So I will call them in to order at 7 o'clock. The agenda is a little bit out of order, so we'll do the, as usual, do the minutes. First, we have the minutes of October 5th, 2021, to take up for approval. Is there a motion? Move to adopt the minutes of October 5th, 2021, with amendments and changes as noted. Is there a second? I think that it has a second, OK. Gee, you guys got to get on the ball here tonight. That's what happens. You go remote, right? We're going to call it a digital delay. Page one, there was one correction we made under the minutes from the last meeting that Marcy Cass's name was misspelled. I think it was March Cass. Page two and page three. Here we know other corrections, then, all those in favor of approving the minutes of October 5th, 2021. Say aye. Aye. We have four aye votes, and so we have passed the minutes. We'll now go to public comment. Is anyone in the audience who has any public comments to make at this time? Seeing no hands, is anyone remotely there to make a comment? No, I don't believe so, Tara. There's no one here. I know what they're. Let me go back to the minutes. I should have mentioned that Gordon was saying on that vote. So it was 3-0-1. Which vote was that, Tara? Minut. Oh, on the minutes. Thank you. So we'll move on then to interviews and appointments. I'll turn this over to Eric to explain what we're doing here. Two items to consider this evening for the board. Last, or two weeks ago, you heard from our Green Mountain Transit representatives, Chapin Caner and Amy Brewer. And they're looking to switch roles to have Amy serve as the primary and Chapin as the alternate. Amy served as the alternate for a number of years, I believe, four or so at this point. And they express at that meeting there, they're certainly willing to make this change. So it's at the board's discretion this evening I'd like to consider a motion. So we do have a motion suggested to do what was suggested for the appointments for the Green Mountain Transit board. Is there a motion? Sure. I'll move to appoint Amy Brewer as the town's Green Mountain Transit Commissioner and Chapin Caner as the alternate commissioner for expired terms through June 30th, 2022. Zero second. Is there a discussion on the motion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. We have, again, four aye votes. We now have a second thing to take up, and that is the member of the Board of Civil Authority. Yep, Town Clerk Sarah Mason brought this to my attention recently that the Board of Civil Authority moved to appoint Christopher D. Roy last year. And then now this also will need select board approval, which is an oversight some last year when this occurred. So for the board to consider this evening is to make this appointment of Christopher D. Roy. And we include the mill initial because there are two Christopher Roy's in town, so on the checklist here. There's a motion suggested the board wants to consider it. Any questions regarding this appointment? If not, a motion is in order. I'll move to appoint Christopher D. Roy as a full member of the Board of Civil Authority for all matters related to elections for an unexpired term through January 31st, 2023. Is there a second? I'll second. Sorry, discussion on the motion. Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. And we have four. So we'll move on then to the animal champion policy discussion and Eric, you can lead this off and then we'll entertain hearing from Brenna Galdenzi. Yep, thanks, Harry and Brenna, I see you online. I'm just gonna get you connected as I leave things off here. I'm going to panelist right now. So the board select discuss this topic a couple of times so far this year, most recently last August. Originally there's a resident petition brought forward last January and you'll have in your packet an updated email on the request from Lynn Plevins and Lynn will be available later this evening to speak to that email as well. Looking at possible policy parameters the board consider on this topic. I've got Brenna from Protector of Our Life Vermont. We'll give a presentation this evening as was discussed at the August board meeting on this topic. And staff is seeking direction from the board but there's consensus to pursue a policy related to tracking on town lands. And so what general parameters should be addressed in that policy? Staff then draft the policy for consideration at a future meeting based on any direction received. One possible suggestion if the board wants to be forward with that is the conservation commission could work with staff on putting together initial draft before they came back to the select board. We'll wait on discussion tonight and see if there's any direction for staff here. I think I've got Brenna connected and I'm just gonna make sure she can check her screen. Terry Brenna should be all set, so I can turn things over to her. Brenna, we just need to unmute. You should be able to share your screen now as well. Welcome, Brenna. I'm not seeing an option here, you should let me screen. Screen share? Yeah, let's see. Seems like every time I'm on a Zoom call, it's different. Do you see it's the green down on the control panel? There should be a green up there. I see it in my college. We know if you can see it. Yes. Okay, well, thank you again for the opportunity to be able to present before your board on behalf of our Williston members. If I could, before I start the formal presentation, I was thinking about this today and I think it's important to ask ourselves or the board, since you're the ones who are making the decision, what are the benefits of allowing trapping on town-owned land to both the community members and to the wildlife that is really already struggling right now in the wake of climate change and over development. I personally can't think of any benefits to offering recreational and commercial trapping and then ask ourselves, what are the downsides to allowing trapping? And the two main concerns that come or that came immediately to my mind is the impact, the potential impact on your local biodiversity and your public safety. To give you just one example of the latter, we were contacted by a Williston residence two years ago because her family was, I'm not familiar with the area, but they were in the Allenbrook area right near the rec path loop and they noticed a large body-gripping kill trap set in a shallow pool of water. And this was in March and she asked me to look into it and I contacted the warden at that time and he told me that the trap was completely legally set.  And if there was somebody in there recreating with their dog at the end of March or in October when the weather is still fairly warm or even a child romping around in the water, those traps will definitely kill a dog and could definitely injure a person. And I just think now with the temperature just crazy as it is, we're having 60 degree days, 70 degree days in October and March, people spending more time in the shallow streams and rivers with their dogs. And it's a very real problem because these traps are set the end of October all the way through the end of March. So it's a pretty long season for both land trapping and then water trapping. And that's what this is an example of. And another thing to consider too is that you really have no idea who is on your land trapping. It's not just going to be Williston residents trapping on town-owned land. It's gonna be people potentially from across the state. So the town really has very little to no control as to who's trapping, what they're trapping, if they're experienced trappers, if they know what they're doing, those are a couple of things that I thought would be important to mention. So now to get into the actual PowerPoint presentation itself, I could spend the whole presentation just focusing on the cruelty concerns, but I know we all have different things that are important to us and drives our decisions. So I only kind of scratch the surface on the cruelty aspect of it. And all the photos in this presentation are from Vermont. And these are more of the sanitized photos and videos. So not to offend folks too much. So who we are, Protect Our Wildlife is an all-volunteer nonprofit, educational and outreach organization that started in 2015. And our mission is fairly simple. We're looking to make Vermont a more humane place for wildlife. So into the presentation, it's important to ponder a couple of questions that we hear a lot about. Is trapping a wildlife management tool? Is trapping ethical? Is trapping highly regulated? Is trapping supported by most Vermonters? How is trapping impacted non-targeted species? So I'm just gonna get into these bullets, very briefly in the presentation. And this is a quote that has always stuck with me. And this was shared with me when I moved here back in 2010 from a deer hunter who is very much opposed to trapping. And he said the reason why he hates trapping is that there's no one at the other end of the trap pulling a trigger.  So is trapping a wildlife management tool? No, it's not because trapping because it can't differentiate between let's say a bald eagle and its target species, let's say a coyote, it can't be considered a proper wildlife management tool because these traps are non-selective. For bearer populations, so referring to bobcats and gray fox and river otters, their populations are mostly managed naturally. There are no surplus animals in nature. And what's interesting is that a lot of the animals that Vermont Fish and Wildlife allows to be trapped like bobcats and coyotes, they are the very animals that we need to be keeping the populations of raccoons and skunks and opossums in check. So the fact that we're allowing the trapping and killing for recreational purposes of these, let's refer them to refer them as apex predators, really just doesn't make sense from an ecological standpoint because those are the animals that we really need on the landscape to help manage the other smaller predators or meso predators on the landscape. And trapping because they're non-selective. So traps, it can't choose male, female, old, young. Again, unlike hunting, when you trap an animal, you're generally removing healthy animals from the population. And in some animal populations like raccoons, you might have mature animals who are actually immune from certain diseases. So if you're sending a trap and you trap, let's say, a raccoon that has immunity to some disease and you kill that raccoon, all that does is leave a vacuum for other animals to enter if that habitat's right. And the animals that move into that Tory may not have immunity to disease. Something else to remind this left board of, I know Kim Royer presented to you from the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department and she's gone on record a number of times indicating that trapping really is not an important part of controlling wildlife populations. And she specifically mentioned that to one of our members as it relates to bobcats. That's an animal that really doesn't need to be hunted or trapped or killed at all. And it's trapping ethical. It's really hard to talk about justifying trapping in 2021 without bringing in the ethics into the conversation because I think more and more people across the country are looking to do things differently. And if we can do things more humanely, people are much more open to that than they were maybe even 20, 30 years ago. So trapping is not ethical. Again, gonna compare it to hunting, right?   They're inherently cool. And there's plenty of videos. I don't need to share them with you. You just Google leg hole traps and you'll see the type of force that these traps inflict on the animal's limb. Traps immobilize animals and subject them to predation and harsh elements.  You're unable to move. You're unable to escape a predator. There's been cases where trappers have shown up to find the trapped animal eaten because a predator showed up was an easy meal and that animal had no way of escaping. And there's plenty of evidence to show that the animals that are trapped in a desperate attempt to free themselves will chew desperately at the metal trap. They break their teeth.  Some animals, especially raccoons, are known to do this. They'll gnaw off their own limbs to free themselves. There's also less visible injuries, sever tendons, broken bones, all types of things that we can't see with the naked eye. And I know that a lot of this probably sounds like hyperbole that you can't even imagine that this is happening in 2021. But I promise you this is happening every year in Vermont. And sadly, we have a lot of evidence of it. This photo here was sent to us by one of our members. She was a vet tech and somebody brought in their dog. This is a couple of years ago and the dog had been caught in a leg hole trap. I think it was set for a coyote and they were able to release the dog pretty quickly. So the dog was probably in the trap for about an hour. And I think this photo here is really telling because it shows the kind of damage that these leg hole traps cause to an animal that's only been in the trap for an hour. So imagine what an animal's paw might look like if it was in a trap for 24 plus hours. This photo here is of a Vermont coyote that was caught in a leg hole trap in a kind of trap that is routinely used by Vermont trappers. And you'll notice on the left paw on the coyote, you know, certainly that does not appear to have been at all comfortable for this coyote. You can see the line across the animal's paw. You can see the blood unsure what this coyote did while he was trapped. He might have chewed at the trap to free himself, chewed at his paw. But this is a perfect example of what an animal looks like after it's been in a leg hole trap. Is trapping highly regulated? We often hear from Fish and Wildlife that it is a highly regulated activity. And we don't really think that it is. And here's just a couple of reasons why. Trappers may set unlimited traps with no limits on the number of animals that may be killed. So there's no bad limits. So in one very small area, let's say in the town of Williston, a trapper could go in there and saturate that one area with numerous traps, baited traps using meat and other types of lures. Trappers are not required to set their traps away from recreational areas or trails, even on our public lands. A couple of years ago, we had petition the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Board in Kim Royer asking if trappers should be required to set their traps away from trailheads, away from recreational areas on public lands. And sadly, that petition was rejected by Fish and Wildlife. So right now there are no restrictions on that. Trappers are not required to report if they trap non-targeted animals, which is really surprising for people to hear so they could trap a black bear. They could trap a hawk, an owl, a raven, a deer. They are not required to report that. There are no repercussions for those trappers in Vermont who are not returning their annual trapper reports. So as of, I think, 2018, trappers are now required to submit only annual reporting. And according to the data that we've received from Vermont Fish and Wildlife, only, forget it's not 100% compliance. Not all trappers are sending in their reports and there's no repercussions for that. And there are no human standards by which trapped animals must be killed. Common methods for killing trapped animals, not just in Vermont, but nationwide, are bludgeoning, strangling, drowning. And previously, when pelts were worth money, they used these options for killing the trapped animal because the bullet hole would ruin the pelts and some of the animals, if they're lucky, they're shot. And is trapping supported by Vermonters? In this video here, just to give some context to it, this is a medium-sized trap that might be used to trap a raccoon or an opossum. And you'll see this is a trap that we set here on my property. You put a pencil in it and it just snaps that in half. And a lot of these animals have very fragile paws, very tiny bones. So for anyone to say that these traps don't inflict tremendous suffering and maiming of animals is just untrue. So the majority of Vermonters actually want to ban trapping. And a survey was conducted by the University of Vermont Center for Rural Studies, which revealed that I think it was 70% of Vermonters want to ban lit-hold, congregational traps and drowning traps in Vermont. And I have to survey methodology in the survey results if anyone is interested. So this here is a red fox that was caught in a lit-hold trap in Vermont. And what you see here within the red circle, trappers refer to this circle as a catch circle. And what happens is the animal just runs frantically in circles when it's caught in that lit-hold trap, trying to free itself, they'll lunge forward trying to escape and they tear up all of the earth. And this is a common site that you'll see where all the leaves are dug out. So the animal is not just there sleeping or patiently waiting to be dispatched by the trapper. And how is trapping impacted non-targeted species? Again, Vermont Fish and Wildlife does not require the reporting of non-targeted wildlife. Thanks to legislation that we passed in 2018, trappers are now required to report when they trapped someone's job or cat prior to 2018. That wasn't even a requirement. The estimates that we have of non-target catches reflect voluntary reporting only. So we submit public records requests to the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department and the only information that we get are just reports that somehow ended up in law enforcement records. And it's still quite a number of animals. Some studies estimate that for every target animal trapped, 18 non-targeted are trapped. And the reference to the study is there. And again, if anybody wants any of these studies, I'd be more than happy to provide them. This is a Vermont snapping turtle that was caught in a kill trap set for beaver. So this is just an example of the trap that I was referring to when I said that a trap was set in Allenbrook near the rec path loop. This is a body crushing or body gripping on a bear kill trap. They close with tremendous force. And this is just a perfect example of a turtle setting off the trap. This was supposed to be a beaver, but this is an incidental take or a non-target capture. This could easily be someone's dog. We did some mapping of non-target captures reported in Vermont. And again, remember, this is only voluntary captures. And the legend will show you the non-target bearer, the pet that was killed. This is just a sampling of the three animals. This bobcat was caught in a leg pull trap set for a coyote. A grape blue heron was trapped in a leg pull trap. You can see that's all that was remaining was its leg. This was found by a deer hunter who was hunting in Dorset and found these traps with remains left in it and contacted the game warden come to find out it was a trap or trapping for beavers.  This trap was set in Killington for Fisher. And again, these traps are baited in the coyote stuck his nose in there. It was the wrong animal. And this poor coyote collapsed next to a house a mile from where this trap was set in Killington and died. So this is just a sampling of some of the animals that are trapped and killed in Vermont in the numbers. These are historical numbers. These are all according to the Vermont trapper reports or surveys. So we have mink, we have raccoons. And again, this is only the animals that were trapped during the legal trapping season. This does not include animals that were killed in defensive property. Stunks, opossum, ermine, coyotes, red fox, gray fox, beavers, bobcats, river otters, Fisher. So a lot of those animals from an ecological standpoint, it makes zero sense to be trapping and killing them because again, those animals, bobcats and Fisher and coyotes and even otters, they help manage the populations of other animals in their ecosystems. So to conclude, the petition in front of you only prohibits the recreational and commercial trapping of wildlife on town owned land. And I've been doing this since 2010 in Vermont and believe it or not, the rationale that most of these trappers give is that they do recreationally trap. They're not making any money off of trapping. In the town would still have the authority to authorize trapping wildlife that is causing damage to property. That would be at your discretion. You would have control over who traps. The only animal that I can think of that you might have to trap in the future, although with water flow control devices, I think it would be a rare instance, would be beavers. So again, you're only trapping and killing those animals that are causing problems. And really allowing the rest of the wildlife to thrive. And it's important to remember that 10 states and 85 countries either restrict or completely ban trapping.  So I know I went through this really fast. I'm hoping you all had a chance to read the analysis we did of Kim Royer's presentation. I think that offered a lot of alternate viewpoints on her presentation. And if anyone has any questions, I'm more than happy to answer them. And I hope I didn't do this too quickly and that it resonated with you all. So thank you again. I appreciate it. Thank you. Board members, any questions for Brenna on your presentation? I can't see, got to, but I presume no. I'll just share. There we go. Anyone in the audience have any questions for Brenna? Yes, sir. You just identify yourself. You might want to keep asking. Just identify yourself. I'm at the World Studies site right now. And I'm not finding the 2017 survey about quota of use in the majority of Vermonters are in favor of banning traffic. So can you please clarify, and can you drop me through the site? So it's on our website, and the select board actually has the results of this survey, including the methodology, what UBM Center for Rural Studies used. But the question here is, should Vermont ban the use of steel jaw, leg hold, body gripping traps, and any types of drowning traps? And the response was 75% yes. That was the analysis without, don't know, refused. And with the don't know refused, it was 62.8%. So I think it's safe to say that the majority of Vermonters do support a ban on trapping. You're presenting anecdotal information. Do you have any real data of percentage of non-targeted animals or trapped? And how does that compare to non-targeted animals that are killed during hunting season, gear season, dog season?   Of animals, non-targeted animals that are trapped compare to the targeted animals that are intended for the trap. Do you have any data to back that up? Yeah, we have a FOIA request from the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department. It comes in the form of law enforcement records and we compiled, we took all that data and put it into spreadsheets by town, by animal. And I think 22 dogs and traps. How does that compare to dog season? I'm not getting the correlation. Well, there's a few dogs. We're comparing trapping to dog hunting. Yeah, that's non-targeted. Do dog hunters oftentimes shoot the wrong animal? I'm just asking. I don't know. Yeah. For this, what would you recommend for areas that need to effectively manage a beaver population? I'm sorry, can you repeat that again, you cut out? What would you recommend, and except if you, if you have your desires, you ban all trappings, what would you recommend for towns, areas to effectively manage beaver populations, which has increased over 120% in the past 20 years? You said the beaver population increased 120%. That's supposed to be on the Vermont Wildlife and Fish site. I'd be curious to actually see that information because I don't, I wasn't aware of them actually maintaining or keeping track of beaver populations. But. Area survey conducted by the Green Mountain African Forest in 1980, 1990s indicated that beaver population levels have increased by 120%. And that's supposed to be on the Vermont Fish and Wildlife site. Well beavers, I mean also, so beavers are also known. Beavers are destructive.  You would also have the option of installing water flow control devices that have been installed in other towns that work wonderfully. It allows beavers to remain and also prevents any flooding. I help the town of Stowe wrap our trees with wire mesh to prevent beavers from felling trees. I mean, there are so many different things you can do. And if they don't work, the town always has the right to trap and kill beavers that are causing damage.   So finding ways to coexist with them versus just killing them for no reason and kill those beavers who are causing a problem that can't be remedied non-lethally, but that's what's worked for other towns. But those are sorts of food for some people. I'm sorry? I don't think that, I'm pretty sure that people aren't trapping beavers in Vermont for food based on the intelligence that I've gathered over the past 10 years. Most people trap beavers, they were trapping them before for their pelts. They sell the caster. They sometimes use the carcasses to bait other animals like bobcats. But a lot of people, based on what I've learned, don't trap and kill beavers for food. It's not a popular food source. There are several long-gain suffers that they have beavers still scrubbing on.  I mean, I think that for an animal that's considered, again, a keystone species that's known to create such important habitat, keeping water on the landscape longer and the air of the land. You know, keeping water on the landscape longer and the air of drought. There's so much to say about beavers that are positive. I think that if someone really wants to eat beavers for food, they could certainly find beavers to trap and kill maybe as nuisance beavers elsewhere, if that's really their thing. I don't find that as really compelling rationale to carry on the trapping and killing of beavers personally. I'm sorry? So we'll move on to others who may wish to speak tonight on this, anyone else in the audience wishes to speak on the subject of trapping. Jim, why don't you come up to the microphone? First, of course, I want to thank our select board and staff for your tireless work every week, all week. You don't just show up at the meeting, I know that. Thank you. And thank you, Brenna, for your presentation that I find to be highly professional. I am here tonight as Representative Jim McCullough and I will speak in his behalf first and then as a Williston citizen, I got my data as a state rat from the National Council of State Legislators, the Division of Environmental Legislators. So when I am voting some numbers here, that's where the numbers came from. When last we met on this trapping topic, I was asked, had I accused the Department of Fish and Wildlife of bias? And I had soft peddled my language so as not to impugn the highly professional person who was in here representing the Department of Fish and Wildlife. But I suffered the consequences of being decorous there and when asked again, I went, yes, the Department of Fish and Wildlife in Vermont is biased. They're biased toward hunters and trappers and not particularly representative of, well, the UVM study, 70% in this case, or was it 75, huge majority of people in Vermont do not feel represented by the Department of Fish and Wildlife. They do use science, there is absolutely no doubt about that. But the idea of trapping as being an important tool to regulate wildlife in the state of Vermont doesn't really fly. So representing a very small number of people left in this state who trap a larger number of people who do hunt and not representing the interests of the vast majority of Vermonters leads me to say that, yes, and I'm gonna say it again, the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife is biased. The highly professional person representing the state that night was at work, you know, is a scientist and she works for the commissioner, the commissioner works for the governor and the governor sets the policies. And this governor and previous governors does not matter which political party you are interested in have maintained the old paradigm that no longer works today for most people. It's important to know, and now I'm gonna cite from the National Council of Environmental Legislators, there are only nine other states in the Union that prohibit ban trapping or severely restrict trapping. So the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife is in good company if the rest of the world, if the rest of the country misery loves company. Vermont is in there with that. This is a systemic problem across the country. The department's of Fish and Wildlife are stuck in the old paradigm of representing an individual ever dwindling, in fact, shrinking and shrunk demographic. So I'm not particularly calling them out, if you will, they are in line with many, many, well, with 40 other states. So now I'm just regular old Jim McCullough who lives on Governor Chittenden Road in Williston. I'm here to say there was a time, there was a time when trapping was a very important and economic activity for many, many people. Going back to when Europeans first came here, and likely our first people's trapped as well. That time is gone, it's gone. I'd like to remind this board that you have the right to ban trapping on your property, the same way any other citizen in Williston has a right to ban trapping, a right to post land, a right to protect their property. And with that property protection comes your ability to trap should the wildlife get out of control because of the ban. And again, to remind you that the University of Vermont survey that greater than 70% of Vermonters, and I quoted this the last time we met, do not favor trapping, do not want trapping. And I'm gonna again stipulate that I do not believe Williston is an outlier in that data, but that's my opinion. I believe Williston residents are very likely right in there with the 70, 75% of overall Vermonters. I want you to know that Lucy and I permitted hunting and trapping on our farm. And that land is now, of course, the Catamount Community Forest owned by the town of Williston. So you have the right to prohibit trapping there, if you wish. You've already prohibited hunting there. I believe it's important for me to say that even though we permitted trapping, we had several Williston residents back in the day who trapped on our property. We had beautiful Vermont State Liquor Inspector Walter McCready who trapped our place, beautiful individual. And I'm sure he always followed proper procedures, but there was a time when that was appropriate. There is not that time now, that time is gone. My family and I do not support trapping in the town of Williston. And I'd like to assert that there are, if the town does prohibit trapping on property in Williston, there's a vast majority of the acreage left in the town of Williston where Williston people can trap for whatever reason they feel it's important to do. Thank you all for your time. Thank you, Joe. Yes. I need to clarify something. I'm on this site right now to protect our wildlife and you've posed the Center for World Studies survey. Any amateur statistician will say this is statistically insignificant. 2,900 people were pulled. Out of that, 2327 refused to take the survey. That leaves 613 people that completed the survey. Out of the 613 people, only 384 agreed to ban it. That is insignificant. That is totally insignificant and you're using emotional conjecture here to stress the point. I'm not seeing or hearing any real data here. Again, thank you very much. Thank you, Jim. Is there anyone remotely who wishes to speak? I think Lynn Levin wishes to speak on this. Lynn's got her hand raised. Peggy Larson and Brenna's raised her hand as well. Would you like to go to Lynn next? Lynn, I'm going to connect you right now. Hold on. Lynn, are you there? Yes, I am. Thank you. Thank you, Brenna, for coming and to this luck word for hearing about this topic again. First, I just wanted to address the point that was just made about the survey. That's very common for a survey that not everyone would take a survey. I'm an epidemiologist. People don't respond to surveys and that doesn't mean that it's insignificant. What I did want to talk about this evening was the petition that over 250 Williston residents signed on to. That was back in the winter time after an animal had been observed in a trap on townland. After hearing a few deliberations by the slack board, we have modified our statement to include to ask the town to not allow recreational trapping on townland. This differentiates trapping for other reasons in Kim Royer's presentation in August. She presented many other reasons why people may trap, most of which don't really apply to Vermont, such as invasive species. What we're asking for is the town to not permit recreational trapping. It would still have the ability to use its discretion to trap in certain circumstances such as when property or public safety is in danger or in circumstances of research that is being conducted under animal welfare oversight. I think that the reasons that this came about are the same. It is because of the welfare of animals, both wildlife and pets who may become trapped, as well as children who could be or even adults who could accidentally come across a trap. So our reasons behind this remain the same. And the revised statement was sent to Eric last week, and I believe you have that in your packet. Thank you. Yes, you do. Thank you, Lynn. You said Terri Marin wishes to speak as well. Peggy Larson. Thank you. Peggy, I'll get you connected right now. Hi, Peggy. You there? Hi there. I think I'm on the move, yes. Yep, you're all set. Well, folks, I'm going to start off by saying, Walter Grant and I attended a Fish and Wildlife meeting in Woodbury here several years ago. And as we were leaving the meeting, a trapper stomped out and he stared at both of us and said, animals don't feel pain anyway. Well, all of you people, you either have dogs or cats or have had some pets in your life. And I'm sure you understand that animals feel pain. That bobcat is no different than your kitty cat. And that coyote is no different than your dog. For those of you who don't know, and I imagine there's just a few of you, I am a veterinarian. My master's degree is in pathology. And I have treated pets that have been caught in traps. My focus is probably a little bit less broad than those of Brenna and Lynn and Jim McCullough. And my focus is on the pain that this particular procedure causes these animals. No animal deserves to be treated like that.  So there are problems with trapping. Our number one, those traps aren't checked properly. And even if an animal is in a trap for 24 hours, this is an enormous amount of pain for that animal. The other thing that's been mentioned already is that many times the target animal is not the one that's trapped. And that can go, I read the statistics on that too, that can go as high as 18. I usually use three or four because I usually select the smallest amount. But I do know from reading that it can go as high as one out of 18. So my comment is all of us that have pets, we all know that animals feel pain and it's time to end trapping for pleasure. It's bad enough that we have to cause pain in these animals if we have to trap them for a specific reason. But to trap them for fun is totally inhumane. And that's about all. Oh, by the way, Jim, I happen to know McCready also before he passed away. Well, thank you and thank you for letting me talk. Thank you, thank you. So anyone else remotely out there that wishes to speak? Brenna has her hand up if you want to go back to her. Brenna. I'm okay. I don't want to take up any more of the board's time. I'm okay. Thank you. I don't see anybody else. So staff is looking for direction from the board hopefully tonight as to whether we draft a policy that essentially bans trapping on town lands only and giving us some, some kind of an option in that draft that would allow us to trap or have trapping done on town land that our discretion for problems that exist. So I'm looking for a consensus if we wish to have staff draft that. I support the conservation commission developing an initial draft to ban recreational trapping on town lands. Others? Exactly the same. The only thing with me is, is I don't understand what is meant by recreational trapping. And so that's something I would like to be explored also. I suspect I would support a high degree of the types of trapping that are banned. And so the word recreational just has me a little bit concerned. What does that mean? What are the, what does that mean in terms of what type of trapping is allowed if recreational isn't? And I want to be clear about that. I think I'm on the same page with language vocabulary and the definition of that is and what is and is not considered that. So I definitely would encourage and I would want from the conservation committee to look into that same specific. So by drafting a policy that would give everyone in town an opportunity to weigh in on it when it comes back to us for discussion. So I would support that as well. So we have all four of us here that are here tonight with that support that. I think staff has. Thank you. I'll speak with the staff that staffs conservation commission and have added to a future agenda here. Thank you. We can move on into the development by law amendment review with Matt. Thanks everybody for coming tonight. And is Matt meeting in person or in? Yep. He should be. I think he's watching the meeting next door. So I'll actually send him a quick text. He should be shortly. Okay. And I, we can go to the health care item too. Here he comes. I guess he was watching. Welcome Matt. I'm going up to the podium and probably in order for us to hear you better. Appreciate. So you're going to give us an overview tonight of what's being proposed. And just when you get to the cannabis part of it, if you could give us a reminder of what those boundaries are for those two zoning districts. Yes. Can't remember. Sure. Thank you for having me here tonight. So before the select board tonight, we have a package of zoning by law amendments on a diverse set of topics. Some of these have been in the works for some time and just ended up aligning with with a few of the others in a way that it made sense to do them all at once. So very briefly, we have some amendments to the town's watershed protection buffer standards. These are primarily amendments intended to give folks who have properties that were developed prior to the establishment of some of those buffers, a little more flexibility if they would like to add on to their home or build an accessory structure that's a sort of a usual and customary thing that somebody might do. And the really big reason for this is we have quite a bit of Williston that was built before the establishment of the 150 foot setbacks from named streams, the Muddy Brook, Zuckerbrook, Allenbrook, Winooski River. And there are some parts of town where that renders some existing residential properties not able to be modified at all, essentially. So that's that one. We have some amendments to the parking standards. Generally, these amendments would allow for greater flexibility in terms of the number of parking spaces that a particular development might need to provide. And these amendments also provide access to a far more refined shared parking assessment tool that the town had developed for it that lets applicants really look at day-by-day, month-by-month, and hour-by-hour at the varying demands of the varying users they have of a shared parking resource, which really helps them to right size the parking resource. We have amendments related to the retail sale of medical or recreational cannabis. The conversation between the Planning Commission and Select Board and staff on this was that the Select Board was interested in considering some amendments to the zoning bylaw in anticipation of or ahead of any vote or potential movement in the town towards allowing the retail sale of cannabis. And what we've come up with would allow those sales to take place in two zoning districts with some conditions in a development review procedure before the Development Review Board. And those two districts are the Gateway Zoning District North. We have essentially the west side of Route 2A in the northern part of town, James Brown Drive, Dorset Lane, and the commercial area on that side of Route 2A. And the mixed-use commercial zoning district, this is the district to the sort of the west and south of the Taft Corners area. We think of it as sort of the big box district where Walmart Home Depot, Gardner's Supply, Town Fair Tire are located as well as some properties on the west side of Harvest Lane. So in those two districts, the retail sale of both medical and recreational cannabis would be allowed with a site plan review by the Development Review Board. There are some standards both for the site development of those as well as minimum spacing between multiple cannabis outlets. In other words, they have to be spaced apart from one another as well as from residential properties where we do about some residential properties in the Gateway North. We have an amendment related to the Commerce Street Superfund Plume site. This is an amendment that was asked for by the Environmental Protection Agency as part of the resolution of that groundwater pollution area. It adds some language to that plume that there are added requirements should they do any sort of work that would bring them into contact with the groundwater. And it requires an approved work plan for doing so. This is not a requirement that would be specifically monitored by the Zoning Administrator or the Town's Zoning Administration. It's a sort of a yellow flag warning to somebody doing work in that area that there are some other requirements coming from other entities that apply. And so we've placed it right after the part that warns people in the flight path of Burlington Airport that they might need to talk to the FAA. So we have a section of our bylaw that talks about those cross-jurisdictional issues. That's where we've added that. We also have a general cleanup. This was the very large almost every chapter of the bylaw drop box element. And this is to deal with corrected cross references, corrected references to state law references within the bylaw or to other town ordinances. And a few things to come in line with some elements of state law that changed particularly related to the allowed size for accessory dwelling units, which the state now requires be allowed at a minimum of 900 square feet regardless of the size of the primary unit. So generally either non substantive or mandatory changes collected together because if we're going to open up the bylaw for amendment, we might as well clean those things up. And that's the whole package. And you'll be talking about one additional thing to add to that as well. Yes. But let's see if we have questions now on the ones that you mentioned. Not a lot. I need to spend more time on this. But the one that for lack of better words is striking me is the watershed protection buffers. And I guess the question is, how is that going to work? And I'm most interested where the comment says in exchange for riparian buffer enhancement measures. And I'm just wondering what could be the negative impacts of that. I know we spend quite a bit of money on our stormwater management and trying to bring some of our streams into compliance with water quality standards. And will that have a negative impact on those efforts? Well, the hope is that we're mitigating that potential negative impact by requiring the buffer enhancement. So when you get into the nuts and bolts of if somebody is looking for this flexibility, first off, it's only applying to properties that predate that 2009 adoption of the bylaw. We're limiting the size of the impact to small accessory structures, 900 square feet or less. We just made it the same size as the maximum or the minimum accessory dwelling unit for symmetry. We only apply this to sites that have slopes less than 15%. So somebody with a very steep slope would not have access to this flexibility. And then what we're talking about doing is reducing that 150 foot buffer down to no less than a 50 foot buffer with enhancement added to that buffer to make it function better in terms of water quality and erosion control. Okay. Okay, good. Thank you. Another question for the board. Hey, Matt, can you, I'm just, I guess I'm just looking for clarification on just how this will evolve with, you know, the Comer Street plume. You know, I certainly understand where I think we're at with that, but can you just kind of give a little bit more detail on like longevity? Like how, how is that going to be? I don't know if the word, I don't think it's a resolve, but like, what's our plan? So my understanding of both the state and federal EPA environmental protection agency plans for the Comer Street plume is it's mostly about monitoring. So, you know, the plume moves, it attenuates or is reduced in intensity over time. The plan is to monitor it. It's not to do any active pumping or, you know, removal of material from the area. And then to adopt this and a few other regulatory constraints that would prevent people from, you know, experiencing the greatest sort of health risks that can come from the pollutant. So it's a, it's a watch and wait and restrict some activities in the area plan that is going to be ongoing for, you know, for the foreseeable future. No, I just see, I think I see slight cadmium and, you know, chromium and those are just like red flags to see if and when where those would develop in potential safety issues. And I know we have a beat on it. I just wonder longevity wise, I guess is my question. Thank you. Other questions? Looking at the plume a number of years ago, there was a plan in place to do some of the pumping, I believe, but that's been abandoned at this moment. Unfortunately, everyone in that area is on public water. So that's not a problem I had years ago. I had friends who lived on the main drag and they had a private water supply. Actually, it was a point driven in their cellar. Made great wine, but I hate to think about was in it. I had heard recently from the EPA and the board might recall they had an initial discussion on a draft ordinance probably about a year and a half ago now. Times hard to contemplate, especially, but they've been working on the mapping for the plume and I know they've had some changes in their personnel and it sounds like they're getting close. So likely to have that back on your agenda at some point here. So if there's no more questions on the major things that have been presented, we have one other one that suggested that regarding transportation impact fees. Yes, and I'll just clarify this is regarding all all three impact fees and actually would have the most effect on recreation and school fees. So we have been aware for the last few months of a potential affordable housing project proposed in Willis in the conversion of the Town Place Suites Hotel in Taft Corners into affordable apartments by the Champlain Housing Trust. And we have in our three bylaw chapters a little bit of a different approach to whether impact fees are discounted automatically for affordable housing or not. So it's it's automatic and there are two different levels of it for transportation. It's explicitly not offered as a discount under the you know by right under the bylaw for recreation and schools. So in speaking with the housing trust, you know, we were asked the question with with the town be interested in in waiving those fees. And if so, what would the mechanism be. And that led us to look at the enabling legislation for impact fees in Vermont, which does have some language that says a select board can choose to waive fees for a particular project that achieves an important town goal. And affordable housing is specifically called out in statute. So we look at that language in statutes and well it says right here the select board can, you know, hold a meeting and choose to waive these fees for somebody if they want to. We asked council for some advice on that council's advice was, yes, that is what statute says but you really ought to have it identified in your bylaws. So what the language that I've mentioned in the memo here doesn't provide any sort of automatic waiver of those fees for any particular project, but rather restates the ability for the select board to grant those waivers if it chooses and set some boundaries around it related specifically to I think the type of, you know, affordable housing number one that CHT is bringing forward now but also the kind that's above and beyond the sort of affordable housing that the town incentivizes. So the language I've I've offered up as a potential add on to these bylaw amendments is for affordable housing that is restricted in price to affordable at 80% of the median income or below that is operated by some kind of housing trust. And that is limited to being offered to those who qualify under income limits. So those are those are three distinctions that are different from what we do in Williston's normal zoning bylaws where we incentivize housing that is perpetually priced at an affordable level. We have not had good luck getting that housing price managed by trust and rather we're managing it for zoning enforcement. And we do nothing currently in the zoning about looking at income qualification for people who might buy or rent housing. Housing that goes above and beyond those affordability incentives could be identified in the impact fee chapters as something the select board would consider for impact fee waiver whole or in part on a case by case basis. So this amendment would not commit the select board to anything but it would identify a particular type of project where the select board might have a meeting to hear out a particular project proponent on waiving impact fees. Questions for Matt. Matt the only question I have right now is I'm on page to the case by case basis which makes me a little bit nervous from the standpoint of you know what what is going to make what are the criteria we're going to use the select board would use to say yes to one project no to another you know different select boards might view different projects differently. Those types of uncertainties always make me a little bit queasy. So that's that's my my first sort of question as I start to get comfortable with this. The other is is the waiving a fee a complete waiver or would it be a waiver of some but maybe not all of the fee. I recognize we already have have the mechanism in which automatically a portion of the impact fees are waived or reduced whatever the right word is there. Part of where I'm going with this a little bit is the concept that we have an affordable housing trust that we're starting to try to build. And I actually wonder if that might be a mechanism in which those fees that the money that would normally fund those fees could come from or maybe a shared aspect of that versus a complete waiver. Don't read anything into that other than these are just things I'm thinking about as I get comfortable with the idea. So you know statute gives select boards the ability or city councils the ability to grant any sort of waiver they want from from none to everything. And I've left that vague here to give the board some flexibility and I think that goes to your second question about you know case by case basis. If if you wanted this language to tighten things up a little bit I would say that the select board would consider a waiver based on findings in support of the criteria as I've laid them out. In other words somebody comes to say you know yes we really are a community land trust or some other kind of nonprofit that provides housing. Here's our plan that would you know guarantee or ensure that we're going to meet those price limits. Here's our process for making sure that they're being rented to folks or sold to folks who need them. So I think in that part I completely agree it's what we look at for DRB language all the time is you know if they're if you're giving somebody something a waiver or you know relief from a condition do it with findings that are that are called for somewhere in the document. So that would be my answer to the question of case case by case. You could change that language to say something with you know based on findings that these things would be met. You know but it's always I don't know it's I think there could be some circumstance where a project is was not one that the board thought it should be waiving fees on. I'm not sure why probably probably some indication under these findings that it didn't seem like it was truly feasible. So that would be you think I feel like you had one other question and I might have lost it in there. Well I mean there are two aspects I think that I'm trying to figure out one is the case by case the other is the concept of the loss of revenues that are you know we have impact fees for a reason you know that revenue was put to good use. So it's the loss of that revenue and a piece of that is are there other sources are there places where that revenue could be supplied from such as the affordable housing trust fund that was recently set up. I don't believe that's probably healthy enough at this point to do anything along those lines but maybe down the road it might be. It could be a mechanism and the board might consider you know spending some of that money to offset a fee and granting a partial waiver. I do know from the story of a recent Habitat for Humanity project around the corner for me in South Burlington they used housing trust fund money to help fund the construction of the building to meet the form based code in the area. So they have a higher architectural standard than they used to and the Habitat said that costs us additional money to meet that standard and the city said we'll fund some of that with our trust fund. I don't recall if they offset impact fees out of their trust fund as well but I believe the town could do that. It would strengthen your case that you're treating everything equally. I would argue that in the case of affordable housing and there's also some job creation criteria right up front in statute. You you have a case to treat things differently based on those criteria in statute. And I should add there are some waiver position provisions in the existing bylaw that I'm that I'm not calling out and that I'm not suggesting someone like CHT asked to take advantage of because they really require the select were defined that this use somehow. Isn't going to generate the impact or is different in the way it generates the impact from other uses and you know at the end of the day affordable housing is is housing. It's a residential use is is likely to generate those impacts and it would kind of undermine the impact fee system to stretch that to this purpose especially when statute says for affordable housing select board you have a you have a particular path on that. Let me ask the question from a different perspective and that is how effective do you think this will be in bringing affordable housing to Williston. Well it could have made a couple of preliminary conversations with CHT a lot shorter at the staff level. Say oh yeah we've got that taken you know they say well what's it going to cost us to get a permit for this project and we said well oh you know come to think of it it's it's over $200,000 in impact fees. So you know the cost per unit that we've been quoted on this project was the conversion of 96 hotel rooms into 72 affordable apartments the cost per unit on this project is about $240,000. So it's the impact fees Williston would impose on this is is most of a unit which is you know it's not nothing. Yeah and you know we also you know like South Burlington with its form based code we have development standards that do add some costs to a project like this we're looking for a section of sidewalk to be completed to meet our pedestrian access standards. As a condition of approval of this project that's you know that's going to cost some money that the applicant would be spending on this so you know it's it's another cost on top of others otherwise. Okay wow that was a high number per unit to convert. There's a really terrific Vermont Housing and Finance Agency report from I think 2017 and recently updated about why it costs so much to create affordable housing. I'll circulate it to Eric it's it's succinct enough that you can you can get through it in a quick evening and and worth a read but the costs for a number of reasons are a lot higher than they seem. So just to clarify. So the transportation impact fees are already established that they can be they can be you know waived or or but can we parcel out education and recreation is it is it all together or can we say you know they're you know with this many affordable housing unit there will still be a significant impact on our educational system. For instance so maybe you know that you know we we can reduce some but but not completely waive and maybe we can you know do some do more on the recreational side can we you know do we have the flexibility with these amendments to do that. Yeah so the proposed amendment would go into each chapter and it would be you know up to an applicant to ask for waiver under each chapter and up to the select board to decide on granting one. I think that you would want the criteria for granting waivers under this provision to be more about was the thing that was being created a desired element of the town plan as opposed to what impact you thought it might create. The it might be better to make those decisions at a policy level say you know we're we're we're ready to do this on rec but not on school for example or something like that. I think you know in general these amendments don't hold the town to anything in particular other than authorize it to hold that hearing or meeting and consider the waiver. Other questions. Any comments or questions from the audience and he but he remotely wishes to comment. I don't see anyone turn right. So the question is would do we. Would we like to add the proposal from Matt and the planning commission to the issue of scheduling a public hearing. If we do it is the motion to do that. They have a motion to try to understand it. Maybe Eric can explain it. Sure. We're so we're working mad on this and he can jump in as well. Whenever you consider a bylaw amendment is transmitted you from the planning commission and under the select board's purview you can make a substantive change. When you warn that for a public hearing but for process the planning commission has to have an opportunity to comment on your substantive change. So when when this was identified by staff it was too far along in the planning commission's process when they put the bylaw together. So this is an opportunity instead of starting a whole other bylaw amendment process to include it within within this one for. Efficiency in process I'll say but so what the motion is asking you to do is to. If you support the additional amendment that Matt spoke of this evening you would include that in this package of bylaw amendments. Planning commission gets their opportunity to comment on that and then you would direct staff to warn a public hearing and we'd warn the public hearing following statute. For the time period allowed for the planning commission to provide their comments on the amendment and those speakers presented to you before at the public hearing. How do I do that. That's that's the bulk of it. You know one of the things the planning commission does when it considers bylaw amendments is required to repair repair report. Which is sent to neighboring communities and the agency of commerce and community development and the regional planning commission. The requirement or statute if the select board makes a substantive changes that the planning commission amend that report which you know takes the form of going back and making comment. And that that amended report must be provided to the select board either before or at its first hearing where it considers the bylaw changes. So Eric and I would have a little bit of work to do looking at the calendar to make sure we met the time frames and I have time to take it back to the planning commission.  Okay. Is that clear now Jeff? Sorry. Do you want the real answer or the do as you're told answer. Would anyone care to make that motion. It's a lengthy one but I'll give it a shot. I'll move after considering the collected proposed amendments to the Williston unified development bylaw heard by the Williston planning commission on September 7 2021. To make a substantial change to the proposed amendments to add a language related to a waiver procedure for impact fees for certain affordable housing developments. Further move to file the amendments with changes with the planning commission and schedule a public hearing on the bylaw amendments. Is there a second? I'll second. Is there a discussion on the motion? Matt are you sure the planning commission is going to be okay with this substantial change? No. I haven't discussed this with them although we've certainly had a lot of discussions about ways the town can support affordable housing and a lot of desire on the planning commission's behalf to do so. So I would want to talk to them and just you know explain what's happening and why and make sure they have a chance to raise any concerns they have with me and with you but I would you know I would bring that back to you if I heard that from them. Okay. Fair enough. Any further discussion? If not all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And we have four. That says aye. So we'll move on then. Two. Thank you Matt for coming in tonight. Thank you. Move on to the fiscal year 2023 preliminary budget discussion and Eric has provided us with a good memo of this. So Eric I'll turn it over to you. Thanks Terry and I think that surely will come out if there's any questions. Okay. So as we've done the last few years staff has prepared a preliminary report with budget indicators in areas of potential focus as we enter the by 23 budget process we're getting there already except on us sometimes. So staff is currently developing the draft operating capital budgets for transmission to late November. And this is an opportunity for the select board to provide any high level general guidance to staff as we're working on that initial proposal here. So I'll kind of I've got a report in your packet. I'll walk through a few few items in it and surely I can answer any questions you have this evening as we as we start this process here. So as we as I was reflecting on last fiscal year we sat here about a year ago. It was a pretty uncertain time with COVID-19 pandemic. You might recall we we weren't sure about revenue streams including local option tax or grand list effect on property taxes and other revenue streams that we collect in town and in terms of fees. Staff were casting over $500,000 revenue shortfall.  This resulted in FY 22 budget approved by the board than the voters with just under a 1% reduction from FY 21, which is just under $100,000. So thankfully by spring of this past year the onset of vaccinations and economic uncertainties became somewhat clear. Our local options tax revenue especially over the third and fourth quarters last fiscal year exceeded our predicted budget revenue to help pick up where we fell short for the rooms and meals tax, which hasn't quite recovered the pre pandemic levels. And also I've spoken preliminarily with town assessor Bill Hinman on what the grand list outlook is and we had a flat grand list essentially last year and bills taking a conservative estimate of a 0.75% grand list increase for FY 23. So that's really good news to hear compared to our flat grand list of last year. I'll speak a little bit more to that in my report from the number standpoint. So we tend to look at some economic trends and pulled out some the last couple years and census data is we're starting to unpack that a bit too. That helps and thinking about where our community is going, how we're growing, what impacts are out there for municipal services that we deliver. So I'll highlight a couple items this evening. Our median household income is just under $95,000. As we compare that mean income in the county is just under 74,000 and Vermont is 62,000. Our employment numbers are working population in Williston is 5,014 people compared to a year ago and it was 5,110 people. It's consistent with the statewide wide trend of individuals leaving the workforce and you mentioned the board a few meetings ago, but according to the Department of Labor there's been 28,000 Vermonters who left the workforce during the pandemic and have chosen not to return to date. Our unemployment rate by population was 2.4% August and back up to August of 2020 that was at 4.2%. So that's certainly improvement there. Our statewide unemployment rate right now is 3% and it's 2.6% in the county so we're below both of those numbers. So we have the census data now and the population piece is especially interesting to look at. Our population is now just over 10,100 residents. In 2010 the population was 8,698. So this was a 14% increase in the Williston's population the last 10 years. So that's just over 1,400 a year. 1,400 in total sorry and 141 per year. In comparison, Chittin County grew by about 12,000 residents over the past decade about 7.5%. As we look at our demographics in town, we look at our 18 and under population is just about 30% of our residents. About 54% is 18,64% and about 17% is over 65 and over. Then I saw touch base with Matt on planned developments moving forward the next year. Production would be 25 new units that Cottonwood Crossing occupied 72 one bedrooms in the Champlain Housing Trust project if approved that Matt spoke about this evening. Another 15 units in Northridge which are most of three to four bedrooms and another 10 units or so throughout town. Planned Department also anticipates about 70 units of senior housing to be added to Finney Crossing potentially during FY23. So where our population will continue to grow in the coming year I can say that would fairly certain certainty. And remember over 10,000 people now call Williston home but our daytime population regularly goes over 20-23,000. It is the number that we've looked at there. Significant nighttime population but a quite large daytime population by Vermont standards with folks who come here to work, recreate and visit our businesses. The other thing we're watching closely is the rate of inflation that's occurring right now. What we typically do for our cost of living adjustment for both labor unions and the boards historically done the same amount for non-represented staff for the COLA is using a calculation. We take averages over two years from the Northeast Urban Price Index from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. So as we plug in the numbers right now that increase is estimated at 3.4%. Shirley can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that number was 1.4 or 1.6 last year. So you're looking at potentially two. Oh, you're on a TV, Shirley. Oh, you're behind the TV. Thanks, Shirley. So as we look at those we start looking at some factors to bring the board's attention as you think kind of at a high level at the budget here. The tax rate last year, this current budget year was decreased slightly to 0.2721 cents. And as we talk about potential other expenses and trying to balance out the revenues, considering a potential tax rate increase is something that board will likely have to look at during this budget process. Bill Himman's projection of a 0.75% grand list increase. That would represent about $15 million in added value to our grand list. And that would generate about $175,000 in new property tax revenue. So we can think about that as adding that as new revenue to the start to the budget process based on that current tax rate. And as a reminder, each cent on the tax rate generates about $200,000 in property tax revenue right now. Our unassigned fund balance is something we're also paying attention to. Our operating policy is to keep it between 10 and 20% of the operating budget. We've been over that 20% number for a few years now. We've tried to spend it down. I will say it's a good problem to have, but we want to keep exploring that and make sure we're utilizing those funds as our component of our general fund revenue. I'm looking at having potentially someone take a look with me at our fund balance policy right now too and thinking about where that should be. We discussed that at the retreat a couple of years ago. What's the appropriate level? And generally towns with a local option tax are advised to have a higher fund balance threshold there because the local option tax is such a volatile revenue source. So you'll likely see in my budget proposal some strategies to spend down the fund balance but trying to leverage, I will say we're not out of woods yet with COVID-19. So we want to, that's a value to have that rainy day fund for us, but it can be an advantage for some one-time capital purchases and also thinking about reducing tax burdens on a one-year basis. So this is in no way a fully extensive list, but Shirley and I looked at this as some kind of larger areas of the budget. The board will have to think about as we open up the process here. You heard our retreat last week, Fire Department Staffing Study. That's certainly something that's important to take a look at here as you think about the budget moving forward, thinking about kind of next steps in that discussion. And I'll be chatting with the Chief Moore and I'll chat with Terry about how to set that up for the board here moving forward. As I mentioned, the CPI and wages love to new collective bargaining agreements in effect with both of our unions. Also the recent market-based wage adjustment for public work staff has added some costs there. We don't know how long inflation it may stay. It could be a one-year, it could be a multiple-year change in the market. It's really hard to say right now. We'll try to find out anything we can on that, but we know at least in the short term we're going to have a higher budget impact there for 2023. And general operating expenses where we've seen it throughout global supply chain right now, the cost of goods, the cost of doing businesses, it's going up quite a bit along with the demand for those services, especially on construction and contracting. And that's something we'll need to pay attention to. And I know department heads are looking at that as they build their operating budgets right now. We also deferred some capital projects in FY22. We didn't do anything that we felt was really largely significant that would set us back, but we need to potentially revisit some of the things we may have deferred to think about when it's appropriate to move those forward. We've also, we have in the FY22 budget, and we had deferred this, our second full-time position in the Recreation Department. That's slated to come in the fourth quarter of FY22, so that position would then flow into FY23 at that point. The board added the third dispatch position last July, and that was not in the operating budget, so that's going to be affected in the operating budget moving forward. The board's had preliminary discussion of looking at a town energy coordinator position as well, so that'll be another piece to potentially consider in the budget process. And then regional dispatch is something we're continuing to look to work at at the CCPSA level. And what we're looking to determine right now is Williston's cost for the remaining capital share. We're waiting to hear on the federal earmark money in the congressional budget and knowing where the congressional budget process is right now. It may not be till January until we know if we've received that earmark or not. So I'll be taking a look in the capital budget. The town may want to consider using some of the fund balance towards that final capital cost for CCPSA to move the dispatch project forward, but there'll certainly more to come on that. So I know I threw a lot at you here, but if we do this to kind of put this on your radar, we certainly, the staff looks for any kind of high level general directions of the board might have reactions at this point. Anything we can do to help out this process of the board as we get it started. Questions for Eric? Looking at Greta. See if she... Eric, thank you. And this, I think, is actually very helpful, particularly the last part, identification of fiscal year 23 budget expense impacts. And one thing I am picking up on is it notes with the fire department new positions to consider in fiscal year 23 or beginning in fiscal year 22. It notes the third dispatch position was created in fiscal year 22. When we get down to the energy coordinator, it doesn't include that. That we might consider doing it in this fiscal year. And so I guess I'm asking the question of should we consider doing that? Oh, certainly. I didn't include that note in here, but yeah, thinking of 23, if that was discussed in 22 or 23. Well, I'm actually asking the question of instead of putting off the decision as part of our fiscal year 23 discussion, should we have that discussion before to see if we're interested in funding it in 22? That's my question. Yeah, we agreed to do that. So we will be doing that and discussing creating a position in this fiscal year as to whether or not we're going to do it. I did not realize that. Yeah, we agreed to do that a month ago or so. Okay. I... Have that discussion. Okay, I'm not disagreeing. Maybe I'm not remembering. I did not realize that. And just, okay, then let's ask the question differently. When will we have that discussion? I'm not sure what we have to do it within probably a month or so. Okay. I would think. Good. Hey, Eric, can you just identify... I know we had several deferred capital projects, but what's immediate in the hopper that we're going to need to take a look at that we deferred? Yeah, let's see. I might look to Shirley on this one. I'm not trying to put anybody on the spot. I'm just curious what it's been a while since we've talked about that. And I'm racking my brain on what some of those projects were. Yeah, we only deferred a couple of small things. They weren't big, right? Yeah, it was a small amount. Yeah, that was our goal to, you know, not with the equipment fund. And we were able to look at the equipment fund a little bit. And some items were, we felt they were adequately funded. So we, we didn't want to take a step back by not having enough funds there. But I can... I'll look back to the materials we prepared last year, too, and we can get a good list together. It was just curiosity. Thank you. There was just someone in the comment section just asked Shirley if you could possibly move closer to the microphone. I actually had, I struggled to hear what you were saying as well. So. So to, to repeat the things that we deferred in the capital budget was about 20,000 that had to do with parks improvement and parks reporting. And I think that's a good point. And again, those are things we went through with Todd. And Todd felt like we deferred the funding, but we weren't going to impact the program as well. And I think Eric's right. The town parking lot, we had about 17,000 in for starting the engineering cost of the town parking lot. So we just moved that back a year. And there were, there were, there were, I want to say there was a police department, a budget item that they really looked through theirs and said in fire as well. Actually, I think it was more the fire chief. They had a couple of capital projects that they looked at and said, okay, with the funding they had to carry over, they were able to cut the amount of the funding. But again, it wasn't anything, any material dollars we're talking about. And that's all I can remember. I can grab the final projection that we were working with back then, but nothing significant. Thank you, Shirley. You're welcome. One question I have is what if all positions were filled in town? How many, how many staff would work for the town? Do we know that? I think we're full time. Sure. I'll have to look at around 70 or so. Yes. We have about 73 full time employees. I'm trying to think of what was just working on September April 4th. We have 73 with one, two, three, four unfilled positions. Okay. Four unfilled full time positions, which would be not uncounting being, sorry. I'm counting the parks, new facilities, that is in the FY 22 budget that we have deferred, position in water sewer, two positions in highway, and one position that had already left the police department. So how do you like that right here floor? Yeah. I think it's probably important to think which are general fund positions and which are enterprise fund positions too, because water sewer has four that picks up part of salaries for manager, public works departments, and then stormwater as well for the stormwater coordinator. So it feels different, different. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Any further questions? We can move on then to the health insurance plan. We have this, this time each year we ask the board to approve the health insurance plan. I'll be offered to employees and we have recommending we keep the same plan as this year. And you'll see in my memo, almost unfathomable health insurance plan. I think we can move on to the health insurance plan. We have the same plan as this year. And you'll see in my memo, almost unfathomable health, the rate increases a 0.07% by sticking with the MVP, MVP gold three group plan. So the, the premiums are essentially the same as, as last year. The deductible is going up slightly, but we, we cost share that between employees. It's first dollar, health reimbursement arrangement at about 84% to the employee first dollar. But, you know, I wish most years were like this when I came to you and said that minuscule increase for health insurance. So staff's recommendation is to, to keep the same plan that we've had. And I think there's no suggested motion to consider. Any questions for our career in this? I commented to him before the meeting started. We had to grab this quickly before they increased their rates. I'm very impressed that, that the rate increases so minuscule. My only question really is that considering that we are having all these conversations about, you know, pay and filling positions and open positions and things like that. I just want to make sure that this health plan puts us on par with, you know, other towns and communities that we might be competing with for potential employees and things like that.  That's a good question, Greta. I haven't run that analysis against other towns surely might have. But, you know, for the cost of the employee, I'd say it's very competitive here. Surely anything you want to add from what you've seen. I haven't looked, but I can only see personally my husband works for the City of Burlington and our plan is better and less expensive the town gets up to more. So that's my only comparison. I have not asked any other towns what their plans are or what their cost share is. You can certainly look into that, Greta. We may have the VLCT Wage and Benefits report as I was just released. So we, that's usually a good piece of data to compare ourselves as well. Other questions? There is a motion suggested. I'll move to offer the MVP Healthcare Gold 3 HD HP plan to eligible employees for calendar year 2022. Is there a second? Second. Second. Sorry, discussion on the motion. None in all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. We have four aye votes. We're moving on to manager's report. Couple items I'll touch on this evening that aren't on my written report and a few in my written report here. There was a question a couple of weeks ago about the noise monitor for Burlington Airport that's being installed with the town brand the recent easements on the real bear property. And what I'm told from the airport is they plan to install that this fall and I include in your packet the information I had on location and what it looks like as well to give you a feel for there. I got a chance to tour the Muddy Brook Colvert replacement site with Bruce today and an open invitation to any board member that's interested in that as well. It's quite the project going on, the sea on the ground with the size of that Colvert and what they put together. I included some photos of when the precast was put together on the Colvert earlier this month and I'm told things are on track. When you're over there you might wonder how they're going to have a road over that in November but I'm told it's running on schedule. So that's quite a project here. I stop by every weekend just to see the progress because it's an interest of mine and it is quite a project going on. I'm hopeful that never fails because it fails where I've got bigger problems. Then I'm proud to report and hopefully we've made a conditional offer to fill a highway position. We've interviewed yesterday a conditional offer to hopefully move forward with them to fill one of those positions. We'll be performing second interviews for the assistant to the manager and HR coordinator position this Friday. So that's moving right along. Then to update you on our two water main issues from yesterday. Lamp light is all back in business. Boil water or has been lifted. Bruce told me this afternoon everything tested fine there from the state. At Partridge Hill everyone has water service but they're looking for a leak which Bruce thinks is small right now so they're hunting for the leak. So hopefully we'll find it soon. I can update you on that. I also have the energy committee applications up online. I was able to get that and start out Rich on that this afternoon. I've got a couple already in my inbox. So I'll be looking to fill that and other open volunteer positions here. That's all I have this evening for the board. Any questions for Eric? So any other business that we need to take up tonight before we go into the executive session? Hearing none raised I'll be looking for a motion to go into executive session. I'll move that we enter into the executive session to discuss the annual evaluation of the Town Manager under the provisions of Title I, Section 313 for Enthusies 3 of the Vermont Statutes and Invite Town Manager Eric Wells to join. Is there a second? I'll second. Is there a discussion on the motion? If not all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. I have four aye votes. So we are in the executive session. We'll get upstairs.


Welcome back. So, we had seen in the previous lecture that for the inventory control problem, the problem the question of that of asking how much inventory should I be ordered, should I be ordering? This question is actually not well posed. So, the amount of inventory to be ordered is depends on the amount of stock that you have available and that is not known because that itself depends on the demand that would have that would evolve from the start of the time period up until that time. So, as a consequence of this, we realize that the way to pose the problem at the stage of when we are trying to plan for what we should be doing is to pose the is to is to ask not how much inventory should you be ordering, but what is what is going to be the action plan. In other words, what is what how much inventory are you going to order for each value of this of the inventory level of the stock that you find. So, how much what action are you going to take for each value of the state that you are going to act that you would actually encounter during the problem in real time in the course of when you are actually in the field. So, what we can what we can compute is at the start of the problem is not the actual actions, but these functions. These functions we had we call these strategies or decision rules. We call them strategies or decisions rules mu 0 to mu n minus 1 was called a policy. Another term for this is often what is often that is often used is a control law. So, mu 0 to mu n minus 1 is often called the control law. So, let us give let us give say see an example of such a such a control law. For instance, one could say that for it can actually be shown that for some reasonable forms of the cost function the optimal policy is to actually at any time k is takes the following form mu k of x k takes the form that you do that of x k minus s k if x k is less than s k and 0 otherwise. Here s k is a suitable threshold. Now, what does this mean what how do I interpret this policy? This policy is telling me a plan of action. It is telling me that it tells me it defines for me a threshold s k and it tells me the following that if your if my inventory x k falls below the threshold s k. So, if x k is less than s k then all then how much how much should I be ordering? I should be ordering in order to top up to the level s k. If my inventory is less than s k then I order whatever is the deficit so as to top up up till s k. If my inventory is larger than or equal to s k then I do not need to do anything then I then I do not order any further. So, in other words what I what you what you get is is a sequence of such thresholds that such that your inventory gets when you keep you only monitor if your inventory is falling below that particular threshold. Once it falls below the threshold you just top it up up to that particular threshold and let and then carry on again till it again falls below that threshold. So, and in finite horizon problems you would also get that this threshold s k is which is a so this s k is a threshold that define that is a parameter that defines this particular policy. It is defined it is telling you what to do as a function at each step at each time step as a function of the inventory that you would see. So, this s k would be would also differ from one time step to the other. So, there would you would the correct threshold that we need to look at that one needs to keep is also would also vary from time to time. So, usually the so the so the inventory then it tends to take this sort of a form that at at at any time at any time k you when you order you fulfill up you you bump it bump up your inventory up till time up to s k then over that time over the time period demand gets realized the inventory falls further.  This is how this is how this particular policy would work. So, once again at the at the danger of of belaboring myself I am again repeating that this is this is not mu k does not actually tell you when we are choosing mu k we are not actually choosing an exact inventory level. But rather we are saying what is going to be the plan for every for every possible value of inventory that you could have set means for every value of x k we are telling we have a plan here which tells us what exactly we should be doing. So, now with this now we we we can we can go back to the original stochastic control problem that we had written not the example but the original stochastic control problem that we had written which was this one. And then we can ask ourselves what exactly are we solving here well the goal is we said we want to minimize this total cost incurred and we said we wanted to do this by taking a sequence of actions. But then we realize that we cannot actually define a sequence of actions at the time instant that this problem is written for which this time it is for which this problem is written this problem is written even before the realization of this of the entire uncertainty. And therefore it is asking us to choose actions even before the information that is available to us. So, therefore what we can choose is plans of actions or policies. So, the problem here therefore this problem is the problem is to is to choose a policy to minimize to minimize the total cost is to choose a policy that minimizes. So, a general stochastic control problem takes this form where you are minimizing this the expected total cost this is your terminal cost these are the stage wise costs. And what we are this is being minimized over all mu 0 to mu n minus 1 each mu k is a function that maps the state space at time k to the to the to the actions that you can choose. So, in this case for example that is let us let us suppose capital X k is suppose the state space at time k this maps this to let us suppose capital U the space of actions at time k. So, capital UK is the space of actions available at time k. Now, so one example of in the of this we had already seen we saw that the state space in the inventory control problem was the state could be any real number. So, the state space was R and the actions we were allowing we were only allowing non-negative actions. So, so capital UK therefore was the non-negative real life. Now, we can there are also problems in which the action that you can take can be constrained by how much by what state you are actually in. So, there can be a for example, a there are problems where you can define another as I said U tilde k of X k. This is the set of feasible actions U tilde k of X k feasible actions at time k when the state is X k. So, when the true state is X k and when the when you are at time k the set of feasible the actions that you can choose is has to be from the set U tilde K of X k. So, in that case any policy that you choose must respect this particular this particular constraint that you have to choose a feasible for a policy to be admissible it has to it must map the state to an action that is present in this. So, so you so your mu k should have the must satisfy must satisfy that mu k of X k is in U k tilde of X k. This is something that is required from any policy that you choose. So, we have seen therefore, in the inventory control problem and we have seen all of these elements we have seen that there is a discrete time system that there is a system that evolves in discrete time whose evolution is given by a dynamical system like this. So, it is a system whose state evolves in discrete time in this sort of way. We have seen that in our case this is equal was equal to X k plus U k minus W k. We have seen that W k which was noise we had that these were independent across time not known while choosing U k. We also saw that there was the action that has to be chosen there was a constraint on the action. So, remember we had U k greater than equal to 0. Now, in this case the constraint actually does not change with the state of the system. It only is just it is a constraint that is the same for every time and every state. But in general there could be constraints that could also be state dependent and time dependent. But nonetheless the key element of the problem here is that there can be constraints on actions. So, therefore policies a policy must respect this a policy must satisfy any policy must satisfy constraints. And we saw that the cost also had this very nice form. The cost had the form at this which was in this form. So, this in our problem was the terminal cost in our problem was capital R of X n and the stage wise cost in our problem was R of X k plus C times U k. So, you will notice that there was no there was no W k in this there was no W k out here. So, there is a W k here but there is no W k here that is quite alright this is this is the more general this is the general version general version of the problem. So, the lesson in short is that we are. So, now this has given us a way of by which we are we are going to complete problem formulation of a stochastic control problem where we are taking a sequence of decisions over various over some finitely many time steps. We have the elements of the problem are that there is an additive cost there is there is a sequence of actions that need to be chosen in that are chosen in real time. But what we are choosing when we are is we are making a plan for actions we are making. So, what we are choosing is this policy mu 0 to mu n minus 1 which maps the state at time k at the where mu k time maps the state at time k to an action at time k. Now, this policy must also satisfy the constraints. So, mu k of x k has to be has to be has to be in U tilde k of x k where U tilde k of x k is the set of feasible actions at time k when the state is x k. Now, when we choose so the way the system evolves is as follows then we when we choose when we choose an action when we choose a policy mu k when we choose a policy mu 0 to mu n minus 1 what happens what happens is this policy is chosen even before any uncertainty gets realized. So, even before the first random variable which is first piece of noise which is W 0 gets realized. So, this this policy is chosen at that stage. So, when we choose a policy what here is how the system evolves first you have your initial state x 0 gets realized then as a function of this initial state you choose an action U 0. And the function that you need that tells you what action is to be chosen is this policy. So, from here using the policy mu 0 using the policy mu 0 so using the policy mu 0 we get our action U 0 then nature pitches in nature pitches in with with W 0. So, nature introduces the noise in the system. So, therefore, as a result of the action that you have chosen and the previous state and the noise that is present you then get your next state x 1. So, x 1 comes out as f 0 of x 0 U 0 W 0 where now U 0 is a function of x 0 and then this goes on goes on again.  This is this is this is what happens at each time step you eventually reach time step n where now you have you have time step n minus 1 where you are in state n minus 1 you have you choose you use the mu n minus 1 that has been decided to choose U n minus 1 then W n minus 1 comes in and what you get is your final state x n which is f n minus 1 of x n minus 1 mu n minus 1 of x n minus 1 comma W n minus 1. Now, the important thing to note here is the role that the policy plays. The policy does two things one is of course, it chooses the action that you need to choose it chooses an action for you it tells you. So, here for example mu 0 of x 0 is the U 0 it is the action that you need to choose but in addition to this the policy also decides the probability distribution of the next time step. So, if you look at x 1 x 1 is now a random variable it is the state that will get evolved that is evolved at the next time step that is a function of the noise. But it is a function of noise as well as the previous step previous state and the action that you have chosen. So, by choosing mu 0 in an appropriate way one can decide the probability with what probability you are going to get various states. So, one can influence indirectly the probability distribution of the state through by choosing through the choice of the policy. So, the policy basically determines also the probability with which various new states are going to get realized as a given the earlier state. In other words the policy determines this probability distribution the probability distribution of the next state given the previous state. This probability distribution is a function of the policy it depends on the policy that you have chosen. So, it depends on mu 0 to mu k one thing I had forgotten to mention that one of the short hand for policy often when you have mu 0 to mu n minus 1 a short hand for that for policy of that is often used is the letter pi use the Greek letter pi to denote a policy. So, this will often be denoted as p superscript pi of x k plus 1 conditional probability of the next times state given the given the current state. So, with this what we have done is set up the problem of stochastic control where we are taking decisions in a sequence and we have set it up formally as a problem of deciding a sequence of functions the sequence of functions is what is called a policy. What we will now do in the next lecture is consider look at an alternative model where the state at the next time step is not given in this kind of explicit way as a function of the previous step but rather in an abstract way where you only know the probability distribution of the next step of the next state given the current state and current action. This is the model that is often used in the field of operations research and it goes by the name of Markov decision processes. We will look at this model in the case in the setting of a where you have finitely many states and finitely many actions. So, this is this is the agenda for the next for the next for the next for the next for the next video. Thank you.