 One. Welcome to ongoing election coverage by town meeting television. This is one of many forums we are bringing to you in advance of local elections and town meeting on the first Tuesday of March, that's March 2 2021 town meeting TV. Election forums introduce you to local decision makers and connect you with the issues shaping your community. The topic of today and the title is Essex merger. Wait, what? Still not the solution since 1958. I'm Christina bell. I'm going to be your host tonight. And we are here with Irene renner. She is a town resident and voter and a former select board member in the town of Essex. And we are also with Ken senior yellow. He's a town resident and voter, and he owns a business in the village of Essex junction. Before we start, I wanted to mention that election and voting will be different this year. There will be a informational forum on March 1 and an Australian ballot on March 2. So I'm going to go over that in advance of local or related to this issue. So I can. We'll go over that at the end of the program as well. And now we can get started. Ken Irene, welcome. Thank you. Christina on behalf of kind of myself I'd like to thank you for moderating tonight. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm going to go ahead and bring the board in behind the scenes and town meeting television for hosting this forum. Your meeting coverage provides a crucial window into what goes on and local government all year long. And it helps to grease the wheels of democracy. I'm eager tonight to discuss why merger as proposed. Still isn't right for Essex. So what I thought we might do right up front. So why is it not necessarily true? Well, nothing can be further from the truth. I got active in a merger task force in 2005. But in 2006, we did vote on a merger plan. And the results of that plan indicated that a number of people did not vote on it. And so that was the result of that. Which was curious to me because it was an issue everybody seemed to be talking about. When I looked into those under votes, I realized the ballot question was on the back of the ballot. So a lot of people missed it. In fact, so many people missed it. The number of under votes exceeded the margin of victory. And at that time. The vote had been yes, by a small margin. So those folks are sort of disenfranchised. They didn't even realize the question was there. So I worked very hard to get a revote in. The next year, January of 2007, so that everyone could have a chance to focus just on learning about merger and then going to polls and seeing that one and only question. Unfortunately, for me, in some ways, that vote reversed and it came out as a yes vote. So from then on, I'm, I'm known as someone who doesn't like merger and that's not true because actually in March of 2007, I earned a seat on the select board. And from then on, I worked on consolidating a number of departments because fairness and taxation was very important to me. And I think that is a way of bringing the community together, not dividing them. So I brought up that chart. And I guess I have to share my screen first. Okay. Because I should do that. You can skip it if you like. Now here you are. You who are watching this live we welcome your questions at the end of the presentation so that may be around 630 or 645 depending on how things go. The number is 802-862-3966. So I've worked with Irene for a while and I know that it can be difficult. She's a nitpicker. She's a fact checker. She's a detail finder, quarter of facts. The problem is she's right most of the time. So what I've encouraged folks to do is not necessarily believe what she has to say, but at least listen and check the facts. Yes, I hope you'll hear us out tonight. And I think what we have is new information, which is something that you don't often hear about in the merger conversation. It seems to be the same old arguments. And if you read the newspapers in 1958, that names of the players are just about the only thing that's changed. But what we'd like to do tonight is just dispute and discredit two of the popular Pharisees that we have about merger right now. So the first thing I thought we would do is, and this is surprisingly a problem, is try to understand exactly how town and the village relate to each other. And just what is it that's merging. Okay, and what's merging is the town and the village. Have you got a map for that. I've got a map for that. So you can think of the town and the village three different ways. The first think of it as two distinct municipalities just like Jericho and under hill to separate municipalities that each have their own governing body, a select board in the case of the town, a board of trustees in the case of the village. They both have the ability to levy taxes. And they both have a separate budget. Two distinct municipalities that operate independently in terms of their government budget and taxes. Second way to think of it is geographically. Excuse me, can you don't have slides showing up so if you are sharing your screen we're not seeing them. I am sharing my screen. Okay, that I do not see. And the audience is not seeing them either. I'm afraid producer. Is that true. I'll try it again. I'm not seeing your screen right now can how about there it goes there it is. All right, so there we go so go back very quickly so we have the municipalities select board trustees for the two different governing bodies to municipalities, and there are separate taxes. There is separate budgets. Second way to think of it as is geographically. So, here's the village of S extension town of Essex reality is they're not separate geographically one overlaps the other. Not cookie cutter overlap and this can be confusing. Now I know it's confusing because until about two years ago, I was puzzled by why is it that my town hall is in the village of S extension and the police station. It was mind boggling to me. Now I understand that the reality is, it is in the town, and it's also in the village. They overlap dirt and stop me anywhere along here. I need to answer a question I mean, okay. Third way to think of it is population wise. Here's the town and the population. People who live in the town are members of the town voters of the town citizens of the town. They vote on village issues of village budget village select board members. They are residents of the town simple as that. If we put in the boundary of the village. It creates two distinct areas and we do refer to them. We're still talking about the whole town. We call them the town outside the village area and residents within it, and the town inside the village and the residents within it. When you overlap the village, what you've got is a situation where the folks that live inside the village, they're dual citizens, they wear two hats. I don't know if my video is showing but you can think of it. We can see. I'm a villager. I vote on village budget. I'm a villager in Texas village board of trustee members. Same person. Now I put on my town hat. I'm now voting as a town resident, and I vote for my town budget, my town select board members. So that's one of the distinct differences for town inside the village folks. They're dual citizens. Another difference of course is if your account outside the village resident and voter, you do not vote on the village stuff. You don't get a chance to vote on the village budget. That's a significant distinction. We'll get rid of the house. So Irene, what exactly is it that's merging. So merging would be the town and village governments, their assets and their budgets. So that's what we'll have after the merger just the town, just the town select board, just the town budget and just town taxes. True. So what exactly is the problem that the merger trying to solve. Well, as some village residents have noticed, they are paying twice. They take taxes to the village for certain services, and they pay other taxes to the town for other services. One point that's popularly made to justify the push to merge by the villages to get rid of some of those extra taxes by sharing them, as well as by seeing them go away as you saw on that map. First question and issue is what do the town residents get town inside the village residents get for their town taxes. That's the first big complaint that we hear right. Yeah, they got nothing for their town taxes, which is a little bit of a misnomer. Let's take a look at two tax bills. So here you see on the left, typical town outside the village tax bill. And then I'm going to bring up a highlighter here real quick. And so here are the town tax components. And here's the corresponding, well it's not for the same property obviously a town inside the village slash village tax bill and you can see there it is. So what we're going to talk about is this part. The town inside the village, the claim is that very little value is gotten by the town inside the village residents taxpayers from this portion of their tax bill. You can see that they've got a second portion that says village taxes, and that's where the pay twice idea comes from. So let's focus on just this top part. What I've made here is a pie chart that shows all of the taxes collected by the town as a whole. And then I divided up into the portion that's contributed by the town inside the village taxpayers and the town outside the village taxpayers. What you can see is that town inside the village does in fact contribute quite significantly to the town budget to the tune of about 41%. Significant. The claim is that very little value is received for those taxes. Why dug in. And I'll grant you over time this situation has changed. Currently, the situation is such that significant amount of that revenue that the town inside the village contributes it does receive back in benefits. Let's take a look at it bit by bit. The first part, most significant part without question is police services. The police budget, when you combine it with the debt service on the police station that we just built 1980 not just built but still paying for about $5 million total split at 5050 wise 5050. Well Sarah Macy split it 5050 when she did her separation analysis. I just got information from the police department that indicates that in fact the number of calls that the police department delivers to the town and the village is very close to 5050. Exactly impact for last year it was 51% 49% 51% in the village 49% outside the village. So 5050 split is quite reasonable I think Sarah nailed it. You can see that almost half of the 41% that the taxpayers inside the village contribute to the town budget they get back in police services. Next, this next item is very interesting I mean you were there when this was established why don't you talk about the next component. I was there when we decided to consolidate the budgets of the highway departments and public works and the town decided to give the village a debate essentially on the taxes they were paying to the town. And now they get a check cut to them to pay for their highway. Wait what. You're telling me that the town cuts a check to the village for $1.2 million. I'm just about yes. That basically covers the villages, highway department, stormwater, a small contribution to the Brinnell library and a small contribution to the parks and recreation, the village parks and recreation. Yes, it does. Okay, so that's a straightforward transfer obviously so there's another significant portion of the 41%. Next, you were also there when this part was established I believe I was we combined the town and village managers into one unified manager, we combine the town and village clerk into one position. And it's now based out of town hall, we combine the finance departments, and so forth so there was a whole lot of consolidation that went on and the budgets got consolidated and so. And now the town and the village share a significant number of personnel town manager assistant manager, human resources finance director clerk assessor, I hearing. And I do know that and I have figured it into this the village does contribute about over a little over $100,000 to those, but added all up. So let's track that part divided by two. This is approximately what the town inside the village is getting in benefits for that sector. Next, parks and recreation. So I took a look and the budget for the town for parks and recreation, totaled up about $600,000. I divided it 5050. This is a question. Some of these are does the town inside the village benefit from the town parks. Irene, what do you think. Well, I think we all know that the village has a wonderful park at maple straight with a pool and fields and things but there are nine other parks outside the village which also receive heavy use from all residents of the village including the jewel Indian Brook reservoir in its park. John was out recently and is being very heavily used during coded times. It sure is. All right, so to sum this up. The idea that the town inside the village town taxes. There's no value received. Doesn't really to me anyway doesn't seem to hold water in fact it looks to me like, depending upon how you classify some and I haven't talked about fire which is question for those are very, very small, compared to the rest. Population sensitive services, the village definitely benefits from, especially the police, obviously 90 to 95% is returned in direct benefits. That's a lot bigger than zero. Okay, can you talk a minute about why the graph is divided the way it is 5941. Sure, well it's not that difficult taxes property taxes are based on grand list. Can you explain what that is. Yeah, the grand list is properties in the two district restrictions or the total town actually and then you would consider the town inside the village as a separate area when you're calculating the village taxes. You multiply that times the tax rate, and that gets you the taxes it turns out that town outside the village grand list is currently larger than grand list inside the village. And growing faster I might add. All right, moving right along. Now if you just tuned in, we are here today with Ken Cinello and Irene. We're talking about the Essex merger. And if you're having some questions as you're watching, you can call us at 802-862-3966. 802-862-3966. Those questions will be open for consideration. At about halfway through the program at 630 to 645. Ken, if I may interrupt. We talked about the one fallacy that village residents don't get anything for their town taxes, but one of the other ones is that the town is not paying its fair share and if you could go back one slide please. It looks to me that the town is not only paying half, which I would consider it's fair share, given that the town outside the village population is half of the total, but they're paying 59%. So it almost looks to me like the town outside the village folks are paying more than their fair share. So we're going to talk about since we're going to be looking now at who's not paying who's fair share of what it looks like is the village taxes that we're talking about when we talk about fair share. So the other side, the other portion of the equation for merger and taxes is the village tax budget. Back to the tax bill. Now we're going to talk about the second portion of the story, which is only paid by the village. That's this part here and you can see it's quite significant. So, I went to the annual the village annual report and grabbed this pie chart. And what you're looking at here is the revenue that funds the village budget and where in the sources of it. And what I noticed right off the bat is that a significant portion of the village's budget is funded by the town of essence. Now remember it's my look quite like a lot of money is significant portion of a $5 million budget. You must remember that 42% of that slice is the butt is money contributed by the village so it's you're getting your money, they're getting their money back really. It's large but it really should be considered under that fact. So, what happens. Well, here's the village budget currently residing and managed and maintained and voted on within the village. If we merge what happens to it. Looks like all of those funds start to come from everyone. The whole town now has to share that budget supply the revenue necessary to fund that budget minus the red slice of course because that now becomes it nets out to zero. Sure. So that's an important concept to understand that's one of the most important parts of what merger does. And that's what really results in the what we call the tax shift. So we're going to take a closer look at that now. Another important part about this besides the tax shift is that that budget that gets shifted to the whole town. The folks that live outside the village, they did not vote for any of it. They did not decide what makes it up. They did not have any say in what makes up that budget they cannot vote on village matters. They cannot wear the village hat. Sarah Macy showed us this chart. Which is excellent. This is a good chart and shows basically a way of representing the tax shift what they've done basically is instead of putting the tax shift all in one year, they spread it over 13 years. That's what the merger plan contains. There's a special tax district to manage that. The problem with this, and what Sarah said last night is that the average tax rate goes up $25 per year. That's not quite true. It's not $25 per year. It's $25 per year per year. It compounds. I've made a little chart to give you a sense as to what that looks like. Here is what was presented. This is those same numbers. It's been 13 years. And now if you compound it, it looks like this. Wow. So, over the course of the 13 year plan, town outside the village taxpayer that has a $280,000 assessed house will end up paying an additional $2062 over the course of that 13 years. Now, to be fair, this could be a lot worse. The $330 in year one right through. So what I call this is this is this idea of shifting the taxes this way, like boiling the frog. Slow, hardly notice it. But in the end, you're going to be paying the full boat. Question questions. Nope. Okay. There's another component to this story. In addition to those taxes from the tax ship where the town is absorbing the budget of the village. The town also has a tax increase every year. It's typically in recent times $40 or so for $280,000 house. Well, how does that factor in and how does that figure in, especially considering that that $40 idea came based on a $15 million budget. So if the village budget is included now in the town and there's no cuts, which is what's been proposed. It won't be 15 million anymore. It'll be more like 20 million. So the increase of 40 is very conservative. And here's how it looks. So I would have said on top of but underneath really underneath the normal town tax increase you will have the additional tax shift. It adds up. That's the concern right. Sure does. There's another way to look at this. Let's put our village hat on a little bit here right. It's also promised that there will be a tax reduction. The taxes go up outside the village because they're absorbing the budget. And town inside the village now has to pay less of the budget so they get a reduction that's logical. And here are the proposed and estimated numbers again granted these are estimated based on assumptions. One of them being the grand list, not growing, which is not true because the grand the grand list grows, the tax rate would go down, unless the budget matches reasonable assumption we can work with this. If the proposed tax decrease due to merger is averaging $36 per year. And it turns out that the average tax increase from the town is $40 per year. You're not going to see a tax decrease. You're going to see a smaller increase, but not a tax decrease. Folks, if you don't believe me on this, I want you to find the government official, a trustee, a select board member, town manager, ask them face to face. As a village taxpayer can I expect my tax bill to go down due to merger. That's a good question. It's a good question. I know the answer. But I think you need to find it out for yourself. Don't take our word for it. Don't take our word for it. That's right. No, honestly, check the facts. All right, so the other thing that happened yesterday is there were a lot of benefits pros and cons that were presented by the trustees and staff and one one select board members and one trustee and staff yesterday. So let's go through some of those Irene and talk about them. The game. I'm game. All right, here is one. Oh no, this was not one that they mentioned sorry. This is one that I thought of. So this is what puzzled me. What kind of a negotiation is this really for my village perspective. So the village is going to share all of its assets it's town hall, it's fire truck, it's fire station. With the whole town, which is great. Appreciate it. But it's going to have to keep and maintain and pay off. It's that. I mean, when you get married normally, you bring all your assets and your liabilities together. Checking first or there aren't any hidden student loans of course, but you. I don't understand this. Now, why isn't Irene you have any idea why it is that the village is going to keep and pay off its debt. The only thing I can imagine, I mean, the official answer is that the law requires it. And yet, back in the 60 late 60s early 70s when Essex Center was a village and it dissolved the town outside the town of Essex took on its debt as well as its assets so I'm a little I don't know why if the law has changed since then or whether this is sort of a gift to the town outside the village of minimizing the tax shift by maintaining the debts in the village for as long as they need to be paid off. Well, clearly for that to happen with Essex Center, they had to vote, obviously you couldn't adjust. You know, so that would have been the necessity here. Right. That could have been put into the merger vote itself, I think. Another item that was mentioned, well, one item that was mentioned yesterday is that the new merger plan has Australian ballot we call it budget to vote. Budget to ballot. That too. That too. So that was listed as a benefit of merger, which really kind of surprised me because we already voted to do this. Back in November. The only fair thing you could say was well, the merger plan doesn't take away something that you already have. That really, that really bothers me, you know, so laying claim to something that you already have, but you're not taking away. Thank you. All right. They claim there will be a reduction of duplicative services. What do you think I disagree. First of all, I think the phrase duplicative services is not accurate. I've never seen two different departments provide the exact same service. Because the electorate that preceded us would have never allowed that. There are two fire stations with two separate fire departments, but in addition to doing mutual aid for each other they go to their own calls first, as I understand it. There are two libraries but they have very different programming they have very different atmospheres they have different collections. So I wouldn't say that any of the things that look like they're similar between the town and the village are actually duplicative. I would say that most of the real duplicative services have already been combined. I think that's a fair statement, or paid for by the town directly with checks. Yes. How about this one. The services will be available townwide. I think that's a tricky one because right now there is five star childcare in the village but given the demand for that I think they would have expanded into the town outside the village long ago if they had the resources. So I think that's a good way is the buildings and the staff to allow for that expansion. I mean I don't know of any business that doesn't take advantage of demand when it has it and clearly, the demand may double. If you double the number of people who are paying into each R.P. Right to the way I look at it is you take a budget that services, the needs of 11,000 people. Take that same budget don't change it any spread it across 22 million people. 22,000 not 20 million. Thank you thank you. For those services that are population centric, obviously, merging doesn't cause the roads to double. But those services that are population intensive. Well, those are going to be a problem because they're going to be demanded by twice the population potentially. Yes, so that's going to require either more resources more money obviously, which I never hear anything mentioned about that. Or additional rationing. All right, next. Tax equity merger will achieve tax equity. That's a mantra we've heard for a long time. First of all, tax equity is sort of in the eye of the beholder. And that orange and blue pie chart. If you define tax equity as people in a certain district paying for the share of taxes that you would determine by population. That's overpaying right now. So, equity is sort of fluid. And again, who's to say that it's equitable for folks outside the village who've never voted on a village budget to now have to pay for those three and a half million dollars of services right and I think that's the key. We've already demonstrated it granted this is more recently in the last 10 or so years tax equity or tax town taxes has largely been achieved. The village taxes that are really the problem. And the problem with the problem is that only town inside the village villagers get to vote on it, the town outside the village folks have never had to say in those taxes nor this merger plan. That's important. How about fewer voting days that's been promised. Oh yes. This, this idea stems from the fact that there are votes now in March and votes in April. The April votes right now are the school board vote and the village municipal votes with the merger the village votes will be gone. Yes, and the town vote in March would remain. However, the school board when asked this question on Monday night of this week indicated they have no desire to move their election for to March they really like having until April to determine their budget so this is not only something that's not going to happen anytime soon from the mouth of the school board members themselves. But it's also something that's not at all related to merger, similar to this budget to ballot second bullet that you have here Ken so why it's being used as a selling point for merger is beyond me. Two slogans I hear constantly will be stronger together or will be one. Well, I think we already are one town in fact we were chartered as the town of Essex back in 1763. So I don't think that we aren't one we happen to be a nested community and that's worked out quite well for us in our circumstances. We are quite strong we've attracted a lot of industry. We've got terrific schools and a great reputation we've got not only a downtown and suburbs but rural areas. I can't imagine a much stronger position than any town could be and so again I have to question why this is being used to sell merger I don't think we're weaker without merger or stronger with it. About this one. One municipality can no longer apply for the same grant twice has that been happening. And we've milked it. Similarized municipalities don't have this advantage of South Burlington with a very similar number of people can only apply as one city, but we, a town and village often apply for the same grants, state and federal as two different municipalities. So this summer, we gained $30,000 from two grants that we were able to apply for from two different directions. We give that up if we merge. And then Irene I want to let you know that we're just a little more than halfway through the hour. 635 and please continue. Thanks. Thank you for that point there appreciate it. We can get carried away. Last point on this chart on this slide. Representation, how does that change. Well, once again, we've kind of been able to double dip as a town and village in the same place. Because on county boards like the regional planning commission when I was a planning commissioner I sat next to someone from sx junction. And again, Colchester in South Burlington could have easily raised an objection because they're similarly sized municipalities population wise, and yet they didn't have that advantage of being two municipalities so they didn't get two people at the table and this was just for other boards as well in the area. So there's actually an advantage to being two. There is but I don't see that when I look at the benefits and the pros and cons shall I say of merger I don't see these laid out in there and that disappoints me I wish that we're being more fair to both sides of the argument. That's why I prefer the slogan to together. It's worked well for us and that's why I think status quo since 1958 has been once one out of the ballot box every time. Okay, so let's wrap it up, and then we'll take some calls you ready for the last slide. Sure. So what we've done is made this little diagram or cartoon I guess. I mean, what are we looking at. My screen is being hidden. Sorry. There you go. We've got a picture of the merger plan and you know, at first glance it's neat and tidy and it looks terrific. Above the water, nothing to worry about right and yet underneath those of us who've done a deep dive have some serious questions about some of the features of the merger plan. We already mentioned the tax shift that was the graph with the bars that grew and grew and grew. There's some hidden costs to merging. There is some unequal representation ahead of us. Let's talk about some of those hidden costs because I heard a little bit of mention of those at the village budget meeting. What did town manager teach have to say about the future housing for emerged town. Sorry. I seem to recall in the reporting on that budget meeting that there was going to be some issues with building or housing the new government. Oh, of course. Yes indeed. The town manager unified manager now mentioned that with all these consolidations we might need say a central library or central municipal building. And that of course would bring mega costs to the equation, either buying land or if we could find land that we already own somewhere. A building is not a cheap proposition 10 million or more is what I remember hearing him say. There are things that are again not being talked about in the merger plan or the documentation that's marketing it that I think is a little disingenuous when it doesn't talk about some of the other costs that would be ahead if we merged. So I also see unequal representation here but I heard quite a bit last night about the fact that three plus three charter changed that you and I put forward and managed to get past actually is in the new merger plan so why is unequal representation here. Well, for one thing. In the time between that when the merger plan passes and the next March election so for almost a year, there will be an interim select board for the new town, because merger hasn't yet taken effect and the people on that board will be the village trustees all five of whom are from the village and then the select board members, several of whom also live in the village so we're talking about lopsided reputation representation to the tune of perhaps eight out of 10 of those people being from the village and when they're going to be spending the budget that we vote on in March, planning for the next year's budget and making all kinds of decisions about merger in between. So that's the cause to think that that won't be equally representing the equal populations within the town. And that's what that refers to I see. Yes. Okay, another hidden below the water items special tax districts. We have some four special tax districts coming in the village as part of this merger plan and again for a group of leaders in the village who've always pushed for tax equity it's kind of curious to me that they would set up new taxing districts as part of this plan. So you run them down quickly. Sure, there's a capital district capital replacement district which would pay for some of the capital for at least five years we're not sure why it is in 12 years that's one of the reasons. Several select board members have questioned the completeness of this plan because there's a lot of moving targets and different deadlines and different timelines for things and that's one of them it's a capital plan district. There's a sidewalk district that ensures that village streets continue to be plowed by 730 in the morning on a snow day. And there's a downtown know that they took that out of the plan. There's a debt reconciliation district. Yeah, take care of the debt that the village is keeping got it. That's what you referred to on that slide as bullet one. And there's the, the district that helps the tax spread out over those 12 years as you showed the bar chart. Tax reconciliation. Yes. There's, there's four special taxing districts which will tax the village and I'm not sure if that's even worked into some of those charges we saw. That's a lot of juggling for the taxing department to handle it seems like in fact I remember that being mentioned that one of the select board meetings that the savings for example for the sidewall tax district turned out to be about $2. And how did one select board member says the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. It's one of the services and that has to do with as we talked before. It's one thing to not have enough childcare right now to service the village through each ARP but if you have the entire town paying for that recreation department all of a sudden you might have double the demand for childcare and camps in summer and how are you going to meet that demand, are you going to be doing more rationing, or are you going to be charging a lot more money so you don't have to rush it. Yeah. Right. It's more than just the feed you have to find the building. Absolutely and staff. Okay. No cost savings. Well, one would hope that there'd be some belt tightening on at least the town or village side, if not both, and yet we have not seen any cuts to headcount or anything else predicted as an incentive to merge you know if two companies merge, they shut down one factory and they move everything together and they lay off half the people from the ol factory but that's not happening where people serving people here and the population here only grows because it's such a popular place to move to and so you need the town clerk to process more absentee ballots every election or mail out more ballots if they're mailing them to every single person who's a voter. And then you only have more people applying for zoning variances and permits to put a new porch on their backyard you know their backyard so I think that we have a hard time seeing a lot of people getting in any situation, but certainly just throwing the two different groups of services together is not going to have any inherent savings. It's not intuitive no in fact their staff is going to grow unified manager asked last August for six more staff members some full time some half time, some part time. So I found that curious that they are so short staffed and if I could back up a little bit we've been told that millions of dollars have been saved through those consolidations we've done in recent years. Well that was in the chart. I'm afraid that a lot of that money that was supposedly saved was on the backs of existing staff who kind of doubled their workloads in order to make it all fit and you know. That's not fair to anyone to make them do both the town and the village work without hiring people to help them. So, again, if it was artificial savings that we're being told came out of consolidation. It's no wonder to me that we need staff now desperately whether or not merger passes so we're certainly not going to see any headcount reductions. So the one last item. I hope we have some calls. Awesome identity. Christina what. If you're listening and you would like to ask a question and call in the numbers 8028623966 that's 8028623966. And we will open up the line for calls in just a few minutes. Last but not least. aspect of the merger plan. The loss of identity this is something that came out of the last merger plan vote there was a proposal to call the new town the town of Essex Junction. And there were people who live out in rural Essex especially but also people ask centers that I don't live in a junction. That's not the name of my town that I moved to. And that's always really important and so I can understand why people from the village would not want to see say the name, or the cute logo that the village has which I love, come off of all the trucks and all the signs in the village you know that's something that a lot of people identify with and celebrate and if it becomes the town of Essex that's what shows up on the trucks is my understanding. All right so that completes the presentation part of the show. And I will stop sharing my screen. There we go. And with no calls we have an alternative plan. So let's see if we do have any calls coming in I'm going to check with our producers they're going to chat to me if they see some calls coming in, and I'll let you know. We're not going to be singing a song. No song. Never mind. That's a joke you have to be a local resident to get. Let's see. I'm going to ask, I've just chatted to the producer to see what they're seeing on the calls. So we'll go through some, some trivia that we learned in the process of doing some of these analogies. So we're, I will see it up on my screen if we, if we have calls that we can take. And so I'll let you know, and how about we, yeah, let's move to some facts that you may want to share. Yeah, just interrupt us at any point. This is not so significant, although interesting I think anyway. So I'll go first Irene. Unless you, you're Bernie to tell your story. Go for it. So what I learned was interesting was this, you saw it on the tax bill, there was this online item on the town outside the village only tax bill town highway tax. You know, I've been always hearing that Oh, it's the village town inside the village that has the extra taxes, but apparently there has been a tax paid only by the town outside the village residents. So I learned, thanks to one of the select board members was big on history that that started in 1917. And I haven't researched it thoroughly but it makes sense that what was must have been happening was there was that tax inequity problem that was recognized and this was a way to resolve it. The town outside the village collected extra tax to fund maintenance of its road because the village was taking care of its own. And we have a caller. Excellent. So we can get someone to someone on the line to ask a question. Hello caller you're on the line. Can you state your name and your question. Hi, and you're live. Thank you. This is Tony Morgan I live in the village. And I think that people all over Essex and the bill both the village and in the town, feel like one one community and want to be one community. We've been working hard over the years and in particularly in the last two years to become one, because the alternative sucks. I don't want us to split up and get like get a divorce. I think we are all better together. So I think that you can find pros and cons. But it's like what's what's really valuable here. Is there a question there Tony. Yeah, is it how important is it to people to really work together and be be one community, because of, you know, how what more could the village do to how much more do they have to give to have Irene and can be be happy with a merger. We've really been over backwards. Tony, I have a question for you what town do you live in. She gone. She gone. Yeah. Well, that was a good question. The answer is simple. We are one community. We all live in the town of Essex. Can I say more. I'd love to add something if I could. Yeah, I know plenty of married couples who sleep in separate beds. It doesn't mean they're not married. It doesn't mean they don't love each other. But there are times for being a part. There are people who go on separate vacations because they have an interest in something my mother went on a cruise because my father wasn't interested. She took a lady friend of hers. It happens all the time in our lives. It doesn't mean that the relationship is strained. It doesn't mean that we don't love each other. It just means there are sometimes times that it's behooves us as we talked about with the grant opportunities. Why not continue to be two communities because those two communities have a lot of history and culture in common. And as we just saw a lot of budgetary things that we do not have in common and if you force one half of the town to take on. Whether it was debt or current expenses that they didn't vote for the level of animosity here will go through the roof and I might be blamed for that, but it's not my problem if people did not carefully think through how we should share expenses and tax increases in a way that is indeed fair to people rather than having to say the town outside the village paid 59% rather than half. You know, I think there's a new data has really opened this up for me. Christina. Irene, thank you for your comments. It looks like we have another caller. Let's see if we can. Hello you're on the line. Can you state your name and state your question. Yes, my name is Patty Davis. I live in the town outside the village. And guess what money talks. If we pay 59% then we don't pay 50%. So whatever that last caller mentioned, I'd like her to hear what service benefit are the town outside the village residents going to leave in the town outside the village for this tax increase, say a new building for our own daycare, or what we want to walkable bike, bikeable community, because we, you know, we want things. Yes, even if they're duplicate because we live here we don't live in the village. Okay our fair share. Please show the graph that shows the annual 3% tax increase that we pay each year and the shift merger to show that last woman what we actually pay compared to what she paid. Thank you. Thank you we have another caller. So, before we go to a graph if we can find that graph let's send ready in time right here. Okay. Tyler can you state your question. There's the graph. What are you referring to. She's simply saying that for the town, but we said earlier for the town taxes. There's tax equity, possibly more than tax equity in the direction opposite from what was originally what is said constantly that's that's the line that we hear all the time not getting value from my tax dollars. That goes down to the village budget, which the town outside the village has absolutely no control over. It looks like we may have another caller. Let's see if we can get them on the line. Hello. Hello, are you there. Okay, there we go your live caller. Can you say this is from Essex. And I have a question. I understand the village has already passed its own version of a merger. And I also understand that it's governance model is significant well is somewhat different. And that differences could be rather significant between the governance model. That's in the town plan. Can you talk about that. I thought about that actually. So let's imagine for a moment a day in the near future and this merger plan passes both plans go to a committee with the state legislature the governance operations committee. They are going to be like King Solomon. They are going to have two merger plans different. They can pick one or the other or maybe come come up with a combination. Think of it this way, if they pick the village version, just go with that and say that's the plan, put it to the legislature and it passes, they will have passed the plan that half of the town did not vote for it. Let's try the other way around the town plan gets accepted as is, and gets passed. That plan would then become the, the charter for the whole town which the village villagers wearing their village hat did not vote for. And finally, if they come up with a half breed plan something that they combine together a hybrid. That'll be a plan that nobody voted for. So, I would not want to be in the shoes of anybody on that governance operations committee if that happens. So the answer to your question is stay tuned. So it is five minutes before seven o'clock. And I want to remind voters that town meeting will be different this year, there will be an informational meeting live streamed on March 1, voting by Australian ballot Tuesday, March 2. Do you want to Irene or Ken say any closing. It looks like we might have one more caller. That's cool. Do you think we can we have time to take it. I have something to say but feel free to take the call. So let's take the call and see if we can also put in some closing thoughts. Hello caller. Hi, yes. Can you hear me. Yes. This is Margaret Smith. And I just want to say thank you for the excellent presentation. And my question is, is this going to be available because I would like to be able to let people know where to view it and the other, the junction presentation to as well. Are they going to be available online. Do you know. You can find the recording of this broadcast, you can find this and more forums like this at www.ch17.tv. As well. Do you have a place where you can make the PowerPoint that you have available. We have a website. We'll put it up there. It's no merger now.org if it's not showing up on this screen. That's, that's where we are basing our information. No murder now.org and w w totally separate, but where this recording will live if you want to recommend it to friends. www.ch17.tv. I think I'll let Irene wrap it up, you know, this is so new to me. I've only been involved. Thanks to Irene. Year and a little over a year and a half now. So, you know, a trial by fire. Irene has been involved with local government for years. So she's earned the right to say something to wrap up. I did want to go back and address something that Mrs. Morgan said and it had to do with us being one and, you know, the good feelings we all have for each other and I would just like to clue her in that at all of the meetings that I go to, I go to most of the select board meetings and most of the trustee when I hear someone like vice president of the village, George Tyler saying, you know, we need to spend down that $400,000 before any merger takes place. That doesn't leave me feeling warm and fuzzy. So if you Tony feel like you really want to merge, I would just encourage you to tell your elected officials that you don't show up at a wedding, or at the altar without your dowry, you can spend down everything that you've agreed to put together. And so, yeah, I still am a fan of a free and fair merger. I've yet to see one come across my plate in the last 16 years, but I keep hoping and in the meantime, I would encourage you to go to separate and share, which is a terrific plan that Ken came up with when he first arrived on the scene, probably because his mind wasn't clouded with all these old plans that the rest of us have looked at too often. And it actually has working in three towns in Maine where they have cooperated. They do things separately. They have separate boards, but they come together on a quarterly basis that they manage other shared services together. And I think that that is more of a solution that will help preserve what's unique about both the town outside the village and the town inside the village in ways that merger never will and it really will be happy ending for all of us. And in the meantime, I would just have to urge you all to study this plan and to please vote it down on March 2. Thank you. Thank you so much Irene and thank you Ken for your presentation. Thank you for tuning into town meeting TV. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks to the collars.