 Should we get started? Put my phone on do not disturb and put it over there. Just needed to tell what time it was. Are there changes from staff? Yes, one change from staff. Tracy noticed that the consent item for human services funding should probably have a motion to reconsider that was not included in the memo that was in your packet. So would request that the select board move item 6C to business. And I know there was some a little bit of chatter amongst the one or two select board members and someone from the public about discussing the reappointments to boards and committees. So I'll leave that to the select board if you want to pull that off into business and have more discussion about that or keep it on consent. And before we do that, I just want to make a note that Evan is on a well-deserved vacation tonight. So that's why he is not here in case anyone is wondering, but I am covering for him. Okay, thanks, Greg. In case we'll move items 6C up to business and we'll have a discussion about what order to put those in in a minute here. So select board members, any addition or agenda changes you'd like to ask for? Patrick. I had not mentioned it to Greg, so I'm not sure if someone else did, but I think for consent items D through G, the reappointments, I would like to pull those out and move those into, I'm not sure how exactly we would do it if we'd move them into executive session, given the discussion of appointment of public officials. So I'm not sure. So what we would do is move it to the business section and then make the motions to go into executive session from there, I believe the motions for that are included in the memo, right? Yep. Yeah, so their motions are there if we need, when we get to that point. Okay, so you'd like to move 6DEF and G into business also. Okay, and there was also a member of the public who had asked a question about how we appoint to committees and whether in deference to the three plus three discussion that's going on, whether there needs to be some consideration to where committee members reside. So perhaps we need to have that discussion. We need to have a discussion about whether to have that discussion since we haven't warned that we were gonna have a discussion about changing how we potentially change how we appoint committee members. We probably won't have that explicit discussion and may need to do that at some other time if we deem it appropriate. So I guess, Patrick, did you want the entire discussion around reappointment to be executive session or was there some other discussion? I was not referring to the three plus three. Right, okay. I think that is something I think is well within public session, but rather specific discussions about individual appointments is executive session material. Yep, yep, okay. All right, great. So then the other, I guess any other select board member comments about agenda. The other consideration is that we have Sarah Reeves from CSWD arriving around eight o'clock. Maybe I'm optimistic and I'm thinking that the agenda is gonna be, or that the meeting might be short this evening. But what I'd like to do is to with the board's permission make item 5D flexible so we can put it wherever in the agenda that it fits to be coincident with when Sarah Reeves arrives. So maybe we may need to go forward and do consent first. It depends on where we are. I don't know how long these other items are gonna take. So having said that, are there any other changes given that I've proposed a somewhat messy possibility for the agenda, maybe I need to make the motion. So I'll go ahead and do that. So I moved that the select board move item business, consent item 6C to business items make it 5E and then move items 6DEF and G also to business following 6C and then also with the provision that 5D will be moved to a point in the agenda that's consistent with when Sarah Reeves is able to attend nominally around eight o'clock. Second. Thank you, Tracy. Any other discussion? Hey, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion is approved. The agenda is changed. Next item on the agenda is public to be heard. This is the time for the public to speak to the select board about topics that are not on the agenda. Is there anyone wishing to speak during public to be heard, either raise your hand in the team's application or indicate in the chat if you're on the phone will allow you an opportunity to speak as we know your presence. So I see Adam Newhart has his hand up. Okay, Adam. Hey, cool. Hey, thank you, Andy. And just a general question for my education around conflicts of interest. So I'm not sure how many of you keep up with local news. I think there's a lot of people missing here tonight because they're on the Essex-Westford School District conflict of interest complaint meeting. And then Charlotte recently lost, gosh, four of their five zoning board members due to conflict of interest concerns. And I saw on the agenda tonight, we have a discussion which will probably be an executive session which is absolutely fine about reappointing public figures. And I know that not saying that that person's position should be taken away by any means, but it's a good example about potential conflicts of interest that on the surface seem very concerning when someone operates as a journalist reporting on the town of Essex local government issues and serves on a committee for that same government. And so I'm curious, you know, to get the board. So Adam, Adam, this topic is on our agenda and the discussion about re-appointment of officials. I didn't want to direct it at anybody. I was really just curious about policies around conflict of interest. And if anything like that's addressed around commitments. So we do have a conflict of interest policy. The individual and individual is able to make the determination for themselves whether they have a conflict of interest. No one can force someone to admit that they have a conflict of interest. The way the policy is written. So it's a personal decision that people would have to make. Okay, great, thank you. Again, we do have this on the discussion for later. Again, yeah, I guess if you're speaking of a specific individual, that's something that we may or may not talk about in executive session. Okay, wonderful. Thank you, Andy. Right, thanks Adam. Andy Champagne. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Okay, yeah. So is it possible to get the salaries of town employees made public like Rutland and Burlington do? They list all their public salaries and so does the state of Vermont. List all the public, all the salaries of all the people who work for the state, city, town, whatever you want to call it. Is it possible to do the same thing in Essex? Greg, can you comment on that? Sure, that information is public. So where do you find that information? You can submit a request if you have specific information you're looking for or general salary information, but please feel free to submit that to me and I can work with our HR director to get you that information. I mean, they listed in like the public reports. I mean, like for like the state of Vermont, you can go out of the web and actually look it up. I mean, why don't we do that? Honestly, it's not something that's come up before so we haven't given too much thought to it. We can think about it more and talk about it more, but at this point it is public, we just don't broadcast it on our website, but again, you're more than welcome to reach out to me and I can track down, help you track down what you're looking for. Okay, so if I gave you a name and they would list, you would tell me exactly how much they know. Okay. Correct. And my email address is G Duggan. That's two G's, D-U-G-G-A-N at Essex.org. Okay, cool, thanks. Yep. Thanks, Greg. Thanks, Andy. Adam Newhart, is your hand still up or is that a new hand? No, my apologies, I did it again. Okay, I am not seeing any other hands. Let me scroll down and see if there's anybody on the phone. I don't see anybody attending by phone. Okay, if there's no other public to be heard, then we'll move on to the first item of business, presentation from energy committee about new net metering proposal from Norwich Technologies and energy plan updates, I believe we'll we'll be presenting. Good, thank you everyone. Hope you're doing all doing well. I am going to try to be as respectful as I can of your stated goal of having a shorter meeting this evening. So I'm not gonna do a long presentation, but it has been a while since. So first of all, my name is Will Dodge. I'm the chair of the energy committee and I have most of the committee members with me as well as tonight a potentially new appointee if it's subject to an interview by the select board. The reason that we're here tonight is to kind of give you an update on a few of the things that the energy committee is working on. And that includes the red off Mr. Chair and to just give you our perspective of kind of where we are having been at least at the beginning of the end of the current major crisis that's affects so many of our lives being COVID, but still in the midst of another very real one which is the climate change crisis. So let me start just making sure as everyone can see that presentation I take it at the moment. So let me tell you a little bit about the energy committee. The energy committee was formed in 2008 with the goal of ultimately doing several different things tracking municipal energy use and recommending to the select board targets and actions for decreasing energy use, researching and recommending to the select board opportunities to utilize renewable energy sources and increase energy efficiency for the town, research and recommend to the select board funding options for efficiency and renewable energy projects, developing energy efficiency educational programs, creating annual reports on energy projects and opportunities and assisting other town committees and commissions in areas of related concern, including but not limited to the energy section of the town plan. The committee can request appropriations for operating expenses through the town budget and staff support through the town manager and the committee can also request grant funding subject to select board approval to carry out its duties. I know Mr. Chair, that you're familiar with this committee because I believe it was one of your first appointments when you started out in Essex and for which we're very grateful and we still have big shoes to fill. Tell you a little bit about with this, with those kind of general goals in mind. Oh, and I should say that even though this is for the, this is an energy, this is a charter for the town of Essex for as long as our institutional historian Irene Renner has been able to tell, the committee has always acted for both town and village and that's something that we actually met on pretty recently and agreed that we're going to continue to do that until someone tells us we can't. We think it's important to look at the village and the town comprehensively as one municipality, at least for energy usage and hopefully that will continue. So a big, an implementation of several of those goals that I read off from that charter was the 2019 Essex Energy Plan that was adopted by both the town and the village and that have very broadly four goals in it. It had a land use goal of trying to develop patterns and building energy use that results in efficiency and mainly, most importantly, greenhouse gas reductions. It had a transportation goal to promote EV or electric vehicle based automobile use as well as making increased availability of public transit, sidewalks and multi-use trails to reduce transportation energy demand. It had a thermal goal, an aggressive one, of 100% residential weatherization and 38% commercial industrial weatherization for all the buildings in Essex as well as kind of a general goal of promoting conservation, efficiency and switching away from fossil fuels and then it had a renewable energy goal which is kind of a complicated one when you read the plan but boiled down to its essentials. It means that we should be trying to achieve about 15 megawatts of solar using existing rooftops and paved surfaces and to give you at least some perspective on what that means, Essex has probably about a little over 12 megawatts today when you combine the generation from the power dam, the portion that's allocated to Essex plus all of the solar plus some other forms of generation. So it's really almost doubling how much renewable generation we have in the town by really by 2030. So we thought that we would briefly mention kind of some of the things that we're working on to implement those goals at least as the energy committee and working with all the folks at the CDO and Greg is staff. Probably the most important thing that the energy committee has helped to advocate for and we're not taking all the credit but we'll take some is hiring Tom Yandell. Tom is the building manager and has been working both on maintaining the buildings generally but on also focusing on energy usage specifically. So a couple of the projects that Tom has been working on now and really over the during the pandemic includes for the town fire department building, fixing up portions of the roof, some of the doors upgrading the lights, adding additional insulation and the results has been a reduction of utility bills by roughly 50% which is pretty good if you think about how often those doors are opening and closing all the time for things like heat loss and also how often folks are there. Another current project is the Sandhill Park pool heating where the combination of a new natural gas line plus and this is the important part 96% efficiency boilers are gonna result in a heated pool, a heated Sandhill pool as well as $2,400 back from Vermont gas in efficiency measures. So another really important one and ongoing struggle as far as Essex zone buildings and its weatherization efforts is Memorial Hall. Tom and others have made a number of improvements but they're still trying to work with Vermont gas on insulation. Efficiency Vermont is only really providing about $2,500. So more money is needed to ultimately insulate that crawl space properly. And if we could get it done, the result would be better community space that's more comfortable to work in and also saving the town some money and having our greenhouse gas footprint reduce a little bit. And then a last project that Tom's been working on lately is replacing fluorescent light fixtures with dimmable LED lighting in 81 Main Street in the town hall. A lot of building that none of us have not seen but then the inside up for a while. But the result is both less strain on the eyes for those who are working there every day. So we end up saving some money and we have a nicer workspace. So those are some of the things that are done all with really a fairly modest budget to work with. So that gives you an idea about the municipal buildings. The other effort that the committee has been focusing on one of the most important sources of greenhouse gases is weatherization. The thermal sector produces the second highest greenhouse gas emissions and is the highest energy user in Vermont. And earlier today we saw a presentation from VECAN that made very clear that that thermal that dealing with thermal is the most important component at ultimately reaching the greenhouse gas goals. Basically between 2008 and now with all of the things that have been done to implement greenhouse gas reductions statewide, we're about halfway to Paris. But to get to the rest of the way to ultimately meet that goal, it means we have to do everything that we did between 2008 and today multiplied by three. So we have a long way to go. And doing that weatherization work is the only way that you can then get extra gains by converting people over to heat pumps or wood. So it's very important. Phil March on our committee did an amazing presentation about weatherization where he worked closely with the Department of Public Service and with some of the efficiency utilities. And what he found out from it was a little bit concerning which is that the blow what's called the blower door test which is the test that is used to determine whether you've achieved substantial weatherizations or comprehensive weatherizations is ultimately being watered down over time. And there hasn't been as much that a lot of the numbers that we have for weatherization are not showing true comprehensive weatherization which really means sort of a 25% reduction in leakage as required by statute. So that's an important point that we're still chasing with efficiency Vermont and other utilities speaking with some of the state representatives about but it's going to take a lot to try to make weatherization a bigger focal point. Another thing that we've been working on and this comes to the agenda item is looking at net metering efforts. Net under Vermont statutes, each municipality is allowed up to 500 KW generation credit if you have projects that are built in your municipality. Right now the town outside the village has a contract with Green Lantern for 200 KW meaning that 300 KW is potentially available if other projects were built. Similarly, the village has a contract with Encore renewables for 150 meaning that they're still room to add 350 KW if the consumption levels are there with the municipality which we think they are. According to Norwich Technologies which is another solar company there's at least a possibility of pursuing potentially a single project that benefits both the town and the village that could use that extra 650 KW of output and save the town and the village a fairly substantial amount of money. But to do all of this it would take time and we did not wanna push forward with it because it's gonna require town staff to become involved whether it's at the Tom and Dennis Letts level as well as through the treasurer to ultimately get the numbers together to have Norwich Technologies or frankly any of the other solar companies to give us a proposal of what it could do. But it could potentially be a very important way of continuing to pursue those renewable generation goals. So that gives you a sort of a snapshot of some of the things that we're working on. I wanted to pass it over very briefly to our colleague on the committee, David Scopin to just talk about the climate emergency and what the committee has been thinking about in figuring out what sorts of things we want to recommend to you. And once David speaks we'll talk about some specific recommendations. David, do you wanna chime in? Certainly. Yeah, the good news is that we're all here talking about this topic. Unfortunately, the bad news, I've lost my magic wand because my intent was that by the time you all woke up you would have read Bill Gates' new book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster and he's not kidding about the disaster and I think you would have found that there's many ways that we can all be acutely involved with taking real action that can bring us to the goal we have, which is to avoid that disaster. And certainly one of them is that we have to talk with another about that topic one-on-one in small groups, collectively, committee to committee but we really need to engage. The other thing is we have to be very strategic. There's no sense in buying an electric school bus if you find that most of the children come to and from the school with a private vehicle. That doesn't make any sense. So one of the things we all have to do is admit our shortcomings and work collectively to pull together and take real action and it will be arduous, but as Bill points out it's doable if we commit. And with that I'll return it to Will. Thank you, David. So let's talk about some of the specific things that we wanted to recommend to the Select Board for consideration tonight. We have seven total, we were trying to narrow it down but we thought that that was a reasonably easy number to keep in mind. So one is, and in each case I'm gonna explain why I think it's consistent with the energy plan. One is to look seriously at solar on the rooftop of the Sandhill Park building as well as a few trackers around the pool or the park. We're not talking about turning the whole park into a giant solar field but a few trackers combined with residential would be a really good and easy and achievable way to ultimately fulfill the goal of exploring possible municipal owned sites for renewable energy generation. A second one and one that's arguably more important is for the town to think seriously about electric vehicles and electric maintenance tools. So in the energy plan there's a bullet that talks about leading by having the town lead by example by replacing its vehicle fleet with electric or biodiesel fuel vehicles as fossil fuel burning vehicles reach the end of their useful life. So far we don't feel, and we could be wrong but we haven't seen any real concrete implementation of that. It makes perfect sense to do but we think it ought to be extended a step further given all the incentives that Green Mountain Power and even Vermont Electric Co-op are putting out to try to replace two cycle tools with electric tools for lawn mowing for maintenance for all of those things makes a lot of sense to do. The third thing we've already sort of talked about is the net metering investigation. And what we'd like to do is have the select boards blessing to continue to explore with the assistance of town staff to the extent it's not overly burdensome on them to come back to you with a concrete proposal for what savings can be achieved by pursuing that extra 650kW capacity. The fourth one, and this is one that we feel is really important in light of the work that Phil March did and given how important weatherization is is to take our button up efforts a little step further and work closely with the Community Development Office to really promote weatherization in 2021. There are a number of incentives as well as dollars that are coming through the state legislature and because we are the second biggest municipality at least when you're looking at us in the totality it makes all the sense in the world to really try to use that money that's only gonna be there once to get as much bang for the buck as we can and really make weatherization work. So up until now, there really aren't any budgetary asks that we're thinking of making to the select board. The last two definitely are budgetary matters. One is an energy building inspector. So in the energy plan, it talks about funding an energy coordinator position to develop energy implementation plans, coordinate efforts for the town and village and encourage residential and energy conservation. And it talks about things like stretch codes but as Tom Yando has pointed out to us there's no point in working through things like weatherization including on commercial buildings, but also residential if there's no way to ultimately enforce and to know whether you're achieving those goals which is precisely the point that came out in the work that Phil did. So the reason that we think an energy coordinator makes sense is because it allows someone to both make sure that we're meeting the goals but also coordinate the efforts and obviously our volunteer committee will still continue to help but there's nothing like making it somebody's full time job to make sure that those energy goals are being fulfilled especially when it comes to weatherization. A six point would be an annual budget for the energy committee and we don't have a specific amount that we're asking for now it's something that we feel that we should develop but what we were hoping is that by having a budget we could put it towards getting more expertise to assist us on where to best put our volunteer energy and time and that would obviously be all the better having an energy building inspector and somebody like Tom who has so much experience that is actually making traction. And then the last and final point is to regularize our check-ins on the energy implementation with other committees and that would include the bike and walk committee within energy within as extension the economic development committee the planning board and also with you folks it's really good if you have these documents and you can show that you're making progress otherwise you start to ask yourself what is the point of making all this paper making all the time and effort that went into the energy plan if we can't actually show the progress. So we're hopeful that in this hopeful time when we've at least come to the end of the pandemic that we can build some general positive civic momentum and really start to help implement the energy plan. So we hope you'll take those recommendations into account and with that we're very happy to share any questions or comments. Thanks, Will and David. So any comments or questions from select board members that you're muted. Thank you. So gosh, I forgot what I was gonna say. Thank you actually for the presentation really impressive work. And I'm something I'm very excited about as well. I agree very strongly about what happened in the town look at its vehicle fleet. I'm wondering, there's so much to it I agree completely with the climate crisis really that we're facing and every little bit I think counts in this instance. Even though for my small, we've had a really strong tendency to lead the nation in a lot of different social initiatives in the past. And I think that this is another area of focus that we could do really well in. I'm wondering, do you see a really kind of a possibilities for I had heard you speak about weatherization. We do potentially have some money coming from the federal government, as far as the most recent legislation that's been passed. I'm wondering, do you have any recommendations about where you think might be best for us to look at spending that in a way that it could be larger projects or smaller projects. Something that would give us maybe the most bang for our buck is we're as a select board or as a community looking at spending potentially some of this money. Because I think a lot of what catches people certainly me myself, I've considered weatherization before but then I'm thinking that initial outlay of this might be $1,000, $2,000. And if I'm thinking of having to spend that or my kids braces, I'm all of a sudden giving pause. But if there is maybe a way that as a municipality we could help people kind of close that gap financially between what they need to outlay and what they could save energy-wise. Maybe I'm rambling a little bit. I should let you guys just talk about, if there is a certain amount of money where do you think it would be best spent? Well, so I really appreciate your comments there. I'm gonna answer it very briefly and then I may pass it over to our colleague, Phil March who did so much work on this. But the big one that recurs to us when we talk about it year after year after year is multi-tenant housing because unlike the single family residents where we can make the calculation about, okay, yes braces versus heat pump but there's this incentive and that incentive and I can be in control of it. With multi-tenant housing, you don't have that situation. You've got a tenant who's cold and you've got a landowner or a landlord who's getting rent and may or may not have incentives to fix things up or just simply pass those costs of having a leaky building right onto that tenant. So if there's money coming in, again, it feels to us like this might be sort of a one in a life or a one in a hopefully a million chance of really using that toward a place that doesn't otherwise have the incentive to use it. Phil, do you wanna expand on that at all? Yeah, sure. I think Will has spot on in terms of the landlords and these multi-unit housing apartments. I think if we could figure out a way to help subsidize the landlords in weatherizing, I think that would be a huge step to help lower utility costs for the people that are the tenants in those buildings. Right now the incentives for multi-unit housing from efficiency Vermont and from Vermont gas are outstanding and so now would be a good time to take advantage of those in addition to helping landlords pay for those weatherization efforts. The other thing I was thinking, right now part of the talk that I gave to the committee a couple of months ago was the fact that we don't know in Essex where the leakiest houses are, so to speak, which ones lose the most heat. I think if we could figure out a way to get together with Vermont gas and the propane and oil users, people that use propane oil and wood, maybe money could be directed toward doing a survey of all the homes in Essex just as a quick audit. Maybe we could subsidize the auditing of homes that we think are the oldest and that are the leakiest in terms of heat loss and that would get us a long way into seeing where we should put our efforts with weatherization in residential homes. Those are my ideas. Awesome, yeah, no, that's great. And maybe this might be a question for Greg unless you guys on the committee know, but has Essex done an energy audit of all of its buildings? I know that we have had a few, but maybe even starting to look at the municipality, the police station, fire stations, what have you. I don't recall having seen anything comprehensive before, but might be a good idea for us to start down that path as we're starting to look at what are our goals for the next 10 years, 20 years, et cetera. I don't know, Greg, if you've seen that, but it's definitely, we're so blessed to have Dennis Lutz because he's so good at keeping track of so much. And he certainly, if he's not done a formal one, he's done several along the way of where he thinks sort of the worst offenders like Memorial Hall and like the fire department to focus on those ones, but maybe doing a comprehensive one would make sense. And again, that does seem like a perfect portfolio or partial portfolio for an energy coordinator, as would be true of potentially doing a multi-tenant residence audits. Go ahead, Greg. Sure, when the police station was built, I believe in 2014, when the town offices were renovated several years ago, I know that was done with an eye towards energy efficiency as far as a comprehensive audit on all buildings, I think we'll nailed it. Dennis, Tom are aware of some of the issues, the bigger issues, but certainly in my time here, and I doubt before my time that there's been any sort of comprehensive audit of all our buildings. Okay, thanks. Something I might try to remember to bring up again, well, something I will remember to bring up again, for conversations going forward, it seems like this is a great jumping off point. All right, thanks, Pat. Any other board members? Vince? Yeah, I just had some questions about like rooftop solar and how maybe like, so what, do we have any ideas about like how to get the community involved in like rooftop solar projects? That's just kind of, that's just short and sweet. Yeah, so I think, you know, luckily we've got some, we've got some important personnel in that the owner for instance of Son Common is originally from Essex. And so if there's possibilities for various promotional items, a lot of those will take place in Essex. We've got some pretty good examples of rooftop solar working really well for folks. One of my favorites is the outlet malls, right? They are completely solarized. And from what we've heard and talking to folks is the tenants actually really appreciate that. And so does Peter, because it allows him to save a little money here to then put into, you know, all of the neat stuff that's happening with the Essex experience. Beyond that, I do think that the legislature needs to get involved a little bit more. There should be a way to do community solar more easily where even if you live in, you know, a neighborhood like mine that has really tall trees and there's no way to put solar on my rooftop. But I'd love to purchase into a plan where I can subsidize it elsewhere. Net metering is very much the same thing too. So that's the other area where we think, you know, a little research now, it's going to take some staff time, but it could go a long way and help us maximize what is basically, you know, a way of just reducing the town's bills by quite a bit while also helping us get to those generation goals. I don't know if that's a full answer, but those are a couple of the things that we can do. For what it's worth though, in the grand scheme of things, what was made very clear on this VCAN call today is that Vermont as a whole is doing pretty well on renewable generation, but where it's not making as much progress as it needs to is on the weatherization, first and foremost, and the transportation second. All right, thank you. And thank you for all the work you put into this. Greg, did you have more comments? Yeah, Vince, PACE loans is another thing that is out there nationally. I'd probably look to see if Will or the energy committee know more about them or if they're being done in Vermont at all. The concept is basically as residents make improvements to their homes for energy efficiency, they kind of get a loan or a tax deduction on the property taxes until they can pay off the loan and then it theoretically increases the value of the home is my simplistic understanding of it, but it could be another option, another research project for the energy committee. Okay, Tracy, go ahead. Yeah, well, I think that rooftop solar and sort of redesigning parking lots and impervious surfaces to have sort of a pavilion of sorts between the parking where you can put solar is important. I'm curious as to whether any work has been done to map out larger plots of land with more acreage that could host solar. If that's been thought of sort of in conjunction with the more developed rooftop solar aspect. Yeah, so my sense and I'm not sure if Greg can chime in, but Darren Sprigler at CDO has actually spent a lot of time and we've spoken about it with him, looking at where are the big game, right? Like could we do the global boundaries parking lot? Well, that has been now further complicated by the fact that they may go to a different utility, but there's big parcels like that where for sure we should be looking at that. And I think everybody's more or less arrived at the point where we know, we don't want to take like a farm field. I mean, there's some interesting policy arguments about that, because we obviously have at least a couple of farms that benefit from that solar in their farming operations, which are hard to do. But leaving that aside, yeah, I think the focus on anything bigger than the rooftop is gonna be on things like parking canopies or just big gravel pits, properties that really have no other value than to just plaster them with panels and turn them into something that's generating electricity. Greg, again? Yeah, just to add to that a little bit, community development has done a little bit of mapping around that. I believe the Regional Planning Commission is another resource in terms of some solar siting. Essex and its town plan, most recent town plan does have a limitation on basically commercial-grade solar wind. And Essex is mostly gonna apply to solar. To Will's point, that's to, for better or worse, keep farm fields being converted completely into solar fields. Great for energy, maybe not as much, depending on your aesthetic views for aesthetics for the Vermont brand, for lack of a better term around it. So just something to keep in mind as we try to figure out the balance between where to put some of those, where to put the solar arrays and other energy saving renewable measures. Thanks, Tracy. Thanks, Greg. Any other board comments? Back to you, Pat. I've got a really good one. Moderails are electric. It's a joke from a previous meeting. I feel that we could probably do better with our harder tax dollars. The Essex Monorail, yeah, probably so. So, let's see, Don, you got any comments or questions? No, okay. So Will, you mentioned the ARPA money that's coming. And I don't know, Greg, I haven't seen anything that says whether the rules have come out for that yet as to how it can be spent. Not that I've seen VLCTs putting together some information about it. I'm signed up to do a webinar tomorrow. Actually, I can't remember if it's VLCT or someone else, but there's more information coming out. So hopefully we'll have better understanding of that in the coming days and weeks. Yeah, okay. We also don't yet know whether the funds will come to the town only or whether it will become to the town and or the village separately. They may be different funds. That's not all sort of that yet, okay. So, but yeah, Will, it's a, I know there's definitely some, I believe some of the, I said, definitely. I don't know if that's true. There's some, I think intent for, at least for affordable housing situate applications for those funds. So this is certainly something that could be looked at what you've, the focus on weatherization along with that. And then the question, is it can be used generally for multi tenant housing? That's something we can certainly look at. And we haven't yet closed on up how we're going to figure out how to spend that money. It's my understanding we have a couple, we'll have a couple of years to spend it. And I think there's some interest in having a lot of public input around that so that we're spending it where the community wants it to go as well. So you mentioned electric vehicles. I think we do have some hybrid vehicles in the fleet. And yeah, with, it's pretty exciting now that there's so many electric vehicles becoming available. So, you know, potentially when those hybrids are beyond their useful life, we could step to electric. Yeah, that'd be fun and good. And I guess I don't have any, are you asking for anything specific from us tonight? Well, I guess what would be helpful would be just a, if the select board's inclined to say that it's okay to pursue and to come back to you with a specific proposal on a net metering process to use up the extra capacity that is otherwise unused. And that benefits the town both financially and from the point of view of greenhouse gases. So do we have a feel for how much staff effort that involves? I know that I remember the Green Lantern plan came to us but I have no feel for how much staff involvement there was in that, you know, whether I don't want to comment or any comment on that, Greg, or. Yeah, it did come to us. There ended up being quite a bit of staff involvement, myself or more so former finance director put a lot of work into that. Trink's interest did a fair amount of work on Village Wastewater to shuffle some things around with some of their existing agreements and free up some capacity there. Will and I have chatted a tiny bit about this. My first, one of my first steps would be to get in touch with the town attorney have them review the contract with Green Lantern, see what else we could do in addition to that and let the energy committee do some more work and speak to knowledge technologies and figure out what that might look like would be my preliminary thoughts. I'm not sure if Will has anything else to add to that. No, I think that's good. In other words, we understand and greatly appreciate that the town staff has pulled in multiple different directions and all the more so in line of everything that's going on. So I think, but I think they would feel to the extent that we ask them of anything, I think they would feel better if there's at least some sort of some level of interest shown by the select board, at least on a preliminary basis. And honestly, it's going to be a hard for staff to find some time if it gets beyond the preliminary stage. It is important, climate change is, it's a real, as David said, it's a disaster that's looming. I'd like to be able to commit us to it. I'd also like some more details for staff. Finance would have to be heavily involved. Looking at the potential separation movement, we don't know, are we putting together two budgets, four budgets, what kind of staff time is going to be devoted to that? If there's just, I guess, hopefully in the coming weeks and months, we'll have a little bit more certainty on workload and direction. And hopefully if Will and his team on the Energy Committee can get some more information too, that would help us with the focus. Okay, all right, thanks. I do see some hands up from the public. And actually, I see, is it David Scopin is at your hand? You're, go ahead, David, since you're on the committee here. Yeah, in this case, it's Natalie also in the committee. And all I wanted to respond, because it fits with everything we're talking about actually with regard to the climate. I believe it was Vince, I believe it was VF initials, but saying, you know, how do we begin to promote, you know, rooftop solar, this sort of thing. And one of the things, you know, you all have called this problem by its name, which is climate disaster, a looming catastrophe. And I think that you all on the select board are willing to lean in with us. The Vermont legislature is working deeply on this, but also when I mentioned calling it by its name as individual citizens, it's enormously helpful if we begin to talk about not, you know, standing on a street court or saying this is climate disaster, but talking to folks about the potential for rooftop solar being much more, being much more willing to talk up ideas of solutions, bike riding, you know, hybrid vehicles, multi-occupant cars, sending your child on the bus instead of in the car, beginning to actually speak those things again. We tend to want to be very careful about not, not telling other folks what to do and we're not, but that is how you build, that is one of the most significant ways to build liquid. And honestly, it's about the only way, is that you are beginning to talk to people and helping them understand that we're of one mind and these are the things that we can do. So you're speaking openly about it and I would encourage all of us to do that as much as possible. All right, thanks Natalie. Patrick, you know, the comment and question. Yeah, I did. I wonder if, as the energy committee, have you made any outreach to the school district? I think in particular, like as you mentioned, busing, you know, but this year was really challenging because, you know, busing was discouraged, you know, in a lot of ways, just simply because of capacity issues. So I'm thinking that as fall comes around, maybe there could be some sort of joint effort between your committee and the school district to, you know, re-encourage families to send their kids on buses, you know, let them know that, you know, we're trying to move again. I think that, you know, inertia is such a big thing. You know, people just get used to driving their kids to school, you know, they've done it for a year. So, you know, in some cases, they're just gonna keep on doing it, even if there are other options. So I would absolutely encourage, and I think you would find a lot of support from Beth Cobb and Brian Donahue about, you know, getting a mix of people to help with an initiative like that, just us thought that popped into my head now as you were talking. It's a great idea and we have, it's an unexplored frontier for us. So we definitely now that hopefully we'll have a normal school year next year, it's something we could take on. Okay, thank you. So let's see, as I said, we've got a couple of hands up from the public. Board okay with going to the public for comment, then we'll come back to the board. I see nodding heads and thumbs up. All right, so Betsy Dunn. Thank you, Andy. I'm wondering if we can have the energy commission kind of talk to the school board, or if it's under our purview, I'm not sure, about putting solar panels on top of all of the school buildings. Most of them are in open settings and they could power the entire school that day. I think that this would be good, certainly there would be an initial outlay of money, but the goal and that looking down the line, I think you would see a good return on your investment in doing that. And the second thing is that my daughter lives in Boston, when she was renting, they had a rental commission where renters could complain about their landowners because she had, when you closed her storm windows, she had a gap of about four inches and she was heating the world, not her apartment at all. And she complained to the landlord and they were like, I didn't care, they're not paying the bill. And so she found the rental commission and did it. And the next thing she knew, they were in there fixing it. So I wonder if that's something that we could think about. I don't know if it's something. And the last one I wanna ask is about affordable housing. Do we have a true definition of what is affordable housing? That's what those are my comments. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that last question, Betsy. We do have a housing commission. Hopefully they could maybe answer that question for us. Okay. Some point. Yeah. Good. And we'll... Greg, go ahead. Maybe Greg's got a comment. Yeah, I actually have an answer to the affordable housing question. The federal definition is below 80% of median income for a certain area. And Essex has adopted that and followed that definition and guidance in its documents. And as to the school board real quickly. So we have explored this a little bit in the past, but as I said here, I do not feel satisfied with the effort that either we made or that was made. Maybe let me put it this way. We may have not found the right person at the Essex-Westford School District to help us with this. So maybe we're gonna get in touch because I feel that that's part of it is us just finding the right contact on the other side to help convey the information and to show the benefits. And it should be a mandate. I mean, what a great way to power the school for the lights and the computers that they use. Heating, who knows? I mean, I think they'd be able to do it. Thank you. Thanks, Betsy. There's somebody whose name is MARG. Short for Margaret. Margaret Smith. Yes, thank you. And I just wanted to say I was very impressed by Will's presentation. And it made me think that I've been thinking about doing some projects in my house around siding, but I don't know where to go for information. I don't know where to look for help on weatherization projects or somebody who would give me some advice on what to do about siding. So I just put that thought out there for you to think about. Thank you. Thank you, Margaret. Patrick, you had a comment? Yeah, just a quick follow-up for Betsy and Will. The school district does have a contract in place with a solar company that does solar fields. I apologize because it's been about two years now since I saw the specifics behind it, but there is something in place even though they're not on the school rooftops themselves. But Will, if you'd like, I can show you an email afterwards and maybe try to get you in touch with, I think, again, probably Brian Donahue is going to be the best person to go to for that. I'm happy to make that introduction because it's something that, I think, going forward as a community, we absolutely need to look into. So thank you, Betsy and Will, both for mentioning that specifically. Okay, thanks, Pat. Okay, I don't see any other hands. Anybody else have any comments? Any other members of the energy committee who want to comment? In answer to one of the pieces of the last question from the public, I think it was Margaret Margaret Margaret. The energy committee has put a guide, a weatherization guide up on the town website. And that'll, it's kind of a summary of all the incentives available. It was just revised a couple of months ago and it gives you an idea of where to look for weatherization programs, whether it should be through efficiency Vermont, Vermont gas, other agencies. So I think if you just look at that, it's on the town website, you'll get your answers about weatherization. I can't speak to the siting issue that you mentioned though. Phil's being a little immodest in that it is Phil who ultimately revised and produced this report and it's fantastic. And it really is a valuable resource. And the other thing that Phil has done a great job in pointing out is that your local libraries will rent you electric bikes. So for those of you who are e-bike curious, now is the time to get a library card and try a bike. I did not know that. Wow. They have ukuleles too, by the way, if you want to play the ukulele. Andy, can we watch you do both? Ride an electric bike and a ukulele at the same time. It'd be dangerous. Okay. Betsy, is your hand up again or is that a holdover? Yes, it is. I was just, I just went back, looked at the website and we're on the website. Do I find this thing about the summary of the different people that are about weatherization of homes? Where is that will? Did he leave? Will, you're muted. Muted. Get, bear with me for one second and I will see if I can make this happen real quickly. I don't want to take a... Let's see. This one. So if you go to the energy committee website, right, you look up on committees, you come down here, you will see revised guide to weatherization opportunities for Essex homeowners. And that is where you'll find a lot of great information. And then if you're interested in more about what we're talking about, you can see the presentation that Phil put together, which is kind of a more global look at what's working and what's not working so well on the residential weatherization front. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, great, thank you. Any other comments? Okay, we'll bring back to the board. Will does have an open question to us about whether to... We would like the energy committee to at least engage about the preliminary work associated with a additional net metering proposal. I think we've made it clear to Will that we have significant limitations to staff availability that may not allow that to go forward in an immediate term, but we should know shortly what our future time allowance look like. So I guess that what I'm looking for is a consensus from the board, whether we're okay with energy committee moving forth with that initiative. I don't think we need a vote, but I think we have consensus. Thumbs up, thumbs up. Don, did I see your head in that? Yep, thumbs up there, all right. So Will, yes, have at it please. And look forward to seeing more when you're able to come back. Again, I'd like to caution that they're, although we do fully recognize the crisis before us, we also have a local issue to deal with as well. Understood and appreciated. Now, we really do appreciate everybody's time and it was great to check in with all of you and we will approach the topic discreetly and with respect to the time allotments of the staff. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. All right, thank you to all of the energy committee. Okay, moving on to item 5B, consider first approval of traffic ordinance updates and authorized staff to warrant a public hearing for final adoption. Greg, you wanna kick this off? Yes, thank you. So this is the traffic ordinances that the board had reviewed back in the fall. There was some, well, there's need, they haven't been updated in years. So the Lieutenant Kissinger, the police department, with public works input from Dennis Lutz and others has gone through and done a revamp of the traffic ordinances, cleaned some stuff up, formatting, cleaned up formatting, make sure everything is consistent in terms of language presentation. From the discussion back in the fall, you probably remember that we were looking at this with the Village Vessex Junction and the Board of Trustees as well, trying to do one comprehensive set of traffic ordinances. There was some discussion and never quite landed on the answer of how to handle things if the trustees wanted to update village ordinances, what's the process to go through with the town? Still looking for an answer to that question. Evan and I have been talking. We have some ideas for putting an MOU together between the town and the village that hopefully we can talk about in the near future at a joint meeting. But for now, rather than continuing to wait indefinitely, we figured that the town outside the village component of the traffic ordinances are ready to go. We can keep moving on them and get them cleaned up. It's important for a few reasons, just to provide some clarity to our residents. It also, the police need to have updated ordinances when they go to court to be able to pursue traffic parking violations. So what you have in your packets today, there's no real changes from what you've seen in the past apart from all the village sections, village streets have been removed. You're looking at just the town outside the village piece. With that said, there's one change that I wanna bring up tonight. We had an astute president who noticed that some of the parking in the 40th and Allen area was a little bit confusing. Speaking about Ethan Allen Avenue and in one section it said that there was no parking on anywhere on Ethan Allen Avenue and another section that said that there was no parking on the southern part of it. So I'm just gonna share my screen here. It is in section 7.20.010. Ethan Allen Avenue says there's no parking for full sides of the street. We would look to remove that. And then in section 7.20.020, it said that there would be no parking on the south side. It's actually on the north side, which is what is there now. So just looking to accurately capture what the current situation is. Beyond that, hopefully you've had a chance to review the changes. Lieutenant Kissinger is here and hopefully ERI can respond to any questions that you might have. And if you're comfortable with them tonight after discussion, staff would ask that you authorize staff to more in a public hearing for June 7th at which point the ordinances could be adopted if there's no more changes after that point. Okay, thanks, Greg. Any comments or questions from board members? Greg, did you have a comment on that? One more thought and it's not Tracy had her hand up. So I'll just add this and maybe it answers the question. I know there was some talk recently about Indian Brook Road and how to handle parking or no parking on Passability of Indian Brook Road. That is not in here. The approach we're gonna do is to likely designate it as a fire lane. That goes through manager approval. It's not an ordinance change. That's the recommendation from the fire chief police and public works. It's a safety issue. It's something the manager can designate. We're just trying to confirm that with legal, the town attorney to make sure that's the correct approach. But if so, that's what we plan. That's how we plan to handle it and that's why it's not in the ordinances that you see tonight. Okay, thanks Greg. Go ahead, Tracy. Yeah, I had a few questions. For 70840 BNC, I'm curious as to whether we have to specify the individual street which are no right on red or whether we could make the verbiage more scalable to say no right on red unless there's a physical or illuminated sign. I'm just thinking then it wouldn't take an ordinance change and public hearing in order to put up a no right on red side for the need arise in the future. Lieutenant Kissinger, do you wanna handle this one? I can. So for B, Tracy, I think that one is specifically for Susie Wilson Road because that one is not a right turn hand, does not allow right hand turn at all because there's two lanes of traffic coming out of Susie Wilson Road and there's two lanes of traffic on Pearl Street. And that's the only one that I know that's full time restricted. The other ones are only an accident when there is someone at the crosswalk that activates the sign. We can look into that and ask the town attorney if we can combine that language. I'll probably say, okay, I would probably refer to the traffic bureau to see if they would allow the generalized language. Sometimes they get very particular about things being generalized but that's something I can look into and report back to the board through Greg. And Lieutenant Kissinger, is that one of those instances where it's helpful if you had to take someone to court for a traffic violation, maybe that's what the traffic bureau references to that they have to have specified and the ordinance says to, that there was no left hand turn there. Yeah, no right hand turn. Yes, we have to bring the ordinances. They have to have a copy of them if they request them. And by statute, if they request them, the defendant also has to have access to the records that they specifically asked for them. Okay, so it sounds like it just puts the town in a more, you know, sort of legally defensible situation if the streets are specifically referenced in the ordinance. That answers that question. Thank you. As far as 7-6-20 and 7-16-25-A goes, I was just curious whether there's specific criteria for how overweight permits are granted. And more specifically, I'm wondering if there would be the ability or the interest in having a fee for overweight permits to offset the wear and tear on the roads caused by overweight vehicles? That unfortunately I can't comment to because a lot of that is regulated by federal standards. That's something Dennis would be the best person to talk to about that. But I know that as far as overweight permits and stuff is regulated quite heavily by the state and by the federal government and their standards, which they allow on the roadways. So I would have to defer that to Dennis, he is the expert. Okay, in one last comment, I know that we've, at our last meeting, we heard about a request for a speed study on Osgoode Hill, just making note that that's still outstanding. I think we should have results back from that by the end of June. So just as an FYI. That's all I had, thanks. So I see a couple of hands up, Ron. This is probably what Greg was gonna say as well. Dennis commented on the overweight limits today in answering some questions that were asked. I think Tracy had asked that via email. There is a process right now for charging for overweight permits and public works keeps track of those in addition to the state of Vermont. I don't specifically remember the fees. I'm not sure if you remember, Greg, but there is a process for that and that is kept track of who has a permit and who doesn't. Correct. So Dennis, let us know that the state has a fee for overweight vehicles and that the town gets a small portion of that. It's like five or $10 per vehicle. It's not much where the town does see some more revenue to help offset some of the heavy vehicles is with development review when a new project goes in, public works and ComDev take a look at how many trips are expected to be generated, volume of traffic, the weight of the truck, stuff like that. They tend to focus it around certain streets and intersections. Dennis called out, in this case, Ethan Allen, or sorry, Allen Martin Drive and Thompson Drive and there's about $91,000 in there which they plan to use this year for some paving on those streets. So they do capture it in different ways. Yeah, and this topic often comes up the Vermont League of Cities and Towns annual meeting. There are many, there's a couple of things. One is the, I guess, the process for getting the overweight permits is pretty cumbersome. But again, it's controlled by the state and then also the fees are pretty nominal. So this does come up. The League of Cities and Towns is trying to advocate on municipalities behalf and also on the truckers' behalfs to make the permitting easier and then also make sure that the fees are adequate for what's needed. Any other comments or questions from board members? Don, go ahead. Well, I'd like to thank Lieutenant Kissinger for all his work. But in regards to that last question, are the police department notified to who has the overweight permits because there was so much concern on San Hill and Allen Martin Drive about overloaded trucks? So I'm not sure, are they notified so they can enforce it or not? To answer your question, Don, yes, we are. They send us updates monthly of companies or independent truckers that have obtained permits through the town. Thank you. You're welcome. All right, any other comments? Since the intent here would be to warn a public hearing, I guess we'll take public comment at the public hearing. Mr. Chair, if I can weigh in on that. There is a public hearing, there would be a public hearing if you warn it. The way that the town of Essex passes its ordinances, you take, you have a public hearing, but then as with any changes, you have to warn another public hearing. So if there's any public input and feedback now that you'd like us to. Sure, get it now. Okay, all right, great, great. Thanks. So any comments from the public? I'm not seeing any hands and I don't see anybody on the phone. Okay, so Greg, are you looking for us to make the motion that's at the bottom of the memo? I would say that. And if you could add as amended tonight, that would be great. And I would capture the parking issues on Ethan Allen Avenue. Okay. Go ahead, Pat. I motion that the select board pass the revised provisions to title seven, motor vehicles, traffic and parking of the town of Essex municipal ordinance and authorized staff to warn a public hearing on the revisions for June 7th, 2021 with the revisions as presented tonight. Okay, thanks, Pat. Do we have a second? Seconded. Thank you, Vince. Any other discussion? Tracy. I'm just wondering if, since we know that we do have a traffic study that we're waiting to hear back on, whether it makes sense to warn a public hearing now or wait until that's finished, because if there are any changes, we then have to start the public hearing process over again. And I'm not suggesting that we leave this open for an indeterminate amount of time, but just allowing that month and a half for that traffic study to happen in finalize. And so then we'd be able to incorporate any changes if they should come about based on that. Greg, any comment on that? I think we're trying to move forward with this because we've been sitting here since fall. Yeah, I guess I would respectfully ask that it go forward tonight. We don't know what the outcome is gonna be of the Osgoode Hill study. If there needs to be a change, we can bring it back and it'd be just a change to that one section as opposed to the whole thing. Dennis is on pace for mid June, end of June for the traffic for the Osgoode Hill study. You never know what's gonna come up, but I hate to push this off for another couple of months and have it fall off the radar again. So I would respectfully ask that it go ahead tonight. Thank you, Greg. No, thank you. Thanks Greg, thanks Greg. Thanks Tracy. So we have a motion on the floor, but I see Betsy Dunn's hand up. We usually don't take public comment after the motion's been made board okay with letting Betsy talk at this point. Any concerns? Go ahead Betsy. Thank you, Andy. I just wasn't realizing that this is any traffic. Are we also gonna still do the study from the beginning of Sand Hill at 15, 15 Jericho Road to where we changed it to 25 for the school? We were going to look at making that whole section of Sand Hill to 25. Is that a study that's part of this traffic? I didn't know. That's not part of the changes that we're looking to approve here today. And it's, I think would be a separate study than the Osgoode Hill discussion. Greg, I don't know if we have any specific plan for when to do a Sand Hill. None that I should call. I know that there was one done for that school section that Betsy mentioned. I can't recall if there's something on the timeline or on the schedule for the rest of Sand Hill. Well, we talked about it in the fall. And because of the kids who walk to Sand Hill Park from the different in the rec programs, there's a lot of kids walking those along Sand Hill Road and people really fly down that road. And I know there's a 30 sign, but that doesn't mean people are going to do it. But I thought we said that we were going to do a study there. We had suggested the possibility and please keep reminding us that we said we were going to do that. I'll check with Dennis Lutz. And we'll also check with Dennis. Yeah, it may be in the plan. We don't have the specifics of what Dennis's plan, right? Thanks so much, Andy. Yep, thanks Betsy. Okay, any other comment from the board? We have a motion to approve and to warn a public hearing. Any other comments? I'm not seeing any. Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm just scrolling down. I don't see Sarah Reeves on yet. So let's go ahead to the next agenda item. Five C, discussion and potential action on Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission, board and committee appointments. I think the intent is to have this discussion in executive session. What is there any other, any thing we should be saying in the public for that on this topic? Go ahead, Craig. The reason staff put this on under business as opposed to consent is that the last time this came up, I think it was a couple of years ago, the select board decided that the alternate, they wanted to have a select board member as the alternate to the Regional Planning Commission board of directors. Elaine Haney is the current alternate. She is willing to continue and step up again and be reappointed, but wanted to give the board an opportunity to discuss if they wanted to do that or if one of the members wanted to step up and serve as the alternate and continuing the tradition that's been in place for at least the past few firms. All right, thanks, Craig. So I guess the question then is, does the board want to have this discussion in open session or should we do an executive session? Go ahead, Pat. I remember that discussion as well. There was some additional information that I don't think that I can share. Right, because it was an executive session. So yeah, so let's go ahead and plan on doing an executive session, yes. Okay, all right. I just saw something flash up in the chat that Sarah Reeves is running late. So in spite of my thought that we might be done early, we're not. So all right, so let's move on then to, we had moved item 6C up to the business section, reconsider FY 2021 Human Services Funding Awards. Greg, did you want to cover that? Sure, I can unmute myself. Tammy Gatchel gave you a great presentation a couple of weeks ago about the Human Services Funding and the changes that have been made in the large number of applicants and funding requests that we've received this year. Unfortunately, after doing that, the funding committee realized that it had missed a couple of scores from one of the members. So Tammy has gotten that and calculated it. It does have a slight change in terms of the award recipients. It's lined out in your memo. It was originally under consent agenda. And then Tracy noticed that we should probably do a motion to reconsider. So there's not two conflicting motions out there. So the Human Services Committee is comfortable with what's recommended in the packet. But this week, still good recommendations. I can try to explain them a little bit better if there's any questions from what's in the packet. But otherwise hoping the boards will take the revised scores and make a motion to reconsider the previous awards and amend them to approve the recommendation that's in the packet tonight. Okay, any comments from board members? Okay, I don't see anybody willing to make a motion. Sir, I'll make a motion that the select board reconsider the 2021 Human Services Funding. Second. Okay, thank you, Tracy and Don. So you say, sorry, just to be clear, you said to reconsider. Do we need to also say unapproved? I think procedurally we reconsider our previous motion. And if yes, we reconsider, then we can make the motion to accept. Okay, okay, the way it's, okay, you want to do two different motions, that's fine. Okay, any other comment? Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes. So do we need a second motion? I will move to approve the 2021 Human Services Funding included in tonight's packet. With the caveat that the voices for inclusion in Essex and Westford is contingent upon them being granted a 501C3 status. Second. Okay, thanks, Tracy. Thanks, Don. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes. Thank you. Thank you for that. And let's scroll down and see if we can see Sarah. She's not here yet. So now we have the, considering reappointment of multiple seats. There was some, I guess there were a couple of aspects to this. One is, there was a request from a member of the public to consider whether in the spirit of three plus three, we needed to consider committee composition to be consistent with that as well. I don't know if, you know, we don't have, we have not warned that discussion on this agenda. So I don't want to necessarily have that discussion, but I guess the discussion is whether to have a discussion. Is it something that folks think we should move forward with? I did respond to the individual that made this request saying that we generally take who we get. We currently have, you know, eight open seats across six different committees. And so it's, it would be somewhat restrictive to, and actually, in all honesty, I don't know whether we have balanced committees already or not. It's not something we've ever asked anyone whether they live in the village or the outside the village in considering. Membership on a committee. So I don't know if anybody has any other comments on that. Do we want to have that discussion? The other thing I asked before I open that up, the other thing is we did, could be the town staff is working on the methodology for paying the stipend to committee members that was approved for the FY 22 budget. And in that discussion, there was also some discussion about revising or reviewing at least how we choose members to be on committees, given that we would essentially be paying people to be in those positions. Perhaps that's the appropriate time to raise this question. I don't know if there's any thoughts on that. Go ahead, Pat. I mean, I think your response, Andy, was very thoughtful. But as you're talking more about it, it does seem like there are a lot of questions around this that are almost certainly going to need a full discussion by the board itself. So rather than kind of lumping it here with a few reappointments, I think it probably is gonna be best to get it onto an agenda at some point in the near future. And or at least I would feel most comfortable doing that rather than kind of impromptu talking about it now. Okay, any other comments? Yeah, I agree, Pat. I think we would need a more fully prepared and more discussion about whether we need to do this. So, okay, okay. And then with regard to the reappointments just to be clear, the town charter puts the responsibility for appointing cemetery commissioners to the municipal manager. That's not a select board appointment. Anyway, we're only approving the appointment that's being by the manager. So that's a slight nuance to that one. But I guess we will have to cover those in the executive session later. All right. Okay, still I don't see Sarah. So I guess we move on to consent agenda. So we'd like to move approval. Make the motion. We approve the consent agenda as presented. So I have a second. Thank you, Don and Tracy. Any comments on consent agenda? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, consent agenda is approved. Let's see, I'll scroll down to see. Don't see Sarah. So let's move on to the reading file. Any board member comments? I guess the one comment or one question I had raised is the upcoming meetings schedule did not include the June 5th date, but Greg confirmed for me that that's still on the calendar. It's a half-day-ish, a little more than a half-day discussion on June 5th. That's a Saturday joint with the trustees strategic planning session. So that was left off the schedule that was in our file. It is still on the books. Anything else? Go ahead Pat. Well, I think primarily thanks to John. Is that Mengen? Mengen for serving on the town planning commission. Saw that his resignation was in there. And also some appreciation for the residential property sales to out-of-state buyers, which was something that, it's info that I've been concerned about for a period of time. More, I think kind of in how it may or may not relate to the short-term Airbnb style rentals, whether or not that's something that we as a select board need to keep an eye on. If we find that that's becoming more commonplace in Essex, right now I think it's limited really to kind of the ski towns in Burlington, has a few. Certainly, I think every town of Vermont probably has a handful, but just keeping our eye on that, just to determine if it's something that we need to take action on as a select board is a pretty wise move considering how utterly crazy the home prices have gotten over the last 18 months or so here in Essex. So thank you for including that in there. Thanks Pat. Any other comments? All right, so only things we have left are Sarah Reeves with the CSWD and then our executive sessions. And then Greg, go ahead. Yeah, there was a comment in the chat that Sarah had just started her presentation in Richmond a few minutes ago. And I think Elise might have her hand up to provide some more insight on that. There may be time to go into executive session and have that discussion, but I'll look to Elise to see if maybe she has a better timeframe. Okay, thanks Greg. Go ahead Elise. Hi guys, I'm here on behalf of CSWD. So that's why I'm timing in. Yeah, Sarah just started with Richmond and they're expecting a presentation. I think her presentation takes about 10 minutes and then the questions. So if you need to move on to executive session and I can hang out and wait to see if when she's finished and send a note in chat if that's helpful. Okay. I guess that's what we will do. I see heads nodding on the board side. So, okay, so let's see, do we have, let's see, do we have to do multiple? Just trying to find the, there's one at the bottom of the memo for CCRPC. Is it the same? I have it over here if you want me to read it. Greg, is it the same or is it different than the one for considering? It will be the same for all of them. All that's considered on the appointment official. Okay. Go ahead Tracy. I moved that the select board enter into executive session to discuss the proposed public official appointments in accordance with one BSA section 313A3 to include the unified manager and the, well, the deputy manager. Okay, do I have a second? Second. Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes. So we will go into executive session and then we will come back to this, to this meeting to hear the CSWD presentation and also to make the decisions based on the discussion we have in executive session. So, okay. We'll be back. Okay, it looks like the select board are all back. Sarah, welcome. I guess- Hi, thank you. By definition it's eight o'clock and you're up. Thank you very much. Thank you for your patience. As you said, my name is Sarah Reaves. I am the executive director for the Chittenden-Sullow Waste District. For those who may be new to the Chittenden County or to CSWD, we are a municipal district created in 1987 to oversee and manage Sullow Waste in Chittenden County. And we are governed by a board of commissioners over volunteers, each of our 18 cities and towns in Chittenden County, a point of representative to the board. And we've been very thankful to have Alan and I be representing Essex for as long as he has. He's been just a wonderful commissioner and we really appreciate and value Alan's participation. CSWD's mission is to reduce and manage the waste generated in Chittenden County in an environmentally sound, effective, efficient and economic manner. And because I'm here to talk about our budget, one of the things I'd like to do is to not only describe how we are funded, but also to describe how we are not funded. The ways we are funded are three main areas. So one is from user fees or TIP fees. And those are the fees that we receive directly from our customers who bring us materials to manage either at our drop-off centers or at the MERV or at our compost facility. The second way that we receive revenue is through the solid waste management fee. And that is a per ton fee that is charged to haulers, our materials that they bring directly to the Coventry landfill. And then the third main way that we receive revenue is from material sales and product sales. So things that we make like our compost products, our local color paint and the recycling that we sort through our materials recovery facility where we do not receive funding or revenues is directly from our member towns and cities. So we do not assess any per capita fees. We do not receive any property tax dollars or income, local income and local sales tax dollars, nothing directly from the municipalities themselves, just from the fees that I mentioned. So this in the fiscal 22 budget, we are anticipating revenues in the amount of 12,954,793 dollars. And we believe that is a conservative estimate and I'll explain why in a moment. We are anticipating expenditures in the amount of 12,323,072 dollars. And the delta between the two, roughly $860,000 will be divided between our solid waste management fee reserve, our biosolids reserve and an operating reserve. We are anticipating fee increases in only two areas this year. The main fee increase area is at our Organics Diversion Facility, the home of Green Mountain Compost and raising the fees there on incoming food scraps and organic material from $60 per tonne to $65 per tonne. And the other fee increases are on some of our biosolids fees. And because that is a pass through and as you would know, as you are one of them, the towns that participates in that program, that is related to the amount generated. So this is a strike and a strike pass through on that. The reason I say that we're expecting the revenues to be conservative in the 12,9 is that we are anticipating another very strong year in material sales, both from the MRF, the Recycling Facility and from Compost. And one of the things that happened over past calendar year 2020 due to COVID was an increase in the demand for paper products in particular. So cardboard, no surprise, people were ordering online quite a bit. And in mixed paper and mixed paper, recycled mixed paper can be used to make paper towels, toilet paper, and wipes. So also no surprise. So what that means for us, because 80% of the material that is processed through the MRF are paper products, that demand again drove off the price that the revenue we received for those products. The demand has continued through this calendar year and we are expecting it to continue through the next fiscal year as well. Also COVID related was our very good sales on compost products. We completely sold out very early last year as people were either building new gardens, increasing the old gardens, growing food at home. We're seeing the same things happening this year. We actually did sell through most of our product already this year and we're anticipating additional good sales next year for compost products, which is great news. We are also expecting a very heavy capital investment year, actually very heavy capital investment over the year over the next four years. We're spending quite a bit of money on our infrastructure. We were anticipating the Act 148 deadline with that happened last July 1, where now all food scraps must be kept out of the landfill. So we were improving the infrastructure at Green Mountain Compost last year. It was phase one that's completed. So that a portion of that area has been expanded. We're continuing that investment. We are also looking at making investments in our Milton drop off center, our Richmond drop off center, and we are also in this current fiscal year which may spill over to next year doing some work of the Essex drop off center too. So we're focusing on those three DOCs at the end of this fiscal year and going into next fiscal year. We're also looking at beginning the design and permitting work for a new materials recovery facility. So as I've been talking with you over the past couple of years, that need for a new facility that did not go away with COVID. In fact, it just highlighted the need for that facility. We don't have the money in the bank for that. So the other capital infrastructures we do. So what we're doing is we are pursuing various funding streams. We were not eligible for the ARPA funds because Vermont does not have county government. We were not eligible to receive any of those dollars. We are looking to the congressional earmarks that were just announced by the federal delegation a little while ago. So we will be pursuing earmarks. If hopefully they'll become available. If not, and we're not actually hanging our hat on that, we will be coming to our cities and towns for a municipal bond in November of 2022. So that bond would not require an assessment to the member towns. We would pay that payment through again, user fees. So the tip fees that we charge at the MRF through if that for some reason wasn't enough to pay that payment, we would then supplement that with the material revenue. And if for some reason that wasn't enough, we would supplement with the solace management fee revenue. So we have three streams of revenue to pay that bond debt down. So we would not be coming to you for that payment. And people have been asking me about the rover. So as I go to presentations, that's been one of the questions that's been coming up. So we did suspend the rover events through COVID and as we put into an effect to the appointment system at the environmental depot, we'll be bringing back some modified version, modified rover events starting in the fall. I don't have the exact dates, but those will be coming back. It's September and October. We'll see how the participation is to evaluate that over the winter and possibly bring some back in the spring. But you can always go to the environmental depot. That appointment system works very, very well. It's super fast. So that is always available. You don't have to wait for a rover. I know people like the rover and I appreciate that, but you don't have to wait. And one of the things I'm also reminding our communities about is the community cleanup fund. And every community has money that has been provided through the CSWD budget to each member town for use within your town for waste prevention projects, for cleanup projects, for tire cleanups, whatever you may want to use it for. And you have $7,500 to use for those projects. And you would just talk to Alan and Alan would submit the project and we would cut you a check. So I wanna make sure that everyone is aware of the amount that they have available to them. So I know that was kind of a rushed version of the presentation. I would love to open it up for any questions that you may have. Okay, any questions from board members? Go ahead, Pat. No question, but a compliment, Sarah, for all the staff as well and Alan especially. I am our alternate and I have to say that I have not once in my time ever needed to fill in for Alan, which is, I think, very impressive. Although I do get all the materials and study through them, I'm very much looking forward to actually being able to go onsite and take some of the tours because we were kind of in the middle of or at least starting to do that and then COVID hit last year. And I haven't had a chance to get to any of the facilities but reading all the materials as they come through to me, you guys do some really incredible work over there. So my deepest thanks to you guys and as I mentioned, especially Alan for filling in as often and as well as he attends those meetings. He is stalwart. He's so reliable and so knowledgeable. He's wonderful. We have great commissioners to have Alan who has been involved for so long to have that historical and institutional knowledge is really valuable. And thank you, Petra, for bringing up tours. We had to suspend a lot of our tours due to COVID and that's something we're very much looking forward to getting back on track. So as soon as we have the Murph tours in particular, really interesting, the compost facility tours, once those are kind of back and live, we will certainly let you and the public know we would love to have you come in and really see in person is seeing is it's amazing. Kind of blows your mind a little bit. So yeah, I've had about 10 days until I'm fully vaccinated. So, you know, you make sure my name's on the list and I will be there. You got it. Okay, any other comments or questions? Go ahead, Tracy. Not a question, just a comment. I wanted to say kudos and, you know, great job looking at not only what you're doing but how you're doing it. I think those focuses on continuous process improvement are important. They're not easy, but it looks like you saw the benefit from doing that. So just good work. Thank you. It's important. Thanks, Tracy. Anybody else? Okay, Sarah, you and I have been in this meeting together for a number of times since you've been here, right? Since you've joined CSWD. I'm gonna ask some of the same questions I asked before but I got some new ones too. The new Murph, is that gonna be operated by Cassella also? I mean, you're currently... It's a good question. You're right. We currently have an operating contract with Cassella and they have been the only game in town to operate that. So years ago, I'm not even sure how long ago it was that we may have gone out to bed and there were no other respondents. We are coming towards the end of an eight year contract that is up next June, June of 2022, calendar 22. So we will need to clearly talk with them about an extension. If we were to receive approval from our member communities and we need to, if it goes out to bed then we just have to have a majority of our voters in the district to approve that bond. We would not be most likely in the new facility and running until sometime into 2024. So we would be looking to extend certainly the operating contract with Cassella. I think that we owe the district and our members some due diligence and putting it out to bid. So there's not necessarily the guarantee that Cassella will be operating. I would expect that they would bid on the contract. It's certainly a good contract but we would be doing our due diligence and we would put it out to public bid. Okay, so you don't intend to run it yourself. It would be contract with somebody. Well, there's nothing stopping the district from bidding on it as well. Okay, okay. Okay, I think you already answered my next question about the MRF, the presentation says that member municipalities need to approve. But I think you said a majority needs to approve. So it's not approved by everybody, just a majority of your member communities. All of the voters, yeah, that's right. So is that a, it was a majority of the voters. So I guess my question is do you put the same question to the entire, all of your member communities and it's one pool of voters or is it municipality by municipality and a majority of municipalities need to approve? My understanding and I have had to seek a legal opinion on this, but I'm, so I'm going to make sure that I've got it straight. My understanding is that it is a majority of the entire voter pool in Chittenden County. All of the voters. Because you are on municipality, all of the entirety of your member communities is your constituency, gotcha. Okay, thank you. That's my understanding. I will clearly verify that, but that's my understanding. Devin, I'll look for the date for when that vote will be. Just. November 2022 is our aim. Okay. Okay, it'll be in conjunction with another election. So it's not an additional election for us. Okay. That's right. That's right. Okay. And you already mentioned the ARPA dollars, which you were not eligible for. Last year I brought up a question about, and I did it yesterday. I actually got some mail that was something important. But yesterday my entire, everything that came to my mailbox, my snail mail never made it inside my house. It went directly into my recycle bin. And you had said that at the time, paper was not a favored commodity from your perspective. And you were trying to work with a legislature to come with a way to make those who send such mailings be responsible for the processing of it. Is that still progressing? Is there any update on that? Yeah. So we have been talking with particularly the Senate, but really anyone in the legislature who will listen about a program that would call extended producer responsibility for printed paper and packaging. It's a program that is throughout Canada, it's in Europe, it's in Asia. It's nowhere in the United States, but there are several states that are looking at a program like this. And it would put more of the onus on those producers of this material to pay for either the recycling of that, to incentivize them to reduce the amount that they're putting into the waste stream. It would incentivize them to particularly for, the ones that bother me the most are the ones that are kind of plasticky. They're not really cardboard, they're not really paper, they're laminated. That can only go in the trash. There's no recycling that. People who are making those particular products should pay a little bit of a fee for that so that we can at least either incentivize them to change that so that it is recyclable or to come up with a different way of doing their marketing. So that bill has been, it was written, it did not get hearing this year because the focus was on the bottle bill for much of the session, particularly in the house and a bit in the Senate. So the EPR bill did not get a good hearing. We do expect to work on it again in the next half of the session. We're going to the second half of the biennium so it won't get taken up as its own bill but we will continue to be pushing for this because it doesn't just cover this junk mail, it's any packaging, all printed materials, it's the whole kit in kombutl. So yes, we've got a draft bill, it just didn't get the time this year, unfortunately. Yep, yep, okay. Yeah, it was a different year for sure. Yes. Okay, and then the other question I've asked you before is I see in your budget that you're adding both IT and HR staff and what I've asked you before is, that's, if there's any way to share back office operations with other regional entities that may have, you know, similar needs. Any thoughts on that? Yes, thank you. So we, when we looked at the IT position, our IT needs are fairly complex and are fairly standalone as far as our data needs, our data analysis needs, the locations, we have point of sale systems, we have scale systems, we are taking in information from multiple different scale systems that we then have to cross, it's quite complex. So the IT piece really didn't fit well with sharing, we're fairly unique. The HR position, when we looked at that, it didn't quite seem to support sharing. We will continue to look at that. Maybe there are programs that we can work together on. I'm thinking possibly something like if we could share resources or ideas around our wellness programs, I don't know, other organizations have those, but the IT really was too specialized to do that kind of sharing, but possibly some opportunities in HR. Okay. All right, thanks Sarah. Thank you. Any other comments from the board? Any comments or questions from the public? I don't see any hands up. So Sarah, are you asking for something from us this evening? Yes, please, if we would really appreciate a vote on our budget if you are so inclined. Okay, let's see, do we have a, we don't have a memo on this. Do we have Greg? We don't. No, we do not. Okay. So Greg, is that the, yeah, I guess the intent we could either approve it tonight or some other night, but it needs to be before May 11th or something like that, or not May 11th, June. May 11th or 14th, maybe 11th, go with 11th, so earlier. Well, given that we have the information, Andy, we should vote on it. And we're here now, yeah, so I was just gonna say, that's not, unless somebody has a reason to push it off, I think, right, anybody wanna make a motion to approve the CSWD budget as proposed? I make the motion that we approve the CSWD budget as presented. Do I have a second? Thank you, Don and Vince, any further discussions? All those in favor, please say, aye. Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes, 5-0. Thank you, Sarah, for your presentation and for your time. I'm sorry to make you wait over here in executive session. No worries. Thank you. No worries, thank you very much. I appreciate the time. Take care. Thank you. All righty, yep, thank you. Okay, now we need to return to two motions that we need to make about appointments. First one, game for the CCRPC Board and community appointments. Anybody have that motion available? If not, I can go ahead and do it. I've got it right here. All right, I'm gonna go for it. I moved that the select board reappoint Jeffrey Carr as Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission Board of Director, Representative Tracy Delphia as the CCRPC Board of Director, Alternate Dennis Lutz as the CCRPC Transportation Advisory Committee Representative and Clean Water Advisory Committee Alternate and Annie Kastandi as the CWAC representative. Second. Thank you, Dennis, any further discussions? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes 5-0. Okay, and then we have another motion for the reappointments. Anybody have that available? If not, I've got it or Greg's pulling up looks like. So it's the paragraph under recommendation. We've already done the executive session, so yep. All right, I'll go for it. I moved that the select board reappoint the following members of the respective committees to a three-year term to expire June 30th, 2024. Justin St. James to the Town Zoning Board of Adjustment, Irene Renner to the Town Energy Committee, Marie Froschel to the Essex Free Library Board of Trustees and to approve the Town Manager to appoint Joan Janssen to the Town Cemetery Commission. Second. Thank you, Don, any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes 5-0. I think that concludes our business for the day. Although a question did come up from Don, do have about the schedule, meeting schedule. We do have a joint meeting with the trustees a week from tonight. It's not clear to me that the agenda has been fully closed. One of the items will be Evans Evaluation. That will likely be an executive session discussion to close that and then a motion outside of executive session. Other than that, I don't know yet what's on the agenda. I will be certainly reaching out to Andrew. Greg, do you have anything to say there? Yeah, the stuff we have penciled in is to have a discussion about the June 5th Strategic Planning Session. We're hoping to have a final draft agenda for that for you to review and talk about some of the goals that you might wanna have or that you might have going into that session. And then based on the discussion tonight about the traffic ordinances, we are hoping to have a conversation about how the town and the village, select board and trustees, want to handle ordinance adoption. Okay. All right, and we should see the agenda as we usually do this coming Friday before the meeting next Monday. So, all right. Okay, any other comments or questions? Comfortments, complaints from anybody? I make the motion we adjourn. Do we have a second? Second. Okay, thank you. Don and Vince, motions to adjourn are non-debatable. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, thank you very much. We will see you next week at our joint meeting. See y'all later, everybody. Yep. Hey, everyone. Bye.