 Monday through Friday so that the seniors could engage in informal activities and socialize and just have a chance to get together and begin to develop a program for themselves. We thought that most seniors, we wanted to reiterate they're walking, they're driving to the center and it's very important for especially people in the village and all the seniors that have been a part of the center to have an opportunity to spend time there as quickly as possible. Also that we want to have in-person gatherings where we open houses as soon as possible where we can display the activities, we've done this before that are possible, develop new activities gives seniors choices of whether if they don't feel comfortable being inside we want to have outdoor choices where they can have activities outside and engage together outside and just to see how this can all evolve. We know that right now it's safe and it's the governor's mandate say that we can meet together, we're vaccinated and we hope that the senior center will be designated for the seniors. And so we just wondered if you had any updates for us on all of this. Thank you. And I can just speak that I don't but Brad I don't know if you do. Yeah, we had a meeting today actually about the senior center and we certainly were hearing the feedback from the last meeting and again tonight and all of our conversation revolved around getting back to those same hours that were previously held. There's a little bit of a catch right now the senior center or the program director of senior services utilizes her time on Mondays to set the van schedule for the week. So our discussion is today that we didn't make any formal reach any formal conclusions were that we were talking about the center being closed on Mondays but then open the rest of the week. So that's kind of where things ended today we we didn't that's just kind of an update and that conversation is certainly taking place and you are heard. And I think we can continue the conversation to to see if we can open up for more limited hours for this latter part of the summer. I did miss misspeak that I said one of course we wanted to attend it for what the seniors were asking for. Thank you Brad. Thank you. Thank you Brad. All right I saw no other hands for those in the physically here in the meeting room. So I'll go to Microsoft Teams and so now is the time for those of you in Microsoft Teams please make sure to raise your hand if you'd like to raise something to the board's attention that is not on the agenda. Andy Champaign I see your hand is up please go ahead. Can you hear me. Can hear you just fine yes. Okay my thoughts on tonight. Since we're going to redo the charter we need to add some vision for recalling elected officials. The town of Hardwick has one where a petition to remove an elected official is signed by not less than 25% of registered voters than a recall election is held. We should do something similar. Given the conflict of interest the town manager has with the town and village plus the fact the town manager can't even set up a meeting rooms during the select board and trustee so everyone can hear with a 20 million 24 million dollar budget at its disposal not to mention there's an uprooted tree stump right in the middle of Stevens Park. There's been that's been there for years and he has let and he's yet to direct the parks and rec department to use their $700,000 budget to remove it. And that's just one of the many problems with parks and rec hats. Lastly after the racism treatment of Brandon Williams last week he clearly doesn't do a very good job overseeing police department. He's literally time when Lannister's hand of the king game of thrones and he's playing a select boarding trustee like a fiddle. It's set. We need a charter provision that allows the voters to force the elected officials to remove the town manager from power. We also need a police commission that is elected and the ability to remove those members by the registered voters. I noticed that in the timeline for the separation that the vote for the charter is first and it kicks off the process with the state then once later we vote on the budget. I wasn't born yesterday and once we vote on the charter, there's no going back. We will have to approve a budget whether we like it or not. This is a simple bait and switch ploy of the blame political ploys you've tried to play. This is the worst one I've seen so far. It's not even original completely obvious and it's the oldest point in the book. Probably one where you picked up the shady car from a shady car mechanic. They give you a $15 oil chain so you bring the car and leave it for the day. They do the oil chain. Then call you say it's ready but you should get an air filter or new battery so you let them do it without asking how much it is. You think it can't be that expensive. Then when you pick up your car there's an expensive car bill waiting for you. I believe a ploy like this can be taken seriously in a town where the average cost of a home is $269,000. Come on villagers, we can step it up here. Randy and his buddy is going to screw us hard and plenty. And lastly, I was shocked he suggested a town to sell 81 Main Street. That's low down and dirty. The town has owned that building well before you were born. Thank you for listening. I see your hand is up. You can go ahead and unmute yourself. Thank you. I just wanted to mention the fact that in observing what I have so far that it's very difficult to hear anyone who's not on teams because of the fact that the way the microphones are obviously set up. So if I could ask everyone to try to talk toward and close to a microphone that would be great in order to help all of us here who are especially trying to watch online. Thank you, Marcus. And I did watch our last meeting at 81 Main Street and I have to say I would agree many times where I couldn't hear myself or other people. So I appreciate that. And for those at home, if you can't hear what we're saying, type that feature and I hope one of us will be able to share that with us as we talk. Thank you. I know other hands up but I'm hearing somebody I think doing dishes. Definitely being distracting to our meeting so if you can mute yourself if you're not speaking that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. We have no other new hands up. So we will go ahead and move off of public to be heard and go into our business agenda with the first item being Business Item 5a, a work session on S6 Junction Independence. So tonight we have several items to address. We're going to talk about city committees and commissions. We're going to look at Intergovernmental and Health and Human Services. We're going to have a conversation about the proposed contracts with the town of Essex and then look at the org chart as to where it's currently at, look at the charter as to where that's currently at, and look at the upcoming meeting schedule and timeline. Thank you, Brad. And so with that we will go back to, as we've been doing this with these work sessions, we will take public comment on these issues now. So if you have any comments about what the topics that Brad had just mentioned, then now is the time to let us know. Once we have ended that public comment portion, we will go into our work session and we will not be taking additional public comment on these items. We'll start with the individuals in the room. Is there anybody in the room who wished to speak to the board about city committees and commissions, intergovernmental and health and human services proposals for contracts with the town of Essex? You propose organization chart, the charter, the charter, meetings and timeline review. Okay. Irene, go right ahead. On the intergovernmental chart it talks about the Green Mountain Transit costs, which are close to $300,000 a year, and I would hope that the trustees will look at how much ridership comes from the village so that those costs can be apportioned appropriately should separation happen. Thank you. Anybody else in the room tonight? Seeing no other hands up, we'll go back to Microsoft Teams. So again, if you have any comments on those items, now is the time to raise your hand in Microsoft Teams and I'll make sure to give you the time to speak. I am not seeing any hands up. So seeing as nobody from the teams world or virtual world had any conversation on that item and bring it back to the board and to staff. Thank you, Brad. Good. So first up is city committees and commissions. And if you turn a couple of pages in the packet to page six, you'll see kind of a starting list. Obviously, what we discussed tonight is not necessarily set in stone. It's just to get a general flavor for what, you know, what the current trustees are thinking of in terms of future committees. It will also just help inform the budget a little bit because of the stipends and keeping that money available. So not significant amounts of money, but if we could just have a general flavor that would be helpful. Yeah. Yeah, I wondered about I currently would say everything that's that we're currently doing I want to see continue the housing commission. I think given that we would have separate planning commissions separate DRB is that this is something that we would not want to continue jointly with the town, but rather we would want to have our own. In terms of the the will haves those I believe based upon what the services and responsibilities of the city would be so I say it's really at those other those other committees. I would wonder about combining climate and energy. They seem very closely related in my mind. I don't have any concerns about adding any of the others. And certainly these weren't suggestions. They were just plucked from from other communities. So it's a lot of it's a lot of committees. Yeah. I think in general, it would be better to start off, you know, with a big broad list, see what we can get. Hopefully, we can find some good champions to help move that work forward. And if not, we can always readjust or think of something else then. But Amber, I see that your hand is up. Yeah, so in reviewing the ordinance for tonight's later discussion, I saw that there's an ordinance appeals board that I'm not sure that it actually exists or not, but would be I would think would be a committee that would be under the current. That's a good point. Yeah. In my, in my time, I don't think that's come up. Dan. Yeah. I'm trying to think back how long ago it was, but we had discussed some of the new ordinances. It must be seven, eight, or maybe 10 years ago, the noxious weeds. Okay, yeah, updated structures and such at the time, as I recall, Georgia here you probably could speak maybe a little bit to it. We requested that a board or committee be formed to to address the violation so somebody has a recourse if there's a violation to go before that board they'll consider the circumstances that are unique to that individual situation, you know, and rather than go right to, I guess it would be the environmental board or whoever or whatever the state. But we never have done that. As far as I know, Robin could probably speak to maybe Evan could, but we do have a lot of ordinances on the books that aren't necessarily strictly enforced. It's more of a, please don't do this. This potentially could be result in a fine of some sort. And but we've never really, I haven't seen a lot of activity to enforce those things. Yeah. So it does look like it was adopted in 2012 according according to the policy ordinance. Members to be included would be zoning to members at large to village residents at large in a trustee. So I don't know, I guess maybe just throw it on there as the list of current though it does sound like it really hasn't been started. Sure. I wonder if that would be sort of a as needed committee, instead of one that meets on a regular basis. You know what I mean where if the issue hasn't arisen, then that may be why they like that group hasn't met. Yeah, it does say, I mean it's section looks like section. I guess there's the section one, two, three, four in the municipal in the code, but it does say that it's appointed as of July 1 of each year with three year rotations. So like all of the requirements are set out. I just think it just never maybe maybe it's something we need to rebook at. But it is on the books per se. I agree with you. I mean, if there's no reason to meet, there's no reason to meet, but we do have this in our at our disposal. Thank you, Amber. Anything else from other trustees. Yes is Raj, we could probably fold. At least, you know, I don't know that we needed conservation and trails committee. We have bike walk. We could, we could figure out, you know, obviously we're not deciding this now but we could figure out what to do with. Some kind of conservation portion if, if I, you know, I'm not fully versed on what the mission of the town conservation and trails committee is in terms of the conservation end of it. But we can probably consolidate some of these. Yep. Thank you, Raj. So different board members. Thank you. Great. Thank you on to intergovernmental and health human services. You'll see the next page of the packet is a list of intergovernmental intergovernmental organizations that either the village is a part of or the town's a part of. You can see the but the FY 22 budgets. You can see the areas that you currently have seats and areas where if you wanted to join, there's a process by which the village could gain a seat on Green Mountain Transit. And the Winnieski Valley Park District to become a contributing community. Yep. Elaine reminded me that remotely the cities and towns were currently an associate member and we would become a full member. Yep. So that that's been added to that list. And then the only other comment I have is the human services grants. Currently the town has practice of offering grants to human service agencies for one percent of the annual approved budget. Again, not something that you would decide now that's something that gets voted on, but something to consider in the future. Yep. Absolutely. I think it's a practice we do want to consider when should separation pass and development of the budget. Sorry, just one more thing to expand on. Essex Rescue is currently at $3.87 per person. They built her capita. They said on the high end some communities or some rescues charge $17 per person. I think she was intimately meant to expect or anticipate that that request will increase in time. Yeah, I remember a few years ago that they had come to the board with a longer term plan about how to increase that share. Yep. Raj, go ahead. Yeah, Brian, I didn't know you started down that road. So I didn't know with some of these others if you had an idea for us on how how they determine the column dues. So I do on some and not on others. The Essex Rescue I just explained the cemetery association I think is just an annual contribution. The Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce is by full top by number of employees. So that, you know, that would increase slightly but you can see the difference between the town and the village is only a couple hundred dollars. GBIC I've reached out to to figure out if that relationship would change. Same with CCRPC. I'm waiting to hear back. We do the way that Green Mountain Transit calculates their fees is based on service and a historical record of the use of the SSTA, which is for senior services. John, who lives here in the village was able to provide that information. It looks like the villages portion in FY 22 would have been 223,000. So obviously there, there'll be an increase for village taxpayers for, you know, the village service. The county. Let me just so that that would have been 220. 223 out of 290. So a vast majority of that is okay. All right. Thanks. I just want to make sure I was clear. Yeah, that's yeah. I'm waiting to hear back when Uski Valley Park District is they use a funding formula that looks at the equalized education grand list as well as population. And so you could basically anticipate that we would be around, you know, 42% of that cost or 45% of that cost. Cool. That's it. Thanks. Any other questions on that? Brad, is there anything you need from us in regards to like Green Mountain Transit or Whenuski Valley Park District in formal motions and or our own advocacy? Not formal motions, just a consensus if the board would anticipate creating those relationships. And if so, we'll build it into the budget. Yeah, I would certainly say yes. Yeah. Perfect. Are we good with that one, trustees? Next is the proposals for contracts with the town. Obviously, you all haven't had the opportunity to debrief. You may or may want to do that debrief in part in executive session. So that's something to discuss. I apologize. I didn't include the proposals in the packet because I didn't anticipate we would be getting in depth into each one. But Marguerite does have those if you wanted them brought up. I emailed them to you. Oh, just now. But I don't know if they're going to walk them up. I don't think we need to go proposal through proposal. I think, you know, if we we can have a general conversation, but in terms of, you know, how to proceed from here. Again, I would like us to not have that in executive session. I think we should just be open, honest and transparent with what we want. The only time I would say that let's to utilize the executive session is if we're going to talk about personnel in any way. As we're trying to, as I said last time, we're trying to build community here. And so to do that in private doesn't feel right. I also say that makes it feel like a corporate to corporate negotiation, which that's not what we're trying to do. It doesn't feel like what we're trying to do here that feels more like one side trying to win over another. And I don't think that's how we want to proceed. So I would really like for us to have these conversations in open session. If anybody feels differently as we go along, please yell it, the trustees, please yell at me to stop and we could have that conversation. But if you're good, I'd like to just move on having that conversation now in public. Just want to be clear what we're going to be talking about. Are we talking about what we brought to the select board? Are we talking about any responses from them? Any and every. And I would also have received any. I mean, have we received any responses from them? Just not meeting yesterday. Yeah, okay. I just, that's what I thought. I just want to make sure I was clear. Yeah, it's a little difficult to really make any conclusions or come to a decision right now without having, you know, heard back. I mean, I know, you know, we're, we've got a aggressive agenda. Yeah. Maintain, but I think maybe the only thing I could say is that there are some areas where I feel. Not so concerned about. Other areas, police services, as we all commented was number one priority. And some other things, I think I could give some time, maybe give some more time to or consider a different approach. Something to negotiate between, but to get to that negotiating point, we have to give and take. We're not getting anything back to take anything back. Yeah. So along those lines, I would wholeheartedly agree that our, you know, the police department as we identified is our number one concern and where I think we want to do what we can to make sure we can solidify. Along those lines, I've said this multiple times in meetings and in my conversations with with select board chair Andy that I get concerned about us not being able to meet that deadline. And as I think the board saw in email, we can't they the board cannot or Andy can't guarantee that they will be able to meet our deadline. As such, what I would like to what I would just muse or wonder what you all think. Do we want to entertain a plan B of if we are not able to get a agreement with the town of Essex for police services, whether we want to ask staff to look at other ways to get police services either with the police with the county sheriff or with another and in particular to look at an RFP to make sure that should we not be able to do this with the town, we don't have to go to our voters and ask them to vote on a charter that they don't know where their police services have come from. I know for me, I would be perfectly fine asking staff to reach out to our neighboring communities to see whether they would be willing to have that conversation and willing to enter into some kind of a plan B. But the details of that would have to be worked out. It's difficult that right here we saying and for agency, whether it be a Williston or Colchester with their existing staffing to provide police services to the village with under a contract or otherwise, obviously would be increased need. I don't know if they have the staff right now to accommodate that. It's a big, big deal. I would hope that the select board, I mean, on this particular issue would be really quick to get back to us on that. I also would hope so. And I'm a very hopeful person. At the same time, I don't think we I don't like to rely on hope. No, no, no, I agree with you. So I personally feel that we should have a plan B, but I don't want to ask staff to put in the time and effort to have those conversations if I'm the only person who feels that way. So I guess that's that's a bit of the ask is are you all okay with staff starting that conversation of a plan B or starting that process of a plan B? I guess for me personally, Andrew, I agree with you. We should look into it. As far as signing anything, we're not going to be doing so. But I mean, there's, as I said, Williston, Colchester to likely potential police services or agencies that could realistically come into the village and the sheriff's department or the state police under contracts. And I mean, I think it's wise to look at that and find out some costs. I mean, I don't want to see them spend too much time on it, but shouldn't be too difficult to figure out basics and how much it would be. Yeah. Thank you, Dan. Raj Amber. I'm sorry I didn't see who went first. All right. So I guess I'm a little unsure how I would, whether I agree with that or not, but I, we dumped a lot in their laps last week. I'm trying to be understanding. And I think it was, you know, we went through it fairly quickly. I didn't feel like it at the time. We went through it very quickly. I guess I would reiterate to them that, you know, we, we spend some time prioritizing. For our board, you know, what we thought we wanted to talk about first and foremost and what we wanted to see results on first. So I think I would hope that they would look at that and say, Perhaps we don't need to wait to talk about all 11 or 12 items at once. We can, we can move forward on on what we can move forward on as quickly as possible. And if we, if we don't get past even number one, and number one being on our list was the police department that, you know, we'll get to what we get to, but, you know, we gave them a prioritized list is in terms of what we're thinking. I do believe that they're interested in that. And I think our community is interested in that. So, in any way, we can remind them or that that's kind of what our intention was of providing a prioritized list. I'm not sure how their deliberations are going, of course, but hopefully they're not waiting to get back on everything before they get back to us in terms of whether we need an RFP out there. I imagine that's a boatload of work. Yeah, I'm just not sure. I'm not sure where I am with that right now, but I just wanted to make the point that, you know, if they if they are listening or if we can communicate to that to them that Get back to us with what you know, don't don't wait to To reply about the whole package. Thank you, Raj. I get the ask about a plan B. I'm planner. I do like to have all of the ducks in a row, but I guess I don't. I really don't like the alternatives. And so I've heard nothing from the small conversations that we've had with the select board, which makes me believe that we aren't going to be able to come to a resolution about this particular issue. And so I guess knowing staff time is already limited and how I and how the community feels about keeping police services within assets. I guess I feel like I wouldn't go down a plan B route at this point. Thank you, Amber. To the point of staff time and doing this, I would look to staff. Is it something that you feel you would have the time to put the documentation and or process to get that started? Or is that something that is too big of a lift for anybody to be able to do? It's not too big of a lift. I think it's going to be a little bit tricky for people to respond accurately knowing if thinking that it's hypothetical, you know, it's one thing to actually put out an RFP and say, we need these services, are you willing to bid on them? It's another to kind of poke and explore. So we could poke and explore and just say if we were to put out an RFP, is this something that your community or your force would consider taking on? I mean, we have the numbers, you know, the village's contribution is a little over 2 million a year towards police services. So we have a number to take to other folks and say, you know, there's two ways to go about it. You can say for $2 million, what kind of coverage and service can we get? Or you can put out an RFP saying we want X number of officers and X number of times and detective services and all those things. So I think the way I would start is saying we have about $2 million a year. Is this something you'd be willing to explore increasing, you know, your department and coverage area? Yeah, I think that. So again, just personally, if those initial conversations could even happen, I think that would be helpful. But again, I hear Dan, I think saying he's okay with it to others unsure. So that's as that's split kind of a, we'll see where that goes as this conversation progresses as I see that Evan has a stand up to. Well, just quickly, I mean, if we did go down this route, like Brad was saying, roughly $2 million, we're still tied to that bond debt for that police station for another 17 years or 16 years, whatever. So it'll be it's awkward, say at least. Yes. Yeah. Go ahead, Evan. I would just add that if you are going to make those inquiries, you should also discuss whether you're going to keep all the same services that the town police is providing, which is including dispatch to all of, you know, to public works, the fire department, I believe wastewater treatment plant, etc. And so you might assuming I assume you're thinking 24 7365 coverage, plus dispatch, and then whatever other other things you'd have to talk about as coverage at CVE. Yep. So, but, you know, you can have an explorer. If it's just a question of this is kind of what we have budgeted. If the things fall through with the town, would you be a potential service provider that we would start having discussions with? Yeah. With some parameters, you might get some answers. Thank you. Can I, can I ask a quick sidebar question? Sure. CVE gets mentioned a lot in terms of police bandwidth. When CVE has big events, let's say the 10 days of the fair and another big events where traffic control is required, they're usually paying for overtime, right? They're paying first. So, while it is a poll on the department, it's not an extra poll on the budget per se. It's not really a budget item. So, here's the reality of CVE. First of all, it is tax exempt. So it's not on the tax rules whatsoever. The current S6 police department does emergency management planning for all events at CVE larger than, you know, you know, 10 people using a conference room or 50 people using a conference room. You actually have to have the officers to be able to have them to be available for overtime. So they have to be your officers. You're the agency of record. And the other part is a lot of other departments, they have been asked to help provide services and a lot of them, they are not providing. Occasionally, their officers will pull overtime. With us and get a stated rate, which is an overtime rate, but the town is responsible for their workers comp while they are working. So it is quite an endeavor to have police services at special events. But from a budgetary standpoint, in terms of per event costs, those are picked up by CVE generally? Generally, yes. Thank you. Was that it Evan? Yes. Okay. Sorry. We'll lower that. Just wanted to make sure. No, I got, I'm not sure why it's up, there it goes. And I would agree with you that, you know, as we, as we talked about with the select board, when we were talking about police services, we were talking about not just, you know, the, you call 911 and a person with the flashy lights comes with a badge. But it's also the dispatch and the associated attributes that brings that person there. So yes, it is beyond just the 365 24 seven coverage. So in terms of having those initial exploratory just conversations with other area departments, is that something that Amber Raji would be okay with and not going out with a full blown RFP at this point? In terms of seeing if there is interest so that that way there could be a plan B? Yes, well, you know, you want to go? Yes. I feel like we're at a standoff here. I'm just waiting for him to go first. I don't, I, I don't think I, I mean, I don't, I guess there's no harm in just an asking. But I really don't like plan B. Let's put it that way. Yeah. Look, I think if, if, if Brad has the time to start these conversations, I think that's fine. It'd be helpful to know what we're looking at. I think the entire community benefits from having police servicing services stay the way they are town outside the village just as much if not more than the village. It would be a big, big hit to the entire community where that to split. So I, I'm fine, Brad, if you have the time, that's great. If someone has the time to have some conversations, let's see what's out there. But I hope the select board gets back to us soon with some of these items and doesn't wait. You know, the, you know, and village residents look if this is something that's important to you five or six months later, now we're starting to talk about the results of the merger vote from March all of a sudden. So take advantage of these opportunities and go and let your select board know this is important to you. They serve you too. They're supposed to, to listen to your input. So please make your input known. Get to some of these, write some emails, let them know that sitting down with the village trustees is important to you. Thank you for that. And I, I do absolutely agree with both of you that plan A is the plan that we would like that would be the most advantageous for us. And I hope plan A is able to come through to fruition. But I do appreciate all of us being willing to explore a plan B should plan A not be able to happen. Because again, my, I'd hate to see us come the end of September into early October, not have a plan for police services. And yet now we're supposed to go out to the community a month later and say, Hey, can you please vote on this charter, create a city of Essex Junction? But yet now we have no idea where anybody's going to come from if you call 911. That just, that's not something that I think we really want to put a situation or put ourselves out there for. So in terms of other next steps, I think at this point, we really are in that, that waiting pattern for whatever the meeting date is at the end of August. I don't remember it's 27th, 28th, but somewhere at the end of August until the, the select board concludes those listening sessions. So then that way we can move this process forward again. And at that point we will then have, I believe, three total meetings to get to a point where our two boards can sign off on contracts. So was there anything else in that item or questions, trustees? Anything else you wanted to add on that? We're on to the Orc chart page eight. Just an update. I don't think there are any changes from the last time you saw this. You know, I think sometimes there's conversation about how, you know, how are you going to get a city up and running and you don't have any employees. And so I just, I noted on here, there's four positions that need to be hired and one contract for IT services. So, and the plan is to hire two of those positions in year one and two for the start of year two. So I just wanted to quell any, you know, concern that folks had of how is this all going to happen and don't get me wrong, there's a lot to do, but you already have a lot of these people already employed. I think that's great, Brad, and a great reminder to the broader community that this Orc chart does not say that we're currently starting at a state of zero, but that yes, there are people who need to be hired. Overwhelmingly, there are already people in most of these roles. You know, I think about, you know, Jim Jutris and the Water Quality Superintendent, Ricky Jones's public works. Yeah, they've been village employees this whole time. That hasn't changed at all. So those, the overall majority again will be, will be there from day one. Along those lines, one of the other things that I've, I've heard a little bit about is how with hiring all these people are, could we possibly afford it, if you will? Or how could we possibly do this budgetarily? And I think one of the simple answers to that is, if you look at the duplication of services that village residents are currently paying for, and I'll use public works as an example or the highway costs, if you look at the budgets for the town of Essex and the village of Essex Junction, the village's highway costs are 1.1 million, which is currently shared through the town and the village as we pay it through the town taxes. At the same time, we also pay the, just about the little over 2.4 million that the town outside the village pays for, for highway, and we pay 42% of that. So when you look at how much it is we pay in the village, we're currently paying $1.5 million in highway costs. If the city had already been formed by now, we'd only be paying just under 1.2 million. So we'd be looking at $300,000 in savings just through separation based on public works alone, and that's not the only department where we do this. So when people ask, how are you going to possibly have the money to do this, and isn't this just going to raise taxes? Well, for one, no, we're going to stop paying twice for things, that as Sarah Macy had pointed out in an earlier meeting, that we are not eligible to receive as village residents. And at the same time, this is also a starting place for us to find out what the budget would be so we can just best understand what that savings would be. Again, going back to that separation analysis last September, Sarah had projected it would be a savings to the village and or then city of 10 to 19% of a tax reduction. So again, pretty easy to figure out how we're going to be able to do this when we're going to be paying less for the level of services we're getting. Sorry for that tirade. Actually, I'm not sorry. But I think we're done on that agenda item. I don't think I'd call that a tirade. Okay. On to the charter. So there are some areas highlighted in green. Those have changed since the last time we reviewed this as a group. There are some, I think there's only one area in blue that needs a little bit of clarification. So maybe Marguerite, if we just start at the top and just go green or blue area. So transition period I think is still obviously in flux. But I think this reflects the current thinking. And, you know, some of that will be conditional on what else happens with some of the negotiations. As we go through this, I would just say, trustees, if you have questions or if you had any comments on these, please just chime in. Don't raise your hand because I'm going to have a hard time looking at the screen and who's raising hands. Well, quickly just to say one thing, like I said earlier, as far as, you know, moving the process forward, working with the select board, the time frames laid out. If we were, you know, to discuss, you know, obviously I'm waiting to hear back from the select board, but I'm not so steadfast with these specific time frames. If we can, you know, work with them, maybe extend things that they are concerned about a little bit longer, I'm willing to work with them. That's what I'm trying to say. So, you know, I agree with what we've got so far. We've been seeing some things I'm willing to work with, some things, not so much. The time frame is one thing that would be flexible. So the next section is 104, it's in blue. I reached out to Robin and I think I included that correspondence in a previous packet, not this most recent one. And he basically said that we would lose that status because it's village, it's related to the village and we would no longer be a village, so we would need to seek a new designation. And so I didn't strike it yet. I wanted to just make sure you guys were aware that my plan is just to remove this section. Thank you for that. One thing that I wasn't sure of is, are there city center designations and or other designations that we should start a process with now? And or I believe as a part of one of those, we would need to have a, that was a pointed out in the committee section, a downtown development board and or an economic development commission. One of those I believe we need to have as part of a city center designation. When, doesn't St. Albans have something similar? I mean, you're up there, the board is up there and I thought they had something in place to address that. They did. They didn't. I frankly, I don't remember what all the details are. I'm fairly confident that George Robin would be able to have that. Elaine may very frankly have the answers up to the top of her head. I just don't recall it right now. Great. I'll reach out to Robin. Thank you. But otherwise I'm going to remove 104 section 104 section 105. So, you know, we were operating off from the merger charter and making edits from that. And the merger charter obviously was complicated because there was going to be a new board from the two existing from the two communities. Basically, the current language is just stating that you already have, you already have a council, you know, currently it's the village trustees. It would become the city council. You all, you have the same exact roles and responsibilities. You're serving the same service area. I don't think there's any need for a transitional governing body. So the recommendation is that all trustees will simply serve out their terms as they exist and all whoever's elected to the different offices in March of that year when the city forms or in April that year when the city forms in July, they'll maintain those same roles. Sounds good. So number, we're onto 112, which is on page 12. There's just a little highlighted section that talks about the finances in the transition period. So that's what that's referencing. The finances are a little bit different in the transition period. 113. This is the language to show your commitment to a future commission to examine some different aspects of governance that we talked about. Yep. Thank you. Page 14301 section B3, appoint or remove the city clerk. There was no language in there previously. Susan McNamara Hill caught that. And so this language was added that the governing body would appoint or remove the city clerk or delegate that to the city manager. Great. If the language wasn't in there, then it has to be elected. So that's why it was a good catch on her part. She has such a good eye for detail. Yeah. Compensation. Two changes here. One is that the we added a sentence that council members may opt to forego their compensation just to give that option. And secondly, the city, we clarified some language in here before it said that the council shall fix the compensation of all appointees. And all employees and that's really not how how our government functions. So you would appoint you would set the compensation rate for the city manager and later in the manager responsibilities. They will set the rates for the employees. And so then we are on page 2702 a the there's just some language added here to reflect the collective bargaining union union. Unit contracts. And then just some language to add the manager or their designee shall supervise the administration of all departments. As you know, we have an assistant manager planned for them to oversee some of the departments. That was a Travis catch. Both of those were Travis catches. Page 21. Page 21. The letter M. This is what I was talking about. The manager shall fix the compensation of city employees, not the board. Hey, Brad is having one quick note. The activity of the village board or city board is to establish a pay in compensation plan. Raj, I know that I think you had raised either at a meeting or in a conversation we had about a desire for talking about a local option tax. Seeing as we are talking about a charter and it's just coming into my mind now. You're looking confused or am I making that up? But I think we had that conversation about possibly looking into a local options tax as a part of this process. Yes. Would you like to see that at our next agenda? Sure. Can you just clarify exactly what? Whether we should pursue a separation having a local options tax, how we do that, whether that's through the charter or there was some weird exemption with the state education tax that maybe we wouldn't need to do that. But that the process I think just needs to be figured out. Then whether well whether we want to do it or not and then the process. I'd also be curious in our sense. So what happens? Let's talk cannabis for just a second because we brought up local option tax. So the community needs to vote on whether they want to allow cannabis retail as far as I understand it. And we won't see any tax income from that as a community unless there's a local option tax. So let's say that all goes through. Prior to separation. It could happen. Do we as a newly formed entity get to read? I'm not expecting anybody to have the answer. Do we as a newly formed entity get to re vote that? Or is that for instance, if no retail establishments are in the current boundaries of the new city of S extension? Does the city then get to decide how it wants to handle that? And the reason one of the reasons I'm asking is let's say the town decides to allow retail cannabis but votes down a local option tax. And the city decides to allow retail cannabis or maybe it's grandfathered in. But we want to see the tax revenue from those sales and we want a local option tax for herself. I'm wondering if we can find out whether how that might play out because. Because you see what I'm saying? Yep. Because I can see a scenario when where, you know, because the local option tax failed in Essex fire in the town in May, for whatever reason, and let's say it does. But again, you know, the village might say no, no, that's that's good for us. We'll do it and we'll have cannabis and we'll take advantage of it. So it'd be nice to know if we got that opportunity. I would also be curious if there's a way where we could have those conversations and not have the impact of those conversations impact the vote on separation. Because one of the things that we talked about early on is keeping things as close to a status quo as possible. Correct. We don't hear, oh, because of this one issue that's new, I'm not going to vote for separation. Had it not been there, then it would have passed just fine. Yeah, so having it as a separate, a separate item. Right. Yeah, the way that I can work out the timeline if that if those are current issues where we would vote on sooner rather than later or how that can even happen or after. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, Andrew, because that was, you know, certainly that would be my first comment is to not confuse this issue and you wouldn't want all of a sudden opponents, if there are any of local options tax to now be opponents to associate that with independence. So it might be that that they're separate items in November, it might be that you table them until April till the annual meeting vote. That'll obviously happen before the city comes to fruition. So that timing may work just as well. So the next item is our meetings and timeline review. Just an updated meeting schedule and anticipated focal points. We added tonight and then the rest of your schedule is all normal with just an addition of the public hearing, which we can still play around with. We had previously scheduled that for the 28th. And so we could keep that on the 25th. I think it's topic for a future conversation. And the next page just before you go into this, I just wanted to lay out a little bit more clearly of what happens in the first year. Again, there has been, I think, a misunderstanding sometimes of how that all works. And so I just wanted to make sure that it's really clear of who's being hired when and what their roles and responsibilities would be. So that's what's laid out on that timeline detail. I think this is very helpful. So thank you. Sure. Any questions, comments, concerns, trustees? Think we're good? That's it for the work session. Great. Thank you so much, Brad, and early. Yeah. Wow, we don't usually do that. So next up on our agenda is to consider approval of requests for bids for the purchase of two buses for EJRP. Hi again. Hi. So, Marguerite, flag this correctly. I didn't don on me earlier this year. I think you could follow from some of the emails that were in here. We had started to engage in conversation about buying two full-size 78 passenger school buses. And for a variety of reasons, we ultimately determined that that wasn't the best approach. And so more recently, we figured out that we are really in need of a 48 passenger bus, which is six feet longer than our existing buses. We have two multi-function activity buses, 28 passenger and a 30 passenger. We currently have an RFP out to take bids on purchasing a 48 passenger. The real driver is that we are providing childcare to all of EWSD after-school childcare, red kids. And the EES wait list, Essex Elementary School, kindergarten, first, second grade. The wait list was getting into the high 20s in a program that already had a capacity of 72. And obviously that's a lot of families who are in need of care. And so we brainstormed a variety of options. We really didn't want to increase the size of that program to a 90-kid program. It just becomes a lot to manage. We had explored some other sites, which didn't work out. And so our best solution is to do exactly what we do in the village schools, is pick up the kindergartners at the end of the day, bring them to a kindergarten-specific program. So we will be doing that at EES, bringing those kids to Maple Street. And then parents will have the option to pick up their kids between 3.30 and 5.30. And if they don't pick up by 5.30, we'll bring them back to EES. The families who are already enrolled in kindergarten, red kids, had the option as to whether or not to opt in since we had told them the program was going to be at the school. The vast majority were fine with going to Maple Street and having a kindergarten-specific program. It's allowed us to get everyone in off the wait list. So it is now not optional for new families that if you want to be in kindergarten red kids, you will be bused. And so it just freed up that capacity. So that's kind of the driver. We'll also use this for field trips for all of the after-school sites. We'll use it for vacation camps. We'll use it for summer camps. It is all paid for out of the program fund, so it has no tax implications. The money is currently budgeted. The reason it's coming before you all is that when Evan, Sarah, and I had the initial conversation, he asked Sarah to reach out to VLCT. And hopefully you've seen that correspondence. VLCT basically recommending that we not take on that added liability. So the question before the board is, are you comfortable taking on the added liability of a 48-passenger bus? You know, I talk a lot in here that this isn't a new phenomenon, that we already operate buses, that the senior vans also run out of the town, that we already have CDL7, CDL-trained drivers. They already go through drug tests. We already have a lot of these protocols that are already in place. So when we switched mindset from the 78 to the 48-passenger, it didn't even dawn on me to get to return to this insurance conversation, but that's why it's before you tonight. Yeah, well, kind of along the lines of that, what VLCT was saying, liability. The cost, I'm wondering about leasing. Mountain Transit does leasing and there's other busing services out there. Just looking to compare what the cost would be. Where would these be housed? Are you getting rid of what you have and are these going to be in that? I mean, where are you storing it? It's a good size vehicle. Yeah, so we actually would be working with the school district to store it up there because it would drive from EES every day and then go back. And so we have had conversation. They're aware that this was what we've done to increase capacity. So we'd work with them on storage of the bus. In terms of, you know, I provided the numbers here. If we were to contract this service, it's 150 a day, which is about 26,000 a year. To buy a bus is going to be between 75 and 90. So obviously after, you know, year three or three and a half or then saving money. The way that we utilize our buses is we're not riding them hard like a regular school bus. It's not driving, you know, hundreds of miles every morning and afternoon. So we expect these buses to last at least 10, you know, an average bus life is 12 years. We expect to at least get, you know, 15. So really from year four to 15, all 11 of those years, we're talking about a pretty significant savings. With the cost you put down, are you including, excuse me, Mountain Transit or some of these bus services? My impression would be that they're including the driver costs as well. And they carry the liability as well. So is that figured in? It is because it would be a full-time staff member who would drive the bus for us every day. So with it being a, are you saying that's a new full-time staff member who would be driving the bus? Or would these be existing staff members that get the training necessary? It would be a new staff member. Either way, we need to add a new full-time staff member and we're working with the school district on that because it'll be another shared staffing position that'll work in the school during the day. And for us after school. Okay. So that's a new position that's already being advertised for. Okay. And so I would then assume that that could then also help out with school district busing in general as a possibility? In terms of? They're a constant shortage of inability to find bus drivers, which I assume you'll be able to fix that issue for ourselves? You know, and I don't even know if the bus company would be able to provide daily service at 3 o'clock. Obviously it's a busy time and all their buses are out on the road. I think, you know, if they're out of bus, if a driver shortage, I think we're the first to get dropped versus a regular school run. Okay. So it would concern me a little bit if they could make the commitment for all 177 days to get us back into work. Okay. And I assume, and again, I'm making an assumption these are not replacing the existing smaller buses. Yeah. Okay. Great. And then if there were a claim, did you have a thought as to whether that would be something that would come against the program fund and or the general fund? It's an interesting idea. I didn't think about that scenario. I hope we never have to. Me too. Yeah. You know, currently, I guess I'd have to go back and look. The insurances have shifted. So insurances are paid for out of the finance department now, with the exception of workers comp is appropriately tied to either the general fund or the program fund for all of the people that work in childcare. So I don't know. You know, I think we'd have to see, see what all of the impacts were of a claim like that. I think Sarah, if you don't, unless you really like to, but I think Sarah may also have an answer. Yes. So brand is correct that a lot of the insurance, all of the general fund portion of insurances are consolidated in the finance department in the general fund. Since these buses would be in the program fund, which is an enterprise fund similar to water and sewer and sanitation, the insurance related costs would be there. So just to point out that if we did have a claim, that would impact the experience modification for the entire group. And so that would have impacts across all funds and not just the enterprise funds where the buses are. Thank you for the Sarah. And from the sounds of it, it sounds about contracting some of the major detractors being you're no longer in control. And really if somebody, if something needs to get dropped, we don't know whether where we are on that list necessarily maybe top or bottom of getting dropped, but rather really being able to ensure that the, that's the recreation program would be able to fulfill his need and not all of a sudden find yourselves in a situation where you have kids in a place that need to go somewhere. That's the number one driver is we, we can't, we can't have those 32 kids or 35 kids stuck at ES and provide program. So that that's our primary concern, you know, doing this just gives us that flexibility, not only on the day to day, but also we're able to bring the kids back the 150 that I have on here is only one, a one way ride. It's not a two way. So it gives families the flexibility to still pick up at ES and it provides us with that bus for all activities throughout the year vacation camp summer. So it just gives us a lot more flexibility. Go ahead. And the main reason we were talking about this is it provides all this flexibility. It provides a lot of good things. It comes with a risk and wasn't for staff to say, yeah, that's an acceptable risk. It's a board decision. Not that one would hope nothing bad ever happens, but things happen, and you just need to know what risk you're taking, and you're accepting of it for the good of the community. And then the other thing is that I am sure VLCT through passive will be if you go down this path, they will be very keen to see what the training is and what the some of those things are, which is appropriate. Other than that, it's, it's what it is. And today, I can tell you in the last two years I've had long conversations with EWSD as to how we could work together to get enough bus drivers. Can we get them to work on the school bus and then the senior van and then something else so that people either have a full time job with benefits or set amount of hours because right now as far as I know some of them are going from EWSD to GMT and back just to be able to fill in days. And so this may be something that works in that realm as well. So I guess, I think I probably know the answer because Brad was just alluding to it a minute ago but you know, since we're just a village or soon to be just the city and EWSD serves the entire community which is what we're kind of talking about here. It doesn't make more sense to, to, if they're going to be trying to co-employ one of these people with these licenses and we're serving their families, has it been talked about with them for them to pick up this expense and liability and still share that employee with EJRP, you know, so they pick up the liability for the, for the, for the bus, the ownership of the bus, still sharing the employee with EJRP for the childcare portion of it. Again, I'm getting at, or is that just a non-star? I mean it obviously doesn't provide you with something for summer and other times, but I'm just kind of curious if that was looked into as well. I assume that was part of the deal with the storage on the school grounds, right? It wasn't discussed, that specifically Raj was not discussed. The way that it currently works and I think you're flipping it, which is totally fine, is that we employ the individuals. So it sounds like you're saying the school district hires in this case and still shares with us and, and then are you thinking that they would have a bus available? I'm just wondering if they were to do this and own the bus and have the liability as a much bigger entity to absorb, you know, any kind of unfortunate incident. And again, my thinking is, you know, they serve all three communities. And in this case, I guess we're just talking about the town. We're just talking about Essex Elementary. I don't generally have a problem with this. I'm just trying to reduce our, I'm just trying to come up with ways to reduce our exposure, but it sounds like a solid plan. But I guess I was, I was just trying to understand if they're hiring someone that we're going to, we're going to share, which I've always thought was a great model to get a good employee, you know, sharing it with the school district and any JRP. You know, if that could still happen. So, so we'd still have those drivers. And I guess what I don't know is if, if your employees who are licensed can drive their bus, for instance, do you know what I'm saying? Or if, because they're primarily your employees with their light, you know, those licenses with them, if the ownership of the bus has to be with us. And it, you know, if this is a move point, then just tell me it's too complex and that's fine, but I'm I don't, I don't think it's too complex to ask. I mean, I can reach out to Brian and ask and he can determine if it's reasonable. And if you're feeling like that really ties your hands for other ways to leverage this, that's fine too. I mean, if, but it just to kind of occurred me while you were explaining it, it didn't when I first read it. Sure. So I think more, more broadly, one of the things that the bus would allow for is that you'd have a bus of the size where during the non school year, that's you could do whatever you wanted, bring a whole bunch of kids somewhere that you currently don't have the capacity to do. And or now you'd have a third bus to be able to bring people to places that you don't currently have access to. And so I would assume if we don't own that bus and then if we don't own that liability, you'd lose out on that. Also be accurate. I think so. I think, you know, going down that road, right, would mean a very much, it would just be different benefits. You know, we would get the daily transportation, but not game the additional bus to program with. Okay. And not, you know, you could also be transporting other people to this isn't just kids for school age stuff. I mean you could be doing any kind of adult programming with this and transporting for other things you could be servicing ski programs, you could be coming up with all kinds of things. Yes, we've talked about utilizing the bus for the Bolton ski program. And one time if time works, we did some work with ADL this year to transport some of their athletic teams. So yeah, I mean, once you have it, and it's just a matter of whether or not drivers are available. We have seven and we probably this year will end up with about 10 people who will have their CDL. So we'll have some flexibility. What would exploring that relationship with EWSD do in terms of your timeline for this bus, considering we don't meet until August 10th? Yeah, August 10th. So if you're looking at two weeks from today, I guess what would be helpful is I'm happy if the board would like me to reach out. I'm happy to just start that conversation. It'll be probably a quick conversation with Brian and I of, oh, that's an interesting idea. Let's pursue it more or absolutely not. And what would what would be helpful is if you if you'd like me to pursue that conversation, I would, but maybe to have an answer on this. If that doesn't work out, whether or not the board is okay with proceeding as planned. I mean, personally, I'm okay just with you with you doing it. I'm fine with the JRP having the bus. I realize it's a it's a risk that we would be entering into, which while that's not always a good thing, I think the the benefits certainly outweigh the potential risk that I again hope we never have to to experience. I'm personally okay with it. I would say, you know, since I brought it up, I would say if if a majority of the board feels that way. I'm absolutely fine with it. I think, you know, serving these serving this need is great. And I'm sure there'll be no shortage of creative ways to use it. So if I'm sort of alone on that, then then I drop it. I'll just see what what the other board members feel. I support the JRP picking up the extra bus. As far as the risk goes in liability. There's so many others. If you're going to go down that road, there's a lot of different things you can look at me. Technically, we separate. We're dropping some liability by separating become a city. We don't, you know, subject to potential liability figure 10. Amber. I support it. Okay. Would anyone like to make a motion to approve the request? Okay, I will do so. Let's see here. Where is that right? Maybe entertaining a motion for the trustees to approve of the EJRP purchasing a 48 passenger bus. So moved. Second. Thank you, Raj. Is there any further discussion on that motion? None. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody oppose? Okay. That was four zero. Thank you all. Thank you, Brad. Thank you. So next up is to consider the approval of the village tax rates for fiscal year 22. Hi, Sarah. Hi everybody. Is that too big on the screen? No. We've only got like an 80 inch TV, so I think it's fine. Sorry. I think your screen didn't work on ours. I shouldn't derail but as quick, but Evan is always asking for us to zoom in. So I think we finally, we finally perfected it on the big TV. Ow. I can't see his face, but I'm confident he's laughing. The beeping sound is her backing up over me. Every year of grievance period this year, there were no grievances on changes of assessments, which was really nice. It allowed us to get this in a little bit earlier than last minute, but this is the process to start working on sending out tax bills for the next year at FY 22. Those are going to be printed next Tuesday and will likely hit mailboxes. Well, they'll hit mailboxes before August 13, but it may be the end of next week. First thing that we do to set tax rates is look at the grand list this year in the village. The grand list increased by half a percent over last year. We do have one, two, three. We have three tax stabilization agreements. Last year we had four. So one of those fell off and later and further down in my memo, you can see that the grand list after stabilization actually increased by 0.7 percent. So we're starting to see the impact of some of those agreements coming to us, which is pretty cool having seen them start and then seeing them wrap up. This year in the budget, we moved the highway rolling stock contribution into the highway department, which then gets funded through the town budget, if you recall, and that had an impact of lessening the increase in the tax levy. And you can see that play out here in this chart. In order to raise the amount budgeted for the tax levy, which was 3,745,866 dollars, the tax rate will need to be set at 0.3345, which is a 1.3 percent increase over last year. This means that taxes on a $280,000 assessed value home will be $937. This is the village tax only. And that is an increase of about $12, which is only slightly higher than was estimated at budget time. I think we were looking at maybe $9 at budget time thinking that there would be a little bit more grand list growth. But I think 9 to 12 is pretty good looking that far ahead. In addition to this 0.3345, the village also has the one penny economic development tax that was initially approved in 2016. It had been slated to sunset this past year, but it was re-upped at annual meeting 2021 for another three years. In this year in FY22, we're anticipating that this will raise just shy of $112,000 for those purposes. I would be happy to answer any questions. Anybody has about this? Thank you, Sarah. So I think I said this last year, this is one of those math problems where you knew what the budget was. We now know what the grand list is. So we set the tax rate because it's what we have to do, and everything's already been determined at this point. So we can just magically change something that's being presented here. One just quick question in terms of the tax stabilization agreements. Do you know when, and if you don't, I'm okay with it, just out of curiosity, do you know when the others phase out? I do. So 8 Pearl Street will be FY22 and FY23, and then FY24, they'll be paying 100% of taxes, and 15 Park Street is on the same timeline. So next year, both of those properties will be taxed at 70% of their assessed value, and then in FY24, they'll be up to 100% of their assessed value. The final one is the Whitcomb Farm, and that contract actually comes up for renewal in this fiscal year. So that's on my radar to pull up and see what has to happen for that. Thank you for that. You're welcome. I have the sheet up. I didn't have that all in my head. We wouldn't have known any different. Yeah, but I don't want to give you any crazy ideas about anything. Any questions? All right. I would entertain a motion. I move that the trustees set the FY22 village general tax rate at . Wait a second. That's not the right number. No. But yeah, keep going, Dan, but this is the number, .3345. Yeah, at .3345 per $100 of assessed property value. Thank you, Dan. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody oppose? Ask four to zero. Thank you as always, Sarah. Thank you, Sarah. You're welcome. I'll remember this. Thank you. You remember it too. All right. So next up is to consider a revision to the FY22 Sanitation Capital Fund budget to replace the pickup truck. Yes. So, um, I'm still me. When Ricky Jones recently came to me and said, Hey, here's the, here's the registration for that for the sanitation truck. That's up this year. What's the budget? My son, are you sure that's not the water truck? I said, Nope. This is a different truck. And we went back and forth a little bit. Um, and I looked back over the last few years and this truck was not on the sanitation, um, capital list. There was actually no vehicle. Oh, sorry. I had another window. There was actually no vehicle. Oh, sorry. I had another window if there was actually no vehicle on the sanitation, um, capital. Budget. Um, we went back through the rolling stock budget, which has a number of street vehicles and all the fire vehicles. We took a look at the wastewater capital budget and we took a look at the water capital budget and those all have their vehicles accounted for. Um, and we are just missing this 2007 Ford. Pickup truck, which unfortunately is at the end of its life. Um, and so instead of putting this off until the next budget cycle, since this is a capital budget and in particular an enterprise fund capital budget, I thought I would, I would come to the group and ask, um, for an amendment to the FY 22 sanitation fund capital reserve budget. As you can see on the screen, I've added it in red. It does not, um, it does not really negatively impact what we're doing, um, in this fund. I do see here that in the coming years, I'll be looking for an increase in the operating transfer, um, to keep up with things, but for the midterm, I think it fits in nicely. And I believe that it was just an oversight. Any questions? That's what I was going to ask. Sorry. It's all good. Any questions? So the replacement, they're going to, I'm a 14 year old truck. It's probably not worth much right now. We'll see. We'll get everything we can for it, Dan. Well, well, the day is not good. Brad, Brad, earlier, Brad was discussing this bus and he said, well, it won't be used that much. I don't know how much use. I mean, it's not going to be used that much. I don't know how much use, I mean, depending on how much use it received or whether it was really traveling over the roads that far. I mean, you could potentially have a 2007 pickup truck that only has 20,000 miles on it because they don't drive it much and it's just local use. Yeah. Can we ask how many kids it can transport? Depends on how much. No, I don't think it has an extended cab. I think we try to get the best traded value. I think to Dan's, I think part of what Dan is asking those could there also just be another department that may have to be used. Right. But whatever. I think in the words of Ricky Jones, it's pretty rough. That might be a direct quote. I can imagine that's barely running at all. Great. Any other questions? I would entertain a motion on this. I move the trustees amend the FY 22 Sanitation Fund Capital Budget to include replacement of the 2007 Ford pickup truck. Second. Thank you, Raj. Thank you, Dan. Any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Okay. Passed 4-0. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Have a good night. Thank you. Next to discuss the update on refuse collection times. Is this one from Robin joining us? Robin, if you're on, is there any, do you want to introduce this? I don't see him being on. All right. Sorry, we had some music going on in the, have a little party in the meeting room. In the gallery. I don't, yeah, I don't see Robin on. Unless I'm missing something. Yeah. So, I mean, this is brought up. Actually, before I even got here, but Robin was sent back. I think it was probably British and since then has been working to fulfill some of the questions that were asked of him originally and reach out to some of the haulers and look at some of the just developed gold that we have on file. I went to the police department and it turns out they were actually working on a public nuisance ordinance that is technically not, you don't have it yet that has been passed. But they thought that would be the, they do want it to be passed eventually in the best and easiest way to sort of incorporate these new times might be in that ordinance. So I got that to Robin and he sort of looked at it and on his research put in the times that you see here also based on other communities that were surveyed around us and what they do. And that's also another reason for putting it in the public nuisance ordinance is because that's often how they all have to when you peace out Burlington, et cetera. So taking the neighbors information into account and then also what our other codes say and kind of, you know, what some of the haulers he talked to said and the comments that came in. This is sort of what he put together and put it into the ordinance once it would be passed that would be it. So that's sort of the proposal. Thank you and I, if I recall correctly from that last meeting the big portion was also the, the start time for haulers or the end time in the morning for, for us to discuss. So really that six a.m. time period was one of the last big sticking points. This off. Thanks for the explanation because I gotta say I spent a lot of time trying to figure out where this was and what I was like, I was losing it. I could not figure out it. So this makes a little bit more sense that this is now a draft that's coming from the police department and something that we're going to see at a, at a future time. I guess I, I'm, I'm fine with it as written. I guess my question would be a couple of questions. What the process is for implementing the ordinance. And if there, if we're trying to do this as part of a, a larger police project, how does that, how does that also really, are we talking about this as something that's going to be six months from now coming to us or shorter time period? I think I can speak to the overall ordinance approval process from our side of things. We can have one public hearing and approve of it. So that's how that process would happen. So that's one of the reasons why this is informational, especially that public nuisance ordinance does have a lot within it. And so I think we'd want to make sure to have a conversation or two before we go ahead and just, just approve. We bring in the Lieutenant. Yeah. Yeah. We bring in Lieutenant Kissinger who is the basically the author of these, of these items. You guys could do one hearing be done town, I believe is two, but we are looking to have these, as the same nuisance ordinance so that the police only have to officiate one. I will talk to Lieutenant Kissinger and Ron tomorrow and see what that timeline is because I know that there was also a noise component to it as well. So I, I just, I think it's just about ready. And I, and I know that the, the part under alcohol is also something that had been brought to our attention multiple times over the years as well. So I would just like to ask that I know we have some residents waiting on some of these items. So the sooner, the better. If Lieutenant Kissinger would be available for, oh, let's just say, you know, the 10th, then that would be great to at least have the first public hearing. And if desired, pass it at that point in time. I think it's pretty ready yet. That's two weeks, but I'll try. You gotta ask. You gotta ask. You gotta try. You gotta ask. Okay. Amber, do you have other questions on that? No, I think I'm okay for now. Okay. Raj. Yeah. So I just remember this part of this conversation. There was, was distance, but the way that. So re reading through this. I too was confused like Amber. I was trying to figure out what I was looking at. So I kept comparing it to what the village has on the books or bringing this up at the last time we talked about it. It's different than, you know, a contractor, but reading through what's here, you know, there's different times for different things like, you know, operating machinery. If you're a contractor is 7am. There's a bunch of 7am's in here for other things, but the trash is 6am. And I'm guessing that's because of feedback, but I'm just a little, that's a curiosity to me. Yeah. Yeah. And the 200 feet, you know, I'm thinking. Pearl street and retail area is surrounded by houses. And all of those dumpsters are almost all of those dumpsters are very likely within 200 feet or just at like 205 or two. I got to imagine. One of the things we asked Robin to do is kind of get back to us on, on how that, how that all falls. I'm thinking behind post office Plaza behind that, that side. On the other side where. You know, down Pearl street where let's say we're subway is behind that there are dumpsters and just behind them as a whole row of I think that's Brooks. And it goes on and on throughout the village. So I'm just wondering how that, how that distance plays. And I realized people need the trash picked up, but between the time confusion and the distance, not having that answer. I'm just kind of, obviously we're not passing this tonight, but that's going to be something I'm curious about when we do end up talking about this. How we can get some of those times to match or if it makes sense to have a match. You know, because in some of these, you know, if there, if Cassell is going out and doing eight dumpsters, you know, in that Pearl street mall over the course of 15 or 20 minutes with the beeping backing up truck and everything at 6am, but a contractor can't run as so until seven. It's just odd. But that might just be for me. No, I think you're right. And I also want to recall Amber bringing this up at previous meetings as well is that why do we have the time differences? And I think now is a perfectly appropriate time to express either an opinion or something that you would like to see and, or if you want some additional information for the public hearings to be able to make a decision. Either of those are completely fine. And I also seem to recall Raj, just piggybacking what you said, we had asked about a, a map where helping to depict what that 200 feet actually means in relation to the businesses that we know this would apply to. Because if that, you know, 200 feet doesn't actually then apply to say post office square is 200 feet appropriate. Does it need to be 300 feet to be able to have some of the information to really have an informed conversation would be, would be helpful. Or is it just a blanket 6am or 7am? Because as Diane Clemens said the last time we discussed this and I will back up because I leave it in further away from the fairgrounds than she does. With two more rows of houses and trees that I can hear just about every dumpster being emptied at the fairgrounds, even though my bedroom faces the opposite direction. So, you know, it's, it's not a huge deal because it's sort of incidental, but it's never one dumpster. It's always, you know, in a whole area with the concurrent backing up and you know how that goes. So, it's, it the distance is a curiosity to me and that map would be interesting to see. I mean, it would be different in the town. I mean, but by the same token that that area around the Essex experience, what are they calling that now? Experience. No, the grant, whatever they're talking about. Essex town. The wise guy. Whatever they're going to do up in the Essex center, I mean, that's going to, that's going to start impacting them up there as well too. If we're trying to. I was just going to say that the one thing that stood out to me as the, I guess the attorney in the room here is that I could see some parsing of words with utilizing mechanized conveyances, meaning they can still pick up trash, but they can't use the equipment to dump it. So, you still could have noise that's going to be generated from the physical act of dumping these trash. Containers. So just, I mean, just to be clear there. I mean, I don't know how much of that happens, but I know with my own development, they dump them. They don't use anything mechanized. They dump them themselves. Good point. So would you be looking for information as to why that's in there? Or is it just something that you're looking for us to discuss maybe when we have a public hearing? I think the latter, I'm guessing that, I mean, I can't remember what, I can't remember all of the different iterations that we were presented regarding, you know, what South Burlington does in Wilson, all these, but I suspect that that's probably common in other ordinances. I mean, we can definitely discuss it at the public hearing, along with the other things that we're talking about. I just kind of wanted to mention that. So if everybody thinks that we're, it's just going to be peace and quiet. And we're not going to have any trash haulers that are operating before 6 a.m. I think that's wrong. You don't think that's going to happen, but I would be curious to hear what the, the trash haulers had to say about this. Yeah. And we had asked for that research to be done. So I would, I would hope since, you know, Robin isn't here that maybe when we had the public hearing, he could provide a synopsis of that for that public hearing. Yeah, I will. And yes, I know he had that question to him. So maybe he already has the answer, but yes, I'll put it forth again as well. Thank you, Marguerite. Perhaps in advance in the packet. Also very helpful. Anything else, trustees? So again, this was informational. Look forward to having that next conversation soon. Switching for a moment. And we had no agenda additions or changes. So that's going to bring us into the consent agenda. I move we approve the consent agenda. Thank you, Raj. Second. Thank you, Amber. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody oppose? Great. Thank you. Next going into board member comments. I just had a couple of quick things. One being where I live, there was a stormwater retention pond. I think it's the right phrase to use that was installed right in our backyard. And during these recent rainstorms, I was quite impressed at how well they had functioned to keep the water from getting too high to maintain the water flow and to help very quickly receive a whole mess load of water and not have any flooding. And so it appears that to a layperson like myself, that it was working perfectly fine. And during these rainstorms, I didn't hear of any concerns. And so I just wanted to appreciate Chelsea and Jim as well, but their efforts in having these put in and their well functioning design. So I certainly do appreciate that and would hope that my appreciation could get passed on to the staff involved. The other thing that you'll see in your reading file for the next meeting, but I just wanted to mention it now. VFA, the Vermont Housing Finance Authority, has approved of tax credits, affordable housing tax credits for a portion of depot junction. I'm sorry, a development called depot junction that is a part of the Chittenden Crossing master development. So if the trustees remember the proposed housing development that the planning commission had approved of, over where the old Flanders, that whole development area over there, the old Lincoln Inn, for the future of that area, where this would be a 43 unit development, that all the apartments would be targeted to households earning less than 60% of the area median income. And that seven of them would be set aside for households that are at risk of homelessness. It's great to see some of this coming into our community as we haven't had this type of a development in the village to the best of my knowledge since Whitcomb Woods in Whitcomb's Terrace. And we just heard from Cathedral Square the other day about some of that need. But having this for those individuals that are not eligible based only on age, I think is a great addition to have to our community. I just wanted to bring that to your attention. And in that packet, you'll see a lovely picture of it as well. So since you don't get to see what I get to see, you'll have to wait for another couple of weeks. Or just Google it. Those are my comments. Amtrak? You want to touch on Amtrak? Which part? There's been so much on Amtrak. I'm sure there's a way to go. The Vermonter, having the Lieutenant Governor here. We didn't do that here yet? Oh, sorry. Wow. It all just blends so much together. The staff effort to put that event together. You can go on. No, it was last week, last Thursday, they had the grand reopening or reuse of the Vermonter. And that was quite nice. Staff and dignitaries from the state. We actually wrangled the Lieutenant Governor to get off at our stop. She was not originally planning on doing that. And then we guaranteed her a ride back, but she did get her own. But she trusted us enough to get her back to say, oh, thanks. But the effort from staff, absolutely, the effort from our community volunteers truly pulled that off. I mean, it was absolutely phenomenal, frankly. I think of like the efforts from Greg Morgan, just volunteering his time to help get the right people to be there. In addition to Tammy and all of her efforts in having these fantastic materials to hand out, the coordination it took to have not only the opportunity to speak, but to interact with the dignitaries, as was said, up in St. Albans, but also then to have a similar event here at our own train station to highlight the need is certainly greatly appreciated. And I do apologize if my forgetting to even bring it up tonight shows any lack of appreciation to those involved. Robin Pierce is big into that. Yes. Robin has been big into it. Dave Crawford, previous village manager, was there and helps to get that initial design process started. So it has absolutely taken a village to get us to that point. So greatly appreciate all those efforts. And of course, Evan and others. No, one other thing. If we're done with that, we can bring up the whole thing that Chief Ho, Chief Ron Ho, who sent out today that the National Lightout hosted by a six PD will be on August 3rd from 5pm to 7pm at a six high school. I think that would be a nice event for as many people. Our first. Yeah. It may be a long time. We may have done it years ago, but it came out of take back the night. And it's a community gathering event. I am told I have grill duties that night. So I hope not to poison anybody accidentally with my grilling skills, but I'll wear my glasses so the font will be fine. But yeah, kudos to the chief and the equity committee that's working on it as well to make it a family friendly and open and inclusive event. Looks like there's going to be a lot of fun activities for people of all ages. I hope that if you do poison somebody that doesn't hurt no, I'm nearly expert grill. We don't even have the bus yet. I just wanted to give a shout out for the three community forms that are coming up in August. I guess they were originally billed as a way to talk about why merger failed. But now they seem to be more about what's going to happen in the town or something like that. But you know, two of them, two of them don't feature a virtual way to connect. And I'm kind of concerned about that. I heard that one of Memorial Hall is Memorial Hall. Memorial Hall doesn't have internet access. I mean, so with everything that's still going on and our meetings now being hybrid going forward into the future. Yeah, it's a head scratcher as to why we would have done it that way as opposed to having it at Essex Elementary if it had to be in that quadrant. Essex Free Library if it had to be in that quadrant. Or if we just simply ask people to come to Town Hall. We lost your rush. If you can hear us. I'm sorry, but our TV just on this TV here. At least we can see him. Clapper didn't work. I'm still here. Can you hear me? That's right. The sound comes out of this. Yeah. Hang on, Raj. I spoke too long. I don't see the lights on. There you go. Push input. Hey, there we go, Raj. Whoa, we can see. Clearly somebody didn't like whatever I was saying. But no, so anyway, I just, I'm, I'm a little, I'm a little surprised we did it. These are scheduled in places where we can't continue this modality and people aren't able to join. And the same for the Saturday one at at the town offices with no virtual possibility. We have this great meeting capability. So I hope staff reconsiders the location for Memorial Hall and finds a location where people can join virtually and adds the virtual component for the 21st. I think it's, it's sort of what we have to do now. Here you are. Thank you for that. Any other questions, comments, concerns? Evan Marguerite. Great. We have no executive session plans. If somebody wants to adjourn. Wow, that was great. Second. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Raj. Any further discussion on that motion hearing none of those in favor signify by saying aye. Thank you. Thank you. Everybody pose. Great. Have a good night, everybody. Thank you. This all worked really well tonight. So thanks for everybody involved.