 Okay, I will go ahead and call the Village of Essex Junction Board of Trustees meeting for Tuesday, September 28th. In order. And do we have any agenda additions or changes tonight? You have one addition of an executive session for personnel. Thank you. And I know. There are some documents that Brad had just sent over to all of us. I think to all of us at least. One is the city budget. One is a budget message. The presentation for the public hearing. As well as an update to the, um, the special election warning. Yeah, and then I would just add in drew the two Lincoln plans that we're saying yesterday. Anything else? If not, then I would entertain a motion to amend the agenda. So moved. Thank you, George. Is there a second? Second. All right. All. Is there any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none all those favorably signify by saying aye. Hi. Anybody opposed. Thank you. Great. So pass unanimously. Thank you all. And that will bring us into public to be heard. So this is the portion of tonight's meeting where if anybody has any questions on or comments and things that are not on the agenda that you'd like the village board of trustees to know. Now is the time to do so. The way you can do that is if you're using Microsoft teams, you can raise your hands and I'll make sure to check there to make sure that you're using Microsoft teams. So if you're using Microsoft teams, you can raise your hands and I would ask that you please raise your hand and. Evan or George. Can I ask one of you to or Marguerite? So along that line, we'll start off with those in the room. If there are any members of public who wish to address the board about something that's not on the agenda, please raise your hand. If you do come right to this front microphone. No, no takers. So going into Microsoft teams again, go ahead and raise your hand if you'd like to raise something to the board that is not on the agenda. I do not see any hands going up. So with no hands, we will go off of public to be heard and into agenda item 5a, which is a public hearing on the charter for the city of S6 junction. I will ask for your patience as I get the presentation up. And do you want me to share on the packet? Do you have the pre do you have the presentation? I don't think I have. I'm just what's in the packet. So if you have something different than that. Yeah, this is. This is what I had just sent over. I've got it right here. There we go. And my graphics card is not optimal for this. We'll see how this goes. Are any of you seeing anything? There we go. Yeah, you can see it. All right. So we have the village of S6 junction public hearing on the charter for the city of S6 junction. The way that this will go is I will go through the presentation. As this is a public hearing, I will prioritize questions, comments, concerns from the residents. And then after that, we will come back to the board. If the public has any questions, I ask you to wait until the very end, because frankly, from a logistical standpoint, I'm not able to see hands being raised. So please hold your comments to the end. You may be asking yourselves, where can you find a copy of the charter? And you can not only get a physical copy. That's the town office of 81 Main Street. You can also get a online version. At a six junction dot org slash proposed charter. I'm sure the big question is, what is it exactly that we are voting on? And really the question comes down to whether or not to adopt a new municipal charter that would transform the village into an independent city and no longer be a part of the town of Essex. And you can see the language as to what that question will look like for those of you who will be voting on the question. In terms of why are we doing this? Well, since 1950. Andrew. Yeah. I think you're sharing, you've probably gone into presentation mode on your screen, but you're sharing a static slide. That's lovely. Is that better? So if you want to back up one, that is better. You may also be able to, yeah, we can just do that. There we go. There we go. You all saw this a while, didn't you? And now I'm getting some feedback. Is that just me getting feedback or others? No, you sound better now. Oh, well, thank you. So here we go. You saw that first slide for a while. Here's where you can find a copy of the charter. And again, this presentation is also a part of the public record. And I'm sure we'll be up on the village's websites at some point in time in the relatively near future. Here is that question as to what are we voting on? And you can see the ballot question is down towards the bottom. Here's where I'd left off of why are we voting on this to begin with? Well, without a doubt, since 1958, there have been many times where the community has voted whether to merge or to separate from and or with the town of Essex. For those of us who have been involved since March and April this year, villagers had voted overwhelmingly by about 80% to merge with the town both times and the town outside the village had voted overwhelmingly by about 70% not to merge. In April, there was a non-binding article asking the trustees to pursue independence or separation by November if that merger vote failed, which it did, and that non-binding article had passed by more than 75% of village votes. So with the merger vote failing, the trustees have been presenting the independent city of Essex Junction charter to village voters. In terms of what's staying the same, the short version is almost everything. There is still going to be a five-member governing board. So those of us on the trustees, the board would look very similar to what you have now. Everybody is elected at large with three year terms just like what we have now. A president and a vice president would be elected by the board just like we have now. The city would not have a mayor. The trustees who are the trustees at the time of the charter taking effect will then become city counselors. And this is rooted into state law where you can't, or federal law where you can't remove somebody from their elected seat. The annual budget would be presented to voters voted on by Australian ballot. Similar to what was just recently passed for the village. Essex Junction will maintain our identity. We will continue to enjoy the high quality services that we have for years. And our quality of life will be maintained as well. In terms of differences, really Essex Junction will have full control of our own future. Our tax dollars will stay and be invested within the city only as we would not be paying taxes to the town of Essex. We would be in equal municipality, just like every other Chittenden County municipality. And the planning boards would shift from a planning commission and the zoning board that we have now to a planning commission and a development review board. In terms of how we got here, I had referenced the votes before that happened both in March and April. And then since April 27th or April 27th of this year, the trustees have been dedicating the first 60 to 90 minutes of our meetings to have work sessions on independence. Just a couple of weeks ago, we had approved of the charter. And then today's the first public hearing on this charter. Our next meeting on October 12th is our second public hearing. And then the subsequent vote will happen November 2nd. So if the vote passes, the charter is approved by village voters. Then the Essex Junction legislators would introduce a bill into the House of Representatives. And then between May and June, we would anticipate that the bill would be taken up and considered by the House and Senate committees who have jurisdiction on the matter. Hopefully then ultimately the bill would be voted upon by the full House and Senate and then ultimately signed by the governor. That would mean July 1st of 2022, the city would be formed. And then that first year would be a transition year where the city would need to hire the leadership and prepare for the full operations and renovations to Lincoln Street to accommodate staff as well as the IT infrastructure need to be put in place. All of that would allow for a July 1 of 2023 time when the city would be fully operational to Lincoln Street. One thing that must be noted here though is that the legislature can of course change the timeline and or the bill could fail somewhere along the way. If that happens, then this timeline would not be what you see. In terms of the financial impacts, the next few slides are an estimation of the budget and the tax rates for and are based on tax rates and tax information for our current fiscal year had the city of Essex Junction been fully formed and functioning at this time. An actual future budget will be developed by the city manager. We need to be approved up by the city council. And just like what we do now would be presented to city voters at the annual meeting to have the voters vote upon. This budget that you would see would reflect the organization of the city after the conclusion of any shared and contracted relationships with the town of Essex other than for police services. So in other words, the city would end up having its own finance assessing and senior services. So as you can see from the fiscal year 22 budgets, this first column is what the village currently has for or would receive for revenue and where those come from. You will see where the revenue for the town of Essex comes from in the second column. The third one is how much in total taxes village residents pay through both being village residents and town residents. That fourth column is the estimation as to what the city would then need to raise to cover the expenses of the city. And then finally that last column is what the overall difference is for taxes. So you can see that the city of Essex Junction at this point in time is estimated to need $800,000 less in revenue than what villagers currently pay. In terms of expenditures, you can see again using that same logic of what we pay through our village taxes what the entire town pays. Then that third column as to what village residents pay through being both village and town residents, the estimate for the city and then what that change would be. You'll notice some areas in which the amounts are lower and some are higher. For those where the amounts are lower such as community development, the reason why they are lower is because in the village we already have a fully functioning community development department that would not need to change or that may not need to change for our own needs in a city and we pay into the town's community development department. That portion of paying into the town's community development department would no longer be necessary with a city of Essex Junction and so that's why there is a decrease in terms of an increase for say county and regional currently the Chittenden County that were the Green Mountain Transit for example is paid for through the town taxes and not through the village currently. So in a city we would end up paying for that and so that's why you would see that number being higher as an example and that same methodology going down into this part two of the expenditures. So some of the key findings in transforming the village to a city is that the taxes would need to decrease or would be decreasing to help support the operations of the city. Overall property taxes would be decreased by around $730,000. General fund spending by municipal government services by the village slash city property owners would then be decreasing by $811,000. Tax rates would go down by approximately 7.25% and again this is a municipal tax rate. This does not mean your tax bill would go down by 7.25% as our taxes are consolidated with the school district. The savings on a village slash city owned home with an assessed value of $300,000 would be approximately $195 per year. You can see the tax rate differences based upon this budget the municipal taxes impact and what that would mean on the villages and or cities assessed home value. The key portion here is assessed so when we talk about an assessed value it is not the same thing as an appraised value or what you may get if you were to sell your home as those are clearly different. The big takeaway here is that the taxes would go down. These are some of the most significant cost savings and the biggest reason for that you'll see in that first bullet are paying for the services that we pay for in the town. You can see the cost increases and based upon that fiscal year 22 savings you can go ahead and see what the total village change would be that bottom line number of the general fund spending on municipal services and the reduction of $811,000. So of course I'm frequently asked questions about what is happening with the police the short answer is we're working with the trustees and the select board have been working together and so far we have come to a fair amount of agreement in terms of how that would be paid for but to maintain the police services that we currently expect through the town of Essex. And we talk about police services we're talking about dispatch, law enforcement, animal control community justice so on and so forth. Do we have the means and the assets to be a city? The short answer is yes the village has been operating since 1893. We have we have the water, we have sewer, we have streets we have what a community in Vermont needs to have so we absolutely have the means of the assets to be a city. In terms of new hires we will need to in converting to a city we will need to hire four new people and those are the city manager, an assistant city manager slash HR director an assessor and an assistant city clerk. The two Lincoln street building would continue to be where the city of Essex Junction would operate and then how will the city continue to grow its grand list, well by no longer being a part of the town all taxes paid by village residents and then city residents would be invested in Essex Junction only. So it allows for us to maintain our focus and a hundred percent of our focus onto our own economic development and downtime revitalization efforts. We have spoken about in earlier meetings some of you may not have been attending where the trustees have committed to continuing the services that the senior center has provided at two Lincoln street which may or may not be in partnership with the town of Essex or they may be independent. The exact answer of that we're not sure at this point in time as we are still talking about the select board about that. Again so for voting information ballots are expected to be mailed to all active registered voters in the village of Essex Junction and are expected to arrive around October 11th. For those of you who would wish to vote in person to the November 2nd at the Essex High School between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. would be the hours and to make sure you are registered to vote or even to register to vote online. You can go to that link on the screen. The next public hearing will be in I believe it's two weeks away on October 12th. You have any other questions that you don't raise tonight. You think about later on you see the contact information for all of us trustees on the screen as well as EssexJunction.org slash independence is where you can get some information on the website. And with that I would be looking for questions, comments from the public. So the way we will do this is I will ask for those of you in the room if we can prioritize those in the room who may have questions to go ahead and raise your hand so that's Evan Marguerite or George if you could identify whether there's any questions that's in the room. Yes we have. If you could come up to the microphone and just state your name is that okay? If not the people at home won't hear anything. I'm Jane Thurston. I live on Stanton Drive. I was just wondering do you have a handout for us tonight with all this that you've just been talking about on paper? We don't but if you give us your email address or home address we'll get one to you. Okay perfect. I would like that. I'm better at reading than going online and doing all that. Right and I can tell you if you don't mind me Andrew if you go on to the sxjunction.org website all of the information is there. All of the information we're presenting tonight is there. Just go home tonight. I'm not going to do that tonight. I just, what do you want? My email address? Okay sorry. Alright. Full service. Thank you. What are you going to do? Ask your question to it if you have any questions. Okay I can't. Okay um phone number in case you needed it. My new Hampshire phone number. Did you have any other questions or concerns? Well I know that everybody has a concern about the taxes going up and it's difficult just the way they are now. For me as a single woman who's 69 years old so you know I get my social security and that's what I live on and I have to it's difficult and I don't want to move my three grandchildren live in town here so that's why I moved here. So that's I just like to you know know more about how all this works and you know having a paper copy would be great. And Andrew just to go back you said that the information you presented show the taxes will go down is that correct? Yes it was approximately 7% is what the municipal taxes would go down as the city would need to raise approximately $800,000 less than what villagers currently pay. Okay well that's significant isn't it? That's good. Okay thank you very much. Absolutely thank you for coming out tonight. You're welcome. Those of you who are linking where there are others in the room. Anyone else? Everyone good? Andrew for now thank you. Great thank you. So then I will turn it over to those of you using Microsoft Teams. If you had any questions, comments, concerns about the public hearing that you just heard please go ahead and use the raise your hand function and I will make sure to call on you and give you the time to speak. There we go. So first on the list Andy Suntup you can go ahead and unmute yourself. Hi I've been here about six years and I'm very satisfied with the services we've received the way we're doing business. I'm very satisfied with those who are running the show both the trustees and staff. The only thing that I am not satisfied is the taxes and I think everybody on the room and on the computer agrees on that. Are you close to a hundred percent confident the taxes are going to go down seven percent you're talking about when we have to pay for new employees a new computer system everything that we don't have to pay a hundred percent for as we share everything because if you're not approaching 99 percent confidence it just seems like you've all spent a lot of time working on this and it doesn't make sense when that's the only thing that people really do care about. I leave it in your hands Matt. Thank you for the question. I would say that speaking for myself yes I am 100 percent confidence based upon the information that we have that the taxes would go down by that amount. So I hope that helps answer your question. That answers it. Thank you. Thank you. May I cut into can I just make a comment here or more than welcome to things besides the fact that the taxes would go down the it would the taxes raised would stay local there would no longer be a sharing of the taxes with the town so the taxes raised would all stay within s-exjunction which is another I think important consideration. Thank you for that George. And Andrew I'll just if I could I know we're not I guess we're not doing this but he mentioned he was very satisfied with service levels and that is anticipated to stay the same because we are largely used to providing our own services in the village for a move like this where the employees we would need to hire is really not that not as significant or not as many as you would imagine and I think we anticipate service levels largely remaining the same. Thank you Rosh. So next on the list with Steven Eustis you can go ahead and unmute yourself the floor is yours. Hello Steve Eustis I just wanted to thank the board as you know I was involved back in 99 when I was on a trustee with a you know a similar initiative to become independent and you know there was a fair amount of work in that we were told to do due diligence work with the town as best we can and we've spent the last 20 years doing a lot of that we know that where that all ended up at the end of the day and I think there was a lot of good there regardless and now we have this initiative from the non-binding vote last spring and I think a tremendous job has been done since then and I think there's been a lot more homework done and plan put together than we did back in 1999 and you know I feel very comfortable with what you've presented and you know I've been following the minutes and things of recent meetings over the summer and so I don't have any specific questions just a thanks for all the hard work that's gone into this I think it's a great plan and you know I look forward to supporting it when the ballots come out so thank you very much thank you Steve next hand that I see is Mike Sullivan I see that you're unmuted go right ahead the floor is yours Hi Andrew thank you for doing this I just want to know that I just want to know if this presentation will be video available video wise outside of the whole meetings town TV thing if we could encapsulate this presentation I think it would be very good it would be help me when I go to when I'm doing the canvassing door to say hey spend 20 minutes watching this and you'll have considerably more information than you may have now that's it thank you Mike I do appreciate that idea so I am not seeing any new hands up on Microsoft teams I assume the two current hands up are ones that are people who have already spoken didn't have anything new and now I see Greg Morgan your hand is up go ahead and unmute yourself the floor is yours okay you can hear me you can hear me great yeah so one of the earlier commenters said the people in the audience were only concerned about taxes and actually that's not true at least not for me I mean I supported the merger all along because I've worked for 30 years on economic development issues related to the town and the village and I think the fact that we're the second largest municipality and leader in advanced education was a powerful part of our story but we're going to lose that but that said I think it's time we need to clarify what's going on and simplify we could have simplified the merger that's no longer possible so now I want to simplify through independence thanks guys for your work I think you've done a great job appreciate it thank you Greg Mr. Suntop I believe your hand is back up was there something new yes I just would like to know what happens as far as our access to Indian Brook and to the Essex Free Library with the Essex Free Library that's a slightly easier one in the sense that with the home card system you would have the same level of access to Essex Free Library as we all do to any of the other libraries within the state of Vermont so there's really no restriction on that with Indian Brook that's still a work in progress that we have not come to in agreement with the select board at this point in time okay when do you think you will know about that before the vote I would like to say yes but I think that that would be a little too ambitious to be honest with you I don't think we're going to know that answer before the vote in other words we're going to be voting and you won't have all the eyes dotted and the T's crossed at that point this will still be a work in progress with that with Indian Brook yes that would still be a work in progress what I would say in regards to Indian Brook is that the town has changed the way that their passes work and regardless of residency everybody is able to get a day pass only residents are able to get an annual pass but non-residents are able to get a day pass so during the months of April or May through September I believe is when a pass would be necessary to go to Indian Brook but to your question yes or no we don't have that answer at this point in time will there be any other questions when we're voting that aren't answered that can throw a wrench into how much we save not that I can think of although I'm not that I can think of it this time all right thank you thank you Greg Morgan is your hand up still the holdover from before right I'm done thank you so I am seeing no new hands up so then we can go ahead and close the public hearing as trustees are there any other questions comments concerns you had if you want to raise Andrew I just want to raise one this is George I just want to raise one point to go back to the original presentation I think it just I would like to not clarify but just add that when the village the village's charter makes the village endows the village with all the same powers of municipal government that are provided by the constitution the state constitution and I just wanted to add that because I think that sometimes people confuse incorporated village as something that is a lower entity than a town or a city and it is not by charter incorporate the village of Essex Junction has all the same powers under the municipal government under the state constitution it's always had those powers and it's been a full service community since 1923 thank you you George all right so we will go ahead and close that public hearing and move on to business item 6a work session on Essex Junction independence great thanks Andrew I'm having technical difficulties so I'm not going to be on camera so I apologize for that I'm sideways and I can't figure out how to make it the other way I'm going to stay off camera that's all I'm going to stay off camera so tonight we're going to talk about the proposal contracts discussions that you've been having the last two weeks with the select board just a quick debrief and then take a look at some possible renovations for two Lincoln and then talk about the FY22 city budget thank you Brad so for the public the way we have been doing this is during the work is where we are not making formal decisions tonight but rather we are first talking about the items that Brad had just mentioned and along that lines we are taking public comments on those issues so the proposals and the contracts debrief from our meetings with the select board the plans for two Lincoln Street in terms of possible renovations and that fiscal year 2022 city budget we're taking public comment now in advance of those items so if you have any questions, comments, concerns on those items now is the time to raise those otherwise we will not be revisiting those later on in the meeting so to keep that order of public comments I would first go to the room so George Evan Marguerite is there anybody in the room with their hand up who would like to address the board on any of those items no okay then we will go back to Microsoft and if you have a question comment concern for the board of trustees on any of those items that I had mentioned not seeing any hands going up so then we will go ahead and bring it back to the board and Brad now to you great so the first one is just an open dialogue amongst the trustees about the two negotiations with the proposals and contracts I know several have come in just came in yesterday it's just an open dialogue personally I for one feel pretty good about where we are in the sense that you know with the police agreement it's nice to be as far along as we are with the others such as like finance IT and some of those it's we'll get there but frankly I'm feeling reasonably optimistic about where we are in those conversations with the select board that have been they've been working with us since August pretty diligently to this point and we see that commitment to continue this process so I'm optimistic trustees any other thoughts about how things are going or that you want them to to express Andrew I'm not going to be as just like last night since I'm live but maybe you're I'm not sure who's live and who's not from your perspective but I can't electronically raise my hand so I'm going to have to do it here and jump in but I just want to say with regards to the comment about Indian Brook that we heard earlier and I think this has been an ongoing conversation I know it's important to many people in the village who go to Indian Brook and I am very confident I mean I think the select board has indicated that they are interested in trying to come to some arrangement about Indian Brook and with some of the things that we some of the benefits that we have we can provide for town residents inside the village and so I'm quite confident that we are going to work something out by the time that the charter is approved and I think the issue is that we have been really focusing on the police contract which is by far the most important relationship that we have and the contract we have and so a few of the other things like Indian Brook and the senior center which we are pretty sure we're going to keep everything is going to pretty much hopefully the senior center will remain status quo but Indian Brook we're trying to work out some deal with the town but I think those things will be resolved I just want to also add publicly that I do want to thank the board because they have really collaborated with us and worked with us on this they like us also have a municipal government that they have to run and yet they have been very generous with their time in working with us on these contracts so I wanted to express my appreciation to them for getting this done for the sake of the community, thank you Thank you George I believe I saw Roger and Amber shaking their heads about things to add we're all set with the debrief I'm going to go ahead and try and share my screen the next materials are updated plans for to Lincoln these are not in the packet so I apologize folks are just going to have to follow along with what we have here John Alden is here and he is the architect who came up with these he's done them a few times over the years and so if he is available if anybody has any questions are you seeing the two Lincoln plans document yes looks like a bullet list yep so this is just very quickly some of the assumptions that two Lincoln can indeed serve as the whole of government that we needed space for 13 employees and the primary focal points one is security the building currently trying to limit people to spaces without appropriate credentials keeping an eye on entrances having some barriers between staff and the public and lockable closable spaces certainly updating the need for health and safety address mold and damp areas increase air flow and filtration increase physical space between employees in public keep separate space for employees in public and separate staff bathroom where also goals we only are planning to add an elevator if their intentions to renovate the second floor anything that's done on the first floor it's already used as office space wouldn't trigger the need to put in an elevator the senior center will continue as the senior center the teen center will continue as the teen center NSX chips will continue to have office space available here in the building there are not in any anticipated if the option 3 or 4 which we'll look at shortly are selected it would affect the second floor in which case you know the chips offices may change slightly but they'd still be available we'll take a look at the options in a minute but as you can see there's a range of cost from the low end of 845 845,000 on the high end 1.5 million we've talked about this a few times but the villages anticipating to receive about 3.2 million in ARPA funds American Rescue Plan Act the exact uses of those funds as still being determined certainly water and sewer projects are on the list so there may be opportunities to fund some water and sewer projects and free up capital funds and just a reminder the only other anticipated expense that wouldn't be in the FY23 budget would be some money to get the IT infrastructure up and this is estimated at 50 to 75,000 okay so I'll just show these briefly hopefully everybody can orient themselves you see the conference room there that George is in over to the left so this is option 1 where it's just this is the first floor in option 1 it's a basement and main floor innovation only using the existing entrance and then putting up some barriers within the office area where staff are and we need to create a new space for title searchers who come in to go into the vault and so you see up by in the upper right hand corner number 12 is that title search area and you'll see that repeatedly throughout these drawings to provide public that access so this cost estimate is that 660,000 plus the basement and the conference room eventually would need to be converted into additional office space in this rendering but that would be optional for the trustees if they wanted to keep that conference room until finance was planning to move over or just do all the renovations at once I'm just going to keep rolling through unless somebody stops me this is option 2 which is also just the basement and main floor renovation this option proposes a new entrance to the building if you look to the upper right you see new vestibule and so that entrance goes directly into the area that's next to the vault and so you have access to the assistant city clerk and the title search area this option does a much better job obviously keeping the public in a public space and the staff in a private space and so this new vestibule option is appealing in that sense there is an option to also enclose that emergency staircase that goes up to the second floor to create indoor access to get upstairs instead of going to the other side of the building cost estimate here with the basement is 1.1 this is the basement for both option 1 and option 2 there's 3 offices downstairs and as well as a small worker meeting space with an estimated 131,000 to add that option in now we're into option 3 and 4 this is option 3 these both of these options include an elevator and so it would be work done on the elevator would go all the way to the basement as well as the first and second floors option 3 is you're looking at the first floor this is also with that new entrance so again keeping this option really keeps the entirety of the office as office dedicated office space where staff would be moving freely about without people from the public coming in unless they were invited in or going into that new small conference space the cost estimate here which would we would also include the fire exit stairs and we'll show you the second floor and the basement is 1.5 so this is option 3 continued this is the second floor of Lincoln Hall you're looking down at the building at the same view the portion to the left that's dark gray is the teen center that says existing to remain as is and then you'll see a large conference room which is basically the entire area over the current village offices and then there would still be four offices for Essex chips upstairs here's the basement rendering with the elevator and an additional bathroom in the basement and this is the fourth option it keeps the current entrance adds an elevator it creates kind of a lobby area out by the entrance and then there's still space for the public to get back to the title searching area in the vault so this is a little bit more of a mixture between private space for the staff and then walking through public space to get back and forth to other departments and offices this is the second floor of option 4 which is the elevator and this one has five offices upstairs for chips and the large conference room and this is the basement which is similar adding a bathroom and the last three pages are just the cost estimates which have already been included in the previous pages John I don't know if you want to add anything or otherwise trustees it's open for questions and comments I have no you've done a great job presenting it it was about the 10th time I've reimagined Lincoln Hall so we're pretty familiar and it does have a lot of square footage and I think one of the things that I'll point out is many of these options in fact most of these options leave the chips program and the senior center intact and that is there's a lot going on in this building but it can work for you thank you John thank you Amber your hands up so go ahead I have two questions one John did we lose parking if we put in that extra vestibule you don't lose any parking that it's entirely in the grass but there's quite a bit of electrical equipment outside that needs to be relocated and that's expensive but not impossible is that included in the pricing that we got the cost yes it is second question is a thing Brad had mentioned that if we did the third floor renovation that would trigger the necessity to put in the elevator but if we did the basement renovations that would trigger it as well or is it just the third floor the reason we think the elevator is required if you go to the third floor second floor is you've put the large meeting room upstairs which is a public amenity that it would be unfortunate to try and pull off without getting the public to the room so in the sense that it really becomes your meeting space that essentially triggers the requirement for the elevator you could put it in now it would be great if you had it now but if you decided to renovate the building the public meeting room up there you really got to put the elevator in the downstairs is still a staff location there's some reasons why you might be able to get away with not putting the elevator in just by renovating the staff spaces but once you've decided to put the elevator in you might as well put it in covering all three levels because it's the right thing to do thanks John Ross go ahead so yeah I think I'm wondering about the public meeting room it sounds like only option three and four has leave the city with the option to have meetings such as this in the same building otherwise we'd have to go to various locations around the community is that right I won't say that's entirely true there are options where you could take the staff put those on the second floor and leave the meeting room as is and you probably would be okay with that you're still under some obligation to provide accessibility more functional accessibility to get to the staff people but if they can come downstairs and meet with people as necessary that should work okay the only other question I think I had right now was the documentation we had one of the last things it mentions was we have not budgeted for work that may need to happen and bring the building up to current codes is there anything anticipated there that would be of concern in terms of you know do we know the major codes that you currently don't comply with have to do with mostly ventilation and accessibility and thermal performance if you're not really exposing the cavities or the shell in any way you're not really required to do thermal upgrades if you can provide for access to all the functioning aspects of the building your accessibility requirements can remain relatively neutral and you know ventilation I told the mechanical people that no matter what happens we've got to do a better job in the basement we've got to do a better job all through the building to comply with the mechanical requirements for ventilation and air flow air conditioning and so forth so I believe those costs are included in all of the options yeah okay because especially these days with the ventilation yeah I guess I would well I appreciate that I guess my wonder is if we're going to do this and create a new a renovated seat for the new city I'd want to make sure it was I hate to have to come back in five or ten years and do more work but if that's that's what we have to do for some of those things you mentioned just something to think about I guess for me thanks George since you don't have the the team's hand feature was there anything that you wanted to raise not right now I'm good I think I like all the plans don't really do any specific questions right now thank you George and my only question was around the air quality which you just addressed John so I am all set as well at this point I appreciate your time on it for the tense time great thanks John so next up is the budget I'm going to share my screen again again this these materials were not in the packet and I apologize for that so hopefully you're seeing city of as extension budget estimated yes it's a little small on the screen if you don't mind zooming in but yeah I'm kind of going to breeze through this Andrew covered really everything in the presentation I think just a couple of things to highlight and then an opportunity to ask questions or make suggestions for changes if people want to see any of this revamped before it's put up on the website so again this budget uses FY22 numbers we're not projecting out we're only using things that we actually know it would be too difficult to predict what a new manager would do or what year things would be in when they actually proposed the first city budget again this budget reflects the organization of the city when it's fully operational and self sufficient so it does not assume that we're sharing anything with with any finances any assessing services any senior services it assumes only that police is being contracted with the town of Essex the rest of this info really Andrew you covered so I'm going to very slowly kind of scroll through just to see if anything sticks out we see about $200 savings on a $300,000 home $800,000 savings on general government spending and Andrew highlighted these you know all of the big five departments where we have mirroring services in the town is where we see the most savings along with the town capital fund which we no longer would need to contribute to and we don't really need to replace because most of those projects that are included are not projects that are within the villager city boundaries the increases you know the most significant is police as we talked about there's only one other increase besides the ones that are listed so the conclusion obviously the village of Essex junctions financially well positioned to become the city of Essex junction residents can expect to continue to receive the same high level and quality of municipal services they currently receive and pay less cost savings will be realized by no longer paying for mirror departments in the town of Essex and with that I'll see if there are questions comments or suggestions Brad I appreciate the work you've done it was not something you just put together yesterday it's taken a fair amount of time to gather all this so I do appreciate it as well as it helps to really inform our community as to what this would be from a financial perspective which we've already heard is a significant concern so I really appreciate that in terms of questions I feel like I've been pretty well informed throughout this process and don't really have any and unfortunately can't think of any other questions that I would want the public to hear at this point just as I can't think of other questions related to this so trustees I would ask you if you had any questions comments concerns no Andrew I would just I'd echo your comments I think Brad did a great job and I know that this was actually months in putting this together and I know you also worked with the the joint village town finance staff and I know this is a lot of work pulling all these numbers and splitting everything like this so I just appreciate you putting it all together thanks yeah no problem and George you are correct I could not have done this without Sarah kindly answering my calls even though I think most of the time she doesn't want to and she gave me my magic bullet today I could not figure out for the life of me something that was wrong and she got me through it so for the record I'm sure she was happy to do it but she's busy not that she didn't want to do it but it is a lot of work yes I'm sure it's a lot of work to oversee one budget let alone two municipalities there's a lot to that for sure so Brad I don't think there's any other questions on that so again thank you you're welcome that's it for the work session in group we have a few other items to come back to after stormwater for the main street waterline thank you Brad so with that we will now go on to business item 6B a discussion on the main street waterline I'm not sure who from staff is taking this Sarah was on she was at the capital meeting correct or I mean Amber maybe as chair of the capital committee if you wanted to take it yeah I don't think you want me to do that I can I can start this process memo read memo love Amber Rick is also here Rick I could probably do a beginning job but I'll let you do it and then it'll save me a lot of consternation okay sounds good just let me know when you just point at me when you're ready wait I've been found I'm here I was listening for driving and then there was a bath but I'm back my son my son is in the bathtub I thought you said a bat I know well welcome Sarah do you want to do a quick overview yes I will and then Rick Hamlin I'll point at you it's your turn so we are here tonight to bring a new project a new highly ranked project to the trustees from the village capital committee this is the replacement of the main street waterline I will defer all of the details to Rick and Rick Rick and Ricky but the capital committee heard about this project over the summer I think maybe actually May and then again a little bit in July or certainly in May and they ranked it in May and they ranked it very high but for a number of reasons in your packet I've included the project summary a brief overview of the project and how it was ranked and how it lines up with some of the other projects so it's ranked right behind the two densmore drive culvert projects which are in the works and then the brickyard culvert which is the feeder culvert to those two densmore drives my non-engineering terms and then this project as well the enormous risk or the enormous disruption that would be caused if it were to fail there there is some money in the capital fund in the water in the capital account in the water fund but it's not going to be enough to fund this project as I detailed in the memo this is a project that would be eligible for ARPA funding but it's a process I don't think for us to be able to say yes we're going to use those monies for this project and this project needs to get moving especially if we're going to pursue the bonding options that I do think we will need to pursue there are two methods that we could look to bond for this one of them is a little bit more immediate going with the Vermont Municipal Bond Bank we would put a vote on the ballot in April that would allow us to be part of the spring bond pool and have funding available in July that coupled with the reimbursement resolution would allow us to get started a little bit before then as soon as we knew the vote would go through the other is the state revolving loan fund for the water in front of me and that does have a possibility of some loan forgiveness it also has more stringent guidelines because it's federal money that we get in other federal requirements attached to it and then the timeline would put us a full year out so I'm open to discussing which of those bonding options is better but I do want to let you know about the critical difference there is going to be I think the timeline and then there's also no guarantee that there would be loan forgiveness so if we waited all the risk things so yeah so I would love to have Rick Hamlin give you some actual details about the project and I think Ricky Jones is here as well to weigh in and I will pass it on over to them thank you sir so Rick are you are you on? yes I am okay any preamble you want to provide before I dive into the details I can do the basic public works things and if you want to do the engineer that would be great it does affect a lot of people it does maybe just a brief summary of the number of breaks over the past history would be helpful and then I'll dive into engineering as far as my records and my memory serves we probably had at least 10 breaks on that line in the last well 30 years it's been quite a while since seeing it but then like one of the valves we had to try to fix it with the valve the bolts holding the valve together are actually rotted away with the oil up and actually I have a little I don't know if you can see this but not that's the one so this is what's left of a bonnet bolt from that valve and when we got there to do the repair some of the bolts were actually missing totally corroded and gone I don't know if you can see the detail here of that you can see I can get this to focus a little bit but the end of this bolt is just shattered and the rest of it is totally corroded so that's an example of what we're seeing in the ground when the the only thing holding the top of this valve so valves are made out of two parts the bottom of the valve and the top of the valve which is the bonnet and the bonnet holds the valve assembly into the core of the valve and that bonnet this is a bonnet bolt the only thing holding the top of the valve on was the weight of the earth and so when it was excavated the bonnet of the valve came completely and was the source of one more leak on that one so it's definitely seeing the end of it's life back to you Ricky and then I'll get into details you've got it go ahead Rick take it Rick fair enough thank you so Sarah I don't know do you have the capital sheets that you could share so we could just put up that screenshot there we go so what we're talking about is replacing all of the water line on Main Street from Densmore all the way to the essentially to the Champlain Water District water tank on Upper Main Street it encompasses 12 inch cast iron pipe and also some 16 inch ductile iron pipe and we'd be replacing this whole line and this stretch of 12 inch is where the failures have occurred that Rick Jones had mentioned over time and we've just in the last few years there's been the valve brickyard there's been the failure at Densmore that you may recall blew out the road and took quite a bit of Densmore road with it so as a 12 inch line when there's a failure and the failures that we've seen have been relatively catastrophic we're essentially dumping the contents of that water tank out of that 12 inch line so a lot of water comes out fast so any kind of big failure means not just failure of the water line but potentially some really big impacts to other infrastructure road waste or water sewer lines everything else that's potentially in the road the other thing that happens is obviously when that water goes down residents don't have potable water but there's also not any kind of fire fighting capability when that water system is down and probably the most important thing is that whenever that line goes down it needs to be repaired and the line gets drained because the repairs need to be made and then you bring that line back up every time you open up that water line you potentially expose that water line to contaminants getting into the water system and so keeping the water system enclosed and pressure tight is a key part of keeping the water system in good condition from a health standpoint so as Sarah mentioned the capital committee reviewed this and scored it quite high and the one thing I might add Sarah is that on your table you still have I think some allocation for I believe it was the LaMoyle street water line and that works all done so that project is complete so you can actually take those funds because LaMoyle is all been done and rebuilt and I'll put back together so LaMoyle the funds that were projected out in the distance you were holding a place for LaMoyle is complete so anyway back to the project it's quite significant obviously Main Street a lot of traffic there'll be disruption for the installation it's quite a bit of pipe again dens more all the way up to the upper part of Upper Main Street to make the bend into the Champlain Water District tank one of the things that's not included in here that probably should be is a pressure reducing vault where the arrow is right at the intersection of Fairview and Main you can see there's a break in the pipe right where Sarah's hand is the idea is that right now we've got two different pressure systems in there not interconnected and interconnectability in that area would be very helpful and so we also have the drawing boards right now a pressure reducing vault now an interconnect between the high and low pressure systems that would also provide another way of looping water systems and providing water should another part of the system have difficulties we have a way to backfeed so that's in a nutshell the goal of the project is to get rid of the existing old cast iron pipe that's causing problems replace it with new with new duct liron and then take it all the way up to the tank Rick thank you so much I feel like I learned a little bit more about this project every time we talk about it do the trustees have any questions about this yeah so Sarah, Rick and Rick thank you so much a couple of questions about the project itself to begin with the water line that you're talking about is it under the road and or under the multi-use path so it's primarily biased to the edge of the road and so the impact would be to mainly to sidewalk and the multi-use path which is actually good because it means much less traffic disruption if the work can be done slightly off the road and what's going to have to happen is that the new line would be installed and then the old line would be abandoned so the new line would be installed water services that come off that line would be transferred from the old to the new then once all of those services had been abandoned removed and moved to the new line then the old line would have to be would then be properly abandoned and so the new alignment can't fall in the same place as the existing alignment because they both need to exist at the same time and so the new line would tend to bear more off the street than the existing line so as you were going up main street it would be to the far right for the alignment of the new water line When you talk about when you talk about abandoning the existing line do you mean that it is left to rot or it gets taken out and put somewhere else to rot? I start to think about things in the news with PFAS and gram contamination so