel like they wanted to bring to a public meeting or didn't feel quite comfortable putting online that they could swing by and ask. PlaySpeak website. So that's the online website with the discussion forums maps and the survey. So there's over 2,400 unique views, but that could have been from anywhere in the country or even the world, really. 231 connects, 221 residents. So you could connect, even if you weren't a resident of Essex, but you couldn't participate in most or maybe all of the engagement prompts. What am I forgetting? The self-guided tours, I don't have any numbers on those. And the July 14th forum actually was not as heavily attended as I thought. So there was 35, 30. Okay, there we go, 36. July 19th. Do I have that date wrong? July 19th or 16th? 19th. So the objective of that forum, again, was to take what was happening online. At the time that we set it, we weren't quite sure how many people were going to be online. So a chance to see what was the action happening there and what were the trends. And in particular, I was thinking people were going to be wondering what I was going to do with this information. So to try to take the understanding that I was making out of that information and put it forth with an invitation to say, do you see yourself represented here and what's missing? And the feedback, I got a lot of feedback from that forum and went back to the drawing board not with a new format, but with new information to populate it with. Does that answer your question about... So you were trying to figure out... It appeared from my review of all of your material and being on the forum that it was a very low number of participation all the way around. And we're making decisions on behalf of the entire community of Essex here with a very small percentage of people weighing in. I just felt the need to make that. Yeah, so I think how you use this information is going to be really important. If you use it as a vote or a qualitative, the numbers as an indication of what you should or shouldn't do, it's not going to work very well. Because this is only participants who took the time to show up for any of those engagement tools. And when you think about... I was asking the team, what is your level of success for a public comment period like this? What are the numbers you usually get for input and the policy decision that you might make? Or, you know, it's comparing apples to oranges a little bit if you go for more bigger initiatives for numbers. But these numbers aren't way out of line for the numbers of people who do show up and participate. It's just a very small percentage overall. Okay, so that actually segues really well into how the report is then set up. Any other questions about process? I'll just chime in quickly. Elaine, one of your questions was what percentage of the population that is accounting for overlap. I'd say it's a little bit more than 1%. But I also do want to point out the list of public relations that Darby Mayville did. Yeah, that's impressive. It's pulled up right here, but I mean you've got a page and a half worth of stuff, two columns, so there was a lot of effort to emphasize this and try to get the word out about it. Yeah, I was really impressed at the level of outreach that was done. It would have been nice to see more participants, but that's what we have. And I think it was difficult. It's difficult to participate in this discussion because there's a learning curve to it, and there are layers of static, too, and just trying to figure out how for each person to identify what they feel is the right thing to do, which is difficult, and then how to communicate it and stand behind that, which is also difficult for some. It's something that we heard from the very beginning. The other thing that's hard for us to track is of the 2,400 independent views on that website, I would be curious to see how many of those folks were from Essex and what did they walk away taking from just the information that was there? And that's unquantifiable, at least from the efforts that we took. So, any other process questions for now? It doesn't mean you can't ask them later. Not a question, but sort of a comment. We knew from experience that some people would probably not go to the public forums, but we needed to find a way to make sure that their voices were heard and collected, and that's why you did the place. Please speak, yeah. And I remember sitting in this very seat, and there was someone from the public who said, what about an online forum? And I was nodding at that point to all these different engagement tools. Ultimately, when we were trying to figure out what to do for online, the survey or the online survey was tricky because of that concern that people had about being very candid and wanting to ensure privacy for input. On the other hand, if it's private without authenticating that somebody is from Essex, it's not going to serve you very well. So, we went with Please Speak because it was the one technology we could find that would geo-verify somebody from the town of Essex and protect their privacy so neighbors could share their mind without feeling like they needed to share it with their name necessarily attached to it. They were authentic as a resident, but they didn't necessarily have to broadcast publicly the same way they might in a public forum. There's pros and cons to that. The benefit of it is that you then get some candid insight and information that people feel very nervous of sharing because it's very difficult to keep those relations in a neighborhood. It's hard to be on either side of a divisive topic and be candid about that. So, Please Speak did allow us to do that. The other thing Please Speak allowed was the interactive maps and some of the features that an online survey might not in order to give information that was nuanced but also give a sense of place because this is an ordinance that's not just... I mean, the ordinance, the language itself will be a little dry and will be a little dense, but the terrain that you're talking about is varied and lively and people use it in lots of different ways that are connected to their well-being and who they are. And so, the only real way to get at that was to provide some kind of interactivity that was also place-paced. There were some other options out there, but that was the first one that leapt out. Interesting experiment. But it was because we wanted to make sure we captured those voices of people who weren't comfortable going to those public forums. Yeah, and they did show up. So, if you look at the transcripts online, there's a little more diversity in the input that you got online than we did in the forums for sure. Absolutely. So, now on to how the report is organized. You've made a really good point because you only have so much participation to base this on. So, the way it's organized is that you have all the transcripts. If you want to go back to the original messages, the posts that people made, and the comments and observations, they are all right there. And I do encourage, because there's some nuance that comes through all those things. In the curated list that I was pulling out, what I was trying to do was create, like a crowdsourcing of all the different criteria that were covered by how many were paying attention to them. But what are the different ways of logic that people are approaching this problem with? And then all the different alternative ideas, whether that would complement an ordinance or replace an ordinance change. And again, not to try to quantify how many people stood behind each position, but to crowdsource the creativity in the ideas and the different ways that those ideas might get you out of a bind if you already used them to complement an ordinance change for supplemented alternative idea. Part of my thinking there is that you're, it's an assumption on my part that you're tasked with a very difficult job of making a decision on behalf of the town. So there may be interest that you're paying attention to, that your various parties aren't paying attention to. And just not knowing how that was going to come out in a public process like this. So there's a distinction between the raw data and then those curated lists. The raw data is right there, just in case anybody would interpret it differently than I would. I went through the surveys, the discussion forums, the place it maps, the forms that we had in person in order to pull out with a mediator year, a negotiator year. What are the criteria or perspectives people are using? Can they be measurable? And what are the different ideas that people are raising? Also included in this guide, all of the original transcripts follows and then there are these little text boxes with clarifying questions. And that is to provide an anchor for when this conversation does get complex and it will. It's a strategic question that you're asking in many ways. What change are you trying to affect? What are the unintended impacts and how can you mitigate them if they're not intended? What are the intended impacts and what are the best strategies to meet those impacts or that goal? Here's, and I welcome your questions in just a moment. I do have one reflection that I've been sitting on trying to puzzle through this one. You know, this decision fundamentally impacts the well-being of people who are watching it play out in lots of different ways. And for a number of the public, my guess is that it is excruciating to watch somebody else make this decision. Excruciating is probably the right word. So they're looking for evidence that you're making informed decisions thoughtful and open-minded decisions based on all the input that's come up. And awareness of what the experiences have been on the ground for various parties in this conversation. None of that is an easy task. The public will also probably need opportunities to offer course corrections if they think that you've missed something along the way. But one of the things I've been trying to figure out if I could give you any guidance around is how to manage that piece, because it is a very complex thing you're trying to figure out. And I do encourage you to take some time to digest and deliberate before you open up that conversation for others to enter that deliberation to make sure that when you make that invitation it's not a haphazard one. And the reason I say that is because those negotiations it has the effect of anchoring the conversation in one place or another. I know the interests that you're trying to pay attention to are very wide. And I know you know that as well. That's part of the binder. It's a difficult conversation to unfold. It'll be difficult to watch. It'll be difficult to have. You'll just have to manage it carefully. So to that end I would like to pass this off to you in a way that gives you the next steps possible. So how can I be of service in unpacking or understanding this piece here? Any questions for Jen about that? It was well organized and I appreciate the way you laid it out. You're now making recommendations. You're just trying to organize all the information that you were getting. And it was from I mean a lot of people were sharing their ideas. So I appreciate having it condensed with the raw material there too as well for us to look at for the nuanced pieces. Any questions for Jen at this point? I don't have a question but I do want to thank you for the research you did up with Please Speak because as you alluded to and as Max summarized there are opinions in there from all 360 points of the compass and all of them pretty strong. I think that's a tool just speaking for myself that's a tool that I will use a lot of and will probably weigh no more heavily than anything else but it will have an impact on the way that I'm going to approach this and how we approach this discussion on the 20th. But I thank you for doing that because it is there's a wealth of information in there. The credit to that discovery goes to their town planner Darren Shibbler who was at a conference and he passed by the booth and as we were sitting at the table trying to figure out how do we do the survey in a way that protects confidentiality but also has is transparent and authentic he said what about Please Speak so that's where it came from my hope is that it does provide you with a bit of a pilot experience in case it's useful again in the future I think this was a tough topic for Please Speak to take on the benefit of helping this be as transparent as possible and also maybe getting some of you out of the bind of relying on information you'd only otherwise get anecdotally and that's tricky too. People give you information in all kinds of different ways I recognize that and it's hard because you need things to be as transparent as possible in order to show demonstrate here's the rationale for why or the logic for why. Other questions it's okay if you take a minute to sit on it to digest. Anybody? We've all read through it it's going to take a couple of readings through I think to to really be prepared for it but I've read it I understand what's in there I don't think I really had a chance to fully process it yet but we will do that so Yeah, Evan. You and the staff team did a lot work on this and a lot of nights of the people that did come and who did post do you feel that their message has been heard and presented I mean it is a small percentage but then again town meeting is a small percentage as well but what are your feelings of how they presented their presence in the please speak and at the forums. The thing I can say with absolute confidence and I it takes courage to show up it takes courage for every single person in this conversation to show up and then stand by other people talking about how they showed up and so I recognize that as a I just have a lot of gratitude actually for each person who participated in this process and I say that wholeheartedly and in terms of what it actually ended up collecting my hope is that it crowdsourced some real perspective and wisdom so you on that notice board have resources that people posted and in the discussion forums you've got stories about what it felt like to actually be in a certain place or not at certain times and you have in the place it maps real wisdom about well this land I don't see where it could be used for this so here's what logic tells me so that input comes from all these different corners I don't know if there's other input out there that's as of yet not said I also imagine that there's input out there that's as of yet not discovered because that's what happens with the nature of these conversations as they unfold it changes over time that's one of the reasons why this public discussion couldn't be a mediation because it continues to change and new people continue to come to it and that's exactly what should happen so in this next step you know as you you've tried getting recommendations you've tried a task force approach and now you have a different kind of approach which is here's the public comment and input and here's a decision making filtering body and then you have standard procedure that follows that and so that's when the town says okay I see myself there if I've done my job well people will see themselves in this report I've now seen it in print and that's okay because that will then resource the next rendition of this and then you'll speak about what the standard procedure is as you try to figure this out what the recourse is is ultimately people try to see if they see themselves represented there so I couldn't have that answer but thank you yeah yeah yeah I know you and the team put a lot of work into it and you see and hear things through your lens so I just wanted to make sure you felt like it was open and you were getting what you thought you would expect from I expected play speak to be way populated with a whole bunch of different people I thought that would really fill up so to see 221 connects that was surprising to me I thought we'd have more connects than that so my wondering is always about what is the difference between connecting and not connecting and is there wisdom there that didn't get articulated or did people see it showing up and therefore didn't connect I don't know can we speculate at this point I will continue to but yes Mike Dr. Thank You Jennifer for doing play speak and having her defer that so well or deflect that so well I want to thank staff because the people that made up the committee that worked with Jennifer made all kinds of sense and then all of a sudden I'm reading Allie vile's name and I never would have thought of that in a million years and to have her be a part of that committee as the director of Parks and Rec just was a stroke of genius in my in my opinion I just think whoever came up with that idea just take a bow because having her there be a part of that I think was a smart thing to do potentially impacts some parks I think her voice at that table can make a difference she can bring insights there that some of us probably would not get anyway anything else for Jen before we set her free Elaine the compliment to how comprehensive your report is how thoroughly you engage the public and how fairly and transparently you engage the public I would be shocked if someone came forward and said I didn't know I didn't have a chance I didn't get all the information I'm extremely impressed with how you presented everything to the public and addressed that learning curve that means a lot and this isn't that means a lot and there is a pretty incredible town committee that helped create this and incredible group of people who helped participate and engage and none of this could have happened without the involvement of every single person who was in it including everybody who continues to show up and be witness and presence and insight so I do want to say thank you I also want to make sure that you spend some time figuring out who you need to have on August 20th and that that question is somewhere in your mix so that you can continue to draw on that same insight that I was able to draw from actually that's one of the things we're going to do next once we're done asking you questions about the report or the process is everybody okay okay so yeah and again we want to say thank you for doing this job for us did it well we really appreciate it you're here or joined well you're welcome to stay here while we're continuing the discussion but I wanted to let you know that you're able to to leave if you'd like okay so the next step we do before we open it up is to first of all see if August 20th is going to work for our discussion that's on our plan list timeline but is everybody available Elaine I have had vacation plan for many months that week and it was only until very recently that we knew that August 20th was going to be the day we discuss this topic I would be able to connect via wifi and landline but it's iffy about the quality of the connection I feel the subject matter requires that I be present I don't want to disrespect the subject matter by not being present so I would request of the board if we could please consider moving the subject from August 20th to September 10th and to be honest I would appreciate that additional window to continue reading the materials and re-familiarize myself with some stuff that I read earlier and just help give me a little extra time to come to the conclusions so a small monkey wrench Andy do we expect to be able to get through this entire topic in one meeting? well it depends on the board's pleasure if you don't say no changes say as a possible outcome then that could probably happen on that day if there are changes that we think need to be done I bet it's pretty iffy to get it done in one meeting but it depends what do you think? we only have one meeting in September and there's likely going to be other business that needs to happen that day as well I would assume typically there's only one meeting so I'm concerned about we've talked about trying to get this done before current year's deer season starts and I'm a little worried about waiting if there's a possibility that it's going to take multiple meetings to get through all the discussion because we could certainly come get to a point where we have an impasse and we have a question that we need to answer that we need legal help with that's not going to be an immediate answer depending on how things go and I'm just concerned that if we think we're going to get done in one meeting I don't know I don't know that it's there's any guarantee at all that we can do in one meeting I'd rather start the discussion sooner and I'm sorry Elaine have those that can't make it catch up I guess we have first a topic like this it would be nice I think it would be nice, not required but it would be nice to have members present there is an option if we wanted to add something on like the 27th which is a week after the 20th we'll have our 20th meeting as planned but delay this topic until the 27th and I don't know if there's other business that would need to be done there or we could just have it be that one topic as a possibility Mike? I prefer that scenario I think the fact that you can connect in some way I think is helpful but I think for this topic I think all five of us should be in the same room I also agree that a separate meeting with just this on the agenda if I were a betting man which I'm not but if I were I don't think we're going to get this done in one meeting I think there are too many nuances that we have to consider before we can come to that decision so you're saying 27th might be I'm saying the 27th so that Elaine can participate yes I will I would say the 27th and then I don't know I think we have just the one meeting in September if I'm not mistaken so I think on the 10th we have our regular town business have our regular meeting and then right after that have a second one just dedicated to this if needed yes I should say that I would propose the 13th instead because I'll be away the 27th August 13th? that's a week before from now is that enough time Elaine you were talking about appreciating that extra week now we're actually cutting it I would but it's my fault that we're having this conversation so I'm free on the 13th and I'd be willing to do that I'd prefer the 27th to give us the time the extra time but we can talk about both I don't know what the staff if there's any concerns with 13th or 27th everyone to be here on the 27th that won't happen oh you can't be here oh I'm sorry I didn't hear that I didn't hear that alright then how's the 13th looking is there any magic to whether it's the 28th is there any other meeting I mean just to give the time trying to balance the village trustees meet on the 28th about 29th but the 29th looks good gone I took that window because that's a three week break okay that's your week back to 13th or I can meet later in September you know that works too if we only have one meeting in September you know we could also do the 17th or the 24th of September the 13th is fine with me if it's okay with the rest of the board see what I got I'm out of town on the 24th but I'm not germane to the process as much as the discussion of the ordinance and what you're dealing with we're out of conference September? okay so 13th just have to study hard Andy what's your you know looking at me maybe I'm misreading that I guess I'm okay with it because I'm assuming we're going to need more than one meeting to do it so if we're not ready we'll have to do another meeting so yeah sure a week from today you're saying okay so everybody good alright let's thank you everyone for making that adjustment I really appreciate it no problem okay so just for everybody what's that oh yeah what about start time consistent 7 start time on the 13th work here yeah well okay we just need to make sure we have enough and dial the temperature so it's nice and cool I don't know how many can we fit in here I don't know what's available though it's a pretty short time well ADL high school so why don't we say well we can have it here but we can see if there are other venues like ADL or some other place my guess is probably a few more people that we have tonight okay yes timing wise doing something a week from tonight will give us enough time to get it out so that people know about it I have 48 hours to warn it so we're fine probably no tomorrow or the day after what's available right distribution for everybody people have signed in okay okay good so we got that so we'll have all five of us which is good so now who else do we want to have present there for example do we want police chief I would think so who else Darren Darren or Dina to help with questions around zoning Darren was on the committee right okay so he's probably be a good choice Allie okay Allie Bile what about the ballistics guy can Bullio okay anybody anybody else we will but I don't think we'll need that night do we I don't think so anything that we come up with it's going to have to get vetted by them later I hate to put them on the spot without giving it time to think about okay and then any any questions that or things that you want to have there for us on the 13th we should be sending how are we going to do that if we don't have them tonight we don't have a lot of runway to get you to get us the information we need that's what makes the 13th very very difficult yes so I guess a question to the select board members do you have your questions or as many as you have that you can get to us in 24 48 hours we can struggle to put them together and compile and do the best we can on short I knew I shouldn't let Travis go on vacation just to buy a little time could how flexible are we in the week of the 13th to move it to a Thursday say that at least buys a few days because if we're going to ask staff to give us information we need to give them the respect and time to get it Thursday is a holiday so the staff have to come in but they might have plans was that a weird holiday it's a battle day so so does that say we can't do it it says Wednesday not Thursday I can't do Wednesday the 15th we've been on holidays before you can do it I'm just saying it might be if staff already has plans some of those people may or may not be available but they may or may not be available on the 13th either true so would the 16th work just again out of respect to try if we're going to ask staff to give us information I know we are to do that okay Andy can you make okay okay thank you Andy alright so Thursday let's target that Thursday then the 16th okay so what about questions when do you need to have them by if we don't have them to you today you want let's think Wednesday this Wednesday by the end of the day end of the day Wednesday we do that or first thing Thursday morning like before at eight o'clock or something if you're going to do it that evening sure yes that already was one the topic is the shooting ordinance but there was a lot of discussion about shooting range a public shooting range should we include that discussion or defer it to because it's really not relevant to the shooting ordinance but it is relevant to the people that have commented on it that's where a lot of comments are right that's why but I'm as a it's you could look at it as not being germane to the ordinance because we're talking the ordinance it's still confusing to me whether an ordinance maybe started to ask too many other questions I'm going the wrong place I just want to have that question do we want to also talk about a public shooting range or do we want to have that be a separate discussion again because it's it may people that want to establish a shooting range in the future that may be prevented from it if we change the ordinance it may they may have an interest in getting a public range so they're not going to lose that ability but I'm thinking that if we want to close the shooting ordinance before November that we should limit it potentially limit it to the topic of the ordinance and have the shooting range discussion part of a recreation needs assessment or something like that you know as handled by you know potentially a proposal brought by the parks and rec departments I assume they would be the ones that would administer such a thing I'm trying to think of if there's a way to limit the conversation to changes to the ordinance I hear what you're saying but I don't know that we want to eliminate that topic because so many people brought it up and it may impact our conversation we can write it off or eliminate it from this conversation I'm looking at it as a potentially not saying it has to be I'm just saying potentially different discussion although it's very very related can I clarify I wouldn't expect our conversation about the firearms discharge to also include a decision let's open a public shooting range but we would consider all the options around shooting ranges as part of our discussion and perhaps defer to a later date actually talking about having a shooting range but if taking the time to have that discussion now limits our ability to resolve the ordinance question in time for on a schedule that we want that's what I'm trying to get at is do we want to intentionally say yes we recognize that's an important factor in this whole thing we will take it up at another date and saying that we will do something and whether we actually do it but I'm concerned that we're going to get tied up because there's all kinds of discussion that can happen around where you would put it I don't know how far down the discussion about a shooting range you want to get in parallel with trying to close an ordinance quickly Elena and then Mike my only concern with that would be if a potential shooting range was included in the mix it might change Board members decisions around the firearms discharge ordinance in the area surrounding that potential shooting range and I don't think we can separate them Mike I agree if you look back at if you look back at the topics that people have come to us with surrounding shooting it hasn't been about hunting it's been about target shooting I don't see how you can separate those two things I respect Andy's opinion I think there's a lot to be said for that but I don't see how we can have the discussion about the ordinance without including the possibility of ranges if you look back the accidents that have happened have come from target shooting they have not come from hunting and again I don't see how you can separate those two one man's opinion that needs to be part of the discussion as well and if it takes time it's the time we need to put into it yeah we need to get in time for the November hunting season we need to take the time we need to take to do it right I just want to make it clear I wasn't advocating to do that I was just bringing it up as a possibility of a way to to understand to conflate those two topics or separate them I think we're saying that they're so interrelated that I think we'd be remiss if we did not okay so we targeted the 16th we're going to have it here unless you can find a larger place it's going to start at 7 we're going to ask for the police chief hopefully it can be here again this is a new date Darren, Shribler Ken, Bulio and Allie Allie Weil did I miss anybody? that's it and we'll get questions to Evan let's target end of day Wednesday I know he said Thursday morning but he's being kind let's target end of day Wednesday because we really aren't giving him a lot of runway as it is and we should look at the 2009 report as well there's some education pieces in there for example I don't think we want to lose got a lot of reading to do between now and then okay so before we make a motion is everybody okay if we open it up to the public to get their comments on the report okay what I'm going to do is have a show of hands so I know how many people would like to speak tonight okay so raise them up so 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 okay wonderful I'm going to ask you if you can just be very very brief since there's 5 if we could do 3 minutes a piece and it has to be germane to the report okay that's what's that's what's warned it's about the report and the process you know that was used to generate the report I know that everyone's been very civil and I appreciate that and I expect that to continue forward when one person's speaking I don't want anyone else to speak I want to respect whoever it is who's talking so even if you disagree nothing under the breath kind of things let's respect everybody let's respect their time we want to hear from you but we do want to keep it to 3 minutes we're going to have Evan can you we'll have a time and we'll give you we'll give you what 30 seconds second warning something like that but please speak in size and if somebody said something that somebody else already said you just don't please don't repeat it just say I agree with and you can identify that topic but again I really do want to make sure that whoever speaking has the respect of everybody to say what they need to to us and this is not a negotiation but we want to we want to hear from you and we'll listen we may not agree at the end with what you say or apply what you say but please don't mistake that for not being heard okay so again this is not a negotiation what we want to do is be able to hear from you and we're not going to have you know a dialogue here it's we want to hear from you so I don't know whose hand went up first who would like to go first okay if you could state your name and your address too great you can just use a loud voice there that'd be great Eric Bailey first I'd like to thank Ms. Nair and her staff and they've been a job on this just felt very included it was open I have to agree with her assessment that it is excruciating you know thinking about nothing wrong with you folks but you know the future what I'd like to do in your hands and worrying about the possibility of that being weighed on emotion and fears that are not based on facts versus local evidence that does worry me greatly the one thing I would like to respectfully disagree with her opening statement on was that the opening statement said that there wasn't a general consensus reached within the process I don't know pictures worth a thousand words and if you look at the preference boards from the June 5th hearing there's panels for change nothing a little bit change a little bit more and just ban firearms really look at those boards the change nothing one minus one or two red stickers was all green and the rest of them minus one or two stickers was all red it was very very telling add to that the 487 signatures on the position that we have in your read file and there's very big evidentiary that there is a consensus I'm sorry you're just going to comment that many of the signatures on that were not sx residents there are some people that live in the vicinity that have land that aren't residents that have land or have hunted here for decades that's true but there they have very very deep best interest thank you and also what I wanted to I didn't mention before you're actually speaking to me they couldn't hear back here no that's fine so if you have a comment for Jen or anybody please have it come through me and also I just want to add if you have extra needs with the ballistics an NRA firearm safety instructor and a range safety officer and I think we're living since dirt was loose so thank you okay we'll go to Mary Beth sorry I said your name for you but if you could say your address as well Mary Beth Redmond I'm at 11 Marion Avenue for me all along the central thing has been the process how is the that's what I've been focused on versus the issue of you know where things should be changed or not changed for me it's been about the process and I did attend both public forums and I also participated on play speak and firstly I just want to emphasize what your observations are in that I think that Jen did an amazing job I really felt as though she handled people who got up with a lot of energy and a lot of challenge and just diffused it right away and really got to the heart of what the issue was for them without any kind of fireworks or angry comments it was really really done very very professionally and respectfully so I just as an outside person going to all of the forums just reflect that back to you I do think that the play speak while I understand that we're really limited in terms of software platforms that will allow people to remain anonymous yet comment I do think that that system was really clunky for a lot of people I talked to numerous people and you could see it on different Facebook forums SXVT and other places where people kind of gave up and didn't post their comments because it was hard to figure out for a lot of people they wanted to post anonymously because they were afraid of being targeted and they couldn't figure out how to do that there was a way to do that which Jen really communicated and put out there but for some people who aren't so tech savvy it was pretty challenging to figure out so I think that's important to recognize I do think at the first meeting that I went to where Eric referenced the high number of people voting for no change I noticed at that meeting that that was kind of the first initial kickoff of what happened and so there was a lot of people of one particular viewpoint in that meeting so I don't feel like that's a totally accurate representation of voting or where people stood at that meeting the other thing that I observed in some of the breakouts I was in one breakout where when people stood up and commented with a different viewpoint there was a lot of going at that person so it was very hard for your comment to stand on its own in the breakout that I was in okay sorry so at any rate I just feel like it's very important it's very important that the process you know at any rate okay the last thing I want to say is that you're real quick you're beyond three minutes yeah okay that is that there are so many issues there are so many layered issues to this and I think it's going to be super I think it was hard for people to kind of weigh in on all of the levels of the issues that have been cut down kind of one by one people would have been able to kind of weigh in on each issue but the overwhelming nature of all the issues together I think made it overwhelming for people and as a result they didn't weigh in thank you Mary Beth, I appreciate that and Brad and then we'll go to Patty, okay Brad? again your full name and address Brad Tennyson, Bixby Hill Road thank you and Michael for ensuring that the issue of the firearms range or shooting range is going to be included in the discussion I don't think you can separate the two and regarding subject matter experts I think it would be very helpful to have some representative from Fish and Wildlife here perhaps Evan Hughes from Vermont Veterinary Sportsman's Clubs and those people can address a myriad of issues regarding hunter education herd management shooting range ballistics and those sort of things so I think you're talking about just town staff let's have people from outside that would be experts you're not hearing it from us from town staff only you're hearing it from some perspective that would be helpful with regard to the first public forum the people that showed up at that forum were passionate about the issue they cared because it affected them and they voted overwhelmingly for no change to the firearms ordinance now I understand that was just one part of the public process 231 231 connects how many days was that available for people to connect address your comments to the chair pardon me, oh I'm sorry it was open for about six weeks 231 connects despite the incredible efforts of the public relations what is it being different in a general election you still accept you can't anticipate what people that don't show up you can't anticipate how they would vote and the people are not concerned enough or passionate enough about this issue and don't show up either on an online forum or in a public forum you can't assume what they're thinking so I think what we have done in terms of the petition we've taken the pulse of the community and those people, residents mostly residents have said they do not want to change it and we've got more than twice the number of places and we did that in a very short period of time and I have no doubt in my mind that if we didn't get over a thousand signatures we could do that but I call on the select board to roll up their sleeves engage with subject matter experts we'd love to be part of that discussion in some form but it's a monumental effort on your part and in task we're passionate about it we want to be involved great idea with fish and wildlife and the others, thank you for that okay, Patty Patty Davis, hillside circle moved here two and a half years ago on the Saxon Hill Road with my courier he's 365 years a year I would like to just give you something at the end of the meeting from Shelburne it is the Shelburne ordinance firearm ordinance one of my clients who works in the as an attorney in the attorney field worked on the Shelburne ordinance many years ago so I have a copy basically I won't state what that ordinance says but in a nutshell 500 feet away from any gathering of people park, recreation area public road that is a public byway whatever you call it, like a public right of way right of way, that's it we moved here because of the fact that it's a class class 3 public road Saxon Hill Road it's now extended to one mile of gravel I love it I will be there every day and now that the sign is taken down the no shootings on the sign which is why we purchased our house on Hillside Circle the fellowship of the wheel the president of the fellowship of the wheel in this area is researching and keeping track of what you guys decide because they have many many bikers from many towns all around and other states come here to use this area it's one of the top areas for mountain bikers in the country do you have something about the report? yes, the report so my report, I want to say that you did a fabulous show and I want to thank you sorry I want to thank you, thank Jennifer for helping my good friend who did work for this attorney that put the Shelbert Ornance together for helping her get online named Debbie she almost also gave up she's been here since 1949 and there should be a fallout ordinance in Essex, there are way too many people the only other thing I want to say if you look at the Killington Ordinance besides this ordinance please invite Fish and Wildlife because the rules Fish and Wildlife and gain will say 25 foot buffer very legal but if you have people walking down up and down biking, hiking on a public road Killington has made it 200 feet in 2015 and their reasoning is it has nothing to do with hunting it has to do with recreational shooting to me, I know nothing about that I don't know what that means by the way it's nice to see my Howard Travis says hi to you Patty, it's about the report and the process okay, thank you very much Patty thanks for being here back, we had number 5 I can't remember yes sir so I'm Tim Payne, I live in 171 Brigham again it's a question for Dennis through Max I just want clarification real quick that everybody who went on PlaySpeak was certified Essex Town or Village Resident, correct? they were Geo it sounded like I heard her say that there was input could have been from all over the country is that not the case? that's why PlaySpeak was chosen because you could Geo Verify right, that's not the case, do you want me to clarify? sure so there's a certain number of views and then 231 connects you could connect to the topic which means you could read the resources but you couldn't actually contribute input as long as PlaySpeak has their filters possible that someone got past those filters but unlikely I just wanted to make sure I was hearing I was hearing a few different things in my own head and then I just want to implore you guys to not rush this procedure as long as we all know it's been going on for 10 years now trying to get this process rolling and we understand that the timetable that you initially put on this was to try and maybe meet the end of this year prior to the hunting season I understand it wholeheartedly but when you run this much material through and you've given it all this summer and now here it is first week in August and you're going to rush the meeting on the 16th as I'm hoping you're going to assume that you're going to be meeting one or two or three more meetings about this this is going to get a little more heated I don't want to call it heated because that's the terms that other people have been using it but definitely the passionateness about it there's going to be a lot of people that show up that are going to need to hear things said and be able to respond to those it's not a matter of coming in with a list of questions spitting them out and then all of a sudden you know you're done I need lots of people myself included need to be able to reply or question something maybe you guys bring up or somebody else brings up and so on and so forth and I realize I mean you could beat this horse to death for weeks on end but just like if we went back to the comments at the very beginning of this whole session where the taxes that Andy wanted to have removed well they've been in place for 50, 60 years no need to rush no need to rush on this game law has been in effect for longer than that no need to rush just come to a consensus make sure everybody's heard because ultimately you're kind of making choices for landowners that non-landowners want potentially okay again we threw it out in the forums you have public areas recreational biking parks and recs whatever use it 365 a year I get it but all we're asking for has an option cut a month or two out of it or warn them this is what's happening for a month or two and I'm talking purely on the hunting side I'm not talking about ranges that's a whole different topic I agree with Andy they're both going to need a little bit of togetherness but a lot of separation there when we're talking that kind of stuff thank you thank you Tim so that was fine thank you all and again it's wonderful community that people can with such passion respect each other like this and we appreciate that tremendously thank you okay I'm going to bring it back to the board we had a discussion now we have the report and we really should be accepting the report so do I have a motion so moved certainly I have to just thank you Andy please I move that the select board accept the summer report of public input discharge of firearms ordinance in Essex Vermont by Jennifer Naur in anticipation of having a discussion on the 16th 2018 of weather to pursue changes to the town of Essex firearms ordinance second okay do I have a second did you second it okay good any further discussion on accepting the summer report of public input for discharge of firearms ordinance it does mention the date of the next meeting in case the discussion gets heated or in case it's a hot day or a severe condition venue I will see what's available I don't think ADL is and I know EMS is not we've had some sweaty meetings there over the years so okay any further discussion hearing none all those in favor signify we're saying aye aye opposed okay motion passes 5-0 I want to once again thank you so much Jen for all you did for us thank you Jen thank you I'm not sure everybody signed in I thought I saw a couple people come in without signing the attendance there's a sign up sheet there if you can just make sure you do sign in before you leave that would be great okay then we're moving on to the next item of business which is 5C and that's selection of attendee for Vermont Community Leadership Summit great I'll jump in okay so in your packet is a letter we were invited to have one participant in each bank one participant for the event for their 4,000 pages of the make it it's the making it happen local leadership for the future of Vermont communities Paul Costello reached out to Evan, myself, Max and Susan, the town clerk to invite the select board to nominate a local leader, community leader to attend the conference for free conference attendance is $50 for anybody in addition who wants to go so there's always a possibility we could send more than one person but wanted to bring it up to the select board to see if you had anybody in mind as a community leader do you'd like to go or if you'd like to open up to solicit some applications whether that's from staff, whether it's from volunteer boards, just to see who might be an appropriate person to kind of put up in terms of that position beyond just the paying $50 it is in Castleton on October 1st so this is a really great opportunity for professional development so I'm really psyched that the VCRD invited us to send someone for free I would like to request and make a suggestion that in addition to the one free person that the town pay for four additional people for a total of five people for $200 this is an outstanding opportunity to support and provide professional development for some of our volunteers and we don't get to do that very often and I had understood from your memo that you were going to do an application process so I don't have any names to suggest in public right now but we could suggest some folks or open it up to staff and committee members you know of our planning commissions of our zoning boards of all the different groups that we have I think this would be a very generous gesture on behalf of the select board to say volunteers you matter to us staff you matter to us we want you to do this because we want you to become good leaders we've already taken that first step we've already taken a step to be a part of the board or committee or whatever this would be a great way to support them to step up even more what's the board think about that so instead of one free we still get the one free but an additional four at $50 that's $200 plus gas maybe it'll be twice that $400 we can probably find that and then I think that's a really neat idea to say our committees because they've stepped forward and maybe there's some in there that we want to help cultivate and our committees is our future leadership so yeah and staff in staff as well I would think right if anybody on the board I would love to go but I'm going to be out of town I highly recommend that other board members go as well absolutely it's the same week as the VLCT's town fair which is the third and fourth that week just for awareness that there's other other things going that week so I usually go to that and we'll likely volunteer to go to it again this year if the sorry let's let Andy finish it yeah I'm going to come here Andy I guess I'm done I guess I was going to say I'd love to go to this but if I'm going to go to the town fair I'd defer and let somebody else a lot of days off work just a lot of days off work I might as well take the whole week out Andy can't go I'll go I would say that between the two conferences that the VLCT is extremely valuable as well slightly different audience the leadership summit I would recommend for newer committee members or just committee members in general who are not in leadership roles or committee chairs this is designed for people to get more education around being a community leader so I think everyone on this board is highly trained in that at the moment but not not limiting people from going but just saying that VLCT has a slightly more municipal governance kind of a flavor this one has been designed to build leadership so is there a limit there must be a limited number of people each place can send you know we should I don't know that there's a cap at all because I mean I need to say no to I mean but maybe we should have six then because I think I really like I personally like the idea of cultivating you know the members and staff or on the committees as a reward a couple things first I'd like to recommend Greg for one of those spaces two if we open it up and we get to five or six I think I can have the authority to add fifty or hundred dollars to the mix if that's okay with you guys but I get four or five but if we get like two more that really want to go like from the plant commission or anybody else to them I don't think I'm going to stop them for fifty dollars awesome is there any reason for it to have to come back to us or can we just okay enable support everything yeah and Greg too sure alright so I guess we would need a motion to that effect to the new okay I'll move that before authorize the manager to solicit applications and designate local leaders to participate in the Vermont community leadership summit any further discussion on authorizing the manager to do that Andy do we think we need to give them a limit or do we you know say five to seven or something like that or not say that we can leave it off yeah but it needs to be a reasonable number trust him but if there are some gems out there that they find we're leaving it as a discretion this is not a one off event this happens every year so okay so any further discussion on that all those in favor signify by saying aye aye post okay motion passes five zero awesome thank you okay we're going to move on to next item of business which is approval of minutes I just need to get there I would move approval of the minutes of July 9th 2018 I have a second on that second all right let's go to page one you know when you're there one line 46 I just wanted to clarify I didn't get the impression then miss was confirming that she had spreadsheet familiarity she talked about the business that she works for spreadsheets but when I pressed her she gave it kind of a no yes no answer so I'd really like to make this miss runner suggested familiarity with using spreadsheets may be a useful skill and leave it at that since I also did suggest that I recall the her being asked by Irene if she knows how to use spreadsheets that's I think this can just stand as it is I don't see that this there's need to clarify that it's a pleasure now as is okay we've got four people saying as is so we're going to keep one the same for line 40 whatever that was six okay page two and a line 50 it says Mr. Watson reviewing the town plan it should say reviewing the town charter anything else on two page three at the end of the line 117 I'd like to add the years and parentheses 2011 through 2014 people know exactly what years are missing so where they go right at the end of that line it's specifying the time period okay anybody problem with that getting details in to the minutes as opposed to getting them into the report just feel the need to note that so you're not no I'm it's not terrible okay page what is it page four I'm still on three okay line 136 the word thought at the beginning I'd like to change that to provided examples of which I did anything else on three alright line 139 at the end again she also wanted history to find this document comma and I would add once a variety of stakeholders had agreed on what happened rather than have it be an open wound and again I elaborated at length on this I named a number of people in the audience that I thought it would be cool to have in the room because we all had different perspectives during that time period and I thought that for the sake of lessons learned and so that we didn't repeat history because I didn't learn from it it might be nice to actually define historic happenings and I referenced Evan's definitions of words which I think are a real positive thing and I'm hoping that we can also define history sure at the end of line 139 I would add a comma and I would say once a variety of stakeholders had agreed on what happened extra necessary I think this is clear already changes or leave it as is okay yes line 141 according to the tape Mr. Levy stated that a vote on the consent agenda was a valid motion and then Mr. Watts noted that the report was not written by staff was it 121 41 on the tape if someone wants to check it is that one okay sorry what's changing it's not changing your name 141 what line it says Mr. Watts stated but it's Mr. Levy who stated it was a valid motion and then he of course no longer has the same amount to see it in so it should be Mr. Watts I don't remember who said that I do because I went back to the videotape okay okay we're going to move on to page 4 Irene I think it's important you are 158 to include the word domestic violence because that's the name of this non-profit it's on page 4 page 5 page 6 and lastly but not least 7 okay all those in favor of the July 9th 2018 select board minutes with corrections signify by saying aye aye motion passes 5-0 awesome thank you that's it for our business items we're going to move on to consent agenda motion to approve so moved second so we have the check warrants mostly in there any questions on the check warrants I knew there was a whole bunch of them this time the sign no comments on consent agenda I would take a motion I mean a vote all those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying aye aye most it passes I have zero on consent and we're into the reading file is there board are there board member comments on item C the human services I just wanted to comment that after reading the sx report article a member of the board of the united way contacted me and clarified that steps to end domestic violence got funding from a different from a different path from the united way so instead of the $120,000 that they had applied for for that one program they used a different program a strategic program to give them $50,000 for the over two years instead of $120,000 over three they got $50,000 over two years with the intent to help them understand how to leverage state funds to maintain the same services in their their shelter and so they're kept fairly whole by that and potentially better off if they again learn a new skill they can get taught to fish instead of relying on the you know the money they were getting by precedence from from the united way so they're they wanted to clarify to me that that there was a different they got funded through a different amount of money through a different path with the purpose of helping them to be in a better position in the future the other thing is he mentioned to me that it was Kurt Gunther who I was speaking to as a president he mentioned to me that the united way just completed a needs survey and I know in a couple of in the meeting where we decided the funding for FYE 18 the memo that came with that said that we might be looking at the process that we used to determine where funding goes and he offered to either come personally or have a member of the united way board come to either this board or if we decide to have a committee to work on that process to help at least understand how they did their needs assessment it's not to dictate what they're what we do certainly if you want to have any insight into the process that they used to come up with a needs assessment that's great we also we also I bumped into Dylan Dylan Jim Patista's wife works for State Department HSS and she said she would even help out a little bit and we have some of so we are going to look to put something together a la what united way did to try to think about targeting what we're trying to achieve one of the things I could tell you is our police department contract with the Howard center for people with mental illness and other things that has freed up officer time and stress both at the police department and at our libraries and other facilities so things like that that are also helping us in our mission we'd like to look at a process including financials I would hate for us to give limited funds to someone who either found funding somewhere else or heaven forbid won't be there after too long to be able to use those funds for the proper use we gave them an extra we gave them some extra money so I can send you an email that too two things when you talked to Kurt from united way was that after we had our conversation with steps to give them additional funds yes it was it was last week sometime was there $50,000 grant to them also after or did that happen before it happened it was happening in part it happened the day that the article came out of the ASIC reporter got it so it didn't happen when they were here it hadn't happened when they were here that's where I was going thanks it was really curious that they only asked for a thousand with a huge gap more? just board member comment not about the reading file but I thought it might be useful to give an update on our governance subcommittee activities just so we know that we've been doing a little research and I've spoken to the Vermont league of cities and towns and the secretary of state's office to determine what kind of assistance we could obtain in our conversations and our decision making and basically none there's a little bit of assistance they can give us in terms of helping us understand statute but it's pretty evident that our subcommittee is going to have to discuss the possibility of hiring an attorney sooner rather than later to guide us through the process of determining what might be the best governance scenario for the two boards so that's just an update I think that was not a surprise to certain people that we wouldn't get a lot of support I mean they're short staffed I guess it wasn't so much the capacity it was more the limitations of their capabilities in terms of representing certain governance models to communities it wasn't that they couldn't help us because it was more if we can come to them with specific questions about specific statutes they can help us but if we're looking to get legal guidance in general about pursuing various paths they can't do that so yeah proceed, persevere, Irie just back on the non-profits for a moment if anyone's seen 7 days this summer they've done a fabulous non-profit series about where money comes from a lot of it from the state and so forth but just a good 360 on how many non-profits there are and where they're getting funded and what they're doing we recommend that highly you have links? absolutely there's one section where they show the tub of butter and it says I can't believe it's a non-profit everything from the Champlain Valley Fairgrounds to all kinds of other non-profits we appreciate that thank you anything else in the reading file Andy? yeah the so called subcommittee minutes from July 12th 2018 I would argue that those are truly select board minutes because the meeting was warned as a select board meeting because a quorum was going to be there a quorum was there town business was discussed and I think that rather than having it sitting in a consent file reading file that those minutes need to be approved by the select board I'm worried my reasoning is that we could come up with any topic that we wanted to have a subcommittee of the select board talk about have a meeting discuss town business have a quorum there and then publish minutes in the reading file without reviewing them as part of our agenda and I'm concerned that this establishes a bad precedence for open meeting we spend money on your question with the attorney to get his input when you ask questions like that it's going to spend money to get the answer from the attorney and Greg you want to comment on that? yeah the attorney basically said that I'm sorry sorry the attorney basically said that the governing the governing body is the subcommittee it's not the select board it's the subcommittee is the I'll just find the language rather than trying to paraphrase he said the public body in this instance is the select board and trustee subcommittee on governance the minutes of a meeting of this public body must be taken by the clerk or secretary of that public body there's nothing in statute that says the minutes must be approved they typically are reviewed and approved by the public body in this case I would say the attorney would say that the minutes should be approved only by the members of the subcommittee as the two members of the select board that are not part of the subcommittee and are not members of that public body and it was warned as a select board trustee subcommittee meeting it was not warned as a select board meeting it was warned it said subcommittee of the select board and trustees okay I disagree I think that I'm worried that maybe it won't ever happen but if we have this similar situation where we have three select board members in a meeting where one of them happens to be representing from another municipality any topic could be discussed any meeting could be scheduled at any time that others of us aren't able to attend and town business could be discussed and I think that well okay I'm wrong apparently the lawyer thinks different so are you going to bring this up often because we're going to the subcommittee is going to be meeting and this is going to happen yeah I'm very unhappy with the fact that we have a quorum of the select board participating in this so-called subcommittee and discussing town business with a quorum present and not warning it as a select board meeting and treating the minutes in the same way that we treat all other select board meeting minutes so you want to go against the advice of the attorney and I'm not comfortable doing that I don't know if anybody else is you know by how are we going against we're doing more than he is saying we need to if we approve these as regular select board meeting minutes he says you don't need to do that it's not a then why do we ever approve any minutes one of the things that we've been talking about recently is reducing meeting time and we've been commenting about reducing our minutes the scope and the content the length of our minutes in order to reduce meeting time so then if there's no requirement that we approve meeting minutes why do we ever approve meeting minutes for subcommittee meeting minutes I don't think you need to approve that's the way I understand it you don't actually need to approve minutes you don't need to approve select board meeting minutes either you have to put up a draft within five days but that draft is not necessary to be approved we have the select board appointed two members our trustees appointed two members we have an unusual situation where we have one member who's working on both boards in this capacity she was appointed by the village trustees not by the select board so in this instance the subcommittee is not a quorum of the select board because she's acting in the capacity of the trustees we can spend more money asking Bill the same question and getting the same answer Andy but considering that when we appointed our representatives we had to take into consideration where our representatives lived it seems to me that the trustees should have considered the fact that putting a select board a third select board member on the subcommittee would call into question the entire process which is why we looked at the geographic considerations when we appointed the other members but the reality is this is our subcommittee yep it is that's why we asked the lawyer I would think that in order to be more transparent and comply more fully with open meeting law that we should treat those meetings as select board meetings and follow through as we do for regular select board meeting I'm wondering why this wasn't brought up under additions and changes to this agenda because I gladly would have had this conversation had you brought this forward then because it wasn't because it's my understanding on the agenda that you can only bring things up from the consent agenda because if it's on the reading file no no action there's no action so in order to bring it up into the agenda it would need to be warned in the future done in a future meeting that's why I waited until this point to bring it up that was my reasoning I thought about that question a lot do I bring it up during additions and changes that occurred that the reason I didn't was because it was part of the reading file not the consent agenda if it had been in the consent agenda I would have suggested it bring it up any comments on that the board want to do anything different than what we're doing alright excuse me I'm flexible anybody see any need to change anyone else rather okay thank you Andy but when you do ask these questions we're going to send them to the attorney thank you thank you for doing that okay anything else in the reading file I want I want to make note because Brad is here that in 7H there was that petition that was referenced earlier by I think Brad and Eric he's still here if you have any questions about that I know Andy you commented that there were a lot of signatures on there that were from outside of Essex I noticed that too do you want to ask him to give a two minute synopsis about what's in there or is everybody comfortable with what they read he's here it was self-explanatory pardon? it was self-explanatory okay so we have it we read it we understand it and thank you for putting it in there is there something that just well I don't want this to be a big dissertation either before you before you continue that Brad I know I just asked you you just said you're fine with it but would it be okay if they if we gave them a few minutes okay absolutely okay so again could you I want to respect everyone's time in the room absolutely and I appreciate it what precipitated re-dizzening the firearms ordinance in your mind what precipitated that was it the action down the shooting of Professor Reese we had two things we had the accidental shooting of Professor Reese which was negligent and prosecuted right and then there was a bullet lodge in a home near Saxon Hill and that came before us and it was clear that we needed to take another and that's great and that's is that correct is everybody okay with that it was it was it was especially the second incident of a round winding up in somebody's family room great and over the years since I've been on this board for what seems like forever now people have come to me complaining about noise not feeling safe in Royal Essex as they walk their dog or whatever because they just heard shooting night and day and they didn't expect when they moved to the country to hear shooting night and day they wanted to move somewhere peaceful so I was hearing from constituents that the peace and quiet and safety to have in Royal Essex on their large property was not how they were feeling and that on top of these public incidents of bullets landing in places that maybe they shouldn't have was yet another so I guess those three things I got the police report from that incident on Jira Crossing and that was December 19th of 2015 the supervisor was Ken Bolio I'll just read you the narrative the bullet hole went straight through the exterior wall and was lodged in the sheetrock the bullet was fired from a location east Jericho and struck the rear of the residence although the property is inside the no-shoot zone for a town of Essex the back of the complainant's property faces a wooded area where hunting is allowed that property the bullet came from Jericho not from Essex I said heard the police this is their narrative and unfortunately I think Chief LaRose and others in the community are unnecessarily alarming the community that there's people running around that are operating the firearms in a careless and negligent manner and here's one incident right here do you want to talk about the report or your petition sure I mean is there specific questions you have I mean it's a nine pages long we asked everybody they said they didn't have questions that's why we wanted to see if you wanted to say something there was a question about the petition do you want to address that yeah so there was a part here that didn't get put in Benborough 54 Lawson Asian Road so I do have a pie chart for the paper petition and the online one which is transparent and categorizes if it's resident and landowner vested interests okay you can give it to Greg and we can get that thank you that was omitted so I want this stuff from the report but I'm going to speak to the you know pushing is this about the year petition it's in our petition paper it's all part of the same committee so the cascading effects of you know pushing such ordinances when we've got an entire history of Essex we've had zero hunting lead cheating access since Essex even existed we've had one that professor very unfortunate it's after some it's far more dangerous riding your bicycle or running down Saxon Hill Road of getting hit by a car than a gun but anyway it's in there but just to point out the local vast president came to the last public hearing on July 19th he came because in his own words he's been inundated with calls from several large landowners in Essex that have informed them that if these go forward they're shutting their land down vast is out, everyone else is out that means crushing the skiers hikers, snowshoers and snow wheelers basically Essex is stopped all that economic activity related to those the restaurants, the stores, the gas stations that those snow wheelers stop at they're not stopping there, they can't get into Essex it's being in retaliation the landowners if they can't if they're not allowed to shoot on their own land they're not going to let anyone else in their own land so in retaliation good dinner I just saw that he stood up and I was like wow that's a lot of people and we'd love to solve this at the local level we would but we also we feel very strongly about our rights my grandfather grew up on Maple Street in the Indian Brook area other areas of Essex in the Great Depression I'd like my stepdaughter to be able to do that too and if you look into the packet not only from our state statute from our constitution, but recent case law in Pennsylvania and other states the Habgulent Rule have basically said that when it comes to hunting a local firearms a local discharge ordinance does not outrule when the state says thou shalt not regulate hunting at the municipal level they had, you know, Pennsylvania it's the most recent so that cascading effect of going forward with this could mean that doing this could end up undoing every discharge ordinance in the state of Vermont including the junction good okay, thank you any last minute comment you want to say about the petition just so if I could jump in, Brad and interrupt for a moment I do want to say, Brad with the police report about the bullet coming from Jericho the police have also said as part of this latest round that they don't know where the bullet came from I don't mean to contradict the report but they've also said as part of this that it's basically impossible to tell where the bullet came from we have conflicting things we know you have one I just want to say what's also been said I understand the question has come up and the police have said as much I wouldn't say that about in my opinion in my opinion I have a couple other comments during the time that Professor Reese that incident Leo Nato was the chief of police and I just read a quote from the select board minutes of December 7, 2009 excuse me, is this in we wanted to have you talk about your petition specifically we don't want to be lectured about this other stuff right now this was not in my petition okay so what we're asking you is there's something specifically in this petition that you wanted to share with us I know there's lots of stuff you'd like to tell but I'm saying this is our focus we pretty much speeded it out for you to digest and if you'd like further clarification we'd be happy to entertain that okay thank you alright anything else on reading from Maureen I'm grateful to have the list of the new old Pomp Road addresses I just wanted if staffs had any pushback from residents on those new addresses as of yet I was told there were a couple people who were a little bit upset and they were laughing by the end of the conversation in a good way okay, once they understood it and you look to see if there are any other streets that might be in a similar situation that we could proactive on I thought that was in your packet if not I will get it to you but I have that list and basically I think I heard it I either heard it or read it I spoke to Shannon none of the roads are in our jurisdiction they're not our jurisdiction to change they may have some one or two but most of the roads are someone else's that have to do what we are doing on old Pomp okay, it's so good because I think it's a good opportunity to look and see the camera rather than wait for an ambulance call to upon okay, anything else okay then what clarification yes sir yes sir yes sir okay okay okay, thank you for that clarification if there's nothing else in the reading file we don't need executive session motion to adjourn okay, do I have a second on the journey Mike, any further discussion on the journey all those in favor signify by saying aye aye, posed, alright we're done thank you all for that so lots of work to be done between now and 16 thank you