Wednesday, June 8th to order. Thank you all for being here. Do we have any agenda additions or changes for today? None from staff. Trustees, anything? This is for the trustees. We'll get into the rest of it in a moment. So hearing no agenda additions or changes, we will move on to public to be heard. So now is a portion of tonight's meeting where if there is anybody in the audience or in TV land who has a question or comment for the board of trustees, now is the time to let us know. I'll prioritize those here in the room and then those online. Is there anybody in the room who wish to bring something to the board's attention that is not on the agenda? Carl? Yep. If you'd like to just go ahead and so that way the TV can hear you. If you don't mind coming up to the microphone here. Yes. Right here. Yep. A little brown desk. Yep. No, you got a chair right there. I keep walking. I'm stopping and standing. I just want to mention to Andy that you guys did a, you almost duty getting this village town resolved. And we seem to be on our way. So that leads to my question of where does the seniors, where do we stand as an organization? With the senior center? Yeah. The senior center remains as it has been previously. In terms of there's the program fund that's paid for by the people who attend. The staff that is paid for for this year is paid for through the town's budget. Yeah. It was, we paid a dollar a year, but it never got collected. Right. There's that membership fee that's paid. That's within that enterprise fund. Well, our membership dues, that was one of our fundraising. They started out to be a quarter every time you showed up to whatever the event or occasion was. And somebody got smart and said, well, just do a dollar a month. So now it's $12 a year. You can pay it. As long as you don't fall too far behind, you can pay it. So that was a fundraiser. I don't know what the membership is right now, but at one time it was, I don't know, pushing $200. I don't know if the pandemic has whittled that down or not. I know we got a couple more widows. We didn't have three, four years ago. But then the other thing we did was hold these bridge tournaments. And I forgot everybody paid a fee. It was duplicate bridge. And we'd get maybe 20 to 25 tables. So that made us a little bit of money. Then in the fall, I do some kind of a, I don't know what you call it, but anyway, people make up tables and they sell their wares. And we'd sell a few things. And so that was another fundraiser for us. And the way we spent the money was we redid the floor in there. That was membership money raised to redo that floor. And we bought a new set of tables. Well, they're about 80% lighter than the old ones that we had. We get some new chairs. And they worked on the kitchen. They get some changes. So it makes it a little more efficient and everything. So we're going to be able to stay there, right? So we're going to be doing some renovations to this building within the next year. When that happens, there may be disruptions into the space that's right next door here. We'd make sure that the senior center and the senior population is informed of whatever kind of disruptions there may need to be. You're going to go through the whole senior center or just these two rooms on the end here? We don't know the full extent of the plans at this point in time. Some things that we do know, for instance, is the floor or the ceiling of where the senior center is, the ceiling of that portion. There's a support beam that's likely going to need to be reinforced. So if there's going to need to be construction, that would prevent really the access to the senior center at that point in time where those activities take place. We'd make sure that you all know. It's a safety, but it's a safety. If there's a safety risk, we don't want to have anybody in there. So we'd make sure that you all are informed so things can't be unsafe. That probably would go on what, for three, four weeks? I don't know. I don't want to over-promise. I don't want to under-promise. We don't know yet. So at this point in time, we don't even have a schedule. So it's hard for me to give any kind of definitive answers. OK. At some point, I don't think we even have a board anymore. We used to elect our officers. And at one point, we hired a coordinator. And she turned out to be very good. She's there all the time every day that the center was open. And she set up some outside activities. And while we're watching at what was going on inside, that we don't have that right now. So. Right. There should be a coordinator now through Essex Parks and Rec. There should be a coordinator. And we can, I'm looking towards Brad, that I believe that person is still there. She's still be on the payroll, I'm not sure. But from what I hear, and she's, whether she is, she doesn't show up very often. We can make sure that that person is communicated with so that they can be up to date to make sure then that you all are up to date as well. My understanding is that the senior coordinator is a person who has most of your contact information. Whereas I only speaking for myself, I know I don't. And I'm not too sure if Brad or Wendy do. So that's why I think we need to work with the coordinator to make sure that you all are as informed as possible. Well, we'd like to get around that somehow if we could. Right. Right. I mean, that's what some of the sentiment is. I'm not saying it's hard and fast, but some of the sentiment, we kind of lost confidence in some of these people. And when we were doing ourselves, morale was very high and turned out for the various days of the week when different programs are going, that was pretty good. We had a bus that served, I guess, all the village and I guess it got extended to Athenianland. So if you could give that some thought about, when we hired a person, the more mature adult person of our age, she got along better with us. But she was there all the time and doing things and checking things out. Right. Then another thing that keeps popping up is over the years, there was some seniors before my time, and I've been there, I know it does in our 15 years, who had a very enjoyable experience as a senior. So in their wills, they wrote in a certain amount of money that they wanted to leave to the senior center. And when I got there, the treasurer, give the treasurer the opportunity to say that we have a CD with so much money and whatever it was at that time. They weren't huge sums, I don't think. Somebody else had a CD and might be a little more, a little less and the treasurer would always take care of that. And then there's a larger one, but no one seems to know where or why that those CDs disappeared. So our interim co-managers, Brad Luck and Wendy Hisco, who are on our virtual land, are definitely hearing what you're saying and can look into it further from a staff perspective. They can look into the books, they can do those kinds of things and have some better access and get some of that back to us. I can't give you even a guess of how much money was, or how many of those CDs exist or did exist, but if we could somehow iron that out. Yep, yeah, for sure. I guess I can't think of any, but long as we're gonna be there, except for when this renovation takes place and that date hasn't been determined as of now. Right. Yeah, okay, understandable. Just keep us advised kind of a heads up when things start to happen. Definitely, absolutely. I don't know if we can make plans to relocate somewhere else. Right. Right. The library's not being used, so maybe we can go over there. Okay, thank you very much, gentlemen. Thank you, Carl. Thank you, Carl. Appreciate it. Was there anybody else in the room who wanted to raise any concerns or questions to the board that's not on the agenda? Not seeing anybody? Anybody on Zoom World? If you have questions, comments, concerns for the trustees, please go ahead and raise your hand. I'm not seeing any hands up. So then going back to the agenda. Andrew, would you mind if I just, I can address that question tonight just so we don't have to circle back and mainly so I don't forget. Please go ahead. Thanks. Just in 2016, there was an Essex Area Senior Center Incorporated 501C3 non-profit who had monies. They dissolved and the municipality, the municipalities assumed responsibility for operations of the senior center. So things kind of shifted. And so any money that was previously donated or given to or raised by that 501C3 is now sitting in an enterprise fund with the village. There's 20 or 25,000 in there. I don't have the exact number, but it is there and accessible for senior needs. And as you mentioned, Andrew, the Essex Parks and Recreation, the town of Essex employs the senior program director. And that will relationship will is planned to continue through 1231 23, at which time the village will take over management of the center. And Brad, just to make sure I heard you write that enterprise account is within the village and city of Essex Junction. Yes, that's correct. Great. Thank you, Brad. So our first or next agenda item is public to be heard. Oh, sorry, I did that one. The public hearing. We did that one. Sorry about that. It's the public hearing on the FY23 water, wastewater and sanitation rates. Hello, everyone. Going to share my screen. Let's see. Not that one. Can you all see my PowerPoint? No, we see a blue screen. Nope. We can see a PowerPoint before. How about now? Now we do. Now we don't. Okay, perfect. All right, so this is our first of two public hearings on water, wastewater and sanitation rate setting. For anyone out there in viewer land, we have the village has a policy that we hold two public hearings on rate settings each year. And just to kind of give some background on this, I am using the same calculation methods and presentation that Sarah has used in the past. So everything should look very familiar with the data being updated, of course, for FY23. So in summary, the combined village rate for all utility rates is increasing 7.7% over FY22. You'll notice there are some red percentages here on this slide. I realized after I sent it that Sarah, I was not using the final version of last year's PowerPoint deck. So I updated it with some information that Sarah had updated in last year's presentation. And then obviously that also fed over into the FY23 budget as well. So we have also in here in the packet, this information is all the same. Those two corrections I just stated are the only ones that I had to make. So in this history slide, we have five year averages, kind of showing that FY23 is mostly in line with increases in prior years. And the total overall increase translates to about $41.78 per residential property per year, an increase for FY23. And this is assuming, again, the same assumption we've always used of 120 gallons per day. So we'll look at each of the rates individually, and I'll kind of go over what the increases represent here. On the water side of things, the water fund is seeing the highest rate of increase of about 5.7% over last year. Due primarily to operating budget increases for benefits costs and increasing a part-time shared position to full-time. And the water budget also includes a 3.5% rate increase that Champlain Water District is budgeting and projecting. That rate normally is around 3% per year. So it's a little bit higher this year. On the wastewater side, we have about a 5.6% increase over last year. And again, some of that is due to the part-time shared position increasing to full-time. So this is the admin position that we are filling for FY23. And there are other various cost increases associated within this budget due to changing state regulations, which essentially are unfunded mandates. And it's both, I guess there are also federal mandates as well. Along on the sanitation side of things, we have about a 1.5% rate increase. And about $7,750 is an increase for planned debt repayment. And then other slight increases in the admin fee as well as various pump station costs. The other two rates that the village sets each year are the large water user rate. This is basically the rate charged to global foundries right now. And again, using the established methods that the village has used to calculate and these are based on actual and projected usage data. We are projecting an increase of 1.8 cents per thousand gallons over the current rate. So next year's rate would be 11 cents per thousand gallons. And lastly, we have the wastewater fund, sorry, wastewater wholesale rate. And this is the rate paid by both the town of Essex and town of Williston for the treatment that goes through our wastewater treatment facility. We have about a 9.7% increase over FY22 here. And this increases a result of the wastewater operating budget of 10.6% increase. Most of that is related to cost increases for biosolids, land application, chemicals and electricity for the plant itself. And there's also in this fund, there's also a planned annual increase of $20,000 for the capital. So that is what I have for a presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions that anyone might have. Thank you, Jess, do appreciate that. And thank you for the consistency as well with the presentation made it nice and easy to remember from previous years. So seeing that this is a public hearing, I would first prioritize questions from the public. If there's any members here in the audience who have any questions of what you've just heard, not seeing any, for those in Zoom land, if you have any questions about what you've just heard, please go ahead, raise your hand. And I'm not seeing any hands being raised. Trustees, any questions? All right. Well, Jess, thank you. That was very thorough, appreciate it. We have no questions, so thank you. Great, thank you. I'll see you again in a couple of weeks. Yes, take care. Thanks. So then we'll go ahead and close the public hearing and move on to business item 6A, which is a discussion on upcoming initiatives with the Chittinsawed Waste District. Hello. Hello, how are you? Good, how are you? Some room for Alan here. So thank you for inviting me back again and for being interested in these two particular items. So my name is Sarah Reeves. I'm the Executive Director for CSWD. And we do have a very busy couple of, or three years coming up on the Capital Front. So I would be happy to kind of do a quick overview of what we're talking about and then would welcome any questions from any of the trustees or members of the public. So the big news is that our Board of Commissioners did approve us to come to the voters with a bond request for a new materials recovery facility. Our current MRF is about 30 years old and it is in desperate need of replacement. It is currently processing double what it was designed to process. So we have no room to move up out or do anything within the building and we simply can't even hope to take any more material in. So we really need flexibility for the future to be able to have a hope of being able to extract more material out of the waste stream and into the recycling stream. We just can't do it where we are now. And a big factor too is that facility is mostly sorted by hand. And pretty much we and the Rutland MRF are the only ones that I'm aware of who are sorting materials by hand. Every container, every bit of cardboard, every paper that comes through is sorted by people. So it's a tough job. What we wanna do is construct a new facility on property that the district owns in Williston. We're looking at about a 22 to $24 million project. The board has approved us to ask the voters for no more than $22 million in a bond. It would be a general obligation bond. And the key for our members is that we will not be sending you a bill. We are very proud of the fact that we do not bill our members for any of the services that we provide nor do we intend to bill you for any of the long-term debt that we are seeking to incur. We do need to get your approval that is in our charter that we ask for a voter's approval. And it will go to individual voters not to the select board's councils or the trustees. So it is different from the budget. We do need to get everybody to vote for it. And so what I'm working on now is getting that not to exceed number down. So we're talking to the folks who have lots of grant money available this year. There's lots of money at the federal level. There are zero interest municipal loans that we have access to. There's other nonprofit grants that we have access to. And so in talking with all of those folks, they are looking at this on this project very, very favorably. So that's super exciting. So what we're looking to do again is to build flexibility for the future. And this current MRF has served us very well for 30 years. We're looking to build, you know, getting into the future of a 30, 40 year facility. So very long-term investment. We, if we get the approval of the voters in November, then we will be able to get those RFPs out for construction, hopefully be constructing within about a year, you know, maybe a year from now, probably into the summer, or the equipment and then hopefully be up and running within about no longer than three years. So we're looking at late 2024, early 2025 to be able to move the material from the current MRF to the new MRF. So again, you know, bringing in technology, sorting technology and making it a larger area, essentially doubling the physical size of the building to be able to accept more material and be able to store more material and then be able to process kind of in a more linear fashion right now. It's kind of like the Game Most trap where things are built on top of each other. And then just to make those jobs much for lack of a better term, better. They're very, very hard jobs that you can imagine sorting every container one by one. So the bulk of the sorting we've done by by technology and then our employees will be quality control. So they're gonna be looking after the material that maybe the machines may have missed. So again, that we are very, very excited about this possibility. It will be able to ensure that the materials we process continue to be sorted at a very, very high level and to actually increase that quality. Many other facilities are putting in equipment now. And so we are really behind the times. We need to be able to improve the amount that we extract out of the waste stream, improve the quality so we can ensure our place in the marketplace. And that's really what we're talking about is making sure that we don't lose footing there, particularly in our paper products. Paper is about 75% of what we process through our MRF and those markets are very competitive and they're getting tighter as they should be for quality purposes. We are sending still sending all of our material domestically and we wanna keep things as close as possible. And there is one last mill in Vermont down in Putney and our paper products are not sorted to the quality that they can accept. We wanna be able to send our material and keep it in Vermont as much as possible. So that's really one of our goals for the fiber products. We wanna be able to keep the rest of the material as local and when I say local, maybe Quebec, certainly in the eastern part of the country. And again, continue to try to be flexible to be able to pull more materials out. So that is the MRF project. So I would love to actually take some questions on that and then I can highlight some of the other capital projects we have kind of ongoing at the same time, but this is kind of a big one. So I would love to hear anything you may have on that one. So with the new MRF, what is it that we as consumers, customers would see difference or what we'd be able to do differently, act differently or would we even notice anything? So good news is you won't notice anything different from what you're doing now and you should be able to do more. And that's why we need to build in that flexibility because right now packaging has changed dramatically over just the past five years, never mind the past decade. So we've been in that business for 30 years and we're still only able to take essentially the same things we took 20 years ago. So we need to be able to improve with the times. So some of the things that we're looking at are things like polypropylene for sure, and we can take these now, but they kind of go into just a generalized plastics bail. We wanna be able to take those out separately because they are very highly sought after, they are very versatile and very flexible and the demand is really high. So things like yogurt cups, coulip tubs, things like that, we'll be able to sort those specifically and be able to get a better price for that plastic. We're looking at, and I get this question a lot and we are very strongly looking at can we take some black plastics? So that has been one that every time I talk to folks about recycling, why can't we take the black plastic it's everywhere. The short answer is that it could be made of many different types of plastic and it's hard for people to know what kind of plastic it is. You really have to pick it up and then be able to identify the code. And we don't have time to do that but the material flowing through, people are picking very fast. Machines will have a better chance of identifying that resin type. So that's one thing that we're talking to our potential equipment providers about can you scan for black plastic? Because I get that question a lot. Things such as pouches, will we be able to eventually take the Capri Suns and the baby food that comes in pouches? We might be able to take those at some point with this newer technology. So some of the changes that we'll be be able to have in the Murph, we'll be able to add on later day. We may be, we'll be able to adjust for the future. The equipment is so smart that we can run something underneath a scanner. It will read not only the resin but it will read the package type and will remember it. And then we can then put that into a database and we can tell that the computer's the next time, this is how you sort that. I mean, it's amazing what can be done now. So really it could be somewhat limitless, right? So as far as the system being able to learn as we go and that's really what we wanna do. We wanna build in that amount of flexibility so that we're not having to constantly swap out equipment because of new packaging, we can just change the brains and continue to have that learn as packaging changes. So that's why we're so excited. Because technology is just grown by leaves and bounds and we're at a great point to be able to implement some of the newest technology. That's great.  Will this relieve some of the pressure at the drop-off centers? I mean, or is there, I go to Williston, sometimes I go over to Essex just because I'm right near the Williston line. It's quicker sometimes we're there. Obviously on weekends, it's very busy. They have those containers that separate different materials. I assume those, what's brought there is what you're talking about going to Murph. Yes. And the quicker you can move the product out of there, the quicker things. Is that gonna increase the number of drop centers or you're gonna keep the drop centers the same amount or what? I mean, I gotta imagine there's some kind of benefit for being able to process more stuff out. Yeah, so what it allows us to do is to be able to take a look at the size of the containers that are at our drop-off centers. And we happen to actually swapping them out for larger containers to be able to hold more at one time so they don't feel too fast because that obviously on a Saturdays will sometimes happen, right? They'll feel very quickly. And if we haven't done the pole dance properly, then it can get tricky. But we will be able to certainly accept more for the Williston facility, it'll be on the same road. So we'll be able to swap that out really frequently. The neat thing too though that will have available to us is we're most likely still going to keep the old, the current facility. So that will give us, we'll still have that asset and we may be able to take additional materials that maybe we will want to have people drop off at the drop-off center, consolidate them in the new mirf like film, maybe styrofoam. There's a whole host of things that are annoying, bulky. We don't want in the mirf but have recyclable qualities that we still want to collect at the drop-off center and then consolidate and sell when we have a load. So we may not need to add more drop-off centers but we are also talking about that this year, this coming fiscal year, is our entire drop-off center system? Is, do we have locations in the right spots for where people are? Are we collecting the materials that need to be collected? Do we have the right number of days, combination of days and hours? So we're always looking at that efficiency as well. And yes, they all kind of, it's all a puzzle that fits built together but really the big opportunity could be that to right size those recycling containers and make sure that there's enough access at the drop-off center. Thanks. Great. So you had mentioned how you're expecting this to be about $24 million or so and that the request of voters will be to approve of a $24 million bond. How is it that if I vote yes for that bond, am I then not paying for it? I think it's one of the things that you had mentioned. Yes, exactly. So the way that we will be paying down our, paying the debt service is we receive revenue in three main ways through user fees or TIP fees. So the fees of the haulers pay us when they come to the MRF and literally tip out the material on the floor. That's called a TIP fee. That is one of the primary sources of income. The other is from the revenue from the sale of the recycling. So those are the two main streams that are generated by the MRF itself. We also have a solo waste management fee, which is a fee that is charged again to haulers when they bring trash to be disposed at the landfill and coventry. So we have those three main sources of revenue. And again, to make sure that I am not going to the voters with 22 or 24 million, I am seeking those grants and the zero just loans. So if I'm guessing, well, I know it won't be more than 22. I don't think it's going to be more than 20. I'd like to get it in the teens. So really what I want to come to you with is no more than something in the teens. But again, those are the three sources of revenue. And so those sources will pay for operational costs, some capital costs, and then the debt service. And the very unlikely realm that in one particular year we're not able to pay the debt service, that would be the only time that we would seek an assessment in a single year from one of our member communities. We would not be transferring the obligation over to the communities. We would still retain the general obligation of that debt. But if there's, I don't know, it would have to be, you know, really something pretty devastating if we're not able to pay our debt service because we can raise the tip fee, you know, right now to $80 a ton. If we need to raise that, we can to meet the market rate. We could raise the solid waste management fee if we needed to. We haven't raised that fee in nine years. We could do that. We also have reserves. We have a capital reserve. We have an operating reserve. We'll be also creating a sinking fund. So, you know, we have multiple sources of both cash on hand and revenue that we are comfortable will satisfy those obligations. The board really keeps it tight control on Sarah with respect to the finances of the thing.  Okay, Alan, you brought it up, I'll brought it up. Yeah, it's indirectly paid through user fees. And then what you said about the worst case scenario where something came up, you might go to one of the member communities for something. Do you mean, how do you mean to address it with the member community as opposed to the whole county because it's chit and solid waste? Why does that burden fall on a particular community? So, each of our members, every community that is in Chinden County happens to be a member of CSWD. So we just happen to be all of the 18 cities and towns. So what would happen is if for some reason we couldn't make that debt service, that year's debt service would then come to each of our town cities as a per capita assessment. So it would be, so say in year 13, something happens and we can't pay the debt service for that year, whatever that would be, we would be seeking to recover that. Okay, when you said it, you said a member community, I thought singling out a particular community, say Essex or Wilson, but it'd be- Everybody. And again, per capita. Kind of clarify that. Yeah, it's population-based. No worries. There hasn't been an assessment, Dan, since like year three. Right. Yeah, I could add, I haven't exactly, and I haven't seen you guys drop the ball once. I have a lot of confidence and I also just want to commend you, Sarah. I think this is very progressive. I think it's very forward thinking. Chittenden County is growing. The need for this is not going to go away. It's only going to increase. And this is very typical of the kind of forward thinking that we've come to expect from you. So I really do commend you and appreciate it. And I'm very supportive of this project. Thank you. Can I get you to write a letter to the editor per student supporting that? So yeah, so that is our Murph. And there will be opportunity for additional public information. We'll be having a series of public forums over the next several months. We'll be having, again, betters to the editor, lots of information coming out to voters ahead of the vote to make sure people know about it. And that we will request their vote. And that is not to say that that's the only capital project we have going on. So we are just finishing up the build out of our compost facility that will finish up in the first quarter of this coming year. And so, luckily, all of that investment will then be in the past. And then they will be set for, oh gosh, at least another 10 years as far as the build out. We are looking to make some improvements at the Milton Drop-off Center that's in the budget, but the town may have some other projects they need to do first. So that may actually get moved to a next fiscal year. Essex Drop-off Center is up for some minor improvements in fiscal 24 and 25, but if Milton needs to get pushed up, we might bring Essex in. So it's a little bit flexible there. We are also looking at building a new administrative building. And if anyone has been to our offices, we are busting at the seams out of a raised ranch that we've been in for a long time. And it has given us every bit of everything that it can. And the time has come, long past time, for us to have a professional office setting. But the dollars estimates are coming in pretty high. So we are actively working with an architect and a design firm to kind of rein that in and just make sure that it is affordable. And if not, then we will save that for another day. But that is a big ticket item that is in this current year's budget. And again, it just keeps climbing. So I am concerned that that may not actually go. It's a good thing because then that doesn't get spent out of the capital, but it's not great for my employees. So we shall see. A little bit of minor work to the latex paint and hazardous waste facility. We are going to also purchase a new screener for the compost facility to help us pre-screen out some of the plastics that are coming in with the food scraps so that when it gets to the cooking phase, we're not also cooking plastics. And we have to screen that out further down the road. So we want to get as much out upfront as we can, cook it, make sure it bakes, screen it again. And then by that time, it's nice and being beautiful and you don't have to worry about plastics in your compost. So we are also working on making sure that the plastics don't get in the first place, but it happens. Plastics and metals. I think I found sometimes little pieces of metal. I don't know. Obviously, there's some that are non-ferrous that don't pick up with magnets. Right, exactly. And these screeners do have magnets on them to help pull something up. But exactly if it's non-ferrous, it's. So to those who might be listening to this meeting, are there recommendations or asks that you would have of them as they're composting? Yeah, the biggest recommendation and really the request is to make sure that... So for example, on a bunch of broccoli, they may have a rubber band on that. Don't put that in your compost bin, put that, save it, I actually use them, they're pretty good. But take that off and use that somewhere else. The twist ties that may come on bags, they sometimes slip in or they come on bunches of leaves. Anything that is not, that you wouldn't eat, don't put it in your compost file. That's pretty much the bottom line. If you can't eat it, it doesn't belong in your bucket. As home composting has become more commonly accepted, I know we do this as well, but we purchase some, would we see our compostable bags to put into our bin? Are they compostable? Are you finding that that actually happens or are we contributing to that problem? Thank you for asking that question and oh boy, I wish you didn't ask that question. So it's, we understand that really in order to make composting widely accepted by everyone, we do take what's called liner bags, so the compost bucket liner bags. And if you can get the ones that are compostable rate, biodegradable, great, our process is so fast that we actually, it doesn't sit long enough for them to really break down. So in the testing, they'll break down in about 18 months. Our process is about four to six. So, but we understand, and that's one of the reasons that we need another pre-screener, is to pull those bags out and so that they don't get into the system. But if you're composting at home, then, and you're not using it each season, over two years, that material will break down. But in our facility, we're just too quick. But we do accept them because, you know, the ick factor is a real thing, so we wanna make sure people are participating. We'd rather have that and deal with that on our end and get more of the food scraps. Great, thank you. Yeah. Any other questions? All right. Wonderful, thank you for having me back. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Thank you. Look forward to it. All right, so our next business item is a discussion for real estate purchase or lease options, which we will be having that discussion in executive session. We would not be coming out after that meeting or after that executive session with a decision or any kind of vote or anything like that. We would just be adjourning afterwards. And that will then bring us into the consent agenda. I will move that we approve the consent agenda. Second. Thank you, George. Thank you, Dan. Any further or any questions? No, I just wanna say I appreciate that already the property across the street is looking better and there's some money in there now to make sure that what needs to be done gets done. I think it's great that space is packed all the time, particularly on the weekends. And I think it's a really good thing. And I appreciate everyone who's been involved and certainly public works staff for all the labor that they put into it. Yeah, since you opened that, I was gonna save it for trustee comments, but do appreciate Brigitte, do appreciate our public work staff, appreciate Rick Hamlin taking the time out of their days to help improve that. You as well, George. Thank you. So the motion was made seconded. No further discussion. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say nay. Pass unanimously. Thank you. And into the reading file and board member comments. The only other thing that I wanted to quickly mention for those who have not seen it yet, the Crescent Connector phase one of the project is happening this upcoming week. What that means is that the railroad crossings will slowly but surely be replaced throughout our community. So that includes the crossings at Central Street. That includes Main Street, Maple Street, the two crossings at Park Street and South Summit Street. There will be road closures. We are not in control of when these happen. So I ask for your patience. I also ask for your understanding because some roads are gonna be closed and you may not be well informed. And that is outside of our control. But we do appreciate this is finally happening. And this will continue through, I believe until August 16th, 15th, 17th, somewhere in that range or longer depending on delays and construction season. Well, the best part of it, if anyone just go down to West Street Extension and travel across the railroad crossing there and you don't feel that bumping and jostling you do when you're going through these other crossings. So it would be really nice. It's worth the wait. In terms of what the crossings will look like, if you go to the intersection of, I believe that's North Street near the high school where it's nice and smooth. You don't feel any vigorous or rigorous bumps as you're going over the railroad crossing. That's what all of these crossings are going to be like. And as somebody who, when I have to go to work and I go through 2A or go down and have to hit those railroad crossings, yes, it hurts me and it hurts the car.  So it's gonna be really nice. It's gonna be much safer, smoother, everything about it's gonna be better. Absolutely. A long time coming. Andrew, I do have one comment if you're good. Please. I just wanted to update the trustees and community on the city manager hiring process. We are accepting applications through this Sunday, the 12th and then we'll begin the review process. To date, we've received 18 applications, seven of which have come in in the last six days. So it doesn't appear that some were watching the deadline but we'll continue to see hopefully a few more trickle in based on a very cursory review. I think I feel very confident that at least the trustees will be pleased with their top three interviews whoever those folks end up being. I think there's a qualified slate of candidates here and just on qualifications and cover letters and responses to essay questions. I think we're off to a good start. So more to come. Good to hear it. That's great. All right. So if there are no other trustee comments then we are ready for the executives. And so I will go ahead and I will make the motion that the trustees go into executive session to discuss negotiating or securing real estate purchase or lease options under the provisions of title one, section 313A2 of the Vermont statutes and to include the interim co-managers. I'll second that. Thank you, George. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say nay. Great. Pass unanimously. Thank you all. So again, we will be adjourning right after that. So no need to stick around. Have a good night. Thank you all for coming out.


My name is Katie McElvenny. I'm a second year CDP student at Queen Mary University of London and the British Library and my research focuses on Russian women journalists during the Russian Revolution and Civil War. The main thing that attracted me to the project when I saw the advert was that it would give me the opportunity not only to do my PhD in an academic environment, but also to work in a cultural institution and gain experience of working in the heritage sector. The idea behind having this collaborative project was to get students that could make use of the library's collection and the British Library has this fantastic archive called the H.W. Williams papers and I'm actually cataloging the archive as part of my project and work with the British Library. Alongside cataloging the archive, one of my other main tasks is to help with the preparation and research for this upcoming exhibition on the Russian Revolution, which will be to commemorate the centenary of the revolution in 2017. We've got a fantastic range of posters from this period, from the Civil War period, especially Bolshevik, anti-Bolshevik propaganda posters. It's very exciting to be able to document them in detail. This collaborative PhD has really inspired me to work in the sector. I'm particularly passionate about the education side of museum work and how we get young people excited about history and I feel like I'm working with the British Library has really given me the skills to work in this area in the future.


So this is work very much in progress, so thoughts are really welcome. So I'm going to be defending with every bone in my body output transparency and raising some questions about input transparency. These will be defined. I'm going to be suggesting a well-fairest approach to the Freedom of Information Act and to Freedom of Information generally, suggesting kind of block-headedly that we should be focusing on the human consequences of transparency policies. What does it mean for real people who are often struggling with environmental risks or poverty or highway safety problems or joblessness. How is transparency affecting them and focusing much less on the word legitimacy or in the notion of transparency as important for its own sake. So that I'm not going to embrace. The structure is going to be simple and in four parts. I'm going to say a few things about the Obama administration. Some things about outputs and some things about inputs and some things about the future. Okay, so a Marja Sen, Harvard's own, has an empirical finding, a stunning one. No famine in the history of the world has ever experienced a famine in a functioning democracy. That's stunning because you'd think wouldn't you that a famine is a product of natural circumstances, not a product of whether you have a free press. Nonetheless, societies with free elections and functioning press are not experiencing famines, never. The reason is that democratic governments in the sense defined have to face public criticism and they have very strong incentives to avert catastrophes. Now, if you would, it's probably useful to think of Sen's finding, not just as a finding about famines, but a kind of rallying cry about the human importance of output transparency. If you're thinking here of Flint, Michigan, that's a that's a good thought. Okay, so here are some words from President Obama from really the very early days of his presidency. Democracy requires accountability and accountability requires transparency and then there's an invocation of Justice Brandeis's words, sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants. I hope this will continue to be true. If you go on to OSHA.gov, the government's website, you will see kind of staring you at the face, sunlight about any place in the United States where a worker has died. That's there. Anyone in the world can find it immediately and the company's named and it's happening not quite in real time, but really close to real time and the goal of that was in part to save lives. No private institution wants to be named on the OSHA website as a place where somebody died and no Occupational Safety and Health Administration wants to see a lot of lit names on its own website. So this is about that. The words here are kind of cramped on the board, but the basic notion is that there's a clear presumption in favor of openness, which means that if things are tough, if you are doubtful, disclose it. There's also an idea here which tracks one of the best thoughts in jurisprudence in the last hundred years. It's widely unknown, but it's great. It's from Oxford's Joseph Raz. Raz has an idea called Exclusionary Reasons, which says there are second-order reasons to rule certain first-order reasons off limits entirely. So it's not like we're balancing. We are excluding some reasons for action entirely and there's an exclusionary reason in the president's memorandum. Don't keep information confidential because of embarrassment, because of revelation of errors and failures, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Okay, this has cashed out this idea by saying something that remains a work in progress, which is that the government should take affirmative steps to make information public. They shouldn't wait for specific requests from the private sector. This is super important. The government has a ton of information and if reliance has to be had on a request from someone in this room or an organization or Harvard Law School, that's not good because there's going to be a ton of things that people in the private sector don't know about or don't have the resources or the time or the focus to try to get to the public. Put it out there. Okay, one thing that emerged from the memorandum you just heard about is the Open Government Partnership, which now involves dozens of nations of a very diverse sort and the most noteworthy thing about the Open Government Partnership is the existence of national action plans, which have clear commitments for disclosing things that could uncover corruption or which could show that things in a nation aren't going so great along one or another dimension. Which could promote transparency. So from the US National Action Plan for about a year ago, just going to give you one example, which is the Department of Education is going to use transparency through a college scorecard, which provides a ton of data on costs and student outcomes so that parents and applicants can see it. That is using transparency first as a disinfectance. So places that cost a lot and don't deliver for their students stand revealed as such. That could be an impetus for better performance and also very different from Brandeis' point. Something that will provide people information that they can use in their lives. The CDC, last year and before, has been kind of a champion of output transparency. And you see a few examples just here. Zika can be translated sexually between men pretty much as soon as the CDC learned that, it told people that. So they know it. There's no change in autism prevalence. That's important to know. We now have a lot of information, both about where obesity is on the rise and where it isn't so much, and about how people can protect themselves against food poisoning. All of those outputs are in the public domain. Here's something near and dear to my heart, though it probably won't get the emotions going in quite the same way as the CDC action, which is the Department of Transportation in recent years has revised its value of a statistical life to the point where, as of 2015, it's nine point four million dollars. Now the notion of a monetary value for statistical life, that's not something that people rise up and cheer, hooray. But it's used by executive orders under presidents of both parties, and the American people ought to know about it. Both the fact of it and the number. Here it is. If the number is wrong or if doing it all is contestable, well, everyone in the world gets to see it and to make that argument. For climate change and probably the most important, how many of you have heard of the social cost of carbon? No, one. Okay. Well, here you're going to learn something very significant, actually. When the United States makes decisions about energy efficiency, about regulation of power plants, about regulation of cars, it decides on the level of stringency. It does that in part by reference to the cost and benefits. How do you calculate the benefits of a specified reduction in greenhouse gas emissions? What's the number? The number is the social cost of carbon, and it's centrally important to decide whether you reduce greenhouse gas emissions a lot or a little. If it's two dollars, the level of stringency would be really low. If it's 70, it will be pretty high. The social cost of carbon figures are in the public domain. You're seeing them right here. There's full output transparency and there is public comment thereon. Okay, in the same general vein that is regulatory choices that actually affect people, there is a regulation involving silica, one of the most important occupational safety and health regulations in the last 40 years, probably. Probably the most important in the last 15. Why is the government regulating silica? And why is it regulating it to one extent rather than less or more? Full transparency of the output, which is you're going to get 600 lives saved per year and 900 silica-related illnesses prevented each year. That's just words, but I confess I was in a room with family members for people who had come down with silica-related illnesses or who had died from silica-related illnesses. If we had kind of a few hundred of them marching outside this room, then the human reality would be visible. In any case, the benefits of the silica rule crush the costs and everybody can see that. You can see that because these outputs are in the public domain. Okay, a generalization of much of what you've just seen is the website data.gov. That's the outgrowth of the president's memorandum and basically this is output transparency with a vengeance. The idea is high-value data sets are being made available without a public request. So what you see on data.gov, I believe, is somewhere between overwhelming majority and kind of all of them just being disclosed because the government thinks it's a good idea. The high-value data sets are defined in terms that are kind of helpful for understanding what output transparency is good for. And most of this is self-evident, improving public knowledge of the agency, increasing accountability and responsiveness. But what I want to underline is furthering the core mission of the agency. So if you have an agency like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that requires people to report in cases in which workers are getting sick so that everyone can see that, then the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's mission, which is reducing disease and accidents, will be served. And there's a great deal of work suggesting that that happens. Transparency does that. Okay, in terms of the data.gov website, here's just a few examples. We have about 200,000 data sets when last checked. It includes information about crime, about chronic disease, about food access. We also have, as a result of data.gov, a lot of private creativity, which is probably on many of the cell phones in this room, you have the consequence, which can allow such simple things as making better decisions about what flights, hotels, and rental cars to choose from and storing your personal health information so you can download it. Okay, here are three empirical notes. Toxic releases in the United States in the 1980s were a quite serious problem. It's not a problem today. 1980s is a pretty serious problem. Congress responded by some statute that had a bookkeeping measure where people had to report the toxic releases to the EPA. It was not thought to be a regulatory tool. So EPA knew the consequence of the toxic release inventory has been to produce plummeting of toxic releases because no company wants to be one of the dirty dozen in California. And the result, unanticipated success story here, has been to reduce emissions. Calorie labels are a form of output transparency where we have information, an outcome of a process, about what the caloric content of food is. The recent data suggests that obese adults in the United States have been losing weight because of the calorie labels. It's working. On your credit card bills, you see transparency about outputs, that is outputs of private and public processes, disclosing the result of filing a paying late or going over. American consumers as a result of the credit card law are saving over $10 billion annually. And the concentration of winners from the credit card law are people with bad credit ratings. Now as inspiring outcomes of law go, I say this rates high because the people with poor credit ratings are the people who are having real economic trouble and they're saving money. Now the credit card law that's producing those savings has a lot of provisions in it, some of which aren't transparency provisions, but the transparency provisions are contributing. Okay, here's a great website, Regulations.gov. It has the beautiful words, let your voice be heard. And I am here to testify to you that my biggest surprise in the federal government. I got 70 surprises, but the one that tops the list is what you're looking at here, which is among the fancy administrative law people, including authors of the leading textbooks, the public comment process is thought to be a form of Kabuki theater. It's not real. It's a TV show. It's on Netflix. It doesn't affect government. That is the sophisticated view I just described. It turns out to be false. The comments that come across on Regulations.gov, they are read, I don't think, by the President of the United States, but people who talk to him every day, they read some of those comments and people who talk to the people who talk to him every day, they really read those comments. So the outcome of what government does is often kind of decisively influenced by what comes across the transom on what you're seeing. This is really transparency working as a corrective to inaccurate decision-making. So our two kind of motivations here are providing people with information that they can use in their lives and increasing the accuracy of government judgments as well as the accountability of government officials. Friedrich Hayek, big celebrator of the price system, which he thought as a marvel because it could aggregate the information held by millions of people. Hayek was not a fan of government action that didn't involve just reliance on markets, but there is something, I think, importantly Hayekian about a process of transparency by which government's outputs are subject to public scrutiny and review. Okay, so in terms of the lack of output transparency being a problem, serious and imminent health risks people don't learn about so they can't do something to reduce those risks, useful information about the costs of care at hospitals are not provided to people, information that the government has about its own failures and imperfections, how policies have gone wrong, how long it takes to get something done. People don't have that, which suggests it's useful to distinguish between consumers on the one hand, choosers of some bit of conduct, what safety seat am I going to buy for my kid, where am I going to live, am I going to go to the airport now or 20 minutes from now, or people acting as citizens or watchdogs and in either case we have problems with the lack of output transparency. Okay, this is a kind of fussy slide for which my apologies, but the idea is that the amount of government the information has that counts as an output is not infinite, but kind of in that direction. So you should probably be thinking about outputs that are useful to people in some way. If there are outputs whose disclosure would risk national security or personal privacy, then there's a reason not to disclose them. And if it's an output that is of no consequence for anyone, then it's not that important that it come across, but we remember the presumption. Okay, that's the kind of every bone in the body enthusiasm part of the remarks. And the hope is that we will see a ton of output transparency in the next administration. And if there isn't, there's going to be some explaining to do. Okay, input transparency, I'm going to try to suggest as a more mixed bag. So you're seeing the situation room. This looks like a discussion of foreign policy. A lot of people are saying a lot of different things undoubtedly. If the room is working well, people aren't in agreement. And now you're seeing the Oval Office where there's a discussion of domestic policy, maybe the budget. And you're seeing a smaller crew, but if the process is working well, those four people are not in complete accord, or they are at least referring respectfully to the views of people who aren't in accord with them. Okay, so the budget deliberation process, I don't know for sure, but that could have been a budget discussion there, maybe. The budget deliberation is not transparent. So if someone from the Domestic Policy Council says, I think that the EPA's budget should be increased by 150 million, and someone from the National Economic Council says, I think it shouldn't be increased at all. Someone from the Council of Economic Advisers says, I think it should be cut. The American people don't learn that. That's not public. Regulatory deliberations, it's a more complicated story. There's more transparency, but as things fall out, it's not so far apart. Okay, so Senator Warren, Harvard's own and someone I greatly admire, is concerned, and I think quite reasonably, about EPA records showing that industry groups have a monopoly over informal communications. Now we're talking here about inputs. It's not intra-government inputs. It's inputs between government and the private sector. She's exercised by the fact that the industry groups are talking a lot more with EPA than the public interest players. Now, that apparently fact is itself public, but it isn't always who an agency is talking to. Okay, that's a discussion. It's not a very sensitive discussion as it happens. It was a discussion about regulation and its costs and what things are looking like in a tough economy, but if I told you more, I'd be kind of ashamed of myself, even though it wasn't particularly sensitive, and that's connected with what I'm about to say. Okay, so my thesis is that typically the benefits of input disclosure are really low. So if the head of the Domestic Policy Council disagrees with the head of the National Economic Council, who disagrees in turn with the head of the Council of Economic Advisers, it's America benefit from hearing that. People in Flint, Michigan get something good out of that. There was one time in government where the White House gave a lot of transparency to the New York Times about inputs, and they told me, sit and talk to the New York Times. I'm going to name the guy John Broder. Does anyone here know John Broder? Okay, so my little boy, who's six, had a line for a while. He would look at someone and he would say, with great mischief in his eye, he's 67 now, he would say, is he a bad guy? Say it with delight and glee, infectious delight and glee. I think about John Broder, and I think, is he a bad guy? He's a great reporter, and so far as I know, he's a great guy, and he was given complete input transparency, and he mangled the story really badly. He described it as a tale of capitulation to the Republicans in order for President Obama to be reelected. I was in that room on multiple occasions. There was no such thing at issue, even a little bit. It was completely a merit's decision, and it got everyone focused on what was not true, and if it was true, there would have been some importance to it, but the really important thing was the decision right. It was a substantive decision, and even if it had been a politically motivated substantive decision, this was the substantive decision good. There's a very good reporter for the Washington Post, and I'm going to be a little uncharitable to her right now, so take this as kind of a version of her that's less good than the real her. She's a tremendous reporter, and she kept asking me after I left government, who said what to whom? Who said what to whom? She wanted to make someone look like a demon, and someone like a good person, or the palace intrigue, and I thought this person really cares about the environment. Write something about the environment and policy. Write something about an output. Don't try to figure out did Larry Summers and Carol Browner disagree on something. Does that matter? For historians, does it matter a little bit, certainly if it involves the president? For most of this stuff, no historical interest. Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense, wrote a book. It caused a lot of news because he trashed his former bosses. He disclosed a lot of inputs. Most of that, no historical interest. I'll get to that. I hope we'll have time for questions. In terms of the costs, the thesis is the costs of input disclosure are not really low. It deters candor for one thing. The fact that people can't talk by email is a cost. They can talk on the telephone, and they do. A speculation which I think a lot more work needs to be done on is that the risk of input disclosure has much worse consequences than deterring candor. The Office of Legal Counsel has become, decreasingly, a relied upon entity, even though the Office of Legal Counsel is the repository of terrific legal judgment within the executive branch. One reason I think is, if OLC gets engaged, you're going to have some public accounting of what the Justice Department thinks, and that's troubling. There's going to be, from the executive branch, that's troubling. It may be that there's going to be disclosure of stuff, or that the executive branch is going to be trapped by what one lawyer's thought on one day, and that is not something that's welcome. And so the deterrent effect of transparency is that OLC is not talking. Not asked to talk. I get the feeling you're not loving these remarks. I confess that this part of these remarks, I think you like the other parts better. I confess that six or seven years ago I wouldn't like this part as much as I now do, but the adverse effects of input transparency are high. And typically what you get out of input transparency is gossip value, and the Washington Post version of the National Enquirer, and not anything that's going to save a single life or make one American enjoy economic opportunity or escape poverty. Okay, there is a diversion for the public in this stuff frequently. Should the calendars of cabinet heads be public? Would that be really great? Is that what America most needs now? Who it is that Secretary Kerry is meeting with? That's not very important. Okay, the more sunlight that shines on agency processes, says Senator Warren, the more likely it is that an agency's final product will reflect the public interest. A good start would be disclosure of all the meetings between the agencies and interested parties, both before and during rulemaking. That's an interesting suggestion. It's not clear that it's wrong, but one kind of cautionary note is frequently if an agency is meeting with an industry a lot, it's not doing it because it's pushed around. It's doing it because it's going to do something very adverse to the industry's interests, and it wants the industry to understand exactly why. So the point of the zillions of meetings is not to say industry, come please come capture us. It's to say we're going after you hard, and we want you to know why we're doing that, and be prepared. This is what it's all going to look like. And we're listening to you, but the listening most of the time produces no movement on the government's part. Sometimes the government learns something. It instead gives people a right to be heard, which they deserve. Okay, just about done. Let's tidy up a little bit. Many FOIA issues don't fall clearly within the categories of inputs or outputs. Sometimes they're at the border like a report on carcinogens that might be the basis of regulation. So that must be acknowledged. What have we learned since 2009? Here are just four points. Output transparency is hugely important, and we need a ton more of it, accompanied by the presumption in favor of openness. The Open Government Partnership is massively promising. If anyone here is prepared to do some work on it, bless you. It should be a presidential priority and an international priority. I've looked, I can't find much sustained research on it. It would be fantastic to do. Input transparency may be a bad idea, and it isn't necessarily a great idea. We spend in the transparency world, I think, far too much attention on this relatively low-level issue. We should understand the Freedom of Information Act through a welfare lens, which would lead us to be careful with abstractions about legitimacy. Frequently, we're not going to have the data to think about the benefits of transparency and the costs, but at least if we ask about the human consequences, which are really high in many of the cases discussed, think about the toxic release inventory, what's on the OSHA website, calorie labels, which are saving not only pounds but lives. But at least if we focus on the questions of what are human beings getting, we're asking the right question. And a lot of the time, that's going to get us to the right answers. Thanks. Hi. I'm going to propose another potential benefit to input transparency. So with the incoming administration, there may be some worries about potential criminality within the executive branch. And I wonder if you think that if folks are more worried about this stuff getting out, it may give them more of a backbone. If they're worried about history, maybe then that would give more of a push as opposed to these arguments sort of disappearing into the ether. It's a fair point. So bracketing the incoming administration and it actually cuts against my argument in a really interesting way. I think my argument depends on the assumption that criminality will be very rare and the democratic processes are a sufficient constraint. If you lived in a regime like Putin's Russia, let's say, where kleptocracy is present, there'd be an argument for input transparency. So it's an interesting point because maybe the division between the input transparency people, people like it, and people who like me are suspicious of it, is that the former fear, illicit acts, I don't, under Bush and Obama, I didn't see anything biased witness here on Obama. But I didn't see any decisions which reasonable people could reject. Certainly Republicans, nothing illicit. And my understanding is under President Bush is exactly the same. You don't like the decision, but nothing corrupt. And if you think that that's just an artifact of the last 16 years, then the argument for input transparency strengthens. It's a fair point. Let's take another angle on input transparency. I'm here. So in the earlier panels, we talked a little bit about the TPP and the failure of the TPP. And there's at least a good argument to me that you can lay the blame for that failure on the lack of input transparency, a public that doesn't feel involved with those deliberations, lacks confidence in the output, to the extent that we don't even get to an output that can really be made transparent. You have thoughts on that? Well, I'm not an expert on this, but, which makes me about to say hazardous. If the failure of TPP is a result of a lack of input transparency, I will eat this computer. Now, we need a good oven for me to, I just don't believe that. The arguments against TPP made by the left and the right, aren't, they didn't tell us enough. And if they, if there'd been more transparency about it, probably meant it worse, because the transparency would have made people seize on the things that they were suspicious of and say, oh, you talked about this and then you did that. So input transparency, often in a highly polarized environment, creates more agitation rather than less. Now, you, I will also eat this computer if I know as much about TPP as you do. So my guess is, you know a ton more. So I might be wrong on this, but given the politics of TPP, I think there might be other examples, but probably that the transparency that relaxes people is when you're given account of why the thing is being done. So if you say, you know, we're going forward with the silica rule, which a lot of people hated, because it's going to save 642 Americans, but other is die. And the science is solid. And the cost is going to be 900 million, let's say, and by the numbers everyone uses, 600 lives worth 900 million. That should come, but then where are people going to say that? If you say the silica rule, you know, the labor union said this and the Chamber of Commerce said that, right? Or the Council of Economic Advisers was a little nervous and the Department of Labor wasn't nervous at all and they won. To my knowledge, that's not true, by the way, but that would aggravate the where the Department of Labor wanted to go more aggressive than it ultimately did. This is just, this makes people not feel confident, makes them feel, it's a fog, a fog of diverse opinions, where if you tell them what was done and why, maybe? I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit more on the Flint example right here, because I'm thinking that the deliberative process of the who knew what, when, when they made the decisions to essentially use the water systems that they did are incredibly important for the public to know. And setting aside the criminal element here, there should be some political accountability there that the public has a right to know. I'm thinking of a stylized version of the Flint problem, which may not be actually the Flint problem. So the thought is, if the government knows water's unsafe to drink, it should tell people as soon as it knows that. If there's, it gets harder if there's internal disagreement about the safety issue with excellent people saying, you know what, there isn't a safety risk, then you're in the deliberative process. I'm using it as a case where the government actually knew who in the government I'm bracketing, but the government official actually knew there was a health risk and didn't tell people. That's a lack of output transparency. So if there's knowledge that people in some part of the country are in danger from, you know, terrible air pollution that month, then to hide that or not to disclose that, that's kind of the core of what government can't be quiet about. And I'm understanding the Flint case in that way. I guess if the Flint case, it's a hard one for me, if as you're suggesting, what government knew was very unclear, lots of people had different views. And I'm not sure what to think about the category of cases where some people think people are at risk and other people disagree. It's not clear that there's an obligation to disclose there because it's influx and the people who think there's a risk might just be scaring people. If you have a political appointee who is overriding the decision of a scientist, you know, that disagreement is important to note, I would say. And I think that would fall squarely in the input transparency. Okay, you raise a very interesting, that's really interesting. So we can think of cases where there's a kind of science policy issue where it's not clear who gets to win the scientist or the policy person. But if there's a pure question of science, sounds like if the scientific judgment uncontradicted is there's real risk here, then the government is obliged to disclose it. And whether we call it an input or output isn't obvious. But I agree with you analytically, you should put it on the output side of the line. Two things on TPP. Thank you for your question. I don't see it as a failure, I see it as defeat. I think it was defeated. And I disagree with you, I think a lot of it really was. I don't think a lot of people really were able to read much of the details. I remember going to a meeting up in Maine early on in the process and legislators in Maine were asking for details of the agreement as it was just beginning to emerge and the issue of not being able to get access to the content and the argument that it was corporate representatives who dominated to the detriment of the public interest I think was huge in the view of the direction of TPP. So the openness was I think a crucial element. And the second thing is I guess I disagree with you also about when you talked about Elizabeth Warren's statement why shouldn't people know if there's no harm if it's an innocent meeting to tell people you know hey we're about to clobber you why shouldn't the public know that and how are the public going to know whether you're talking to people because you're going to clobber them or because you're not going to clobber them. Okay so good thank you for both. On the first I'm not ready the computer yet but but I hear you. On the second I didn't mean to disagree with Senator Warren on that so the office which where I worked the practice is always to disclose the fact of meetings. So you know it's it's not a bad thing but and it might even be a good thing but okay so the Office of Information Regulatory Affairs and the Executive Office of the President discloses all the meanings with with people. Now has one child in the American in our beautiful country of 330 million people had a better life because of those disclosures? I don't know either. Well I just okay so I'm for it so I'm for it but you know I guess another way to put it is how to get at this. 480,000 Americans die from smoking every year 28,000 die from on the on the highways that's real. Okay now if we could have transparency policies that would make a dent in those things that would be something to get really excited about and for the transparency community that to focus on that is very worthwhile. The Oira's you know I'm being very candid here Oira's multiple countless disclosures of meetings I'm for it but you see the point is there one person in Utah who's had a better life because of those disclosures? I don't think so. So I agree I think I agree with you and Senator Warren but it's but I like much better the the idea before that if the scientists have consensus that there's a risk let's characterize that as an output and say that the government should be disclosing it even if no citizen is asking for it. I think we'll have to leave it there. Our next panel is going to come up in a couple minutes. Thank you so much Professor Sensen. Thank you all. Thank you. Thanks to all of you.


Florida State did not make the college football playoff and I feel so bad for them feel bad for the players the fans the coaches and I especially feel bad for Jordan Travis because of this sweet broke my heart devastated heartbroken and so much disbelief right now I wish I broke my leg earlier in the season so y'all could see this team is much more than the quarterback for TNO and this roster matches up across any team in those top four rankings I am so sorry go null not only did Florida State win the ACC championship they won every single game and the only reason they didn't make it into the college football playoffs was because of an injury I do think the committee got it right but that doesn't make this any easier let me know if you guys think Florida State should have made the college football playoffs


I think we'll start this out with the demo. We want the Hilbert chain, as you're going to have eight passes. I'm going to drive a bit loud! You're going to have to buy the function. We might be wrong. We're buddy, but not always a gentleman. I suppose, you know, you might be wondering why I'm out walking on a country road. You might even be wondering why I stopped my car. Me too. Actually, now come to think of it. Thinking, that's an interesting sort of pattern of behavior, isn't it? Come to think of it, I think we left off a while ago on our behavior B series with... Just hold on, I need to take that moment. We've worked really hard at CalPies over the last couple months. It's time we earned our reinforcers. In fact, in fact, I think that's what our topic should be today. I think we need to talk about reinforcement. I think it's probably the most important thing in applied behavior analysis. Let me say that again. It's the most important thing in applied behavior analysis. You didn't reinforce me enough. Otherwise, I would have done it like this. No, I think you guys have done plenty of reinforcing because obviously we're still here. Behavior analysis joke. So anyway, folks, the video, here, behavior analysis, applied behavior analysis, behavior beast, psychor, so much is in my head because it's all been bundled up because with the CalPies videos, the words have already been said and I haven't let them out. So they've all built up. They've got to come out really quick. Anyway, reinforcement. So reinforcement is a pretty cool thing. Like I said, it's probably the most important thing in applied behavior analysis to understand and to understand in gross depth, which is, of course, why we're here to help you understand the gross depth of reinforcement. Not that it's gross, but it is deep. Not as deep as the CalPies, but God dang it, I digress again. You must be reinforcing me for digressing. Again, I digress reinforcement. So reinforcement is one of those key concepts that once you get it, everything else starts to make sense. And in fact, if you want to understand behavior, you really should understand reinforcement. So let's just throw a simple definition out there. I know we've got like four definitions already on our channel, but what the heck? Another one doesn't hurt. So reinforcement is a process. Keep that in mind. We're going to break that down into reinforcers later. But again, I digress. Let's get back to the definition of reinforcement. Reinforcement is the systematic. I'm sorry. Let me try that again. Reinforcement is the contingent application or addition, whatever, or removal of a stimulus that results in the increase or the maintenance of a particular rate of behavior. So there's a key here, right?  Doesn't mean that's going to necessarily reinforce his behavior unless rocks happen to be reinforcers for him. What he doesn't know is that flipping me off is a reinforcer. I'd have taught my children that. Oh, thank you. I'll stop. So anyway, the point is that we have a contingent application or removal. We're going to break into that in a little bit or in another video, but a contingent meaning that you have to do something in order to earn a reinforcer. The first thing that we think about doing is anything, is behavior, right? So the behavior has to happen in order for something to be reinforced. So that behavior can't just be magically appearing at a higher frequency. It has to appear first. So once the behavior is emitted, there's another key here. Once the behavior is emitted by the organism, then the environment can go, Yes, that's what we wanted. And he says, give me more. All right. And it delivers a reinforcer. There's lots and lots of types of reinforcers and they're different for everybody. And cameraman might need to engage in some negative reinforcing behavior by stepping my direction just a wee bit. So the car coming down the road does not hit him. All right. There we go. Thank you. Hopefully it's negatively reinforced and he doesn't swerve and kill us both, which would be a positive punisher and a really extreme version. But anyway, side note. So the contingent application or removal, again, we'll go back into that application or removal of a stimulus. That stimulus can be anything, right? If a rock reinforces you great. But the thing is that we don't know what reinforces you until you do things like reinforce your preference assessments until you actually go out in the environment and do some functional behavior assessments, all sorts of different things, right? And figure out what's really going on with these, but with the behavior. All right. So anyway, so we've gone into quite a bit about reinforcement, but there's a couple of things I want you to remember specifically. Reinforcement is a process, right? It has positive and negative. We'll get into that. So added or removed, right? It's contingent. The behavior has to happen first. Now, one of the things that people often get confused is reinforcement and reward. Reward might be a reinforcer, but a reinforcer is never a reward. Why? Because it's a reinforcer. Rewards, by definition, don't change behavior. They're just things that you get. So I can reward Brad with a rock that won't change his behavior. I could reward Brad with a pad on the back and that might not change his behavior.  So we need to watch the behavior, folks, in order to find out if a behavior or if something was a reinforcer or not. No matter how much guessing I do or you do, we're not going to figure out whether or not something's a reinforcer until the behavior changes or maintains. That's all we got. Now, of course, we can bring it in and do experimentation on it and figure it out that way. But really, just watch the behavior. So welcome to reinforcement. And we got a whole bunch more on the topic. So I think it's time for me to cross the road, because it's reinforcing.