This is the town of Essex in from town meeting informational hearing, Steve used to share moderator for the evening. And I'm going to start by introducing the chair of the select board, Andy Watts. Thank you, Mr. moderator. And welcome everyone like to introduce the first the other members of the select board. Pat Murray is our vice chair. And the chair of the select board is the select board clerk. Don Hill flurry and sue cook are the other members. Also, I'd like to recognize some other guests that are here. We have a couple of the village trustees. The list keeps jumping around I see Amber Tebow, from the trustees, and just scrolling down to see if I see others. I don't at this point. Also like to introduce staff. Greg Duggan is our new town manager. New this weekend to the position. Congratulations Greg. Also we have Courtney bushy who's our new finance director. And Sue McNamara Hill, who's the town clerk. Ellie vile, director of Essex Parks and Rec. I see Charlie Cole, who's the Essex town fire chief. Have I missed any other staff members. Dennis Lutz is on. Who's that Dennis Lutz is on Dennis Lutz is on yes Dennis I see Aaron Martin. From our public works. There's also the police. Is here. Whilst we. I also saw that. Linda Myers has joined for representative from from Essex. We have a couple of our current representatives Tonya by Hovsky and Ray Garrafano are are attending as well. And let's see. I don't see. Trying to see there's anybody else I missed. Margaret lad has joined she is the deputy manager. I see Alyssa black has joined welcome Melissa. Thank you good to be here. Thanks Andy. I thought you might be attending. Westford. Welcome. Westford is actually not having their meeting tonight. Okay. Okay. Okay, so I think. I think that's all the introductions. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Next up. We're going to have the reading of civility. For the meeting to help set the tone before I get the instructions. For the meeting. And Mr. Chair, who's going to read that. Don Hill flurry has volunteered to do that. All right. Okay. He's going to do as clerk that was her job to do. Oh, okay. It's been handed back. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We gather as a community in the oldest sense of the word. We gather to come together and try to make decisions about what is right about what is wrong. Let us advocate for our positions, but not at the expense of others. Let us remember that there is an immense gap between saying I am right and saying, I believe I am right. And that our neighbors with whom we might disagree are good people with hopes and dreams as true and high as ours. And I think that's a good point. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here at the end. Caring for each other in this community is a far greater importance than any difference we may have. Thank you for being here this evening. Thank you, Tracy. All right. So I'll read out the instructions for the meeting. So as I mentioned earlier, this is an informational hearing to discuss the articles being voted on by Australian ballot. The 2022 town meeting. All attendees must remain on mute, except when recognized by me. Attendees can get in line to make remarks by using the raise the hand tool. We're using the chat type that they want to speak. People will be queued in order of request. And I'll also check the phone lines every once in a while to ensure there's no one on the phone waiting to talk. All remarks, questions and discussion should be addressed to me. Please wait to be recognized before muting and speaking and your name, speaking a loud voice so that your comments may be heard by everyone. In order to have a reasonable length meeting, discussions on articles one and two might be limited to an hour each in public to be heard to 30 minutes. The select word presentation at the beginning of each article does not count towards any discussion in it. As in our usual town meeting, each person should plan to limit their time to two to three minutes so that more people have a chance to speak. As in past years, I will not be specifically timing people, but we'll encourage people to wrap up if they're speaking too long. My role as moderators to help you ask the questions. Help you ask your question or make your point. If you need help, please let me know. Above all, as we just heard, please be civil and respectful of your neighbor's opinions. Lastly, as I remember his chat window is only be used. To speak. To be asked to speak. Type your last name or first name is like to speak and no comments, questions or conversations are allowed in the chat. So that's how we'll govern the meeting tonight. And what we have first. Is. Article one. Which I'm going to state article one here. And then I know the select board has a presentation on it. So they'll. Go over that. And then we'll have discussion. So article one. Shall the town adopt a budget for fiscal year July 1, 2022. To June 30, 2023. As recommended by the select board in the amount of 16,000,000. $675,241. So with that reading. Andy, were you going to do the presentation? Yes. Yes, I am. So great. Can you share, please? And I can see that. Okay. All right. So as. The introduction. Yeah, we'll be talking about the budget for the fiscal year. 2023, which starts. July 1st of 2022. And this is our proposed operating budget. Go ahead, Greg. To the next slide. Okay. So before we started putting before the budget was put together, the select board was asked for, if there were any budget goals for, for this year, the four initiatives that the select board. Asked for were to. Continue the funding for equity initiatives and mental health support. In doing so, the, this budget does include $30,000 appropriation to the equity committee. That's an internal. Committee. Who will make recommendations on how to spend those funds. We're, we also are continuing the funding of board stipends, meaning that starting at the beginning of this calendar year, we started offering the opportunity for. Committee members to be. Paid a small stipend for attending. Committee meetings. That's extending into next year. We've. Added additional funding to the community justice center. And then we created a new position within the police department of the community affairs liaison. I'll talk more about that later in the, in the rest of the budget discussion. Next thing was you wanted to consider how to address climate change in our programs and initiatives. What's happening here is there's three police. Vehicles will be purchased this year. All of them will be either hybrid or hybrid or fully electric. That's. The. Activity that's happening this year's budget that will, that falls into that category. Next, next topic was to minimize the financial impact of separation through tightening spending, deferring anything possible or diverse, diversifying revenue. We have removed one management position. We no longer have a shared manager with the village. And so there's, there's instead of a three management positions, there will only be two going forward in this budget. The last topic was to address the impact of separation, but continue to work toward tax equity. Although there's no new initiatives there. Because of the possibility of separation. But some of the exist in some of the existing consolidated. Activities will occur during the first transition year. But those will, will resolve themselves by the end of the first year and you know, examples of those of the clerk, clerk's office and village highway, both of those will, will be funded. At least the clerk's office at least partially and the, the village highway fully in the, in this year's budget. Okay, next slide. So general highlights, we are using 431,000 of fund balance. This is leftover funds from prior years to offset the, offset the tax rate. This is some big port, significant portions of this are being used to pay for one time expenses. There are some expenses in the finance department that are related to separation that will be coming out of that 431,000. And also this is an unusual year. I mentioned that we're purchasing three police vehicles. Typically we only purchase two. There's every so often we the, the life cycle of our police vehicles. We end up having to buy three. So we're buying the third vehicle out of this, this fund as well. So it's not an on, wouldn't be an ongoing. It's not included in the, it won't be included in the taxing that we do. It's being paid with, with prior leftover funds from prior years. There's been a variety of staffing changes. Again, I mentioned we repurposed one of the, we're taking a vacant patrol position in the, in the police department and converting it into a community Ferris liaison. This is someone who will be able to interface with the community from a communication standpoint, from also talking about you and services and, you know, potentially hopefully your partner to address. You know, non-police activities, non-policing activities. That are in the responsibility of the police department. We've limited, as I mentioned, we eliminated one management position, but we did add an administrative, our assistant to the manager previously, the assistant to the manager has been paid by the paid for by the village. So we're having, we are adding, there were actually two people in that position. We're gonna be going forward in the town. And I think one of the village also. So that's that. The next thing we're doing is we, in order to improve our safety response, our emergency response, we've added to 40 hour per week, daytime, per DM firefighter positions. These are not full time positions for anybody. They are, it's 40, it's 40 hours equivalence of multiple people's time. So that we can share that we have staff on hand during the week, daytime to address emergency response needs. This is also the first full year of an economic development position. This, in the current year's budget, we budgeted for a half year. So we're extending it to the full year to, to continue that position that person, that individual has been hired. And I don't recall her name. Greg. Geno Sullivan. Geno Sullivan, right. Okay. So we focus again on economic development and that, that position is as I said, is being extended to a full, a full year. So it's the first full year of that. We're also adding a full time parks and maintenance tech that will be shared with public works. And then we're going to, we're going to have to, to help with winter plowing and summer parking maintenance. The County and regional health and human services. Have a fairly large increase this year of 228,000. There's some, I'll have some more discussion about that. That's largely, yeah, I'll talk, I'll touch on that more. When we talk about emergency services. That's a good point. I think that's a good point. Another change to the, to the budget is there is the insurance costs for the police department are being moved into the police department costing center. They previously, I believe been in the finance costing center. They've, they're being moved over to the police costing center because. If separation occurs, we wanted to have all of the police costs in the police budget. We wanted to have all of the, we wanted to have all of the, we wanted to have all of the police costs with the village that the, the accounting is much simpler because all of the expenses will be in one category. And then there's a number of changes throughout the budget tied to potential separation as things become disentangled. And some of the services are starting to. I think that's a good point. And then there's a number of changes associated with that. So those are included in there as well. Right. Greg, next slide. So from a standpoint of consolidated services and where we have alignment, the police. Is a, the, is a, is a town department where services, the entire community that will, that will continue. Senior bus and senior programs. Those will continue through the. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that our discussion is about what happens after that. Clerk elections and records will all still be. In the same department. Though again, they will, they will. Not again, but they will separate. At the end of the. The transition year. The assessor will, will remain a common until the upcoming likely reassessment is complete. The next series of services. Will actively start unraveling or will completely separate at the beginning of the, of this. Of the transition year of the, if the. Separation occurs. It's information technology, storm water services, highway, public works, administration and paving and tax billing and collecting. All of these things are paid for. In the town budget, but they're going to start separating their property. And then there are other services that are shared the wastewater, wastewater treatment. The wastewater treatment plant is, is shared that is a, the wastewater treatment plan is owned by the village, but there's a separate agreement that's called a tri town agreement between the village of Essex Junction, the town of Essex and the town of Williston. That's completely separate from separation. Won't be impacted by separation. And only those that use the. In the town of Williston are connected to. Municipal sewer. Pay for that. So if you're, if you've got a septic system, you're not, you're not contributing into that. Essex rescue ambulance services are an independent nonprofit. But they do. Give us an assessment to. Of a certain amount of funds to support them. And I think there's another slide that goes in more detail on that. Green Mountain transit services. Again, those that's an independent, that's a regional entity that provides bus service. Within and within Essex and beyond. That is again, as an independent of the, and the town is currently paying for that for both the town and the village. And it will continue to through the coming year, but then we'll separate slater. So that's a good point. And we're going to have a, we're going to have a similar with the chicken and count County regional. Planning services. Okay. Next slide, Greg. Um, services that will no longer be shared the, We no longer have a unified. Town and village manager. There are. Two separate management chains now. Finance and administrative services or being separated. resource director at this point. Fire department alignment will be less of a priority. Pay and training will be determined by each department. They're already within this coming years budget, starting to go slightly different, different directions. The, I forget what the, what the phrase is. The agreement that we each back each other up with this still in place. And then recreation department alignment has also a discontinued co-location has ended the six recreation and parks has moved back into 81 main. But at least through the coming year, village residents says we'll still have access to those offerings because they'll still be paying taxes to support those. It's not yet determined. We're still negotiating discussion about what happens after separation or after the transition year. Okay, so new and enhanced programs. I mentioned the, I was going to talk more about Essex rescue. Essex rescue has added a, I believe the second daytime ambulance. Because of population and demographic changes within Essex. This is actually the first of a four year plan to increase this fairly substantially. This, this number 164,746 will be paid by the town in FY 23 and FY 24. It gets divided between the town and the city. So those, those numbers will change in the future, but at this point it's a, it's a fairly substantial portion of the public safety increase for this year. Along with the, the two per diem firefighters that we've, we've added that I mentioned earlier, that's just under 90,000 for that. We're continuing to fund the justice equity, diversity and inclusion work. And by adding the community affairs liaison to the police department. Some of this is redundant the first full year of economic development coordinator and then the parks and maintenance planning person were added. So the budget itself, the proposed total budget is 16.68 million. The increase over the current year is just under $750,000. It's a 4.7% budget increase with a 5.1% tax levy, but the individual tax rate that taxpayers will see is, is a 4% increase, which is higher than what we, the select board typically agrees to. We've been in the three to three and a half range. So we believe in this year with getting ready for separation. Some of the things that we've had to do are driving this to be a little bit higher, plus the, the unexpected increase in as express you was another big piece that is driving that. Okay. And then the majority increases. I mentioned the biggest increases appropriations. These are, these are appropriations that come to us from the outside that we don't have a lot of control over. That's the biggest piece than the personnel costs are just under a hundred thousand increase with payroll and benefits. Highway and storm village highway and stormwater increased to 74,000 that's within the, the 6% limit of the, that's in the, the MOU that, that governs the village highway and stormwater expenditures. Vehicle purchases are higher again because we're, we're purchasing a third police car this year, which we don't typically do. Stormwater maintenance has increased largely because of state mandates, our insurance rates are up. Again, that's something we can't really control. And then the justice equity, diversity inclusion work and the volunteer stipends that I mentioned the 30,000 that was provided for the equity committee. The additional 14 697 there would be the, the stipends for volunteers. Professional services is up 27,000 election expenses are up almost 26,000. That's largely due to the mailing of ballots. We've seen a dramatic increase in participation in elections with mail ballots. So I think that may, that's likely to be an ongoing expense that we, that we will see transfers to capital. There are some shortcomings in how much capital we've been. There's, there's some expenses coming up that we're going to need to deal with. So we've increased the transfers to capital by 22,000 this year. And then the net of everything else was 61 488, which gives a total of total increase for the year of dementia was just under 750,000. So 749 113. Okay, Greg, anything else? Okay. Then the estimated tax impact. We've off and referenced the $280,000 home. And so the FY 22 tax rate is 5.5285. What we're estimating the rate will be for to support this. The FY 23 budget is 0.5497, which is the 4% change in the. The dollar amount again for the typical or the, the example value of 280,000 would be a $59 and 36 cent change for the year on your municipal tax. This assumes that the grand list grows by 1%, which is a little bit lower than what we've seen. And this also uses, as I mentioned at the start, 431,000 from fund balance. The tricky thing with fund balance is that next year, we have to make that up in the, in the regular budget. Unless we have additional funds to continue doing those kind of offsets, but it's unlike, it's not, it's not a, there's no guarantee that that will happen. Okay. And Greg, was that the last slide? Nope. Okay. Then we got the, here's the pie chart that shows where each of the, you know, all of the dollars go. The police department is the largest chunk of that followed by public works. And then a general government, which is the select board, the manager, the management staff for all of our departments. And then beyond that it goes to culture and recreation, which is the library and parks and rec and then into much smaller chunks after that. This shows where each of the, you know, all of the, the estimated total tax for a $280,000 house would be 15, 1,595 and this shows where each of those dollars goes within the budget. And then Greg, I think that's, is that the last slide? Yes. Thank you. Right. All right. Thank you, Andy. With that, you will open it up for questions or comments on the budget on this article. So people can raise their hands and I'll recognize people in order of raising their hand. And I see the first person is up here. Thank you very much. So Andy, Suntop, if you can unmute yourself and go ahead and make your comment or question. And you have a multiple part question. Are we getting any funds from the federal government as part of the COVID relief? So what is that being used for? And if it's not being used for something that could reduce our taxes, why not? Cause it just seems like taxes are going up a heck of a lot more this year. If you could address that, please. Thank you, Andy. Andy would, other Andy, would you? Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think this, I think it's more appropriate for Greg or Margarita comment on that the select board has not yet. You know, addressed or dealt with the, any of those federal funds. And actually, I guess I should, I'll step back a second. So a lot of the, the. So I'm not sure, Andy, whether you're asking about ARPA money, which is, which is, or if you're asking about COVID relief money. And so some, some of the COVID relief money we certainly have gotten. That we're using to offset the tax. I think that's where a lot of that came from. There were a lot of expenses that we had this year that were reimbursable using that, that, that mechanism related to, you know, you know, expenses that we had surrounding or revenue losses that we had associated with COVID. And because of that, there were a lot of situations where we had expenses that we were reimbursed for. And so that's where we ended up with a, you know, a fairly substantial surplus this year and a fairly substantial portion of that is being given back to the taxpayers. That's where the 431,000 came from. Thank you. Thank you, Andy and Andy. Anybody else have questions or comments on this article? Looks like Sharon Irene has her hand up. Go ahead, Sharon, and ask your question. Sharon, Sharon, I don't know why my Zoom says Sharon Irene. I have a quick question about the, assuming the 1% increase in the grand list being a plus because it's my understanding that when the grand list increases, that means more people or more businesses and more taxes, the services to those new grand list people or businesses always exceeds the tax revenue. And I always hear this and I think an increase in the tax, the grand list really means more taxes for the town and across the board. Okay. Thank you, Sharon. Andy, would you like to answer that? Sure, I can respond. The, the reason it's mentioned is that it gives you a larger base for the, the taxes that need to be raised to be spread over. And, and, and, you know, to be, to, to be completely honest, Sharon, yeah, the reason that the Essex rescue had to add to the other ambulance is because of increases in population and changes in demographic. So, so yeah, there are, there are impacts associated with grand list increases, but it's mentioned here, the context with which it's mentioned here is that it's, it gives a larger base for the taxes that are being asked for in this budget to be spread to. Right. And probably that's something we should maybe think of down the road when we're encouraging more people, more businesses, more housing that every year, our budget goes up because of our increase in population. There, yeah, there have been discussions. There are, there will be discussions. I mean, we've had some very small, minor discussions, early discussions about impact fees and so forth that, but yeah, I understand too that if an impact fee isn't a one-time thing and taxes and service support are ongoing. And that's a different discussion. So I'll be quiet. Thank you. Yep. Thanks, Sharon. Thank you, Sharon. All right. It looks like a Zachary force here. This is the end up. Go ahead, Zachary. Hi guys. This is just a little like, a little off topic comment here, but I just wanted to point out when we're talking about increases in the size of the budget and the grand list that, you know, we do live in a system where our money is inflationary and this is again a very broad picture of thing, but I just want to commend the select board and everyone who works on this budget because 1% is in real rate, a smaller budget than it was previously in terms of its actual purchasing power, considering we've had, you know, 7.5% inflation of our goods. So I just, I just want to throw that out there because I know that the, the number is often scary when things go up, but the reality is, is wages also probably outpaced that in this area and, you know, All right. Thank you Zachary. Who else would like to speak? Any other questions or discussion? Okay. Is there any, do we have anyone on the phone tonight? It looks like it's a, from what I can see from the participant list. It looks like all people online. I don't see any phones. Last chance on article one. Anybody would like to speak. Okay. So I'm going to end the discussion on article one. Time check. It's 803. All right. So that will take us to article two, which is written on the ballot as. Shall the town of Essex authorize cannabis retailers and retail portions of integrated license. Licensee establishments in town pursuant to seven. So we can go straight to questions and commentary. From the, from the voters. Who would like to be the first person. Who would like to be the first person to speak to this? Please raise your hand. Anybody have any questions? Or comments on the article two about cannabis. Okay. Looks like Zachary force here has his hand up. Go ahead, Zachary. Sure. So obviously cannabis is kind of a new, a new legal thing for a lot of states in the country. And it's kind of something that people are dealing with differently in terms of regulation. And I, I am pro recreational cannabis, but I was wondering if there was going to be any increasing regulations in terms of, do we have any methods of, you know, testing people for, for THC when they're driving or any, anything like that. And additionally, I know that some, some businesses, especially a business that I work at is working to make restaurant menus, which in turn, either CBD or THC products. And I was wondering to what extent the, the recreational use would be for businesses like that? Like, would there be like a licensing system? Or so yeah, those are my questions. All right. Thank you, Zachary. Andy, would you like to answer that? Yeah, I can, I can comment on some of this. Zach, I think the, the, from the standpoint of. Testing individuals who might be, you know, potentially driving impaired. I think that's, that's largely, there are trained officers who through observation of individuals will make that assessment. And I think this isn't really something that the town has any, any say in. It's really the state level. Discussion about, you know, enforcement. Around that. And then to, to go on to your discussion about. Consumables. It's my understanding that there's no on premise. On premises consumption. It's only retail for use at home or. I don't know what those, you know, if there's restrictions on where you can actually consume it. I don't think you can. It's, it's. I'm pretty sure you can't do it in your car. I haven't looked at those, those, those regulations, but the, from the standpoint of adding. THC products to. Edibles in a restaurant. I don't think that's allowed. It's only takeout or only retail. Yeah. Sure. I appreciate that. That definitely makes a lot of sense. And it clears up some of those questions. And I definitely think that that makes sense that the state level and the police officers would be working to do things like that. I guess I must have a, I don't know, I don't know. I don't think that that makes sense that the state level and the police officers would be working to do things like that. I guess I must have a, a very, a liberal business owner that I'm thinking of in mind here, because he, he was, he was already preparing some, some specialty dishes himself because he's, he's obviously advocating for it to become something more like beer, where it's kind of, you know, a common place and, you know, consumed in different forms in different places. But yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Zachary. And I've got a credit, a question queued from Patricia, but I wanted a rep. Tanya. Did you have something you wanted to add to Zachary's question or before we go to the next one. Okay, go right ahead. So I'm on the house government operations committee and we are sort of actively in the process of working with the cannabis control board to really look at how we regulate and what that is going to look like. And then we're going to go to the next one. And we are talking about it. But at this point, you know, we're still sort of figuring it out. As you pointed out, it is really new and we do have a really great group of people on the cannabis control board, really informing us and guiding us. So could it be that down the road, that might be something that is possible? Maybe. I don't know. But at this point, chair Watts is correct. There is no availability for on-site consumption. So I think we have heard there's a, the cannabis control board came before us just last week, and we'll be back before us next week to talk more about sort of fine-tuning those regulations. And those will sort of continue to be fine-tuned as this is new and we're learning as we go. So I'm, Zachary, I'm happy to chat with you more. And I'm also happy to sort of send you the hearings and keep you informed as, as we move down that road. Sure. Yeah, I definitely appreciate that a lot. And I'm happy to be on it. And definitely, I mean, I'm not the most informed person on issues like this, but I definitely think part of it is probably technological and just in terms of testing people quickly because with something like obviously alcohol, it's pretty easy to just breathalyze someone and then figure out whether or not they're at a safe level. So, but yeah, I definitely appreciate that clarity. And I definitely would love to get more information going forward. So. I will pop my contact information in the chat so that you and I sort of offline at this point, scientifically, we don't have a great test for the cannabis stays in the system so much longer than alcohol. So there really isn't a really easy way to test for active intoxication, but we're certainly looking at that, but I will throw my email in the chat so you and I can talk more. Sure. Thank you very much. I definitely appreciate that. All right. Thank you, Tonya, for adding that in. So we've had some questions on raising hand on the bottom of your zoom screen. You should see something that says reactions and under reactions. There's a raise hand button that you can push in order to raise your hand and Patricia cracker. I saw your comment in the chat that you wanted to talk and so that works as well. So I'm going to give the floor now to Patricia cracker to ask your question or make a comment. Yeah, I realize that there are going to be. Age restrictions on this, obviously. But if this were to occur. Just the kind of availability will be a little bit. More so than before. And I'm wondering if there are any if they're planning. Any funding on public education. You know, specifically in our schools, because we're well aware that cannabis use and, and youth before the age of 26 can. Severely, you know, like a. Have heavy use can severely impair. An adolescent brain. And I'm just wondering how. We counteract that. Through education, parent education, community. And, and is there, is there any funding for that in this plan? Yeah, that's my question. Okay. Thank you, Patricia. Andy, I'm guessing that's more a comment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So there is funding set aside in the cannabis revenue stream. That is specifically meant to go towards education and prevention. That is one of the things when we looked towards tax and regulate, that we very intentionally earmarked funding. For exactly what you're talking about that, that kind of education and prevention. And Patty, to address your, your specific question about ages 21 is the. Is the. Legal age. For purchasing. Thank you very much. All right. Next up on the questions was our WD. If you could give your full name. And ask your question or comment, make your comment. Good evening. Roger Drury story. I wasn't able to fix that before I logged on. My question is, Mr. Moderator and to the select board is. It's my understanding that cannabis and marijuana. Remain on the federal schedule. A meaning that they're still federally legal. What protections does. Our town or. Even our state offer against federal prosecution. If someone is. Found guilty on a federal level. Can you take that, Andy? Roger, I don't, I don't know the answer to that. I don't know. If you are. Or somebody from town staff. Oh, go ahead. No, I'm certainly happy to weigh in. I mean, in other states that have legalized largely the federal government has stayed out of it, but. Realistically, if the federal government chooses to step in, it does have precedent over state law. So how can we responsibly. Declare it legal within the boundaries of our town. When it is illegal within the boundaries of the federal. Of the nation. Just one clarifying comment here. From the article being discussed. The select board isn't making it legal or not legal. We're saying. Can people sell it? The discussion is whether you can sell it in a retail establishment. No. So just to be 100% clear on that. The state of Vermont has already legalized. That's right. That's right. So that's not a town question. I guess it's my. So how does the town. Justify. Authorizing people to sell it. Then in that case, what protections does the town and the state. Offer our citizens. If they are selling it. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. So we don't, we don't offer protection to any business that does business in our town. It's up to the business owner to understand. You know, the regulations under which they're operating. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Right. The next person to speak. Thank you, Roger. Is Meredith. Ma'am. Hi there. I just wanted to add as a cannabis business owner. That it is as of right now. Federally illegal. And it is a responsibility that we as a business owner. Are taking. And I also just wanted to respond to a previous question about children and. Let people know that the cannabis control board has. Stated that there needs to be a guard at the front door. And then an ID check at the register as well. And that as a responsible business owner, we intend to work with public safety officials. If it does pass. To make sure that. Children don't have access and people understand the safety aspects of cannabis. Thank you. Thank you, Meredith. My pleasure. Thank you. All right. I see Patricia and Roger still have their hands up. I believe from before. And just as a general rule, I mentioned it in the beginning. We like to have, give everyone. In case there have a round two question. We'll try to give everybody that hasn't. Already asked question. The first opportunity. So before, so Patricia's clarified that she does have a new question. Does anybody have a. Question that hasn't spoken yet. That wants to. Go in ahead of Patricia asking her second question. Steve, I believe someone named Kendra has asked to speak in the chat. Oh, okay. I missed that. All right. So then I agree. Then we should go to Kendra. Thank you for that, Mr. Chair. Sorry, it's actually Adam Goodrow here. Okay. So I guess wanted to ask the question, whether or not there's any. Financial. Potential financial liability on the town's part, given that it is still federally illegal. I don't think so. I, I believe that all responsibility for. Following regulation falls on the business owner. Great. Thank you. All right. Thank you. So I now see. Hubert Norton is a first time speaker. So I'm going to go with Hubert. Go ahead. Just. I was trying to clap my hands before rather than raise them. But anyway. It is too bad this whole COVID situation. We have to go to this. It's unfortunate that people attend these meetings. And don't turn on the video. I think it's important for people to. Be face to face. And. And speak to peace. That is the beauty of town. I think it's important for people to. Be face to face. And speak to peace. That is the beauty of town. I think it's important for people to. Be face to face. And speak to peace. That is the beauty of town meetings. And I do understand. The rationale for what we're doing here now. But anyway, I'd like to get that out. I do have a question. The article states. And retail portions of integrated licensee. Licensee establishments. Because someone described to me. That is a. An integrated lacy. Establishments and give me an example. Of what a retail portion of that. Licensee establishment might be. That's a new term to me. Thank you. Thank you. Can you answer that, Andy? Yes, I can. Integrated license. Involves. A growing processing packaging. And retail. So it's. Soup to nuts operation where the same businesses. Is doing. All are multiple pieces of a. Of the operation. And a retail establishment is simply retail. They purchase it from someone else and are selling it. And so the way. The way the, the state law works is the town can only regulate retail. Growth. Processing. Packaging all the, any, any processing that needs to happen to the product before it's sold. Is. Is, is dealt with through your zoning laws. And you, we can't restrict. Any of those operations other than with our own, with our standard zoning. And I'm, I'm curious as to what is the planning commission's. Position as far as making any adjustments to current zoning regulations. That might. Define. Where. Growers may. Do their business. And I'm curious as to what is the planning commission's. Position as far as making any adjustments to current zoning regulations. That might. Define. Where. Growers may. Do their business. Because indeed. If a, if a grower is allowed to operate in a certain area. And they are also if this passes and we are, and they are allowed to do retail, retail sales. I would think that would come into the, into the competition. What's the status of the, of the planning commission's actions here. If they're allowed to do retail sales, they're allowed to do retail sales. They have to have a license that allows them to do that. That license costs quite a bit more than just the, the retail license, but I guess I would, I would defer to. Perhaps Greg Duggan to address planning. The planning commission part of that question. Or if there's someone else from planning commission. Go ahead, Greg. The planning commission has started to have conversations about. How to do zoning with, with the retail cannabis. And that's really the, the primary way that. The town or any municipality would regulate cannabis in the community is through zoning, the retail portion of it. I don't think they've gotten too far too deep into those discussions yet. There are some regulations around at the state level. Retail cannabis operations have to be at least 500 feet from a school. So that's pretty much everything except for the retail portion is going to be regulated at the state level and, and establishments will have to adhere to state rules for a lot of that portion of it. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Greg. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Greg. And I think that. Ends that question. All right. So I don't see other, other new people coming to ask. And so I am going to go to Patricia Crocker's second round. Go ahead, Patricia. Yeah, my questions related along the lines of a couple other folks who, who asked about liability. My question is whether like the town has consulted with, with like their lawyers. I'm guessing that the town has some kind of insurance and whether that insurance. And I'm guessing not, not knowing for sure, but any kind of municipality I would guess has some kind of insurance and whether rates would go up if, if, if it was, if Essex allowed retail. Places for cannabis within the town. You mentioned that only the retail place would have liability, but what if somebody, for example, was in a car accident and was injured and the person had been, had purchased cannabis from a retail place. And for some reason that the insurance didn't cover that. Could the town be sued? Yeah. I'm still questioning. You seem a little uncertain. And I'm just wondering what kind of legal. Um, advisement was given around this. Thank you for your concern, Patricia. And just a reminder to only use the chat for asking to speak or where's like rep. Tanya gave her email address because she said needed it written down for people, which is, I consider official. So, and raise your hand if you want to speak. So anyway, so let's let Andy answer Patricia's question. I don't have the answer to that question. I don't know, Greg. I suspect that it falls in a similar category as alcohol sales with regard to the, the business owner that, you know, it's more difficult than this situation because there's no onsite consumption. So it's, you know, for example, if you went to Essex Discount Beverage and, you know, bottle handle of vodka and drank it at home and then drove your car, the Essex Discount Beverage has no liability there. It was your choice to do that. And so I think it's a similar situation for cannabis. Since there's no onsite consumption, there's no control over how people consume it or where they choose to do it. It's a personal liability and decision. I don't know, Greg, if there's anything else to say to that. No, but Patricia, good questions. Good concerns. We really have been looking to the state for guidance on this issue. And as far as I can tell, this hasn't been a concern for the state. As a municipality, we also looked to the Vermont League of Cities and Towns for a lot of guidance. That's a nonprofit group that provides assistance to cities and towns within Vermont. Again, as far as I'm aware, they have not raised concerns about this issue. So I just don't think it's something that really the state or towns have really raised as a problem or something that we need to be aware of. And I think Andy's right in speaking that it would probably be treated similar to an alcohol driving somebody driving on intoxicated with alcohol. I realize, you know, insurance, insurances are actuaries. So the more risks that you have, the higher your rate. So my question is regarding whether that's something that, you know, the town has insurance. And this, if this is a factor that could potentially raise the rate because of actuaries, I realize there's, there's alcohol being sold right now, but it's been like that for a while. But if you have an insurance policy and, and there's more risks, they usually raise the cost. So I would just like to know that that was looked into and planned for. We do, we get insurance through passive is the name of the, the firm. It's through the Vermont league of cities and towns passive is the insurance arm of the LCT. They are in good communication with us and our finance department and our manager's office about issues that might be coming up and our rates. This is not something that they have raised as a, as a potential concern or potential increase of rates. So I think that's a good question. All right. Thank you, Greg. Thank you, Patricia. All right. The next person to speak is Ron Lawrence. Go ahead, Ron. Hi, this is Ron Lawrence. My only question is whether our. Police department or our police chief has. So yeah, it's my understanding that, that. There are some concerns that the police department has. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if Ron is actually on, on the call here. Perhaps he can comment, but the, you know, again, it's a, it's a, the state is making it legal. The only question here is whether it's right to allow it to be sold within it, within Essex. There are. Is it 20 or is it 40 communities that are voting tomorrow. On this question as well. So there'll be quite a few places that it's likely to be. It will be purchased, but. I don't know, Ron, did you want to comment on your, your specific concerns, you know, if there are specific concerns specific to, to Essex. No, my concerns aren't specific to Essex. I mean, I think I laid these out, you know, recently in the, in the guidance that was posted on the, on the town's website. And it's just the same concerns that we've had from the federal government. Of course, the federal government is also anticipating, you know, continuing black market. You know, obviously folks driving impaired is a, is probably number one on that list. Those are those are just some of the concerns that the police department of law enforcement still has over all of this. Thanks, Ron. Any other. Rep Tony, it looked like you wanted to say something. Are you good? All right. Right. So I think, I think we're good with. And at the moment, I don't see any hands raised. We have any other questions or comments? People a moment in case they're fumbling for the button. All right. So I'm going to move on. And it's now 831. So I'm going to move on from article two. And the other two parts of the agenda just so people understand. I'm going to talk briefly about article three. And then there's a public to be heard on other general topics. So article three. Is the election of the following. A moderator. Where there's one vacancy for a one year term. And the select board where we have three vacancies. We have two three year terms in one one year term. And we also have the Champlain water district commissioner. And we also have the Champlain water district commissioner. With one vacancy. For a three year term. And the voting people should have already received their ballots to. You know, turn in in person at this point, you can't, it's too late to mail or going to the polls, which are open at the middle school in Essex. For people outside the village and for the high school for people outside the village. So that's article three. And I hope everyone has either sent in their ballot or we'll be doing so tomorrow. In person. Or, or. In the drop box at the town office. And. Clerk Susan. Did I get all of that correct in case there's anything else technical? Yeah, just the only thing is the ballot box will be available overnight. It will come in in the morning after seven o'clock tomorrow morning voters, if they have their ballots, they'll have to take them directly to their polling place. Okay. Thank you for that addition. All right. So moving on to the next topic is. Public to be heard. So this is your chance to bring up general questions. Related to the town of Essex on, on any topic. Municipal related. And ask the select board. Comment or question. So we'll use the same procedure that we've been using to raise your hand. If you have comments that you'd like to make. We've got more, more questions. All right. We've got a hand. Select. We're member dawn. I don't have a question, Mr. moderator, but I do have a thank you for both Patrick Murray and soup cook. As this is their last town meeting for a year or so. And I'd like to thank them both for their service. Thank you very much. That's nice. Thank you. Perfect to share. We all appreciate your service and. Anybody else like to comment. It's like Charles co. Go ahead, Charles. Mr. moderator, following that same line, I would also like to recognize Dennis Lutz for his decades. Of service to the town of Essex. Dennis is an engineer and has always had the town of Essex. In his best interest in every decision he's made. And he has demonstrated what's best for the town. From our capital equipment plan to all of our roads and all of the strategic planning that he's done. He's paved the way for Aaron to take over a well established program. And I just want to thank him for his. Again, decades of service that he's given us. Yes. Thank you, Dennis. And I did like that just to add in briefly in the annual report. I just wanted to add in briefly in the annual report. What it was like when Dennis started in the town on. What was different? I found that very interesting. Good mark. Good marking in the passage of time. Stop your pencil. All right. Anybody else like to comment or question. Okay. Any last chance to. Make a comment. All right. Seeing none. And I guess we can't have motions, but I'd say I'd entertain a motion to adjourn. But it sounds like we can. So we need to adjourn. We need to adjourn until tomorrow. Right. That's right. Steve, you do. Sorry, I missed it. Thank you, Sue. Go ahead, Patty. Yeah, I just wanted to say that I'm going to miss Dennis too. We've only been here like six years, but I really enjoyed picking his brain and I've learned so much about Essex town because of him. I hope you're not a stranger, Dennis. I want you to still be around because if we see you around, I still want to pick your brain. Thank you, Patty. Anybody else. With that, we'll adjourn to the balloting tomorrow. And again, I thank you all for attending and having a very civil meeting with some good discussion and questions. Have a great evening, everyone.


Wel, yw'r trofi TV i'w hyffordd yma yw'r reiach i Eftyrn 1 ar Ysbydd Arsnol yn y Prifysgol Lleid. Mae'r gwaith bod ychydig yn y prifysgol i'r golygu ystiolaeth, Dysgu, Eire ac Gwdyllian Parf. Mae'r gwybod bwysig hefyd yn ymddangos ar y cyfnodd mynd i gynnwys yma yma. Mae'r gweithio yn ffantastig a'r ysbydd ar Ysbydd Arsnol. Mae'r gweithio yn ymddangos i'n gweithio. a dyna'n dwy'r gweithio'r ddweud hynny. Mae yr ystyried yn ymgyrch yn 4-4-1-1, mae'r ddweud o'r ddegwch yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch, a'r ddegwch yn Alexi Wobe, ac mae'r ddegwch yn ymgyrch, mae'n dweud i'r ddegwch i'r ddegwch. Yr Adolai D'Cory, mae'r ddegwch yn ddegwch yn Ddominicaldolu, mae'n ddegwch i'r ddegwch i'r ddegwch i'r ddegwch yn Amadu O'nanae. The teams came out, good reception for Sean Dice, as well! The fans pulled the team through a time today, but the team got the support because they put the work rate and efforts in, and we showed that. You have never had great chances in the first half. Brilliant room from Amadu O'nanae leaving Allaidghardd in his way and rolled the ball across.. but don't know how, don't miss it, it shade a Paul Gascoe, in 1996.  Aaron Ramsdale had had to make a shave from Dominic Oliver Lewin as well, one he'd expect but never the less a shave. Arsenal for day attacking in the first half only had one real chance and that was a volley from Saka which Connor Cody cleared off the line. They had a lot of the ball in front of Evan but I think Miquel Ar Tether would be very disappointed about how little they managed to work today, any real kind of space or any good opportunities. It's second half, come out for the second half Everton, on it again had to be Arsenal, really good at keeping the ball and moving it around and Everton just battled and scraffered everything and we won a corner from good play and we'd given Arsenal some issues in the first half with deep corners and we did it again, Dwight McNeill who I thought had a good game today, credit where credit, she battled and worked the socks off, put a ball to the back post and there was James Tarkovsky to head it back into the net for his first Everton goal. A goal made in Burnley day we say and Everton took the lead and the roof came off, and then it had to be, we had opportunities to make a tune, not great ones but we did have a couple of opportunities but it was more about trying to throw yourself in the way of Arsenal's attack and play. Miquel Ar Tether made changes, Troshard on the pitch to try and liven that up as they went for it. Everton was a baby for Georgie as well but Everton worked like I said, worked really really hard and Jordan Pickford really didn't have too much to do, there was a shot from Troshard which he'd done well to push out and other than that there was no real moments where it was kind of he got himself into good positions. Yes Saca, fired over, yes Oedegard fired over and he probably should have done better. You expect a team of Arsenal's quality to create chances, there's no doubt about that but Everton hung on and the Miffeel 3 today I thought he was tremendous, particularly Llyr Drishy Ghanagai, he was my man at the matty, he was outstanding, he was everywhere but on and on it brilliant performed the corey coming in from the cold, he'd had a fallen out with Frank Lampard, came into the side and was excellent today. He was shameless, calm, tremendous. I mean going through the team everybody played their role really, I thought Dominic Alvertloon did a really good job, he went off on the hour, I'm hoping that's more of a preservation thing than feeling any kind of knock or any kind of twinge. Neil Mawpai came on and I don't think Mawpai had, it was a strange, I do have to say this from Sean Dice, it was a strange sub for the simple reason that we still try to knock it, not long but we were trying to play the out ball which was a flick on and Neil Mawpai against Gabrielle was something to behold but he did end up winning a couple of headers late on. I just don't think he got into the game as much as he should Mawpai but he did in injury time get himself involved with an incident with Tsinchenko which I thought the Ukrainian was a little bit fortunate when you do that. I mean there wasn't really anything in it but there was no need to do it and Arsenal were becoming frustrated as you do when you're getting beat and the team is slowing again down like everything did do but everything had to do that and the position there. I've seen Arsenal do that to teams so everyone does it, what goes around kind of comes around at times but where we are we've got a battle and scrap for everything. Arsenal have much better days than they've had today, they're the top side, the top of the league proves that and we've battled and scrapped our way to a huge win today for us and it's three-point, it's three-mash of points. We got out the bottom three briefly at the time of recording this Liverpool a two-null down, the day you want them not to get beat, the two-null down to Walsh where I put everything back in the bottom three but we're closer to the teams now and we've got a huge three-point. So it's a good start for Sean Deisham, he's absolutely delighted on my turn up but hopefully there's 17 games to go and we've got to see how many wins we can get but if Evan played like he did today and scrapped and worked like he did today, I think they'll be in a good position. I think they'll have a good opportunity, a good chance of staying up which didn't look likely a few weeks ago so loads to play for it's only one game I get that but that's the bar now so they have to follow it. There you go, that is it from me, thanks for watching, see you later.


Despite what you've heard from culture, truth does not change. Despite what you've heard from lukewarm Christians, truth does not change. Brother David, you're being very narrow-minded. Yes, I am. Jesus said, narrow is the way. Some people's minds are so open, their brains are falling out. They'll go for any little thing that sounds like it's kind of true. The reality is this. The Word of God is the highest and the final authority.


Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Jamie Scott-Okataya, coming to you from Virtual Metro Connect 2021. Joining me today is my good friend, Sam Mitchell. He's the director of sales at Comstar. Now for our viewers who may not already know, and I'm sure they do, but could you tell us a little bit about who Comstar Technologies is? What makes you unique? Yeah, of course, there're not really many organizations out there who can fully design and deploy and support UC, IT security and AV solutions. We have experts across all of these disciplines and that makes Comstar a true value add partner. We serve our clients by maximizing profitability, catalyzing growth and most importantly, mitigate risk. We're also not tied to any individual vendor, so we offer a more agnostic experience. And I understand that Comstar recently underwent a complete company rebrand, very exciting stuff. Let's talk about that and the company's future initiatives. We did, it looks awesome. It's so important for us to have a strong brand that represents who we are. As you know, we operate in a very competitive and saturated marketplace. It's integral that we have a very concise message. We spent a huge amount of time refining our solutions to solidify that we're bringing the best in breach solutions in each of our disciplines. It really helps our internal teams to know that we're aligning with those key business objectives. We're strengthening the team all the time. We've brought in some incredible talent in the last quarter and we're certainly not stopping there. Absolutely, no stopping you guys, even during this difficult time with the pandemic. Of course, so much of life has changed recently causing us to work and learn from home. How is Comstar working with businesses to solve these complex issues? You'd think that the challenges of individual organizations are very similar as we enter almost a year of the pandemic. In fact, we found that more than ever, the challenges companies face are actually more specific to their size, sector and their location. Just this week, we're actually helping a large metropolitan zoo enhance their cybersecurity and physical security. So it's hugely important that they detect network intrusions, physical intrusions and then react to them when not at full staffing capacity. Another cool thing we're doing for them is actually assisting and improving how their visitors interact with the exhibits and the animals by building out a more immersive audio visual experience as well. It's a pretty cool project. Oh, I love that. It makes going to zoo so high tech. I love this. And you also made some major headlines, particularly around your own growth trajectory, specifically regarding the acquisition of a Buffalo-based UC company named Comtel. What lies ahead for Comstar in 2021? Continued growth, Jamie. The acquisition of Comtel has given us a strong foothold in Western New York. Throughout this year, we'll be increasing our geographical footprint through both organic growth and then also further acquisitions, strategic acquisitions throughout the year as well. So anything else you'd like to tell us about 2021 in Comstar? Yeah, one thing that's extremely important to us here at Comstar is how we're serving our community as well as our clients. That's one of the reasons we implemented the Comstar Cares program. An example of this program at work is this year's National Sales Kickoff instead of handing out the same dreary physical awards that will sit on someone's shelf and gather dust or give out gift cards, we actually collectively decided to make donations to key Westchester-based charities. So we're actually based in Westchester, Pennsylvania. So we're helping amazing organizations such as Operation Warm Coat, Chester County Food Banks, Safe Harbor of Chester County. They all benefited from this. As the year progresses and social distancing allows, we're gonna be doing more charity events and our team will be fully involved in that. Oh, I just love that. I just love that, especially now when the need is so great. So tell us where can our viewers go to learn more about Comstar? You can visit our website at comstar-usa.com or follow us on LinkedIn. We do strive to put out fresh and educational content on a regular basis. Please do that. Also feel free to reach out to me personally. It's always great to meet new potential partners. There you have it guys, comstar-usa.com. Sam, thank you so much. It's such a pleasure as always having you here on JSA TV and thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA Podcasts. Happy networking.


Hello, and welcome to Farming Matters, a video series of the North Central Sustainable Egg Research and Education or SAIR program. I'm Erin Schneider. I am a farmer and the administrative associate with the North Central Sustainable Egg Research and Education Program. And I am here today with Marie Flanagan, a co-host of Farming Matters, the producer of the show. Hi, Marie. Hi. And I'm also here. We are very lucky to have Beth Neff with us. Beth wears many different hats and one of them is a farmer and she is here to share about her project. And Beth, I will just let you take it from here. I know you have a lot of experiences to share from what's going on in St. Louis and where you've been. And after that, we'll get a chance to just highlight and celebrate the work you're doing on the ground in St. Louis. Okay. So welcome to the Marsh Cooperative. Our project was neighborhood-based cooperative market gardening in Corandallette, St. Louis, Missouri. Corandallette is a severely disinvested neighborhood in St. Louis. And our project was founded by a mother-daughter team, myself and my daughter, as a social arts performance project. So we established a team of collaborators, five of whom became board members, with this, the idea of exploring ways in which food could become an organizing anchor for sustainable community development, and climate resilience. So we did a lot of research around the city of St. Louis and finally found what we believe to be the perfect site for our project. I used the proceeds from the sale of my farm in Indiana and we purchased this long vacant, a decade vacant, multi-use property in Corandallette on a main artery in Corandallette. The property consisted of three upstairs apartments, a diner, a former diner, the inside of the diner, and just left as it had been for 40 years. It was a big open space that had been a dining room for them and that we removed all of the remnants of that. And very fortunately for us, a large vacant lot out back that we developed then into a labyrinth permaculture garden. So we spent the first year and a half renovating the building. It was in very bad condition for both residency and for public space. And in early, in 2018 and early 2019, we held a series of community meetings to try to figure out what types of building uses the neighborhood would respond to. Everyone wanted the diner to be reopened and so we developed the idea of creating a cooperatively managed diner and grocery. And then in the spring of 2019, our region was hit by a severe Mississippi River flooding. We're about a quarter mile from the Mississippi River here, and we suffered extensive damage. That damage took us an entire year, pretty much to recover. But during that time, we worked to develop an online platform for our grocery cooperative. We thought that would be maybe a good way to start. And so we built a website where people could purchase any products that we had access to directly for themselves, and that we would divide it among the various members. This website is still operating. And we launched the online food co-op exactly one week before the first COVID shutdown of 2020, so March 2020. So for that period of time, we continued with exclusively online sales and curbside pickup, but the main efforts were based on the fact that we were inundated with a huge demand for mutual aid food supplies. And we devoted many hours and resources to filling that need. We also made a sliding scale of groceries that we acquired through the cooperative and from our gardens and other local producers made that available to the neighborhood by holding weekly outdoor markets. So several things became clear to us during this period. The first was that we needed to make the fresh food we were growing and preparing from other vendors more widely available. And one way to do that was to open a brick and mortar grocery store. The second was that we needed to grow more food directly in the neighborhood, because one of the primary things we were learning from our neighbors is that there was a severe shortage of fair wage jobs and sustainable food resources. And the third was that we wanted to involve more people in the process of producing that food through democratic collaboration. So we were able to pursue the first objective of opening a brick and mortar store with a successful grant application to the Healthy Food Funding Initiative. And we had also had extremely positive responses to organizing around the cooperative diner before flooding and COVID hit. It generated a lot of interest. And so we thought, well, we can apply that same energy and concept to the network of community gardens. And that is what motivated the application to the to SARE for a grant to create a worker owned urban farming cooperative that grows food for consumer co-op and the broader community. We basically followed the process that we had outlined in the grant. As we engaged in this process. So the first step was to engage the neighborhood in this project through a variety of events, you know, sort of test people's desire around and understanding of what community food production would look like, issues of food equity, fair employment, how we make decisions together. And then the next step was to. So we sent out, we created an application, a number of events where people were invited to participate, combination of work days meetings sharing of food, just to get people involved and excited about what could happen. You know, just a variety of different kinds of events. Including, you know, outdoor barbecues music, just anything to to engage people in the process. We were able then to build a team that was comprised primarily of nine non binary and women identified people of color, who described themselves through our application process as having personal experience with food and security, and interest and collaborative decision making, and were located in the neighborhood. And so this group of people took on a task of developing transforming a grassy, you know, just sort of vacant double lot into viable food production by doing the planning together. Setting up preparing and then learning how to market our produce so we held a number of work days. We established the site with a combination of like mulching techniques, cardboard newspaper, we hauled in massive amounts of chips, massive amounts of compost, and created gardening beds to establish our new face. So the planting began in the early spring of March 2021 with our new team, some of whom were Spanish speakers, some of people who had no experience with gardening before, and worked through what collaborative decision making processes were like, and also what our relationship to the community would be through a neighborhood gardening process. So lots of conversation, lots of work, and lots of food. We had a successful garden. Definitely weed issues involved in year one of a garden space that used to be a grassy lot. We are in the second year of that and most of those issues have presently been mitigated so our food production then was transformed into a way that people could access it, both through the grocery store which opened in July of that year. We continue to do the outdoor market, and we also continue to be involved in mutual aid food activities where food would just be gathered and sent out to people in bundles, along with groceries. So this is our new grocery store and display of some of the produce that we produced in our two gardens, the one here at Marsh, and the new garden, we call it the Minnesota garden because it's at 7200 Minnesota and, you know, building traffic so I think that some of the questions you had asked was, you know, what kind of results like what what was our most impressive result. And I would definitely say that the relationship that we're building in the community has been an important part of that. We do produce a lot of prepared foods now, a combination of the produce that's produced anything left over from the gardens and also we order from regional suppliers and so anything that we nothing goes to waste at Marsh. We just everything gets transformed into some kind of a food product so you know we all learn together how to make focaccia dough and we have our, you know, special products that people are excited about. We have a lot of volunteer groups that come out to help in the garden so we've made a lot of great connections and partnerships with other organizations who are interested in what's happening at Marsh. College classes. You know there's a with every project I think there's kind of a surface level of oh this is what we're doing and this you know is how it appears from the outside and what it looks like to the community. But there's also sort of a deeper level of you know what are we, you know, a conceptual framework of degrowth and climate resilience and post capitalism and you know these these issues. There's a chance to be able to provide so many different access points for people just depending on where they're coming from and what they're most interested in so this project has been like tremendous in that regard. A little bit of media attention, it's always nice so newspaper, television. Yeah, it's been pretty cool response. And I should just say that something that's really been important for us to learn, especially with collaborative project like this one is that everyone is going to come to this with a different set of priorities, a different focus, especially with a very complex project like what are people most interested in some people were very focused on food production learning farming skills, you know, sort of the labor aspect of it, earning a good wage to to work. Others were more interested in sort of the cooperative structures you know how do you make decision decisions, how do you communicate in a group. And that the other very strong emphasis that came out of the particular group that we put together was outreach to food insecure patrons of the grocery store and the outdoor market and the development of the sliding scale model so that that is still a work in progress we're always tweaking and changing, but the, the whole concept and the way that it would operate and the communication about it evolved out of this group process so that that felt really powerful, and also as a really important learning experience just to respond to the wide variety of needs and interests of the people involved and to be like nimble and flexible in our planning model. And then you asked for advice, always a little shaky but I think the most important advice. At this point in time you know just coming out of this process is to have some kind of an idea plan for what comes next you know what are you going to do once the grant funds are gone or extended. For example, you keep the momentum going of a project that you started. How will you ensure that the shared commitments that you've established in these relationships have a foundation for continuing and moving forward. I think that especially in relational economic situations, people that have become involved want to be part of next steps, and it's pretty essential to incorporate them into planning and to pursue strategies to access the resources to make those steps happen. So that comes up when people are talking about urban farming and and Sarah soil quality and soil issues often come up as a concern. Can you talk at all about any of the soil quality or concerns you had working in an urban environment testing you had to do. That's another excellent question I think there's a huge concern here about toxicity. A lot of vacant lots are places where buildings existed before and in some cases the they were basically just pushed into a basement. So we have absolutely you know lead arsenic. You know they're a lot cold burning at one point there's there is a lot of toxicity. We just built up as best we could. We didn't want to expend a lot of resource sources a lot of people do boxes, you know, like kind of that raised bed gardening. We created a situation where we're just not really digging into the original soil at all so we have added probably the newest gardens probably have like 12 to 18 inches of compost on top, and the older spaces. Like there's two feet of compost. So to me, you just brought up like one of the most important issues with both urban farming and you know what our sort of a climate response is going to be. And that is where is the compost going to be coming from how are we going to create enough compost if we're going to restore places that have been, you know, sort of poorly managed in the past, and we're also going to create like, you know, carbon absorption. We're also going to create massive amounts of compost, or the need for massive amounts of compost and I've had this conversation also with other local agencies and organizations that are looking at that and water, like access to water, as being pretty essential sort of like baseline issues to deal with as we move more into urban agriculture. I wanted to ask to if you wanted to just share with our, our listeners and viewers like one another thread in there that came up with this sliding scale or pay what you can model at that because it's sort of the theme there is coops helping coops right here in community help me know how what did you notice or observe or however you want to respond to this or about how do you beat the farmers making, you know, what they are living wage from their produce sales and then also the work people in the grocery store and those who are able to pay what they can along the way and I just as a grower I'm like, wow, I'm so grateful you're dressing this head on and wow, how do you even start. Kind of the answer that is I have no idea. It's, it's, this is the, the primary economic challenge is, you know, to make transformation in what would be a fair and equitable economy in the middle of a totally extractive exploitative economy. So, it's a huge challenge, and we did start out, allowing people to decide how much they were going to pay. Because of the neighborhood that we are in, that was nothing for a lot of people. And we ended up giving away over $13,000 worth of product out of the grocery store. And we're, you know, sort of threatening our viability with that model. So that's one of the reasons why I said, you know, we sort of tweak this to. You know, you can pay 20% below or 20% above, and hopefully the balance comes in at cost so everything in the store is priced at a very low markup right around 12%, which we calculated is what it takes to cover, you know, basically keeping the lights on.  One is that we operate as a not for profit. So that makes it so that we're not looking to extract any profit from the system. But we also need external funding, we need donations, we need grants, we need to be able to fund this from resources that come from outside of our existing system right now. So what do you feel like is transforming or growing out of this. Sarah projects into the next year. Yeah, no that that's a tremendous question. So, another Sarah Grant. We did apply again. And so we have a two year grant now. And to move this project to, you know, the center has been food. And I think that that still works for a framework, but to kind of have like the next ring, be a climate resilience. I think that more towards knowing our neighborhood, you know, sort of seeing kind of what we're up against in a lot of ways, not just us but sort of like systemically societally. These are the people, the precarious people are the ones who are going to be hurt first. You know we saw I included the slides of the flooding just because this is the kinds of thing that we're going to be seeing more and more often. And with this summer I mean it's kind of amazing that we, we are doing a Sarah project to kind of figure out how we can respond specifically to growing challenges but also to what kinds of like community and relational challenges they're going to be. So that is where we're headed with the focus of having like an actual like climate conference or symposium at the end of 2023 so about a little over a year from now. And I think it's an emotion that wanting to make sure people had the energy to continue going and to that next step, like where is your energy at right now and what gives is most alive for you as heading into this next phase of this project in the year. Well, I will answer honestly that my energy is very low. My expenditure of energy is extremely high. And that's sort of the reason for that. And I guess that's why my most important advice was to plan for what comes next, particularly with the, the HFI grant, which is a larger grant to get the grocery store open. It's not a large staff, and once that that process asked for, you know, budget projections out to five years, and those projections showed, you know, somewhat arbitrary but they showed that we would be breaking even at five years, and that seems to be true. So what do we do then between years two and five. And the answer is unfortunately that our team is much smaller than it was while we were being funded by the grant. We have fewer hours in the store than we were able to fund during that period of time. So we have had to scale back. And that is incredibly disappointing. You know, we sort of lost the farm actually has been able to keep going but but in regards to the grocery we lost sort of some of that building of skills and interest and investment and that sort of thing to the point where it kind of feels like some of that is going to be starting over again. So we were not necessarily we have a couple of people who, you know, we have some continuity. What happens then is that the founders have to plug in because, you know, I'm a volunteer. I'm not pulling from any salary from what's happening. And so my hours are the only thing really in some ways that keep that going you know with the cooking and the processing and that sort of thing and we also started a CSA this year as a strategy to kind of save the grocery store. So we have that membership. It's not on a sliding scale you know that's kind of our the privileged people redistribution of wealth basically supporting the rest of the system. But that you know, I'm sure you know is an exceedingly high amount of work. So, you know, preparing those shares, you know, twice a week because we people have two different pickups. It's a whole other activity really, and we sort of tacked it on in hopes that we would be able to keep everything else going. So, yeah, things are. Yeah, they're a little scary right now. I think what is there. Anything back that you want to just that feels left on set in your heart or in your mind about your project or this experience or this moment or really wonderful and exciting that we have a way of publicly providing resources for exploring these really important questions of sustainable agriculture. And I think that Sarah has made a outsize contribution to the positive research around sustainable agriculture to the actual just activity of people doing sustainable agriculture, and also to the public just assuming the baseline, you know that this is how agriculture could and should be done. And sort of that that knowledge so I, I really just honestly appreciate the funding and I also appreciate like what you guys are doing with this, because I do think just the more we talk about it and the more there, the more people have just an understanding that this, wow, you can do this like we can grow food like in our city or in our surrounding rural regions and that people that you know we can all contribute to what support for that looks like. So, I've appreciated being in relationship with this with Sarah as an institution for a long time, and it's making even more of an impact now to what we're doing. Okay, the gratitude and just really thank you for your time and much, much luck and success and good, good mojo to you and your neighborhood and the soil and all of it. Thank you so much. Yes, you are very. Yeah, we look forward to crossing paths again.


What's happening, Magnetsides? Black Viking is back and ready to react. And this one is two Dragon Ball Xenoverse Jump Fiesta Trailer. So let's get it in. This place is a collection of powers. And there we can regroup and try. You are truly my greatest masterpiece. A dark venom causes to the veins of the Dragon Ball world and opens a dangerous rift in time and space as the power intends to force. The past is rewritten. Give me a strong ally, someone with the kind of power to help me defend time itself. This wish I ask of you, Shinron. Co-Wish is graphical with Xenoverse. And you just require it as well. See, if history is in any way altered or distorted, it could change the world as we know it. Travel through an alternate past to restore the universe and bark on adventures never experienced in the world of Dragon Ball. Was that Vegeta part of the get-you-force? You change suddenly as the alternate history unfolds. Team up with your friends and take on the most challenging situations.  Stop it, Frieza! Sure you are. All you have to do is beat Frieza and it's done. Help me out. Let me be the one to finish this. And yet, I can sense his energy. I think it's time to harvest. Your energy will be honest. They're thieves stealing energy from warriors of all time periods. And because of that, history is changing for the worse. Now that...  But still, power's only... Oh my lord, how can something like this happen? There's no mistake. I know it. Those two are changing history. Nothing seems to be going our way. I wonder, is that Goku's son? What's wrong, Gohan? Oh, I'm sorry. Are you scared of my return? Her killing Gohan beats strange. And you're the cause of it. That'll be all. Let's retreat for today. A new adventure awaits across incredible worlds. Help Goku and Mother save Dragon Ball history. Travel along or join together to defend the past and protect the timeline. This sounds like a real long involved game. Oh no! Which is good. That's what you get your money for. 17, 2015. By the way...  Is it anybody there that is with me on this?   Yeah, it works against Buu, but like, whatever he harnesses...  It didn't work on Vegeta. And I'm like... I'm not talking about the movies right now. I'll just say... In one of the movies though, he had to absorb it right to use the power. But he needed everybody's power from on Earth to beat Buu with it. It just is retarded.   Whoever is with me, post your comments below. If you like the spirit bomb, post your best rebuttal against hating the spirit bomb. Tell me why the spirit bomb is good.  One million subscribers!


Three decades, United States airlift forces have helped shape world history. From its beginning in World War II, airlift has repeatedly documented its ability to rapidly deliver the weapons of conflict and the provisions for peace. This then is the story of military airlift working for humanity. It began in 1943. During World War II, the men flying the hump over the Himalayas from India to China not only proved people and supplies could be carried long distance by air, but that airlift was critical when time was a factor. The Flyers of the Humps set the stage for today's military airlift command, MAC. The Military Air Transport Service was created in June 1948 as the heavy long-range airlift force for all U.S. military services. Just 26 days after Air Force and Navy long-range airlift resources were consolidated under mats. The challenge was issued, the Berlin Airlift. For several weeks, Russia had been slamming the doors to the city. They cut road traffic, then rails, then barges. So America, Britain and France decided to supply the city by air to keep freedom's door open. Many experts called it an impossible task.  Within a month, 159 United States aircraft were delivering 1,500 tons daily. Not enough, but it gave the people hope. Additional American and British aircraft were brought in. The first priority was coal, then food, then medical and industrial supplies. For the aircrews, it meant long hours, navigating through narrow air corridors into the heart of the city, flying on instruments through the winter's worst weather, landing at three-minute intervals, and then returning for another load. The peak day in April 1949 saw 1,400 missions deliver almost 13,000 tons to the beleaguered city. Many types of aircraft were used, principally the C-47 and the C-54, to fly 4,500 tons of food, coal and other supplies daily into Berlin. After 10 months of relentless flying by the heroic aircrews, the Russians gave in. The blockade was broken. The city of Berlin had been kept from starving and freezing by a quarter of a million flights, delivering two and a quarter million tons of supplies. But airlift saved the city and was established as a diplomatic and humanitarian weapon. Today, 20 C-5s flying only six hours a day could duplicate these accomplishments in the same period of time. But the Berlin Airlift still stands as probably the greatest airlift in history. Berlin was only the beginning. Even while the Berlin Airlift was still operating, Airlift was proving its worth elsewhere. Meanwhile, in the United States, an extremely severe winter had struck the northern part of the country. Thousands of snowbound sheep, cattle, deer and elk faced starvation. Operation Halift, conducted by tactical airlift units, dropped thousands of tons of hay. In 1950, when U.S. forces were committed to defend South Korea against communist invasion from the north, Airlift again played a vital role. A quarter of a million personnel and 80,000 tons of cargo were airlifted to the combat area. Return flights brought back 66,500, about 90% of all sick and wounded. Aeromedical Airlift reduced the World War II death rate of 4% of the wounded to a new low of 2%. While war raged in Korea, U.S. military aircraft on the other side of the world were performing an unusual airlift. 3,700 Muslims were stranded at various points in the Middle East, unable to reach Mecca by August 28 as required by Muslim law. The massive pilgrimage had saturated commercial airlines. The U.S. Airlift called Magic Carpet helped them meet their religious obligation. 1953, inundated by waters of the North Sea during a violent spring storm, Holland faced devastation. Helicopters evacuated people and transports flew in relief supplies to the flood victims for distribution by the Red Cross. Meanwhile, another unusual airlift came into operation. Kinderlift meant a five-week summer vacation for the needy children of Berlin who were unable to leave the Communist encircled city. American transports carried the children from Tempelhof Airport to camps and private homes in West Germany. Begun in 1953, Operation Kinderlift operated each summer for five years and airlifted almost 10,000 needy children. Humanitarian airlift continued. Severe weather, snow, cold and winds lashed Central Italy and Northern Greece. Thousands of communities were isolated and in dire need of food, clothing and medicine. U.S. Air Force transports delivered 700,000 pounds of critical supplies, some by airdrop, to the stricken areas. In another area of Europe, during the same year, the Hungarian revolt quickly crushed by the Soviet Army caused thousands to flee their homeland. During a six-month period, they were flown from Germany to the United States whereby executive order of the President, they could become American citizens. In July 1958, military airlift was again called upon. The President of Lebanon, Fearful of Revolt, appealed to the United States for military assistance. Airlift deployed forces from Europe and a composite air strike force was sent from the United States. The show of force stabilized the political situation. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the Chinese Communists were shelling the Kunmen Islands in the Formosa Straits and threatening to invade Taiwan, the home of the Chinese Nationalists. The United States, committed to the defense of the Chinese Nationalists, neutralized the situation by deploying a composite air strike force augmented by a squadron of F-104s. Again, Airlift made these deployments possible. In Japan, 1960, the crisis was polio with more than 700 cases of the dreaded disease reported. From the United States by military airlift came life-saving iron lungs donated by the National Polio Foundation. Ample supplies of Salk vaccine were also airlifted into Japan. The same year saw Airlift respond to an emergency in the Republic of the Congo. Widespread violence depleted food supplies and threatened the safety of all non-Africans. Responding to the United Nations' call for support, U.S. airlift forces in Europe flew in supplies and evacuated refugees. The airlift continued after 1960 but with less urgency, and by the time it ended in 1964, military aircraft had flown more than 2,000 missions. The Glovemaster Transports were called upon elsewhere in Africa during 1962. Floods in the Rugee River Delta area of Tanganyika cut overland supply routes isolating 55,000 inhabitants. The C-124's air dropped over 1,500 tons of food in the emergency airlift. In the spring of 1965, a political crisis in the Dominican Republic flared into a revolution. Concern over the welfare of United States and other foreign nationals prompted the airlift of U.S. troops into the area to protect and evacuate the civilians. Food, medical aid and other services were also flown in. In November 1970, airlift came to the aid of East Pakistan. A severe cyclone followed by a tidal wave and extreme flooding devastated large areas of the country. Assistance from the United States came on the wings of C-141 Transports, which airlifted eight helicopters into the area for air dropping food to the isolated inhabitants. Water purification units, medical personnel and other supplies from the United States were also airlifted into the stricken country. One of the most memorable and happy airlift operations in history occurred in the spring of 1973, when the North Vietnamese released 566 American prisoners of war. Most were pilots who had been shot down over North Vietnam. Some had been imprisoned for seven years. After evacuation from Hanoi by C-141 star lifters to Clark Air Base in the Philippines, they received a medical check, a new uniform and were flown on to the United States. At various bases back home, they proudly walked off the Transports and into the arms of the families from whom they'd been separated for so long. C-9 nightingales then transferred them to military hospitals near their home areas, for many received treatment for malnutrition and injuries sustained while in prison. On 13 October 1973, the United States, at the urgent request of Israel, began a dramatic airlift of material into Tel Aviv. Throughout the years, humanitarian airlift continued. In 1974, a severe drought in the countries of Chad, Mali and Mauritania prompted a massive airlift of food and medical supplies by C-130s. During the six-month operation, airlift missions delivered more than 200,000 pounds of supplies to the isolated and starving inhabitants of these African countries. One of the final airlift operations in Southeast Asia was the evacuation of thousands of refugees just prior to the fall of the South Vietnamese government. Included among the refugees were hundreds of orphans who were airlifted to sponsors in the United States. Carrying for them en route became everyone's business, from flight nurses to loadmasters. Airlift has routinely responded to natural disasters. Earthquakes, one of nature's most destructive forces, struck in widely separated areas during 1976. First in Guatemala, where almost 23,000 people died. Emergency supplies and relief workers were airlifted into the country by U.S. Air Force Transport to care for the sick and homeless. Later in the year, earthquakes devastated large areas of Turkey. Relief supplies were quickly flown from the United States to bases in Europe by C-5 and C-141 transports. C-130s then trans-shipped the supplies into Van Airfield, Turkey, near the stricken areas. The following year, 1977, airlift was used to cope with an emergency in the United States. An unusually severe winter storm had blanketed the city of Buffalo, New York with snow. 10,000 tons of snow removal equipment and 500 relief workers were airlifted into the area. Responses to humanitarian requirements had been dramatic aspects of airlift. But airlift has also been used to support scientific programs. Since 1955, the continuing scientific expedition in Antarctica has been resupplied by Operation Deep Freeze, which involved airlift operations from the United States via New Zealand. Air Force transports have also supplied scientific expeditions on ice islands in the Arctic. In 1977, an Air Force C-5 was tasked to fly a 40-ton superconducting magnet from the United States to Moscow. This was done in support of the International Cooperative Program between the United States and Russia in the field of magnetohydrodynamic power generation. The development of the jet engine, improved communications, and improvements in cargo handling have enhanced our airlift capability. With mid-air refueling, our C-5s are now able to carry heavier loads over greater distances. Tanks, personnel carriers, and artillery pieces can now be flown directly to overseas locations, eliminating the need to land and route and refuel. Modern weaponry has reduced the spectrum of war from years to months, from weeks to days. By developing rapid military airlift mobility to meet the demands of modern warfare, we have gained an equally fast reaction to worldwide natural catastrophes. It is here that airlift spends its finest hours. In meeting the challenge of earthquake, blizzard, fire, and flood, America's airlift proves in full that it truly is an instrument of peace.