 Hello, and welcome to Town Meeting TV's coverage of Town Meeting Day 2024. This program is part of a series of forums we are bringing you in advance of Town Meeting Day on Tuesday, March 5. Town Meeting TV hosts forums with all candidates and covers the questions you will see on your ballot, introducing you to community decision makers, and connecting you with issues that shape your local community. You can find all our forums at cctv.org slash 2024 or on our Town Meeting TV YouTube channel, where auto-generated captions are available. On tonight's program, we will hear from one candidate running for the Essex Select Board. This is Tracy Delphia, an incumbent. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. We have prepared a list of questions for you. You will have 90 seconds to answer each question. And if you are tuning in live, we also welcome your questions at 802-862-3966. If you call in, we will do our best to prioritize your question, though we will screen calls to ensure questions are not repeated. We ask that you share your name and the town you live in. Let's get started with your one-minute opening statement. Tracy, why do you love Essex and what will be different for the community if you are elected once again? Thanks. Essex is home. The people, the businesses, the staff, everyone is so hardworking and dedicated to our community, to our residents. Our community is so invested in the unique opportunity that we currently have to redefine who we are, what we value, and what is important to us. I don't see so much of a difference if I'm elected, but a continuation of the good work that's happened over the last three years. We have made strides toward more communication, not only with our community, but putting in place feedback mechanisms with our communities, or excuse me, our committees to the select board and vice versa to really bridge that gap of where do those gaps, where do the overlaps exist so that we're not duplicating efforts, and that we're all pushing in the same direction. Many hands make less work, so if we're all pushing in the same direction and we're all going toward the same goal, we should be able to get there faster. I've also had multiple people mention to me that the tone, the tenor, and the welcoming feeling in the meetings are palpable. They feel more inclusive, more open. This is something that we're obviously striving to continue, not only on the select board now, but in the future three years. Awesome, thank you. So we have some questions about the town budget. The proposed town budget represents a 3.8 increase, 3.8% increase from last year. What's in this budget? Do you support it? Is there anything you would have preferred to change? Big question. I do support the budget. Early conversations with the select board through our strategic planning sessions, early budget discussions. It was important to the select board that we keep any increase to 5% or below. Last year we did see over a 22% increase in the property tax per house. However, the actual budget was a 7% reduction from the prior year. So taking that into consideration, the actual budget is proposed to increase 4.58% over fiscal 24. The municipal tax rate, however, is proposed to only increase 4.24% from FY24. The dollar impact to the average $280,000 home is $80.36 per year. Mean drivers of the increase this year, health insurance premiums are on the increase across the board, approximately 12% to 14% plus depending on the individually selected plan. As with our household budgets, everybody knows inflation. This is seen through personnel costs, the collective bargaining agreements, everything from construction supplies, gasoline heating costs, road salt. Like I said, even in our household budgets, we see this. We are not immune at the municipality to these types of increases. We do have some offsets to these increases based on contractual obligations that still exist with the city of Essex Junction, namely the police department budget is still shared based on that shared services agreement, and the assessing services are still shared and those will continue to be shared throughout the reassessment. What I'd like to see change, I'd like to change the narrative around being proactive in budgeting. And what I mean by that is our capital planning needs, equipment replacements, capital planning is basically our savings account for planned expenses, ongoing expenses. And waiting until something is broken or absolutely needs to be replaced is penny wise and pound foolish. I'd like to see more of an approach like in our own household budget. If you're spending more on replacement or repair costs for your vehicle than it would cost for a new monthly payment, what we would do is just go and buy that new car and incur that new cost because it's less expensive in the long run. Thank you. So ballot items, do you support the bond items and the ballot questions to include more information in the town's annual report? In addition to the regular budget questions, the moderator, the select board position, there are two additional items on the budget stemming from voter backed petitions. One is to list in the annual report the tax stabilization agreements, which are agreements that the select board, the town, enter into with businesses to basically ramp up their payment of taxes to the municipality, primarily for economic benefit. So for creation of jobs, so to speak. The other is to fully list out staff positions, salaries within the town report. I should note that these are all currently publicly accessible information. You can call the town offices. You can get them personally. I don't see a reason why this information shouldn't be included in the annual report. If it leads toward more transparency, more interest from the public, I don't see a downside to that. Thank you. So the town plan 2024, another big topic. On town meeting day, Essex's next town plan will be on the ballot. Do you support the proposed town plan? What do you like about it? Is there anything you wish were different about it? I'm sort of a municipal planning nerd. So town plans, I find them very interesting. A town plan is basically a visionary guiding document that sets the goals for the municipality over the coming eight years. In my experience, we should always be tying back our priority, our work list, our department assignments, our committee work to the vision, the goals, and the strategies listed in that town plan. The town plan also opens new grant opportunities. With it comes a proposal for a town center designation, which would open up grant opportunities for the state, which would also offset future costs. It paints a clear picture for the future, establishes clear and transparent goals, sets public policy, and promotes, helps manage future costs. Our zoning regulations haven't been updated since 2016. So the town plan will lay that foundation for those updated regulations. And the town plan process actually went through a really large amount of public input through the committee structure and engaging residents. I absolutely support the town plan. Awesome. Wonderful. Thank you. So the new town office. The town of Essex used ARPA funds to purchase land for a new town office to be constructed in the coming years. Do you think this was the right use of ARPA funds? What do you hope this space will provide for the Essex community? One time money should rarely be used for ongoing expenses unless a replacement funding mechanism has already been identified, approved, and readily available. Too many times, free money, so to speak, there is no such thing, is used in the moment without a plan for the cliff that's eventually going to come when those funds end. So I do think that this was the right use for ARPA funds, one time money, particularly following community outreach that identified community space as one of the appropriate uses for that funding. I'm very excited to see the start of public engagement around the details of what should be located there, in addition to, you know, obviously moving our town offices there. Personally, it's more important what the community wants, but personally, I'd really like to see the inclusion of community gardens, farmers market space, consolidated meeting space, not only for our community, but staff, as well as ADA accessible walking pads for recreation, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, such as solar to offset the costs of energy utilization on that site. And also, TANT amount, like very important to this, is a public-private partnership. It's important not only to meet the goals for the ETC Next plan, but also as a funding mechanism should the town decide to use it for things like a tax incremental finance district or selling and leasing space to offset the costs. And there's already been interest in those opportunities. So it's really exciting. Wow. Great. The Essex separation. That's my next question. How is the separation of Essex and Essex Junction progressing? FY24 budget was our first sole budget is just the town without the city, the former village. The finance department is operating independently. They are no longer co-located. And as stated previously, there is still the shared policing agreement as well as the assessor. We have been able to focus more on operational items as opposed to do we merge, do we separate? But the train is very much down the tracks. We are completely separated financially absent those two agreements, but financially and from a municipal operating perspective. Congratulations. So big topic of late, public safety. So here's a few questions. What is the state of crime and public safety in Essex? What is the select board's role in keeping Essex safe and how many officers does Essex have? How many are they budgeted for? I always think there is room for improvement when it comes to public safety simply because bad things will always exist in this world. Recent drug busts, overdose events are concerning to me. And there is an opportunity for public awareness and engagement. Knowledge is power. And I think many in our community are completely unaware of this threat, particularly parents. This is not a them problem. It's something that needs an us conversation to truly move the needle in a positive direction. And I'd also like to see a statewide approach to addressing this important issue. Patrol officers are budgeted at 90 percent to better align with historical spending, primarily due to staff shortages. So it's in line with with what we've seen historically. Dispatch services are now budgeted at 100 percent. So we're fully staffed after being at 90 percent for fiscal 24. OK, thank you. Property appraisal, Essex is currently conducting a property reappraisal across the town. What do you anticipate will be the impact of this reappraisal and how might this change the way Essex considers property tax burden? It's largely unknown what the individual impact will be, because, you know, you may slightly go up, others may slightly go down. It's my anticipation that property values will increase, but it'll reduce the underlying tax rate. I think of it as a three legged stool. If you have A, which is your your grand list, your property value times B, which is your tax rate to fund C, which is your budget amount. I'm oversimplifying, but to fund C. So if you level fund that budget, if your property rates go up, if your assessed value goes up, the tax rate will go down to come up with a number that will fund the budget. So I don't anticipate any large changes in property tax bills for that reason. Right. Thank you. Well, this has been really wonderful to ask you these questions. And I wanted to see if you would like to end with some thoughts about how your love of Essex and and just some ending statements for this time together. Sure. As I said before, Essex is obviously my home. I love living on a wooded property, but being able to be where I can shop, where I can recreate, where I can work, where I can meet with friends and and members of the community within minutes of my front door. I've always believed in service above self throughout my entire life. My parents taught me that very important lesson in making changes for the betterment of our community. And I would like to just give a call out for our volunteers, our committee members, our dedicated staff members who truly are dedicated to the community and make it what it is. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you for tuning in to Town Meeting TV's ongoing coverage of local candidates, local budgets and ballot items. You can find this and many more forums at cctv.org slash 2024 or on our Town Meeting TV YouTube channel. And you can tune into our live election results show after you cast your ballot on March 5th. Contact your local clerk to find out how to obtain a ballot and to register to vote. 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