 Is there any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? We are going to move into executive session there. For those of you in the town hall, you'll be going downstairs and I'm going to stay right at my computer and join you in a few minutes. Thanks, Derek. We're actually going to go with the annex. I found some more room over there tonight. So we'll see you in just a moment. Okay. So we're back in session and sorry about the delay to people who were considering motion now on a subject that was discussed in executive session that is an MOU with the fire department. So Eric, you want to just give a very brief introduction to that subject and we'll take a motion. Yep. This is a MOU for a short term stipend for call staff in the town hall. I'm going to move to approve a memorandum of understanding with the Williston professional firefighters IAFF local 4-6-11 regarding weekend call staff coverage and authorized town manager to sign the agreement on behalf of the town. Second. Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? So we have taken care of that. Has Gordon joined us yet? I did. I am staying from that area. Okay. Oh, okay. And for 4-0-1. Thank you. Then we'll move on to the minutes. We have two sets of minutes tonight to look at. And the minutes of January 11th, 22 are the first ones. Is there a motion to approve? We approve. Modification. Is there a second? Second. Page one. And page two. Hearing no corrections. All those in favor of approving the minutes of January 11th, 22. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. The next one near the are the minutes of January 18th, 2022. Is there a motion? Will we approve subject to modification? Is there a second? Second. Page one. Page two. Under item number six, space covering rule making an extension. The last sentence mentions. Public comments received, which were the ones mentioned. We're all against the mass mandate. And I want to point out and think the minutes should reflect on that. We also receive. Comments that were in support of the mass mandate. Yes. Page three. And page four. Hearing no further corrections then all those in favor of approving the minutes of January 18th, 2022. Say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. We can go on to public comment. Is there anyone in the meeting room that wishes to make it a public comment? No one here. And I don't see anyone who's indicated such online either. Okay. We'll make a move on then to the highway mileage certification and acceptance of the road. And, um, Erica. You're going to explain this or is Bruce there? Yep. Bruce is here and for folks watching, this is an annual exercise for the town to confirm its highway mileage for the certificate. First, we have a short section of roadway for the board to consider this evening. And then after that, the highway mileage certificate. This determines how much, say, eight dollars for class two and three highways. The town will receive and it requires. I'll turn it over to public works director Bruce for. Okay. This is just to clean up something. We're not actually accepting any. It's not really a new road. It's a portion portion of it's daily in a portion of day lane. That's actually been there a little while ago, but it's been there a little while ago. It's a portion portion of it's daily in a portion of day lane. That's actually been there longer than the newer section of day lane. This section goes from night lane is up a road. Whatever reason, it wasn't accepted and put on the town highway map. So this is just to take care of that. So it says you can see it's what a tenth of a mile. Yeah. A little over a tenth of a mile. Any questions from Bruce? Mary. This shows up on a map from 1973. That can't be right. I'm misunderstanding. Those shows up on a map from where? Not 94 was the plan. It doesn't show up on the town highway. There's actually one more little section this section. It's just up the road from it. It goes into Chelsea Commons. It's in the shorter section, but so far we haven't been able to get the deeds cleaned up to find out. We have a utility easement underneath that, but that's not good enough for us to accept the short section of road there. So that'll be something that still needs to be done. But other than that, we're all set. Any further questions? There is a motion suggested. Move to accept 0.103 miles of road segments described in the memo from Public Works director Bruce horror dated January 10, 2022. As class three town highway and authorized the town manager to sign any necessary documentation. It's your second. Second. As your discussion on the motion. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed. Any abstentions. Good. Moving on into. The EPA update. And I think we have three people. Remotely connected to us to talk about the. The Superfund site that we have in Williston. Get it back. Yep. Yeah. And Terry, there's one more motion for the board to consider regarding the highway certificate. Ah, okay. Sorry about that. I didn't see the other motion. Oh, yeah, I see. Move to oppose. Yes. If the chair would allow, I'd move to approve the 2022 certificate of highway mileage. Thank you very much. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion on the motion? All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed. Any abstentions. Thank you. Thank you very much. The coal is really not getting me down, but. My, my voice has gone down like two octaves since yesterday. So move on to the EPA update. And we should have three. People from EPA on the line. I'm told. Charlotte Gray. Darrell loose. And Kevin. Yep. I see everybody there. I'm connecting you right now to make you a panelist. So you'll be asking just a moment to rejoin. Yeah. I'm just going to get these folks connected here. And can we also add my colleague, Dan Keith as well. And Kim called us here with Vermont DC as well. Great. Yep. Hi, Charlotte. I see them all again connected right now. So you're on. You may proceed. Sure. I guess I'll start. Hi everyone. My name is Charlotte Gray. And I am the community involvement coordinator that's working on the commerce street site for EPA. I'm joined with a few of my colleagues today. I'm here with Darrell loose. Kevin Hine and Dan Keith. We are all from EPA. And we're also joined by Kim Caldwell, who's from Vermont DC. And with that, I'm going to pass it over to Darrell. That's going to give you a site update. Go ahead, Darrell. Okay. Good if I unmute first. Thanks. And my name is Darrell loose. I'm the EPA project manager for the commerce street plume super fund site. And I'm going to pass it over to Darrell loose. Kim Caldwell is my counterpart at the state department of environmental conservation. And she's been on it for a longer than I, I picked this site up a little over a year ago from Karen Lomino when she retired. I know Eric probably worked with her quite a bit. Also with us is Kevin Hine, who will be taking the site over from me in about a month time or so. I'm going to pass it over to Dan Kef. So he's from Vermont, Connecticut section. And Dan Keith, there is his supervisor. What we're, what we're here to talk about is right now is the explanation of significant differences that we've, we sent to you, I think last week on Monday and a short one page summary that we also had assembled. What an explanation of significant differences. that's changing some of the remedy, but not in a significant way, in terms of either the scope of the remedy, the cost of the remedy or the protectiveness of it. And it changes the portions that were in the 2015 Record of Decision that I'm sure many of you remember that was put out to clean up the site. So the three things that we're here to talk about that are encompassed really in that one page handout and the explanation of significant differences are two of which have been completed or almost completed in one case. The soil remedy, which was done back several years ago where they took out the contaminated soil at the back of the facility at 96 Commerce Street, backfilled it with clean fill, and then re-landscaped it so that you don't notice it from one portion of one property to another. What was changed there was we changed the cleanup levels. The cleanup level for two of the compounds there, arsenic was one of them, and the cleanup level for that was changed to reflect the background conditions in the surrounding area and the state as a whole. The cleanup level for hexavalent chromium was changed to fit a risk criteria of EPA, so it now fits within an acceptable range for our risk requirements. The next one was the vapor vacuum, vapor intrusion remedy that was done on a home there that was affected by some of the, excuse me, affected by some of the vapors that were coming off the contaminant plume that is made up mostly of trichloroethylene, a solvent that some of us have in our basements or something like it, but it was coming off into his basement and Kim would be better to speak to it since it was the Vermont DEC that did the work in terms of installing mitigating measures to protect the resident from any of the vapors, and the big change there is that they decided to pull the house out of the water table, so that way it eliminated having a sump pump and having to treat that sump water that would have been contaminated. Did I hit that right, Kim? Yeah. Close enough. Close enough, yeah. That basically eliminated the need for a treatment system to keep treating sump water. Yeah, so that was the two that were done. Then the last piece of the puzzle here the third one is the groundwater remedy. That has been designed and during the design which I think the report came out in 2019, they found that the contamination levels for trichloroethylene, the one of the two big contaminants in there had declined enough so that they didn't need the two amendments that we were gonna add to the groundwater to treat and reduce the concentrations there. They had declined enough on their own, the native microbes and also some of it is dilution but had decreased the concentrations to where now we can just use bio-augmentation which is adding materials that will just simply help the microbes better digest what's in the groundwater. So that's pretty much it in terms of the three things. Do you get anything? Nope, but certainly if there is a comment period that we have that runs until February 23rd if you have any questions, please call Kim or myself and we'd be happy to answer any. So do we have any questions now? So members of the board, questions for Daryl or anyone? The, we saw them, go ahead. This is Jeff Harris, the only question I have is none of us on the select board are technically capable of understanding what these changes mean. So I need the folks who are technically capable to let us know from the town's perspective, does this increase keep the same, reduce the risk and what should we as the town be concerned about? Well, with respect to the soil levels there, the risk now is an acceptable level. From when they dug up, I forget, Kim, what was it, I think it was just below 1,000 yards of material and disposed of it at another site. So that risk is gone, like I said, they use clean backfill there. So the 96th Commerce Street property itself is clean. The groundwater contaminant plume, the vacuum, keep coming back to vacuum, the paper intrusion problem that the state has been working on, that likewise, I think they're just doing some final punch list items for the homeowner and that was the only home that had a problem at the time. So that risk right there is removed. The only risk that remains is for anybody who would go out there and sink a well and drink that water for some period. And the plume does underlie a good portion of the Alling Industrial Park, about 70 acres, maybe 1,500 feet north, south and east, west. And it's essentially about 20 feet down between 20 feet and 50 feet. It's not getting into the bedrock because of a clay layer that sits on top of the bedrock and keeps a trichlorothelin from going down into it. And it migrates slowly. And as I said, the, and actually I think I left that out, the size of the plume and all, sorry about that, but it will be addressed with that, the bio amendments, which one of them is like an emulsified soy product. I forget the exact designation for it, but something much akin to salad dressing in terms of how it looks. What it does, again, it's just the concentrations that we're looking at for the trichlorothelin are still quite small compared to other things. And to keep the microbes working, it's important to add this soy emulsification. And I think the other one was chitin product, which chitin is the stuff in your fingernails, but I looked into it because I didn't know what I'd never seen that used before. And the chitin is actually crushed oyster shells. So it's materials that'll be placed in the ground to allow the groundwater to essentially treat itself. And there that should reduce, I'm sorry, reduce the risk, getting back to your question, reduce the risk and concentrations. And you can definitely have the technical people in your town look over all of our documents and the public comment period runs until February 23rd. So if you would like to submit formal comments, you can either mail them to Daryl or you can email them. All of that can be found on our website with more information. And I've also shared with Eric as well. Thank you. Jeff, you have more? Go ahead. Kim with DEC, if DEC concurs and if there's anything DEC thinks we should know. Sure. So yeah, DEC agreed with the changes just to add to what Daryl was saying. Really the big change with the groundwater remedy is there was supposed to be some chemical oxidation used in a limited hotspot area and that hotspot was found to no longer exist. So the groundwater treatment that was already planned for the larger extent of the plume, that's still taking place. We're just removing that hotspot treatment that we originally assumed was going to be necessary. And yeah, I mean, like Daryl said, the soil remedy's done. Part of that also was an update to some of our state standards during the time between the record of decision and that cleanup was done and I think that the vapor remedy is definitely, in my opinion, more protective than the original plan to treat the sump water. It really removes the risk in all scenarios whether you have water infiltrating into that home or under dry conditions. So I just, and then just to add, we are in the process of reclassifying groundwater. Everyone in the area is on municipal water, but just to ensure that there are no wells drilled in the area in the future, we have a reclassification document drafted that's under review by our management and that will be ready hopefully soon. As soon as management reviews, that will also be put out for public comment. And what's the bioremediation of the groundwater? I guess that's the remaining step, action still to happen. Once that is completed or it's run its course or whatever the right words are, what happens to the property? Well, state that differently. What will be the viable uses of that property? It shouldn't affect anything other than if somebody wanted to put in a well for any reason. It'll be several years before the site is cleaned up or the groundwater is cleaned up. The site technically is the 96 commerce street site is cleaned up, but the rest of the 70 acre groundwater contaminant plume, that's gonna be several years and the people that live over the top of it or even near it shouldn't drill well. So the people who live near it shouldn't drill them just from the standpoint of drawing the plume over. It's better to let it sit in that spot and let the treatment occur. But that should be it. And as Kimberly was saying, the restrictions that would keep people from using groundwater would stay in place since you have municipal water, it shouldn't be a burden for any of the businesses there. I really don't see any. Yeah, and I think the only other thing I would mention that I don't see being likely because of how developed the area is, but if someone were to build a new structure, I think the one thing we wouldn't wanna see is a basement being dug out or some deeper excavation since groundwater is pretty shallow. I think some of the homes on Kirby Lane kind of built up the land so that they could have basements under the homes. And so I think that would be the only thing, but there's no restrictions on residential use or anything like that. All right, good. Thank you. Couple of questions, the understanding is there'll be some federal funds released, hopefully the near future and will that be used to do the remediation that's been recommended? Correct, this site right here has no responsible parties that we can put the cost of the cleanup onto. And so it's the federal government and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act or whatever that was recently passed should be able to fund that. I think their funds have been set aside for it, but when they actually come to us and then when we get that, we'll look at what sort of contract mechanism it has to go through and then it has to get a contractor on board. So it'll take some time. I'd hate to try to predict. Yeah, thank you. At History, when this first was discovered, I was working at the Vermont Department of Health and the Division of Environmental Health and we were very much involved in it at that time along with DEC. A very good friend of mine had, still has a house on the road, not on Commerce Street, but on the other road on South Brunel. And he had a drilled point in his basement and made very fine wine. And I'm not sure how good it really was, but anyway, any other questions for the EPA folks? Yeah, I just have one that wants to field this, the science, when you mentioned hexavalent chromium and I know there's different types, was there a specific type that was identified? Well, when they identified the chromium, the easiest analysis to do is for total chromium, which really just lists the trivalent chromium, the type you find in your vitamins. Right. Hexavalent though, we have to do a special analytical method for and so it's not too commonly done. And I believe also too has a very short hold time where you have to get it to the lab and so that also complicates things. But we did find hexavalent chromium in the soil. The standard for chromium in groundwater is the same whether it's three or six and none of the groundwater at the site exceeded the standard. Thank you. Any further questions? If not, thank you very much for coming tonight. We're running a little bit late, so thanks for hanging in there and being with us and we appreciate the information. Of course, thanks. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thanks. So we'll be moving on then to interviews for our town volunteer board for the DRB. And Eric, it looks like we have one person in the audience. Is that Nathan that's with us in the audience? Yep, Nathan's in the audience and I'm connecting Joan who's at home here. Okay, good. And Nathan, you can come and sit up up here. I'm just getting Joan connected with just me. Fine. Hi, Joan, can you hear us? You're just muted, Joan. Hi, Joan, you'll just need to unmute. Okay, now. We can hear you now. Thank you. So tonight we have two candidates for the DRB, Joan Pintowsky and Nathan Andrews. And we have your applications in front of us and I'd ask each of you then to give us a brief synopsis of your history with the town and your interest in becoming a member of the DRB. And Andrew, I'll start with, Nathan, I'll start with you first and then go to Joan for your comments. You may unmask if you wish to. Okay, thanks, Terry. My name's Nathan Andrews. I've lived in Williston for about seven years now. I've got two kids in the school system here. They are five and seven years old. I grew up in Shelburne and went to UVM left for a couple of years and made my way back here. And I've always wanted to find a way to be more involved in the community. But I also take that very seriously and I feel like just now I'm at a point in my life where I actually have the time to do it. My family is good with it. My kids are an age where they understand if I'm going to do this and they don't need to be held all the time anymore. My career is at a point where I know I can get away from it enough to commit to something like this. And my real interest is to be involved in some way with this town. And if by the end of this interview, there's some other way that all of you as the select board field might be a better way. I'm very interested in that too. The reason that I landed on the development review board is really just because I always check in with the town website and see what's going on and check out the minutes and sometimes watch the CCTV. But that was, you know, after seeing these vacancies for quite a while, I thought, well, wow, maybe this is actually the time for me to do something. And my career has nothing to do with development. I'm not a developer. I'm not an engineer. I did work over a decade ago for a construction supply company where we did have to read some blueprints and we bid out like large commercial construction jobs. So I'm somewhat familiar with blueprints but my interest in this is just that I want to be involved. I like construction. I'm a putterer around my own house. I build things. Now that's nothing like building Finney Crossing but it is an interest of mine. So I'm here number one just because I want to be involved. I've seen these vacancies for a long time and I wanted to come in and see how I could help out in the town in some way. That's what interests me the most right now but if it's another way that makes more sense then I'm interested in that too. Thank you. And Joan, how about you? Well, I've got a longer story. Not really. I'm older. Let's see. I've lived in Williston for about 35 years, lived in Essex Junction prior to that, have retired about five years ago from immigration. Before that I retired from IBM and before that I worked for the Vermont State Police. I have been on the cemetery commission for, oh, I think it was about seven years, a few years ago and I enjoyed doing that. And, but now that I am retired and I have time and to, I'm bored to death. So I'd like to actually help out wherever I can. If I'm not needed on the DRB then maybe there's something else that I could do. Mostly my strengths are in the legal side of it. And I was listening to some of your meeting about the water. I am a dowser and if that means anything to anybody and I could be helpful, I would do that also. I guess that's just about it for me. Good, thank you very much. You're welcome. I'll open it up to questions from the board. Good. And more like, I can't see you. So jump in. Okay. Question for both of you. I'll preference the question by saying that I consider the DRB probably one of the most challenging committees to be on in the town. I don't mean that in a negative sense at all. You have great staff support but you also have a very difficult job to do which is to implement our town zoning ordinances bylaws. And one of the more difficult parts of that is there are quite often gonna be disagreements where a proposed developer or development maybe because of some national standards or they're a national company and they have these national aesthetic type standards that may or may not comply with either your opinion or the town's bylaws. So my question is, is how do you handle situations like, how would you handle a situation like that? Sure. Who would you like to have answer that first? Why don't we start with Joan? Start with Joan. Okay, all right. Well, let me start with saying I've been in a few situations working the different positions that I've had. And number one, I'd like to say I enjoy people. I like to see what other people are thinking what they're doing, how to improve. My biggest asset I think is getting along with people listening to them and also letting them hear what I've got to say. And I believe in compromise. I believe in investigating different situations to find the bottom dollar of it. And I just have an interest in challenge. Not, I don't have a problem being challenged and I do like people. And I think that with a background like I've had all these years, that's helped me a long way. Good, thank you. Nathan. Sure. Well, I think Joan, I'd absolutely agree with you that listening is the skill that we all need to do that better. I've been in sales for 14 years and over that time you start to realize that you don't make progress until you really start listening and stop talking a lot of the time. And that can be a hard thing to do. Sounds like you're good at that Joan. I think it's something that I am good at but I also recognize something I'm always working on. I think that there is a misconception probably with most people that something like the development review board is a group of seven people just sitting there deciding what's gonna happen. When in reality, like you were saying, Jeff, you have to understand 400 pages of the bylaws and you have to then analyze and apply those bylaws. And at the same time do that through the lens of advisements from the conservation committee and the architectural historical committee. So I think that if like you said, Joan, you're able to listen and then really look at things through the lens of what we're supposed to be doing which is understanding those bylaws, listening to others. When you sit back and present things in that fashion, then people will be less confrontational about it. It's really not a personal thing. It's not, I want this building to look like that. Let's look at these bylaws that have been more than 10 years in the making and through many different people that have served on the select board and these other committees. And that is very interesting to me. I read some of the bylaws, not the whole thing. Definitely was somewhat of a skim read, but I can see where that would be very interesting. And I have no, I also don't think this is something where it's two hours for the first or second Tuesday and two hours on the fourth. This is definitely something that's a big commitment. And that's part of what interests me. So I guess that's how I consider it. Good, thanks. Other questions? We're good, thanks. I think we asked this a lot of people applying for different positions, but we live in a very small town. We live in a very small state. So inevitably conflict of interest will arise. And so, you know, what would be your approach to handling a potential conflict of interest? I want an answer on that one. First of all. Well, I think first I would want to understand the conflict of interest. Hopefully, if there was a conflict of interest, someone would have come forward and recused themselves from that. If that's not the case and a conflict of interest arises and someone is not forthright with it, then you really just have to stop everything there and figure out exactly what's going on. There's no other way about it because if you don't do that, any progress that's made would be lost. So I think it's simple in that respect, but of course emotions can be involved and just again, have to look at it by the book and follow the rules. If we all follow the rules, then everything should be good. Joan? Well, I think with the conflict of interest, I think it's a good thing. I think it's good. I think you can learn from other people and seeing their side of it. And I still feel that compromise is probably one of the top things that you eventually come to. But I will say that conflict of interest is probably good. And I think that if you're a good listener and you're a good presenter, then I think they're gonna learn from you too. Other questions? Anyone else with questions for the candidates? If not, we'll be considering the appointments later on in the meeting. Obviously this is an open meeting and I'm not exactly sure what time to tell you that we'll be getting to this, but it'll be probably another hour, I would guess anyway, but you're certainly welcome to listen in or stay in the building and listen to the other stuff that's going on tonight. So thank you both for appearing tonight and we'll make our decisions later on. And thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Nathan. Greta, thank you for asking the COI question. I was surprised you had it. Yes, I believe or not, I usually save it for last. Okay. And so just because I think we should talk about more of the personal connection to the whatever and then get into that bureaucrat or one. That's not the right word. Well, we'll move on then to move on to the market compensation assessment and pay level study with representatives from Hickok and Boardman and Eric, it looks like we have somebody on the line right now from Hickok and Boardman and Eric, why don't you start off the discussion and then we'll go to, is this perhaps a Karen? Yeah, sorry, I'm just changing my name so everyone can see that. Hello. But thanks, Terry, I can give a brief introduction. Last summer staff contract with Hickok and Boardman HR intelligence to perform a market compensation assessment for our non unionized staff members. This analysis hadn't been undertaken for these staff members in a few years of the town. And as we continue to work to recruit and retain staff it felt it was important to do an evaluation to check and see how we're doing compared to our peer organizations. You'll hear tonight from Karen who is the lead on this working with us from Hickok and Boardman that we're in good shape. We're doing well overall. And I asked Karen to walk the board through the report that you have in your packet. There's a couple of things for the board to think about. We're gonna look at our current pay ban structure and Karen can walk through that a bit tonight. This is time to be an overview and report from Karen and staff interested hearing feedback from the board. Any further questions you have as we look at this piece? So I can, there's no initial questions. I can turn this over to Karen. All right, I'm gonna share my screen. Just bear with me for a minute. Eric, can you give me screen sharing? Yep, I think. Okay, here we go. Yeah, okay, just a second. Okay, everyone see okay? Yes. Okay, wonderful. Okay, so quickly the agenda, just gonna take folks through a general refresher on why it's important to do an intentional, to have an intentional approach to classification and compensation. We're gonna talk about the project outline and then obviously about where we landed in terms of recommendations for the town. So why is it important for Willison to take an intentional approach to compensation? Ultimately, it's a very challenging labor market. I don't think that's gonna surprise anyone. And so it's really requiring organizations to have an established compensation and total reward strategy in order to be transparent to both applicants and current employees about what they're doing in terms of compensation and the rest of the program total rewards. And by periodically conducting the market analysis, you have the ability to see as an employer how you are positioned in the current market. This is a particularly volatile market. And so Eric and I have talked about it a few times where organizations are closely watching each other. And so there was an article that Eric shared today from CAX where Waterbury has already adjusted certain positions two, three times and that's what's happening as one organization is making adjustments and now there may be the better paying employer in town, they may be able to attract talent and then that forces other organizations to make adjustments. And so it's a very unstable market at this point. So nonetheless, it's important to take a look at the market data in order to be able to for a whole picture for the organization to make sure that that pay is fair and equitable across the board. And so the benchmarking exercise helps to take the up-to-date position information and matches, matches it to the market, taking into consideration geographic region, organization size and industry. And well-designed compensation strategy obviously has legal compliance in mind to ensure that the organization is compliant with state and federal laws. And ultimately your total reward strategy is only, is pay is only one component, right? You're looking also at every aspect in terms of benefits, flexibility, anything that an employee, the employee value proposition for why they wanna work for the town of Palestine. And ultimately wanna tailor that total reward strategy to ensure that you are able to attract and engage the right talent. Ultimately the goal is to move towards the total reward strategy that is tied to the vision mission values of the organization. And so here you see the town of Wilson's core values. And so as the town moves forward with its compensation and rewards programs, it needs to be thinking about its communication strategy and its compensation philosophy and making sure that it is grounded in the same tenants philosophy that your vision mission values are grounded in. And I wanna do a refresher on how position classification is key to any benchmarking exercise relates to employee compensation. And so classification, it's a systematic process in which you're evaluating the scope, the duties, the responsibilities, the complexity, the breadth, the depth of knowledge, skills, abilities, what is required to perform position. And that's taken into consideration to determine a title and the level of the position within a position hierarchy. And so position classification defines groupings of positions and that creates this organizational position hierarchy and the larger the organization, the more important it is to be thoughtful about the position classification so as to ensure consistency in your titling, job requirements, higher setting expectations and managing performance and ultimately how you're paying your positions as well. And so here you see an example of a position classification system where you have the family being similar to the department of finance. And then you have some sub-families and categories and so forth. And this makes up the position structure and the position hierarchy. And when an organization does this well and is transparent about classification, it helps to provide what we refer to as career pathing which is the process that allows employees to visualize their growth and development within an organization and that's only possible if an organization has a transparent classification structure and system. And so the job description is the culmination of the evaluation of the position and it's a communication tool which explains the duties, the tasks, the functions that are required by this position. And where you have position classification being the definition of the work, the compensation is the monetary value for that work that is being performed in the position. And so here you see an example in the benchmarking process we use the job description to match to the market. And so there's a database of positions and we're using the job description to narrow it down to make sure that we're matching effectively and as closely as possible to the market. And so we determined that the pay market, it wasn't that complicated, as you know, Burlington, Chintending County for the geographic region, the size of the organization being 50 to 100 employees and the industry being government. And then I took a benchmark each position taking the job description and matching it to the market and based on information provided by the manager's office. And then once all of the positions were reviewed, I was able to see a pay trend for the organization. And so the town of Willetston's pay trend is right around the 50th percentile of the market which is actually a really good position to be in. And it was somewhat surprising to me because normally I do a lot of this type of work and a lot of projects for for profit and not for profit organizations and you tend to find out for profits and government's municipalities to trend more towards the 25th percentile. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that already the town of Willetston was trending further into the market which is a really good position to be in considering like I said, the volatile labor market that we have. And it doesn't mean that there aren't a couple of adjustments here or there to be made to for a couple of specific positions but for the most part the organization is in a good position in terms of the work it's done to keep its compensation relevant to the market. So after doing the benchmarking exercise I take the market data for each position and we determined at the 50th percentile because that was where the organization was trending and use that information to determine the midpoint for a pay grade. And so I know that you've all received a copy of the pay grades. And so by using that the 50th percentile is able to determine the midpoint for each level. And then once that midpoint is determined I'm able to figure out the minimum of the maximum. And despite having had a number of levels previously I recommended to Eric and Shirley and to the town that you consider fewer but broader pay bands in order to support a more again this volatile labor situation. It provides for greater flexibility in terms of hiring and also should help prevent both pay compression as well as allows for the organization to recognize employees who have a significant tenure in position so that they're not bumping up against the max of the pay range which can happen when you have narrower pay bands. And then I guess just separately move forward the slides. So ultimately these ended up being the recommendations in the report to go ahead and implement the proposed pay range structure. And then to take a look at the few incidences where there might be someone who is low to market to consider whether or not individual employee pay adjustments should be made and determining what's the timeframe for that whether or not there's financial abilities to do that immediately or if that has to be a some sort of a staggered multi-year plan. Obviously maintaining the job descriptions and the classifications is key and to continue to look at either positions that are hard to fill or when there's frequent turnover in any position. So as to make sure that you're engaged in an active process to determine whether or not the position should be structured differently if you can't find the talent that you need to find. And in particular, we're obviously we're seeing a lot of pressure on trades positions which I know has impacted the town and it's impacting the state broadly. And then what is most important coming out of this type of a project is the communication plan in order to communicate not only broadly to you in order to make decisions about how to move forward but also to showcase the total rewards program. Pay is just one component and organizations tend to fall down on the fact that they provide rich benefits packages and other less tangible or less quantifiable benefits that employees really appreciate. And that's why, such as the town of Wilson you do have long-tenured employees. I recommend that you firm up a compensation philosophy and then like I said, address any individual pay rate changes. So I'm going to stop sharing so that I can see everybody. And then I just, I wanted to open it up to questions. So members of the board, if you have questions for Karen. I'll start. Well, first of all, thank you. I'm on page seven. And the very first full paragraph where it talks about the proposed creation of four paid levels. And I'm assuming that that means that there'll be four additional paid levels to the paid levels that are already in place. No. No, okay. It's superseding the pay levels. It's a whole new structure for your non-bargaining unit positions. Okay, I'm not disagreeing. I'm just trying to get my head around. When I look at the proposed pay grades starting at grade seven and then moving up to grade 10. Yes. Oh, you're asking me why does it start at seven? Well, I'm asking, yes, that's a piece of it. You might start at one. But the other piece of it is between the grade seven and grade 10, does that include all of the 36 positions that you looked at? Yes. With the exception of the town manager's position on the town clerk, because those rates of- I want to pay them, so- Yeah. So, yeah. So because you use a different, obviously you set the rates for those pay. It just, it was sort of an apples to oranges situation. So I kept them out. But yes, that is all of the positions and Eric stopped me if I'm, but that is all of them, correct? Yep, that's correct. Okay. That's all of them. If you don't mind, and maybe I should have known this, what was in place before, or what's in place now? Actually, there's probably the appropriate way to say that. So I'm going to let Eric speak to that, because I won't tell you that I spent a lot of time in what was current. I just, I went with what we recommended in terms of what we thought would be effective for you to use. Yeah, and I realized when I was looking back for the packet, I should have provided the current structure, and I could provide that between meetings here, but we have a broader structure that I believe we have, and truly might be familiar, more familiar with the stuff that Topper had than I am, but we look at, I think we have a grade two to a grade 13. So what we have is more shorter pay bans in place. And when Karen took a look at this, look to make these more broader bans, I suppose, of that longer structure. Okay. To have more flexibility within each band. So I'm not a, I don't understand sort of this profession, if you will. So is that broader band that you were just describing, is that a good thing? So I don't think either as good or bad. I think it's just there's different tools for different scenarios. And sometimes our pay structures just grow up and evolve as our organization evolves. And I think when you have more levels and it's a narrower wage range, it means that you have fewer positions per level. And it's just an extra level of administrative complexity that may or may not be necessary. We're talking about 30 some odd positions. And so do we need 13 levels for 30 positions? From my perspective, what Eric and Shirley were telling me about were positions that were bumping up against the max of the range and folks who were in a situation where their pay wasn't growing because of their tenure. And so in that situation, the town has a number of positions that are similarly paid. And so I don't see any reason why you couldn't have more positions in fewer bands. And that would allow for again, just a broader range. And so in a situation like we're in now where you're looking to hire people in and you need some flexibility in order to be able to make those decisions, we don't want you to be in a position where all of a sudden you've got compression, right? So we hire someone in now, but somebody's been here for five years and we're hiring on the same amount. So maybe we need to make that adjustment. You need a pay range that's gonna allow for that flexibility. And also to take into consideration the fact that you might have somebody who's relatively new to the position or somebody who's been there for 15 years. And so the pay could be very different. And so in that regard, I do recommend a wider band. I don't think there's any one, there's just different ways to do it. This is the way that I would recommend it. I don't necessarily think it's, there's a right or a wrong in this. Okay, you mentioned something which was one of the questions I had. Sure. Impact of wage compression. I talked about that on page nine. I don't understand the concept. Sure, sure. So think about it in, especially in an organization where people stay there for a long time. If you hire someone in at a certain rate, let's just say you hired them in 10 years ago and they're making $40,000. And then every year they get a 3% sort of across the board adjustment and their position grows gradually. And then five or six years later that position has grown to whatever it's at, but you need to hire someone in, but the market has grown and it has increased in that. And now the position is valued at a higher place. And so you hire in a new person, maybe the market for that position is more like, I don't know, 45,000 or something like that or 46. And so now you're hiring in a new person at either the same or more than a person who's been with the organization for a long time. And so that's a bad situation to be in. That's pay compression where you end up with the inability to recognize things like special skill sets or tenure within an organization, things like that. Does that make sense? It does, okay, thank you. I mean, I'm sorry, I don't mean to dominate, which leads to a question of the four pay grades. Yes. Grades that are being proposed and the men, the mid and the max are given. Those aren't automatically adjusted every year, increased by the cost of living or something. Once they're set, they're set until we decide to change them. I would recommend that if you are doing any sort of across the board increase every year that you apply that to your pay ranges as well. That is how you keep your pay ranges, you know, you try to keep them close to market. I mean, there's a lot of other factors. It's not just cost of living that goes into a market, market fluctuations in terms of pay. But if you, but think about it, if you leave your pay ranges the same and cost of living increases or whatever your increase is over the five years, if you don't do anything, then your pay ranges potentially are lagging by many years. And so you wanna add, if you're not going out and doing this type of an exercise frequently, then you at least wanna apply your cost of living or across the board increase to your full pay range on an annual basis or whenever you're making those increases. Okay, all right, good, thank you. I'm back on page eight on world recommendations. And one of the bullets says, develop a communication plan. Yeah. And I understand the concept of a communication plan. In this case, what I don't understand is who is the communication plan communicating to? Is it internal to staff or is it external to folks outside of Williston telling them what a great place this is to work and they really ought to be here? Yes, it's all of the above. And those talking points may differ, right? And so Eric and I have had some conversations about there's conversation that you wanna have internal with your leadership team to make sure that that managers are feeling comfortable and understand what's going on and they can answer questions that may come up as well as questions that may come to the manager's office. Then you wanna have some broad talking points to the organization. And again, this goes back to, there's the simple like we did a benchmarking exercise and we've got new pay grades kind of communication or there's the broader, hey, we have this amazing total rewards package that includes our pay philosophy and currently we pay close to the 50th percentile of the market and we have a minute of max and we typically hire people in here or whatever it is there's definitely work that can be done to develop in a sense a marketing strategy around how do you pay and reward your employees and organizations are making the efforts to do that right now because it's such a crazy labor market. And so that's what I mean when I say communication plan it can be small or it can be as big as any normal sort of marketing exercise you might do. It just depends on obviously resources and what you have to work with in order to put that together. Okay, good, thank you. And I promise this will be, well, I don't find that but I think this will be my last question. Okay. Among the last page, page 10 and you talked a little bit about the, we're at the 50th percentile of the market and what I heard from that is that's a really good place to be. That's where you want to be. I just wanna make sure I understand when it's 50%ile of the market, that's the local market meaning I guess like Chittenden County where we might draw employees from. Right, so the local market what I used was again employers that are government organizations with 50 to 100 employees in Chittenden County. And so that's your market but your market is, let's be honest your market is whomever is stealing your talent also or where you're drawing applicants from. And so for certain positions it may be a national market. And so there's no one specific market necessarily being at the 50th percentile makes you more competitive than if you were at the 25th percentile. And I would say, it's really hard there's no one right answer to this. I can't say the 50th percentile is exact for all of your positions. I think you'll find that some of your trades positions that you're gonna be paying closer to the 75th percentile because it's hard to, there's a finite number of folks available for the whole state of Vermont and we're drawing on that and they're retiring. And so it's getting harder and harder to pull in folks to do our basic trades positions. And so you have to pay more. And that may mean that you're more at the top of the market for those positions and every organization it's a little bit different. And again, depending on your region because we're talking Chittenden County that you're not necessarily in a situation like say St. Johnsbury would be where like you got three that you're looking at that you can hire from and everybody's fighting over those three you've got a deeper pool to pull from but that's still not, you know you're still up against the complexity of the market that all organizations are facing right now which and it's a buyer's market employers are gonna, employees and applicants are gonna go to where they find they can find the best match for what their needs are. And that's not one simple answer, right? Okay, good, thank you. Yeah. Other questions from members of the board? I only had one and that's that the fact that people are bumping up against the maximum salary I mean, to some degree that's gonna be inevitable, right? I mean, the people that come out of tenure and they're here and they've maxed out. I mean, I think it depends on how you and how you pay folks, right? And right now I would say you are paying tenure, you do sort of an annual adjustment that rewards tenure. So it's not specific to performance, right? Or something else that you would be, you know calling out different aspects, everybody's getting it. And so the longer you're there, yes the more you're getting the broader the range the less likely it is that folks are necessarily going to bump up against it in particular if you're making the adjustments to the range in the same way that you're making them to individual positions. I think that where you might run into issues is if you eventually progress to sort of a more pay for performance type situation and maybe someone is getting a, they're a really high performer and they're long tenured then it's likely that they're going to outpace your pay ranges if you're not continuing to adjust or they're not growing into a different pay band. I mean, there's my guess anyway that there's no data that shows that if somebody's been with a employer throughout the better part of their career they're approaching retirement, that person if they're up against the, if they are at the top of the pay range, they're not likely to be saying, I gotta get out. I'm gonna go somewhere else. I'm gonna write, yeah. Okay, thank you. Less likely, less likely. I think that what we're seeing with folks that are in, that are nearing retirement age is not that they're looking for other jobs but they're just, you know, until recently that the stock market was doing so well that folks were retiring more than they had been. And so those folks are leaving the labor pool more than and then not coming back. The rest of the folks that may have departed briefly because of the COVID and so forth they're making their way back in but folks that are in the closer to retirement age are more likely to just retire. Now, obviously if the financial markets continue to take a downturn that may have an impact on and not again. Thank you. Sure. Any further? So surely who am I coming up with to tell you? I can hear you. So I think what started this project and Eric you can add to it as we were working on the FY23 budget and looking at our current pay grades we had a few people who have been up against the top of the pay grades for several years. So they were getting COLA but no merit. And then as we rolled into doing the FY23 budget calculations we had more people part of the problem with that was people were getting COLA plus merit which was typically 2% or up to 2% but we were only increasing those pay grades by COLA. So we were compressing those pay grades offering people more money and we did actually start to have people ask about that because they had been stalled just getting COLA for many years a few people here. So just a little background for you is what also got us to start looking at this project and our pay grades. Thank you. Any further questions from the board? Well Karen, the one question you haven't answered was why do we start at pay grade seven? Because no one wants to be in pay grade one. And I'm not kidding about that. Fair enough. And it gives you a little bit of room obviously if you wanna expand you could sometimes when you have temporary or seasonal employees I see those folks go into grade six, grade five, that sort of thing. And so I tend to start at grade 10 and work backwards as opposed to starting at grade one and moving the other way. Little bit arbitrary though. Any further questions for Karen? I think well, this will be an action item at another time on the agenda in another meeting. But Eric, I think you're playing on giving us the current pay grades and the allocations. Yep, I'll provide that to the board and this will be on a future agenda to consider it. It would be amendment to as I see it part of the personnel policy and the personnel policy tasks the manager with looking at this every now and then and for the board to consider if they wanna make any adjustments. I'll add that to you in the next meeting after that. Okay. Good. If there's no other questions, thank you very much Karen. This was really well needed and thanks for a nice job. Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate the time. Good night everyone. Good night. Thank you. So we need to move on to the temporary event ordinance and hopefully Matt is with us at this time either remote or in person. Yep, you just walked in there. No, good. Perfect timing. So we all have copies of the latest draft which I think answers all of the questions that we had the last time around. So hopefully we can take some action on this and get it to a public hearing. But anyway, Matt, it's yours for the time in. Sure. Thanks for having me here tonight to go over the revised temporary event draft. Attempted to address the comments I heard from the select board last time and in doing so, I found myself restructuring the draft somewhat significantly trying to bring a little more organization to it. So hopefully I've not moved anything so far out of place as to create confusion, but rather made it flow a little bit better. And I'd be happy to just open it up to questions from the group if there's anything about the revisions that raise concerns or warrant further discussion tonight. Good, thanks. So board members, comments, questions, concerns? So my only question, I see that you had addressed the issue of like notifying the abutting properties. So by asking them to provide the names and mailing addresses with envelopes and what, so the plan would be then to submit to the abutting properties prior to like the granting or would you, once the permit had been granted, then supply it to the abutting properties? The idea would be to have those envelopes available so that the owners of abutting properties could be notified prior to a decision. So sort of following something fairly similar to what we do with DRB notification. No, I compared it to what we talked about. What was it back in, well, I guess in January. And I'm good. The only thing that threw me for a little bit of a loop, but then I saw it in my notes is new temporary. I was like, why is it temporary? But now I remember why. Other questions? There was one, just one thing that I know of us, looks like page three, it talks about a minimum of two firefighters, EMTs shall be hired for a minimum of three hours. And last time said, well, should that be three hours each? But I think the rest of the sentence talks about the fire department will actually make the assessment of the time that's to be set, is that right, Matt? That's correct. I see it. That's the only question I had. Any other questions? Yeah, if not, I'd be looking for a motion to schedule a public hearing. I'd move the schedule of public hearing on the temporary events ordinance with any changes to the draft ordinance suggested by the town attorney. Sir, a second. A second. That's a discussion on the motion. Very none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Very good. Thank you, Matt, on that one. And we'll move on then to the form-based code discussion. And Eric, you wanna just start off and then we'll turn it over to Matt. Yep. This is some, so Matt was here early January and he's been over planning commission tonight as they've started their piece of their public hearing on these proposals. Matt, I presented to you in January 4th, where the proposal is, and then the board asked for additional time for discussion with Matt. So we've gone back this evening to discuss that memo from January 4th. And any questions the board has right now? That says this is a big policy item coming your way in the next couple of months. There were several items that Matt had introduced to us the last time we talked about this. And I think those are the things we need to chat about tonight. So Matt, I wanna turn it over to you. Great, thank you. And as Eric mentioned, I'm happy to report the planning commission has embarked on the public hearing phase of this project, which means they have a complete draft in front of them duly warned. And tonight is the first night of that public hearing process. While mechanically they could close up tonight and vote to transmit to the select board, my perception is it will probably take at least one more, if not more hearings beyond that. We had really great participation next door. I saw about 25 people on the Zoom call, including representatives of three or four of the largest property owners in the area and development community who have been, of course, following this with great interest and thinking about what the impacts of this new code might be on some of their thoughts for the future of their lands and tap corners. So I did provide you with the memo on January 4th and really tried to bring some focus to what I think are the most fundamentally different things about the form-based code and accompanying official map and by-law amendments in an attempt to sort of call out the broad policy shifts that this code as drafted would create because I think if there's a really big change of direction that the select board feels is warranted on any of these, I would just as soon bring that feedback back to the Planning Commission as part of their hearing process sooner rather than later. Really briefly, a form-based code is all about regulating what buildings look like and how they are placed on the sites where they are developed, generally pulling buildings to a mandatory street line such that they create a coherent public realm that would help achieve Williston's long-stated goals of becoming a downtown area with a strong pedestrian orientation. In other words, there's a street to walk along, there's things next to you in terms of buildings and homes, there's good pedestrian facilities and not sort of the more pedestrian unfriendly elements that you might see in a place like Taft-Mars today, like places where the sidewalk is there, but it's a long, long expanse of parking lot frontage or sort of space that's being used inefficiently along that walkway. So within that, the entire way in which a form-based code addresses new development is pretty different the way we do it under conventional zoning. We still talk about what uses are allowed, but more often than not, we might be talking about what uses are allowed on a ground floor versus an upper story of a building. Most uses, if they can work within the building as it's allowed to be created, can be allowed in the form-based code district. We have a very small part of the form-based code district where buildings would be required to build a shopfront configuration on their ground floor, but otherwise throughout the bulk of the area beyond 800 feet along Wright Avenue, ground floors of buildings could be residential or commercial or a mix. There's not a lot of upper floor commercial allowed. There's a little bit, but generally it's anticipated that most buildings would go residential beyond the first floor. So uses get talked about in terms of where they happen in the building, not so much where they happen within the designated area. There's a lot of focus on the creation of pedestrian-friendly, bicycle-friendly streets. And I've identified that mandate in the form-based code as an item for some concentration and also some future work because these street sections would need to become part of the public work standard specifications if we were to truly be able to require someone to build a street to this configuration as part of a new development. Form-based code beyond that building placement height and roof pitch is a lot about how the building, as our consultant would say, is dressed. So the use of materials, the diversity of materials on the building, the percentage of the building facade facing the street that is developed in either windows or doorways, the provision of private open areas like rooftop decks, balconies and private green spaces to the side and rear of buildings are all elements that are much more heavily prescribed in this code, as well as the creation of public green space on the overall map via that regulating plan and the official map that supports it underneath. And that's another major component of this project is that it's a code and regulatory tool that says here in Taft Corners, this is where we want these greens, this is where we want these streets. The reason to prescribe those things so carefully is to create blocks of streets that are of a walkable dimension. So this is when somebody talks about something being human scale, when you're walking along a street, you don't want that expansive street to be much more than three or 400 feet long before you come to some kind of a corner because it just feels like you're walking along a highway at that point. And so there are things about the environment that this code pulls for, not just the way a sidewalk is built or the way a building is built or the fact that there's a park nearby, but literally just does it feel like the kind of place you as a human being with the instincts you have want to walk around? There's a lot of design to that that's baked into a code like this. So we also have a map. I didn't have it to share with you in this memo, but it's in our planning commission, TransMiddle Tonight. It shows that there are planned greens within this form area that mean most of the areas within a two and a half minute walk of some kind of public green space. I just said public green space. And what that means is that sometimes as a component of a development, an applicant would be asked, how would you negotiate it with and possibly compelled to provide a piece of public green space along with their project to the town that would become a town park? And those are planned to be dispersed throughout the area in a way that when folks come and live in Taft Corners, they would have access to green space that they could get to on foot. We certainly hope they'd be able to come up here to the village by bike or car, but like anybody else, it's nice to have some public green space out your doorstep. So that's a really key component of this code and the toolkit that lives underneath that to really try to make it happen. Another bylaw amendment that we would want to put into this draft and hopefully help these things happen is that if you were providing that public open space or if you were building one of those new regulating planned streets, the cost of doing that could be offset against either your transportation or recreation impact fee. I had a really interesting conversation with our consultant team engineer early on and he was asking about our transportation impact fee. He said, so you guys charge the same fee all over town no matter where a dwelling is built. And I said, yeah, he said, but don't you think that when a dwelling is built in Taft Corners, there's more opportunity to not generate car trips? And I said, well, yeah, we're certainly trying to do that. We charge them the same fee. So I'm not proposing charging a different fee, but in this part of town, there's a lot more opportunity for the private sector to partner with us to develop that walkable infrastructure. And there's a nice way to build the incentive in by adding those grid streets to the project list to say if you build these streets the way we're planning for them, you can offset that fee. Same parallel for the idea with parks. So that's a piece of this package as well. I think the last thing that I really kind of belabored with the select board last time is the minimum building height. So as it's drafted, there's nowhere in Taft Corners where the minimum building height for a new building is less than two stories. And in much of this area, if you have a color version of the regulating map, all of the orange and light orange streets, the minimum building height is often three stories. So the reason to do that is a couple of reasons. One is it's part of creating that sense of enclosure on the street for the person walking on the street and creating that walkable environment. Another is to encourage the efficient use of land and concentration on a small area at a time. So putting a building that's got those multiple stories, you're putting more dwelling units on a smaller amount of acreage. You're building more incrementally. We also have some tools in this code, like a maximum building footprint of about 15,000 square feet, maximum building frontage width on the street of about a hundred feet. Requirements that any building on a corner be brought to the corner and occupy that corner for a distance of at least 30 linear feet in either direction. All of those things are designed to bring about that coherent walkable environment. But also instead of one big long 300 foot long building, and we do have some three-story 300 foot long buildings, you would have that building broken up into three or four individual buildings. They might be so close to each other as to be touching, like a true urban environment, but they would be built as different separate buildings, most likely at different times, given the town's capacity to support new residential development. And that brings about that more organic feel, diversity of rooftops, architectural styles. And you're really saying to the community, if you wanna develop here, we wanna see something that gets some housing into Taft Corners, because inevitably those upper stories are gonna be some kind of residential use. So really whirlwind tour of where we are, there is an awful lot to digest. I'm sure all of you have some thoughts and I'd be happy to hear those answer questions as I can and try to bring things back into the planning commission process. All members of the board, that's your opportunity now to share your observations and concerns. I guess I'll start. My first comment is, I always struggle to understand form-based code. And this really helps. And I'm pleasantly surprised with, maybe not pleasantly, I'm happy with what I'm reading here. I think it's good. I wanna point out two things. Page two up top where it talks about uniquely Williston. I won't say more than other, Williston does need an identity and maybe that's a way. And then I'm on page four up top item number two where it talks about the ability for affordable housing and how this can support that. So those are two things I just wanted to point out. I guess in terms of questions, I wanna try to understand the official map a little bit more. I think I got the concept of what it's trying to do. I guess what I'm struggling with is, once it's set, how permanent is it? Is it flexible? Is it expected to change over time? Certainly we know that, I shouldn't say we know, I suspect that what might be desirable, let's say in 2022, in 2028 or 2032, we have a whole new, not a whole new, but a different concept of what's desirable. Is the official map able to adapt or be revised to reflect that? Yes. And it would follow the normal zoning bylaw amendment process per statute. One thing we were just talking about a lot over at the planning commission, because we had a couple developers in the room who were looking at the prescriptiveness of the official map and saying, well, what if I've got a really great idea, but you've planned for a street right in the middle of my great idea? How would we resolve that? And it would need to be resolved through a conversation with the planning commission and ultimately a public hearing and amendment process. So it's totally possible and I would anticipate that the regulating plan and the official map, which are one in the same in terms of layout, would change over time. Then a lot of that would probably be applicant driven as they had a plan for a particular site. But it would be a significant public process to do that. And within the code, I don't know that I'm gonna give you chapter and verse in the code right now, but there's about a half a page in here and it's either in the regulating plan chapter text or it may be in the public realm text. But there's actually some guidance that says when you're changing the regulating plan, when you're changing the location of streets or adding or deleting streets, here are the general principles that you wanna follow to maintain that walkable block size. So we kind of looked at, so well, here's a bylaw that says what you're allowed to change in its own text, feel a little bit like a snake eating its tail, but we chose to leave the language in because I think it provides some good guidelines and we'd actually also said as a follow up, I'd like to reflect that in a town plan. But yes, this can change. The land use designations, the colors on the regulating plan could change. The street layout or public infrastructure layout could change, will change. Certainly between now and the full build out of this area, a hundred and something years from now, this will change. Oh, okay, good. And I sort of get that, but the part I'm a little bit hung up on is the concept of the official map is so that developers know what's expected. So they aren't gonna come in with a project where they're hoping to put a building right where we wanna have a very pedestrian street. How does that work with, but yet you got developers who are gonna come in and say, yeah, but I'm not gonna develop and we'll extend on my property unless I get X. Am I expressing that at all? Well, that kind of conflict that might happen and then you might even get a developer who's upset because we said no to their project because they wanted to put a building right in the middle of what we wanted to be a street. But 10 years down the road, we no longer want the street there. And developers like, wait a second, that's what I was arguing years ago. So the way official map works in statute is it actually forces you to make a decision if the developer asks you to. So the way it works, developer proposes something and there's a street in the way on the regulating plan and is not able to come to terms with the town through sort of the normal development review and discussion process. The project is denied and at that stage under statute with official map, the select board has given the opportunity to acquire that street layout with money. It's not unlike eminent domain, you would be asked to decide if you really want this street here, are you willing to purchase the land such that that street can be built? And if the decision is yes, there's a process to go and do that. And if the decision is no, then the landowner is off the hook to build that street in that location. Okay. So doesn't that lead to the question or the dilemma? If we agree with the official map, when we agree the answer is always going to be yes, we want to acquire it. We may not have the means to acquire it, but yes, we want to acquire it. Right. Ideally, yes, you do. And communities in Vermont really differ in terms of how they use this tool. Hinesburg has used the official map tool for a while now, in particular in their village center to lay out streets. They also have identified some planned public parks, but they've chosen to only put parks on there that they're willing to fund in their capital plan. So they've said we're gonna prioritize the ones that we really, really want. And we're actually gonna save up so that when the time comes, we can partner to acquire them. So, we can set all of the incentives, the way that we hope they will work. We can use all the tools in the toolbox right up to that sort of brass tacks, put the money down or go away, conversation at the select board. The hope is that it usually doesn't go that way, but there also may be a point. And I think it would more be around the green spaces than the street layouts, where it might become part of how the town looks at its capital planning. It also might be the way the town looks at spending its rec impact through money. So this is a little different than a ball field or a sort of a playground facility, but it might just be, there's passive recreation that happens in an urban park. And it may be something the town looks at. How much does it wanna sort of hold in reserve to make some of those things happen as development unfolds in the area over the next many years? Okay. What will the transition from our current bylaws and codes to this, what will that look like? Will it be one day it's under the old cold code and the next day, or is there a transition? Are we telling, for instance, developers, don't submit anything because we're in the process of changing things. Yeah, so it's worse than what you described in statute. You do wanna be able to move efficiently once you enter into a hearing process because what Vermont law says is once you've worn to hearing on the new code, any project that comes in for a period of 150 days has to meet the standards of both the new code and the existing one. And the two are in enough conflict here that it would render many things just simply unapprovable. This is what my counterpart in South Burlington refers to as the zoning vortex, which they're currently in in South Burlington in part of the city. So there's good reason just for everybody involved to move efficiently once a decision's made to consider something new. So, but the way it usually works is that we would move through that period. And then there is one day where the old code prevails and there's a day when the new code prevails. And Taft Corners, for all of the activity that you see in Taft Corners, you're seeing the continued build out of two major master plan projects that are both more than 15 years in the making and the occasional development of a lot in Taft Corners Park. And we do have things in the pipeline all the time. Folks have heard about the Aldi grocery store that's under a pre-application review now and is facing a deadline to best in the old bylaws as we approach the possibility of a select court hearing here. But I had a conversation yesterday with the owner of a lot in Taft Corners, one lot with an older building on it that it might be time for it to come down and they're thinking about redeveloping. And given their timeline, I said, well, it sounds like by the time you come in some version of this code that looks about like what I have in front of me will be there. So let's talk about what that would look like. And the building you get, I would say would generally be smaller in terms of its frontage on the street. It might be taller, but if it is taller than what you see out in Taft Corners, now it's some of that height will be in a pitched roof of a pretty significant steepness. I forget the exact minimum pitch, but it's a steeper roof than is being put on the Blair Park Hotel right now for sure. And you might even see that roof have dormers on it because we would allow it to be occupiable space. You'd see more windows, bigger windows. You'd see doors that walk out onto the street frontage because those are required. You would see some kind of access in generally an alley form with parking at the back. One of the other elements of the regulating plan is that there's that built-to line that's generally gonna put the building somewhere between five and eight feet off the right of way of the street with a little door yard in front before you get to the sidewalk, et cetera. So there's a built-to for the building. There's a parking setback for the parking. It's generally 30 feet back from the right of way. And any of your lot frontage that you don't occupy with building, you need to put behind a minimum four foot high street wall. So where there's not building, there might be a little street wall and then 30 feet of most likely private green space and then parking going back. So really, really hard to develop a parking lot that sits right up against a street the way some of them do today. The other thing I think you would see that would be really fundamentally different is with the requirement for most things to be served by some kind of an alley configuration, it's not just parking that goes behind the building, it's the trash, the dumpsters, the loading dock, all of those sort of access issues. And I can tell you the number of times we've struggled when somebody needs a loading dock for something and how to deal with a loading dock when you don't have an alley in a setting like Taft Ports, it's really, really challenging. And what we did with the healthy living review, which is the most recent one is just tried to dress up the loading dock. But the end of the day, Holland Lane, which is an awfully nice, eventually very shady boulevard, for about 150 feet, you walk along the side of a loading dock, there's not a lot of life on that streetscape. So really fundamentally different when you really do start putting those things behind the building. And you do have examples of that like Shaw's and Mabel Tree Place where trash and loading is actually handled in a sort of a dead end alley between Shaw's and the buildings that face the green. It's very unobtrusive by comparison to some other configuration. So what would you, administratively, you would see the staff and commenting department spending an awful lot of time doing pre-work with applicants on this. Eventually a permit would go out the door. It may be an administrative permit. That's the way this is drafted right now. For residential projects, growth management allocation is still in effect, but it's made part of that administrative process for the growth center. So that's a little different. There's really a challenge we face with growth management in the growth center. There's not a lot of competition ever. There's kind of one project at a time. So that whole idea that people are competing and the best project is going to get to move forward doesn't work very well when people aren't competing. And given everything that we're requiring here, we said, well, I don't think we're ready to give up the limit on new dwelling units per year, but let's just make it part of the permitting process. So that's part of the proposal here. But you would see some things that would be different in the configuration. You'd see some things that would be different in the quality of architectural materials in the sort of the way the building facade was laid out. You might see some differences in story height and certainly in those services and parking to the back things that we talked about. I think this might be my last question is how will developers, is it at all possible to project how developers will look at Williston once under form-based code? Will it be more or less desirable? Will it be more or less expensive for them to develop here? It depends on what they want to develop. So from the residential side, if you don't need to buy a bunch of land just to get the units you want in the building, that gets easier. So, we're talking about increasing residential density if you think about it as a units per acre count. If you think about it as a units in a building, the form is pretty similar, but it really means you get to put your whole site to work. And it probably means developing more incrementally. So one of the things that I think it would look very different to the development community is rather than I've got these 70 acres and I'm gonna come up with a 20-year plan and sort of try to finance the whole thing. I think you'll see a little more incremental, plat the streets out, plat the trails and the greens out, and then create a buildable lot and then go in and get a building on that one lot. So a little more incremental, a little different than the style we often see. I think that incremental nature actually opens the door for more players in Taft Corners to come in because they might be looking at a smaller piece of land, maybe sitting on an existing infrastructure and we have some of that in town. If what you want to do is entice a retailer who is only interested in being in Williston in a single-story building, if Williston says you can't have that or you've got to put a second story on it, that will become very challenging. And our folks who run Taft Corners Park, Jeff Davis and Jeff Nick have commented about that. They are concerned that across this entire plan area, the market will not support multiple stories across the whole area anytime soon. And they do see some demand for single-story retail that they think they could still serve in this area. So they've made that comment, there's a letter to the Planning Commission I just uploaded to their page tonight related to that. I will point out that the boundary of the form area is a little different than the boundary of the overall growth center. And so when you do get down near Interstate 89, the digital equipment or now food science, Walmart, Home Depot lot and the brick office building and hotel adjacent to the highway, none of those things are in the form-based code area. Those remain in the mixed-use commercial or gateway south zoning districts. And mixed-use commercial is essentially the big box district for Williston. So where Jeff and Jeff have commented that they see friction is everything south of Marshall Avenue. They would rather that that not be regulated the way the form-based code would regulate it. Interesting, because I thought for, I thought those two large single-story retail, Walmart and Home Depot were gonna be part of the form-based code, but now I'm maybe not, now if you remember me, I'm remembering wrong. Was that a change? Well, we started off looking at the entire growth center boundary. And through our public input process and just looking at the practicalities of what our market analysts thought the area could support and given the proximity of those sites to the highway and the likelihood that they may not redevelop anytime soon, the decision was made to put the boundary along harvest lane. Okay. We have a few other places where the growth center takes some areas and that we chose not to put in the form-based code area. So the growth center actually crosses the Allenbrook and covers some residential stuff on the other side of Taft Farm, the condominiums and down by Bingham Lane. That's not in the form-based code area. It's all developed as residential. Didn't seem to make any sense to include it. So yes, the boundaries shifted a little bit in terms of what's under the form area. And that map will be available sometime. Anywhere on the website, I can print you a big one. I can give you mine. Okay. Other questions from board members? They're having a hearing on this tonight. They are. There's gonna be another one. Most likely. And we'll get a final version at some point. Yes. I have no further questions. Yeah. Question for you, Matt, on the last time you were here, you mentioned that because this is a very prescriptive bylaw amendment that the DRB's authority would be lessened or that they would have less leeway to do anything. Is that true? That's correct. I'm not sure if that's good or not, but. Well, you know, I did mention that part of it is because so much in terms of the site layout, especially in architectural standards, are controlled by the code that a lot of what we tend to debate at DRB is simply made a requirement here. Where I would see DRB involvement is in subdivision plotting. This code, there's really not a good way under statute to administratively be approving subdivisions. We've had that advice from council for a long time. And at that planning level, that's where a lot of the creation of the layout for these streets and greens under the regulating plan would likely happen. So the DRB will still be seeing things, but probably more in terms of a land division and infrastructure layout mode, as opposed to commenting on the design of a particular building or the placement of a particular building, because we do see those things as being really pretty heavily prescribed under this code. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions from that? On page three, it also mentions a project review committee, which sounds like a new committee. Yeah, this is fairly similar to a pretty informal process that we have now, which is whenever anything big is proposed in town, myself or the planning staff ask for the police fire public works heads to come together and talk about the project and the issues that might come up from their various perspectives. This formalizes that a little more. It means that group of staff works together throughout all of the sort of preliminary review and discussion with the applicant, which experience in neighboring community says, you might have six to eight to 10 months of conversations with an applicant before they actually file an application. But we would hold a meeting of that committee of staff that would be publicly accessible. We went and actually watched one of these meetings in Winooski under their form-based code, which was drafted by the same consultant who's leading our team. And they open up a meeting on Zoom. Butters have been notified of that meeting. It's not a public hearing. It's not a quasi-judicial proceeding. It's a meeting of town staff to talk about the issues a project has or how to coordinate them. But it does give you some kind of open and transparent process by which anybody can come and view what's happening under that approval. The other thing that we've asked to add to this project that we're gonna move forward with the consultant is having our consultant help us develop application checklists and findings checklists and a user guide so that if you're a citizen and the zoning administrator approves something under this code and you think that that approval was in error, you'd be able to appeal that approval to the DRB. They are still the body that hears appeals of anything the zoning administrator does. But more importantly, the process of approval would be transparent enough that as a citizen you would understand what to appeal and why. So you'd be able to look through and say, well, was it the architecture of the CA got wrong? Did they miss something about the building placement? Did they allow too much or too little parking? They'd be able to go through that findings checklist and actually have a informed conversation with the DRB about why they wanted a re-review of that decision. So, Planning Commission has expressed that really strongly that they want it to be an open and transparent but efficient process and we'd like to develop the tools to be able to do that. Okay, good. And do you anticipate is the planning department the capacity to take on form-based code or will you need additional staff? I think we have the capacity to take it on the level of review is quite similar to what we would do today if we were putting together a DRB staff report, which we do at a pre-application and a discretionary permit level for every new building that goes up. I think bringing the consultant in to help us develop those sort of checklist tools will make that review even more efficient. I do expect we'll spend a little bit more time up front with people. And when I was on the phone with somebody who was interested in this code the other day, I felt like it was 2008 and I'd just gotten off the plane from Missoula and I had this Middle Eastern zoning code in front of me trying to quote all of the various places I needed to find. There's a learning curve to it. But really, as I was doing that on the phone, I just went into the thing and I went to step one that said, how to use this code. And I said, okay. So the first thing I need to do is find your lot on the regulating plan. Okay, great. Now I need to look at the street frontages. Now I understand where your building can go. And it just kind of flows from there. So I do believe we have the capacity to administer it because it's fairly similar to what we're already doing with the DRB, but clearer. We will argue internally less about this than we do what's in the current zoning by-law. All right, good, thank you. Any final questions for Matt? If not, thank you very much, Matt, for coming tonight. You've gone through a couple of long meetings already today. So thank you. I appreciate it. And I look forward to coming back to the group with a transmittal fairly soon. Good, thank you. So let's move on then to the energy plan or position in fiscal year 2022. Like Eric has put together a memo regarding this, we asked them to do that our last meeting. And after that, I'd like to do a straw poll as to whether we're in favor of doing this. So Eric. Thanks, Terry. And to follow up on the board's request the last meeting to look at the town where to fill the position of energy and community development planner during the current fiscal year, what that process may look like. So this is included in the FY23 budget proposal that will be considered on town meeting day on March 1st. Took a look at this the last couple of weeks and looked at it with Shirley as well. Also had to look at the job description one more time as we're working to finalize that. But a central timeline I could see for this should the board want to endeavor down this path. The budget support on town meeting day, we could then post the position in early March after that. Look to recruit candidates. Look in April to interview folks, pitch to make an offer for a position and look to have someone start in May. So looking at that potential logistical timeline, we looked to so, I said, okay, if this position is filled for about two months to fiscal year, a little equipment expense, estimates about $15,000 of impact in the current fiscal year. Best estimate we have right now. Number of moving pieces here. Staff suggests the board be looking at ARPA funds. That's a source of funding that is most disposable at this point. Not don't want to kill it. Fund balance is an appropriate look right now. We think ARPA is probably your press consideration here. You might recall there's the board's assigns up to 150,000 of ARPA funds for the firefighting position. Should those be supported in the budget? That's a bit of a fluid timeline of when those positions may start that chief and I are looking at. This is supported at town meeting. There's some other physical testing and different things to line up. So we base that number off early April start date that could be mid or later April. So we'll have a better sense in March, what those numbers may look like. So what I'm kind of getting at here is of that 150,000 of ARPA money, all that may not be needed for the firefighter positions that could instead be used for this type of position. And if we come back, the board's interested in using ARPA for this and need to look at additional of the unallocated ARPA pool, we could have that conversation once we know a little bit more. But this is part of the larger ARPA use that the town staff are working to get a project and other proposal lists together for you coming up this spring and with that early summer as we look at that remaining 2.4 million on the allocated ARPA funds right now. So if the board, listen, your feedback and how you'd like to proceed tonight, if you have any direction at this point, but potential short term as we could finalize the job description and kind of have that ready to go if the board wants to move forward with potential recruitment right after town meeting day. So take any questions from the board on what we'll put together here. Questions for Eric. I think this looks great. Obviously I've been very vocal about my support for this position in general, but also getting this position hired and onboarded as soon as possible. So I think this is a good plan. Typically I would hesitate using ARPA grant funding for a salaried position, but again, this is all contingent obviously on the position being passed in the FY23 budget, which is part of the plan for its continued continuation. So I'm okay with using the ARPA dollars in this context for this position. And yeah, I hope that we can do this. Others who can weigh in, please. Me too. I agree. I'm on board. I concur. Thank you. It makes five of us. So we'll see this again in two weeks trial, you know. Yeah, I'll have the finalized job description for you. Yeah, sure. Good. Moving on to the appointment to the volunteer board to the DRB. We do have the two candidates that we heard from earlier tonight, and we need to make an appointment or not, but it appears that we would have two reasonable candidates. Your thoughts? Well, it's late, so I apologize if I'm a little blunt, but to me it comes down to two good candidates which one excited me the most in terms of how they expressed how they would approach the position and everything from doing their homework, leading up to the interview and how they would approach the position. And anyway, Nate Andrews is my choice. Other comments? It's fine. Me too. Great. Jeff, did you have a motion then? I do have a motion. I'll move to appoint Nathan Andrews to the Development Review Board for an unexpired three-year term through June 30th, 2023. Thank you. Is there a discussion on the motion? Hearing none. Candidates. Hearing no other discussion then. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? So congratulations to Nathan and I'm not sure if he's still in the room or not, but he was a little while ago. He walked down maybe five minutes ago. Well, we're still not. We should. Moving on, management reports. But we might not have chosen him. We've been predicted. We've been predicted, yeah. All separate managers report, Terry? Yeah. Not much this evening in my written report to his report, the energy committee. Now it's fully appointed. We'll have its inaugural meeting tomorrow night and resume. So excited to get that committee going and Erin and the manager's office and members of our planning staff will be supporting them as they get started. So a lot of organizational work is in the committee to get started. So that's the rule there. Their first meeting is agenda tomorrow. The Allenbrook Bridge Replacement Project is going to get started. It's been in the capital plan for a couple of years. So we'll have a, obviously we'll have a closure as that bridge is replaced in the park. We've filmed our annual town meeting, preview TV show on Friday. Terry, Shirley, and Chief Collette and myself. So that's available on the town website along with a number of other resources for town meeting for any residents who are looking for information. We'll continue an outreach next couple of weeks. We'll have some things in the observer on final attempt as well. That's all I have for managers report, Terry. We'll have one other item on other business. Yes, we'll move on to other business. I know you do have one other item that you'd like to talk about. Yep. So it's, we're finalizing in report dedication and thanks to the board, but I've had different suggestions from every board member about to make a decision to get it done this week. So one, I chatted with Terry about this. One thought is we could continue with the same type of dedication we had last year to the full community based on things that have been going on with the pandemic and emphasize appreciation of first responders and throughout all sectors of service. So I quote that as an idea for the board, but certainly take any direction the board wants to go with that. Yeah, I very much like that idea. Other comments? Who would have thought that when this year, who would have thought that we would be facing the same, not the same, somewhat different, but we'd be in the same situation again this year? Yep. So kudos to the community for persevering as difficult as it is. Any objections to doing that? That's good. All right. Any other business we need to talk about tonight? Tomorrow is Groundhog Day and if you're writing checks, it's two, two, two, two. Oh. It's not. All right. It's also my mother's birthday. If there's no other business, then I'm ready to adjourn the meeting. So I will do that with a wrap on my knuckles. We are adjourned.