to take some other legal, political, or legislative route, I would like to see the town do that. I don't think it's appropriate to just point to statute and let ourselves off the hook. Thanks. Thank you. Can I make a comment? Yes. Yeah, thank you. I just want to emphasize that I suspect that the response that the residents received from staff was what it was because that is the information that the staff has handy. I don't want the implication that the staff is being disrespectful to residents to occur. I feel like they probably just gave the information that they had at the time, knowing that they would have to have further discussion. Thank you, Elaine. Is there somebody else that wanted to speak? If you could state your name for the record, please. My name's Don Down, and it has been over. And they have made an accommodation. I think the town is doing what they can with what they have. I think 60 cars is a little overstated. Because there's no place to put 60 cars. That's a parking lot. That's a real parking lot. We're given the one that's outside this building. So that's not going to happen in our neighborhood, because there's just no place to put it. The sidewalk is unusable, anyways. If you don't plow it, it's unusable. If somebody shelves up the park car there, really does anybody care? Have we changed the usability of that sidewalk? No. They have. The town has made an accommodation of a small parking area across from my house, where the nature trail goes in. And honestly, the simplest thing is to be able to park on the sidewalk. I don't have a problem. I can park on my driveway, but Deb's driveway, it's very, very steep. And I also help keep it clean for her, so she can go up and down it. But if you're up there and it snows, she goes to work sometimes a little earlier than I do, so it always doesn't get time before she leaves. I've done 180s in that driveway over the years. So thank you for your comments, Jen. I understand the nature of the problem, but we will have a one-denesis here. We'll have a full discussion on the operations plan, which we'll touch on that. Oh, OK. How about Andy? I just wanted to clarify a question. Are you asking for a variance year round or only during the winter? Only after the sun hits it, if I thought it shuffled down enough, I need to open down in the winter. What this is for is just during the snow time, because. So you're not asking to park there during the summer months? OK. Thanks, just wanted that clarification. Thanks. Even in the summer, I'd like to point out that when most people walk around our block, they walk in the middle of the road. So the same in my neighborhood, yeah. Just to respond to Elaine, and thank you for your comments, Elaine, I followed up with Dennis Lutz and the town manager back in late February or early March when I was first alerted of this issue. So it is not something that has just come upon the select board or just been something that Dennis has been pushed back on. This has been pushed back on for several months, and I'm not hearing any new creative solutions from Dennis's department. And that's why I'm urging us to think bigger and to really get creative with this, because it's not a last minute request, Elaine. It's something that's been sitting out there. Thanks, Dennis. I understand that, and I appreciate that. I mean, what I'm just objecting to is the implication that the staff is being disrespectful to residents. I did not mean to imply that, and I don't know if anyone interpreted it that way. But please don't think that that was what I was implying. I have great respect for the staff. I know how busy they are, but they'll not be framed as someone who was disrespectful to staff. I have the ultimate respect for them, but I also know that sometimes we all can only think within the boxes, the field that we've been working in, and sometimes we need to open it up for more creative solutions. They're required, the staff's required to follow policy and law if they want to do anything different that has to come to us. So that's what I'm asking for. Great. Yeah, great. Just for a quick take from the staff perspective, Dennis and his team have been looking into this. They did create a couple of parking spaces, as Mr. Basley mentioned. And I know they've been reaching out to some residents in that area to look at possible solutions on private property. If they haven't reached out to either of you yet, I'm happy to put them in touch. I spoke a lot at the bottom of our driveway. My hill is like this. So to dig into my hill and make a parking lot for myself and my daughter's car is an enormous amount of money. I just have to move. So they haven't reached out. And it's a state law, and it's also a town ordinance, so I can reach out to the town attorney and see if there's anything legally we can do to consider some other creative options. That'd be good to have that before this. We have been trying to brainstorm with staff and residents to try to figure out some options. OK. Great. Anybody else? We're public to be heard. OK. Thank you all. We're going to move on to our business items. And the first item of business is a first-class liquor license approval for HPRLLC, doing business as Railroad and Maine. And do we have a representative? We do. Courtney, hello, Courtney. Good. OK, so what I'd like to do is first hear from the board on any issues on the application and then find out what the board's pleasure is, and then we'll go from there. So any issues at all with the application? Yeah, it was pretty clean, pretty straightforward. And both Todd and Courtney have been through the training, so that's wonderful. OK, so what's the board's handy? I move that the select board approve first-class liquor license for HPRLLC, doing business as Railroad and Maine. Thank you, Andy. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Mike. OK, any further discussion about approving the first-class liquor license for Railroad and Maine? OK, hearing none, all those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. OK, so motion passes unanimously. We do not need a roll call. So before I invite you up, I just want to tell you what the usual admonition is, and that is that the select board takes the issuance of liquor licenses very seriously, as should the area establishments that serve liquor. We expect you to not serve alcohol to minors or to anyone who's obviously inebriated. And we do want to say we appreciate you doing business in Essex, and we wish you a very, very good year. And what I'd like to do, Courtney, if you would like, is to invite you up, and if you could take three minutes or so, or less, to tell us about your business. I know it used to be Essex Grill. And we've been watching a new building pop up there. So this is a time to plug your business. My heart will always be the Essex Grill, but I got outvoted by my husband, so. So it will be the Essex Grill in an elevated building. We are not looking to be fine dining. We're not looking to be at a high price point. We're not looking to be a sports bar or a bar. Our bar is definitely bigger. We'll have maybe 14 seats at our bar with 12 to 16 taps. So that's a big difference from the Essex Grill. But yeah, I mean, Todd and I, and doing what we've always done, just that building has been challenging for lots and lots of years. And so the town was nice enough to let us tear it down and start new. So we're really excited about what's to come. It's been a fun process. And when will you open? Well, August, but we were slated to open in August. But it's just been set back after set back. We were planning on opening around the 15th of October. We had a flood this past weekend. So now we are shooting for November 1st. So it'll be well worth it when it's done. Does this happen in the building or nature's? No, when we had that torrential rain, we had our hoods put in the week before. And they didn't tar around the opening correctly. And so our kitchen got flooded, which was not that big of a deal except that the tile was down but not the grout. So all the plywood that the tile's on is soaking wet. So we're still waiting for that to dry so we can grout it. But it's just the way construction goes. I thought restaurants were stressful. It's given me a whole new perspective on the construction world. So. And do you have an idea what the menu is? Can you share that? So about 50% of the Essex girl menu will stay the same. So we'll have probably two or three burgers that were on the girl's menu and then a couple new ones. Some sandwiches will stay the same. So yeah, about 50%. We're going to scale it down a little bit. The other menu is a little bit bigger. We have a huge amount of regulars. So we're going to spend some extra time on specials. So we'll have a larger specials menu every week so those frequent fliers can get a little bit more variety. So that's what? Yeah, we're hoping. Any other questions from the board? Can't wait. Thank you. Again, we appreciate you doing business here. We wish you a really great year. Thank you very much. Or to be in there October 15th, right? Yeah. I hope so. Do you say? November 1. November 1. November 1. OK. Sorry. OK. And it wouldn't surprise me if it's December 1. We'll hope for the best. OK. We're going to move on to our next item of business, which is 5B, that's participation in Button Up for Mont 2018. And with us, we have the chair of our energy committee, Will Dodge. Welcome, Will. How are you? Fine, how are you? Good. Good to see you. So why don't you take us through? We kind of went through this last year, right? We did. We did. There were a lot of legal machinations, but basically what Button Up involves is trying to, I think, as I explained last year, when we think about the energy committee, there are sort of three components to focusing on energy use in Essex generally. One is renewable generation. And we've done a lot of that over the past year, right? That's kind of sort of a third of the problem. And there have been new facilities that are going in or about to go in. We're still working on, I guess, the town's legal counsel is still looking at the offset agreement. But hopefully, it's for this close. So hopefully, that's going to start to show some savings for the town by the end of the year. So that's one component. The second component is electric vehicles and transportation. And that's sort of a more diffused subject to get at. But the good things on the horizon, our small contribution has been putting electric vehicles in the parade this year, talking a lot about looking at car share, looking at more chargers, working with the village and the town on where we could move charging infrastructure to. And we've got a couple of other things in that vein that may start to bear fruit soon. But then the third and maybe one of the most intractable energy problems is how to deal with thermal. In other words, how to deal with heating and the fact that notwithstanding climate change, we still see a lot of cold, sometimes brutal winters like this past April. So where ButtonUp comes in, it's a program from Efficiency Vermont that is designed to try to help people take steps to weatherize their homes. And that can be all different degrees. ButtonUp traditionally has been a lot about just sort of information dissemination. So getting people to sign up with Efficiency of Vermont, we'll send you coupons and information. Efficiency of Vermont has some great videos of simple things that you could do to your home. But where I think we've spoken about them and other energy committees have said, we feel like more needs to be done. In other words, just putting information out there or having us at tables at the clover on the weekend doesn't get really enough. And what we really need to do is something much more targeted. So this year there's a component of the program called ButtonUp Heroes where basically the Efficiency of Vermont is making available to each participating energy committee to get a bunch of contractors who will be there to meet with people and talk with them and offer to actually, you know, subject to signing up certain registrations, go through their homes, not do complete energy audits, but basically walkthroughs where they can spot things much more easily than probably most of us can. Things like, wow, if you just put a doorstop under this door, it's gonna make a difference or can we take a look in the attic? And with that, there's some other sort of corresponding rebates, programs to help people with weatherization. So if the town, so we need to sign an MOU with the Efficiency of Vermont to participate. I think what we tried to do is just replicate for the most part what we did last year. There's a little bit of legal back and forth. God help lawyers. I just, you know, well, they can't help themselves. I say that as an attorney here. But anyway, there's a little bit of back and forth left to work through, but assuming that that would be approved, where we would be is we would be looking to do one of these big contractor events on November 7th. We would try to pair with the Westford Energy Committee. So we haven't picked a venue yet, but we're looking at a date. Jericho and Underhill have paired together, and they're doing theirs on November 8th. So what we're thinking about kind of collectively, and we aren't trying to work with the other committees, is to say, well, let's publicize this in a way that says, if you can't make it to the one on November 7th, go to one on November 8th and vice versa. Richmond is not participating for a whole bunch of reasons, but they're doing some of their own pretty interesting events, and we may try to, you know, just to work with them as well and with our friends at Chittenden Regional. So then the other component that we've thought of as the Energy Committee, in addition to having the contractor event and publicizing that, we've thought about going potentially door to door through two neighborhoods, one in the village and one in the town. And we asked Randy Vaines about that, the as the assessor and I said, you know, we can't really do this program well for multi-tenant housing, which is a structural deficiency that we're gonna have to address over time. But for single family home, we sort of said, well, where's like the older housing stock where you'd have single family, but it's old and probably needs a little bit of TLC. And Randy gave us a couple of, you know, he talked about in the village, North Street, Grove Street, Pleasant Street, Camp Street and the Jackson Street neighborhoods. And then he said for the town, Valley View Drive, Skyline Drive, Pioneer Drive, Ira Allen, Sterns and perhaps ironically enough, Button. So I think we need to, at our next meeting, we're gonna kind of talk about like, do we have the people power to do all of that or should we pair it back and kind of say, let's do this much this year and this much next year? But the idea would be by going door to door, putting our brand new Energy Committee badges on, talking to people and try to get them interested in signing up for one of these contractors to go through. It helps kind of bring us a little closer to where the issue is and hopefully benefit the people that could really use the help the most of anybody and not just preach to the converted, which we were always ready to do and we're good at it, but it doesn't lead to quite as much progress for the community. So that's my spiel. I don't know if I'm happy to answer any questions about it or we'll open it up to the board for questions for Will. Mike? Well, you mentioned a possible event on the 7th of November. I also noticed that we're getting a little bit of a late jump. I think this was a September to December deal.  Well, I'll tell you, so it's an excellent question and I appreciate it. I'll tell you that we have in a way maybe jumped the gun a little bit in that we had a button-up table and a sign-up sheet for people who are interested with the idea that, prospectively, it's gonna be starting at both Steenfest this past two weekends ago, as well as at the farmer's market for the last farmer's market of the year. So we've started that and we got some people very interested, some really good contacts from that. My feeling, Mike, is that if we focus most of our energy on this contractor thing and on our walk-throughs, we're gonna potentially, if it works, get more kind of bang for our human energy than we have of just doing the tables and doing the info, but so. If you'll let me, I think, and the other part of that is that it's taken efficiency, Vermont, a while to get organized with all their contractors, but now we know that we have energy co-op and building energy are the ones who are sort of aligning themselves to Essex and say we will do buildings in Essex, we will go look at people's houses in Essex. September stuff, that was a great idea to jump that gun. Like I said, we got names, we got names, so we got people who are interested, so now it's just a question of getting the really good stuff organized. Thank you. Other questions coming? So you're asking us to authorize the town manager to sign MOU? Yes. But you don't have the final MOU. I can speak to that. It's basically in there, there's just, there's one page with a few handwritten notes on that, that's our attorney's review, so those are the changes that we're trying to. I was gonna ask the question because it says no changes, modifications, or amendments in the terms or conditions of this MOU shall be effective unless reduced to writing, numbered, and signed by the duly authorized representative, so I was gonna ask about those handwritten notes down below, so. Those are our attorney's requests. And what I've been told, I don't know if you ended up seeing this today, but the answer to that was all of those are accepted as long as immediately after the town's language we add, but only if the requested information is not exempt from disclosure under that act, that act being the Public Records Act, so I think what that means at the end of the day is, it's kind of obvious, but that if you don't have to disclose it, you won't. Okay, okay, other questions. So Will, when people sign up for the contractor thing, you'll share their information, contact information, with Efficiency Vermont, right? With Efficiency Vermont and with the contractors, those two contractors who are under their own NDAs with Efficiency Vermont. Okay, you'll make it explicit to the people before they give you information? Absolutely. I'm gonna share it, plus the fact that it's a public record now that could be if requested out there, as long as they understand that and give it willingly in that. Yes, absolutely. And what I'll say too is, and we did this last year, once we were done giving the information over to Efficiency Vermont, all the records we had, we destroyed them. So we're not having them float around. We basically said they're with Efficiency Vermont, now they're the custodian. Is there attention to this question later? Yeah. Yeah. We don't know. We like that he was thinking about that. We like that he made them the custodian of the record. Well done, Will. Well that's, yeah, that's the idea. If we have to change that, obviously we're happy to, but we ought to think critically about it. How funny. Okay. Any other questions, Mark? If not, sure. What's the board's pleasure? I would move. Go ahead. I move the select board to authorize the unified manager to sign a memorandum of understanding allowing the Essex Energy Committee to participate in Button Up Vermont 2018. Thank you, Mike.  Second. Okay, good. Any further discussion about authorizing the unified manager to sign the MOU for the Essex Energy Committee? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Elaine, did you vote? Elaine, are you there? Here I am, aye. Aye, okay. All right, so motion passes unanimously. We thank you for all the effort that you've put into this on behalf of our community. Well, thank you so much. Absolutely, that's great. We're making progress. Excellent. Okay, moving right along, we're gonna go to the next item of business, which is accept purchasing policy. And with us tonight, we have Sarah, Macy, and Lauren Mirceau. So I'd like to ask you to come on up. How are you? Nice to see you. Okay, so we've read it. And thank you, Evan. We got it a little earlier than our packet. Normally, then we normally get our packet because it is pretty extensive. But if you could walk through the highlights of that, that would be great. So purchasing policy. Dennis and I started talking about this three years ago. And it's a big issue. Wouldn't it be possible to move the mic closer to Lauren, please? And it's a big issue. So we finally, we've been aligned for three years and decided that this was the time to do this. I looked at the town purchasing policy that we were working off and it was dated 1989 and the thresholds hadn't been updated since then. And so it was, well, it was time, plus it's very difficult to work under the two different systems for the village and the town. And so this policy has been put together with the village, the old village type policy, the old town policy, the VLCT model policy. And then I went to a webinar where they had the policy of golden Colorado, which had some good stuff in it. So we took some of that too. The big thing that finally brought it all together was the table of contents. It was so huge that to do it without that would have been a real problem. One of the most important things here is the thresholds for authorization to purchase. And so we, and we've actually increased, we've added a category. We now have incidental up to $500 routine. Five to 2,000 minor is 2,000 to five. Moderate is five to 10 and large purchases are over 40,000. And I did take a look at the a calculator for inflation from 1989 and it was 25,000 before. And it actually would get to 51,000. So if you ever, if you wanted to increase that, that would be fine during this discussion. Anyway, so it outlines who was authorized to purchase under the different authorities. So that's a big piece of this. We have people signing and we can't read their signatures. So that's another piece of it, is to have an authorization card for each person that signs so that we know who's signing. It's something that finance really wanted to get in there. The sealed bid process, we've gone through that. Criterias for bids and Dennis is working on a model bid pricing form. A bunch of them as a matter of fact, depending on how big the price is and those will be attached when they're finished. We do allow for pre-qualification for single projects for a list of pre-qualified vendors for things that we do all the time like roofs and HAC and things like that. And then there's exceptions for emergencies. Recurring purchases, repair parts, some special exceptions for public works and wastewater that buy specialty items. Leases are covered. We do have a portion about how we appoint the village attorney and engineer and auditors and the town and village auditors. There's a section on real property that we can purchase, how to dispose of them, our insurance requirements and our charge card policy. So it's pretty comprehensive. We had started out, we put it all together. We sent it out to the department heads. They sent it back with all of their suggestions. I think we've put most of their suggestions back in. We sent it back out, came back in. More suggestions, went back out again. So it's really been back and forth a number of times. And hopefully you'll be ready to accept it sometime soon. So just for about the process here, we're looking at it tonight to accept it. It doesn't mean it's approved, but it's to say that we have it. And we're gonna look at it from the select board point of view. The identical draft was sent to the, or will be, if it has been, to the trustees and they're gonna look at the identical policy, but from through their lens. And then October 11th, we're gonna have our joint meeting between the trustees with the select board. And we'll have this on the agenda and see if it can be approved or if major updates are requested from either side or both. We may have to have new language and then come back. But I just wanted to make sure that it's clear that tonight we're just accepting it, saying that we received it and we can give you our feedback. And the same thing will happen with the trustees, but we'll have the full discussion when, or the two boards on the 11th. Okay, and also for clarification, you did that inflation calculation, but on the 25,000. Yeah, I didn't do it on the other numbers, but. You didn't? I didn't. Okay, so all these are from 89? No, no, these are new ones. In 1989, that the large purchase, the major purchase was 25,000. So, I had to go to. That's what's in the document. And now it's 40. Now we've made it 40. It is 40, okay. Yeah, so you could, and like I said, if you wanted, you could make it higher. So, I'm sorry, 40 is the threshold of which somebody would have to be bid. Right, exactly. Competitive bid. Okay. Okay, thank you. All right, I'd like to open up to the board for questions for Lorena or Sarah. I'm good. I thought it was well done. It'd be a great copy, yeah. Yeah, the only comment I have, and I know you've seen it already, is it just happened to be triggered by seeing the water quality superintendent as authorized to buy a specific item. And my question is, and it's not specific to the water quality superintendent, it's just in any case, I don't know, I didn't go through and see if there were any other instances where a specific position title was given the responsibility, the singular responsibility to buy something. I just wanna make sure that we always have an alternate, in case that position isn't filled or that person's not available, and we have a, I just wanted to make sure that we don't tie ourselves up by having agents. The unified manager can designate somebody if somebody's missing. The unified manager is the top purchasing agents. So, if you did have an empty position, you could do it that way, they have it, and I did make a change in that piece about the water quality, and I just said, or their designate can do those orderings, but. Okay, so we just wanna make sure we always have an alternate person. Yeah, yeah. Okay, thanks. Okay, Larry. I had some questions to have, and I don't know if they got to you today. I was in meetings all afternoon, so I apologize. Yeah, that's okay. You could shoot them at me, or Lauren. Well, I'll just, I'll reduce it to two, and then I'll just hand you all the nits. On 15, I wondered if you'd be amenable to changing the word citizens to residents because I often get pushed back from people who are non-U.S. citizens, that that word just sets them off because they are residents as much as anyone else, and they would like to be refrigerated. And that would be under emergency purchases, sections B and C. We'll page in the document. 15. Sure. B and C. In a similar, just discussion point, since I think we were trying to make the gender-neutral in most town documents under contracts on page 17, we referred to the contractor and his employees, so if we could switch that to there. Again, I just want to let people know we're trying really hard to be gender-neutral here, and that's the only instance I saw where I think you missed it. Otherwise, you really were very thorough, and I thank you for that. And it's a great package. Enjoyed reading and I learned a lot, so thanks for all the hours, weeks, months, years that you put into it. Yeah, and this is part of our alignment process that we've been talking about, and hopefully we'll make it easier for staff once you have these aligned. We recognize the amount of work that goes in to do that, so thank you. Elaine, did you have anything? Thank you, I have a quick question regarding page 16 under professional services for the town attorney and the village attorney. Okay. Both of the definitions, both of the town and the village attorney it's mentioned that they're appointed in accordance with the Chargers, but there's a great deal of description in the village attorney section about how does Board of Trustees will use the attorney and when the attorney is not being used with permission of the Unified Manager, and there's none of that for the town attorney. So I'm not sure if either the village attorney definitions or sections should be shortened or the town attorney section should be made similar to the village because I'm correct, there are procedures, similar procedures in the town for use of the town attorney. Okay, thank you, Elaine. I believe I lifted the village attorney part out of the Charter and it may not be in the Charter for the town, but I can look at where that is. So you can look at that and see if the village one should be shortened or if the town attorney one should be included a little more detail. Right. Okay, by anything else, Elaine? That was it, thank you. Okay, anybody else? Would you like a motion? I have a way to go. I would move that the select Board accept the new purchasing policy for the town of Essex and village of Essex Junction. Thank you, I need to have a second on that, accepting this. Second. Okay. Any further discussion on accepting the purchasing policy with the select Board comments? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye, so motion has unanimously. Yes.  The finance department, the department heads really put a lot of time and effort into this. There was no gnashing of teeth. There was no, you know, this is my, the way we always do it. This was a really good group effort of them working to try to make finances job a bit easier day by day and their own, knowing what they would be able to do and not be able to do with authority and try to streamline our purchasing and our services so that things could get done in an expedient manner and not have to bring everything to either the village board or select board. If it was an emergency, we could just take care of it. So really well done by Lauren and Sarah and all the department heads. Yeah, and we thank you. We understand the level of effort that went to this. I think it puts us in a very good place. And we also understood that both boards were gonna have to look at it and go through it and decide, did it suit your needs as well. Thank you. So, thanks. So we're gonna move on then to item 5D which is looking to accept the records retention policy finance department retention plan with Sarah and Lauren. And it's kind of telling me because we just heard from Will Dodge from the energy committee about how he's handling his records. So if you could do the same thing, just kind of walk us through. Certainly, so this is not quite as involved as the purchasing policy. This is something that finance has been talking about a lot over the last six to eight months. We have, we are just bursting at the seams with paper and the old vaults and up at the tree farm and we need to decide what do we do with it. The village had a record retention policy. The town did not have one. And not too long ago, the Vermont Government Finance Officers Association hosted somebody from the SARA which is the Vermont State Archives and Records Administration who did a workshop about what they're doing with municipal records and where they were going with these things. They've been revamping their general record schedules and old disposition orders to be a more comprehensive format. And they are working on that as we speak. They have a number of them already ready up on their website and they meet like, I think once a month with different stakeholders to talk about what they can work on next. So this is a couple of parts. The policy we lifted from a model policy that the SARA put together and we altered it slightly to meet our needs. We, for example, we took out one reference that we actually couldn't access because it was on their private server. And just a note for everybody, this does not currently apply to the police department. Which is a unique animal. So the records management policy states that we are going to generally follow the SARA rules unless we come up with rules for ourselves that have longer time frames than what they have. And that is what you'll find in the attachment. Attachment A is specific to the finance department. And so our plan is to get the policy in place which allows you all to accept the policy and look over it and hopefully approve it in the near future so that we can then move forward with the finance department. We can start to clear clean house with what we have and then we'll let the other departments come on board as they have time over the next year or so. I've been known to give really short timelines and then not be able to follow through them. So we'll just give them a little bit more time. But to start with, I've listed in attachment A some cryptic references to the SARA general record schedules that we referenced in order to make our schedule. We're going to follow what the SARA says unless we think it should be longer. And then the spreadsheet that is attached to this details some of the things that we do want to specifically keep for longer than the SARA has noted. And there are just a couple of notes on there from our discussions in finance. And I'd be happy to answer any questions you guys have. Okay, thank you. And this is similar to what we said before on the purchasing policy where we're looking to view this from the select board lens. And then I think next week, the trustees will look at it through their lens and then on the 11th we'll have this also, I think, right? On the topic to hopefully come and hopefully approve it at that meeting. And also, you need to know that this has also gone to the department heads for their review as well. So they've had a chance. So similar process, how you did the purchasing, okay. All right, thank you. So I'll open up to the board for questions or comments for either Sarah or Laura. So I've read through this document. I can't tell what records I need to maintain. So personally, or as a select board? Well, as you know, we got these nice devices here that all my stuff, I do everything on here now. Okay, so I've had this for a year now. So I know that I've got a year's worth of documents on here. The rest of them are on this device. So if I have a public records request that reaches beyond a year, I've got to surrender my phone. I want to know when I don't have to hold on to my phone and surrender my phone anymore. So that's one, I guess, example, you know, we have minutes, we have agendas, all of that stuff. I can't find in here where it tells me what our policy is or is it up to us to decide that or? I'd lean toward the latter. And so we have not talked about any records that departments other than finance keep in this iteration. We've set the stage where we're working on a record retention plan. The policy allows us to do that. And we've started with our department and then each department, each group will come back with what they have. We can certainly look through what Visara has. We'd be happy to help with that, but at this point we've not done it. I'll confess some of the things that the town fairs on, Thursday and Thursday, and there's a session that I actually requested asking about records retention. So they're having the sorrow come in to talk to, select work members about it. Excellent. And you can bring all their information back. Yes. But that leads me back to my question that I think I may have worded poorly when I asked it earlier. Is this sounds like it is the finance department's retention policy, not a general policy for everyone to follow. That's where I'm saying I can't find what applies to me in this document. Certainly the attachment is finance specific. The policy says that we're gonna do what Visara tells us to do. They have some additional resource, reference information on their website and some additional stuff in the works. So that would point you in the direction to start with any of your records. So the policy says that we as a select board should go look at what Visara recommends for select boards to do, and then we should set our own retention point. That we would then be happy to put into an Excel spreadsheet and label attachment. All right, I just wanted an understanding. And it also says that you'll retain them as long as they say, or if you choose, you can retain them longer. You have those choices. But you will at least retain them as long as they say. That's what the policy says. Yeah, okay, all right. Thanks for that question. Anybody else? So digitizing the records is not a substitute for paper. Is that right? Some instances, permanent retention must be in paper unless, hold on, unless it's the policy of the town. Oh, here we go. Provision is made by the municipalities to transfer files to future file format. So let's say we're saving everything in PDF right now. And in 75 years, PDF has gone the way of microfiche, and we have to transfer all those records to the new format. Permanent retention, however, is unusual in the record schedules. Permanent retention is until the state of Vermont no longer exists. It's a really high bar. And so for anything other than permanent retention, electronic format is fine. And I think we've only got two things on our schedule that are permanent. That's payroll records. And the other one is we choose, we want the audits kept forever, I guess. It's good information, but I don't know. God. How'd the audit of 1890 come? Oh, that is so interesting. I wouldn't have a fun. So is this the first step then in this retention policy that you sort of made an umbrella one? Then you have the specific spreadsheet for your finance. And Evan, is that right? The other departments will be then putting their piece in here over the next, whatever. And I can envision administration working with the board, select board, and village board on your retention schedules. I don't suspect that you guys would just create, we would work with you on that as well. As we've mentioned that everything that has been put on your tablets is held by the village or the town. So we are the record's keeper of 90 plus percent of whatever you get. What you do on your own cell phones is your record. And we probably could help recover something off of your phone quicker, et cetera. But we recommend not, you know, doing as limited amount of work on your cell phones as you can. When you send us an email, it goes into our email server. We remain the record's retention. But if you text, that's your record. But we don't know how long we have to keep it. But you don't know. Yeah. So we'll get through that. But we will help from administration through the boards on your records retention. All right, anything else? Do you have a motion? I would. I would move that the select board accept the record management policy and finance department retention rules. I would also recommend the trustees, no, that's not us. I would recommend the select board and trustees approve the records management plan and finance department retention plan. Mike, any further discussion about accepting the records retention policy? And finance department retention plan. Okay, hearing none, all those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you all very much. Awesome work. Thank you so much. Well done. Thank you. Okay, we're going to move on to our next item of business, which is a five E and that's approval to dispose of town property. There's a motorcycle. So welcome Chief Gary. Thank you. And here it looks like you were going to have you up for the next cup. Yes. So yeah, you want to just walk us through what's going on with the motorcycle? Sure. Part of when I accepted chief position was to start analyzing where we're spending money well and where we could be more efficient and both our procedures and our expenses. Part of one of the ones that came up to mind was the motorcycle. We've had a motorcycle program for probably almost 20 years. The town has purchased, historically purchased motorcycles that we have owned. I would tell you that our return on investment in the last four or five years is not good. We do not do a lot of, as you can assume, with the weather, we don't do a lot of motorcycle work. And it is my opinion at this time that we could use the monies that we're using for that program and other programs where we could make better use of the monies. So what I'm looking for is permission to put the motorcycle program on pause and dispose of that asset to be used for another program we're going to talk about in just a little while. Okay, chief. Questions for the chief? Irene. Don't tell me you're going to ride the dog. No, ma'am. Okay, just check it. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. So chief, when the motorcycle program was initiated 20 years ago, there was a need that was taken care of. And you see that that has changed? See that has changed. We had more people that were certified at that time that took an interest in it. We don't have as many certified officers. We literally had no one ride it this year. Last year it was taken out twice. We were paying money to put tires on it, to inspect it, to keep it registered. We can be just as efficient in a car. So I think we can make better use of that money. In fact, I'd like to, that was part of the request, is I'd like to sell the motorcycle and earmark that money to use for a different project. And then you don't have to worry about the weather. You can just use a cruiser for doing this traffic work. That's correct. And then we can certainly restudy it in a few years, but I don't think we're being efficient with what we're doing right now. Got it, thank you. Okay, any other questions? Yeah, Mike. Motion whenever you're ready. Okay. So we can do a monthly stuff time for discussion if you want. So. Okay. I moved the select board to declare the Essex Police Department 2006 Harley Davidson FLHPI motorcycle with a VIN number of one HD, one FW, excuse me, one FHW, 146 Y628377 as surplus and authorizes sale of this motorcycle. Proceeds from the sale of the motorcycle will be directed to the canine pilot project expenses. Yes, assuming that passes. Thank you, Mike. Do we have a second on Mike's one second? Thank you very much. Yeah, any further discussion about approving the disposal of this 2006 Harley Davidson motorcycle? Elaine, any comments or questions? Okay, nobody? Okay, then all those in favor of authorizing the disposal of the police department's 2006 Harley Davidson. Signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Okay, so motion passes unanimously. So assuming the next one passes, we'll see how, where that money goes. Okay, so we'll move on to item business item 5F, which you're looking for approval of a canine pilot program. So I wanted to tell us a little bit about that. Yes, thank you. The Essex Police Department has never had a canine, typically how the canine program works in the state of Ramon is different departments have them and they are loaned out from different towns when they're needed by other departments. So actually, since I've been here 30 years, whenever we needed a canine, we basically contact agencies that have those and asked to use them. We use them about 25 times a year, approximately for everything from building searches to chasing bad guys that are fleeing from scenes to finding missing children, to finding missing adults, for drug searches, for all kinds of stuff. One of the limitations we have is we are always at the beck and call of, is the dog available. Basically, there's a list that runs on the state. We know where dogs are, if we need one, we call. And if there's one available, typically that agency will send the dog. And depending on where it is, depends on the delay we have. We're lucky to have three or four in Chittenden County, South Burlington, Colchester has had a dog, historically, Burlington's had a dog, and the Sheriff's Office has recently had a dog. We recently hired Officer Ben Cherivelli from the Chittenden County Sheriff's Office, is a new full-time officer with us, and he actually was the canine officer for the Sheriff's Office. In the state of Vermont, handlers are trained with canines. The canine actually belongs to the Chittenden County Sheriff's Office, to the Sheriff. So when Ben came to work from us, we basically incapacitated the canine program for the Sheriff's Office, because typically they don't retrain a canine with a new handler. The Sheriff has come and offered us a deal to donate the dog and all the dog's equipment to Essex with a little bit of an exchange of some technology services that we're already providing to them, and basically willing to give it to us. Dog is about three years into its working life. It has approximately another three or four or five years. What I'd like to do is take the opportunity with almost no cost to us to give this resource a try. I'd also like to be able to, if we had this resource, be able to pay back a lot of the communities that we have borrowed dogs from over the years. That's a quid pro quo. I'm sorry? If there's no charge from the other departments too. No, there is no charge. When we use canine services from somebody else, there's no charge, and I would propose that we would do the same thing. The unit, Officer Chervelli, the dog is certified. It's up to date. Important things to know about this dog is this is not what historically is known as a attack dog or a bite dog. So this dog is only for search and rescue and for drugs, not including marijuana. So one of the big issues in the past when you talk about should we have canines, one of the big things is the expense. They're the ones with the liability when you have bite dogs. A lot of times you get sued a lot when you have dogs biting people. So the good news is, is this is not a bite dog. It is not trained to attack. It is trained to search for people, for fugitives, and it's searched to alert on drugs, not marijuana, which was kind of a nice thing when I heard that. So like I said, the cost that we would only, what I'd like to do is the money coming from the motorcycle, the estimate we got from the Harley dealership is they thought somewhere around $7,000, but to use that money towards the dog program, you'll see in the attachment that I put in, we're looking at probably, I think in the end, about $3,000 a year, all of the training is already paid for, all the equipment is already paid for. Basically, we have food and insurance that we would have to pay for this year, for the next two years. What I'd like to do it as a pilot project for two or three years, see how it works, see if it's a benefit to us, and then come back and report to you about how it's working. I think we pretty much are gonna cover most of the expenses under, with the money that we would get from the motorcycle for the first two years. Okay, interesting program. I'm just curious, does the dog live with the officer, or does the dog stay here? Okay. No, so the dog does live with the officer, and has been with the officer since he left the sheriff's department. So the dog, yeah, the dog goes home with the officer. One of the things to make you aware of is part of the expense, before when they talk about the expense of having a canine, you also require now through fair labor standards to pay the officer for taking care of the dog, feeding the dog, grooming the dog, walking the dog, taking it out, veterinary appointments, that type of stuff. Most departments now build that into their 40 hour week so that there's no overtime that is needed. The only overtime you typically pay is if the dog gets called out after hours, but the dog will be working a normal shift with that officer, which is an evening shift, which is usually where we see most of our activity. I think we're going to see it very useful. We have had a couple cases of lost elderly people, one about 10 years ago that we lost, unfortunately, during cold winter, that with a canine, we probably was in a field, just 100 yards away from the house, that with a canine, there wasn't one available at the time. That's the type of thing that we can solve some of these cases. The dog actually, when it was working for the sheriff's office, came and did a search for us where we were standing almost right on top of the suspect and couldn't see him. The dog showed up, got out of the car and walked about 10 or 30 feet and said, hey, that guy's right there. So very, very good. I've spoken with one of the lead trainers down at the academy. He speaks very highly of the officer and of the dog. So I think we've got a great opportunity to try this program for almost no cost. So I think it's a great idea. So the dog has a good track record? The dog has a good track record. It has no, to my knowledge, no legal suits for anything. And so it's ready to get up and going. The next piece, after I have approval, would be to write a policy. We've got copies of all the policies of state police and everybody that's got a dog in the area has to formulate a policy and then get that instituted and then we'd be up and running. So it's trained to follow the scent of a person? Correct. And to smell for drugs other than marijuana? That is correct. And when he does find the suspect, he says, it's not a pointer, right? But it will sit and focus and bark or something? That's correct. So we would use it on several other things. Lost people, lost children, lost adults. We would use it on if we're chasing a suspect. We would use it for when we have alarms at buildings where we find a door open, the officers go inside those buildings to search those buildings in the middle of the night. Typically what will happen is we'll actually send the dog in first to see if there's a bad guy in there. So we have the ability to actually reduce potential liability issues where officers are going in where they can't see and coming across a suspect in their dog is quite often used to if we're in a warrant or serving a warrant on a house, maybe a drug house, we can have the dog is very encouraging about people surrendering when they need to surrender. It reduces our liability or our need sometimes to elevate the force level where we have to maybe go to an impact weapon or chemical spray.  Will the dog need a doggy vest to go into these situations? You know what? I don't know the answer to that question. Certainly if it would actually be a member of the police department. So if it did, we have the money to cover it. The sheriff, my intent is we drop an MOU with the sheriff, but he basically told us all equipment for the animal which includes all the equipment to go in the car, all the vests, all the, because there's a heat alert systems in the vehicle to make sure that the dog doesn't get feeding, all that. He's agreed to provide all the equipment and no charge. So this officer will be required to have access to a car all the time then. That is correct. There's a cage in it for the dog. That's correct. So I take it home. That's correct. So what I'd like to do is I'm gonna use one of the old vehicles that we were rotating out is use that as the K9 vehicle. Because we were just gonna get rid of it. So what I'd like to do is that means we don't have to bring another car in. Again, as a pilot project, and all that equipment that we have will fit into the sedan vehicles that we have. So again, no cost for a new vehicle. And again, since it's one dog, one trainer, it's not like with this pilot program, you're gonna need to bring in another trainer and get him, because it's only one per dog, right? That is correct. No one else handles the dog. It is one handler, one dog.  We'd like to assess it for the next three years. I mean, if things obviously don't go well in two years, we'd wanna come back and tell you that things aren't going well and we'd like to pull the plug in the program. But I'm thinking about a two or three year window would give us an opportunity to do an evaluation, a cost evaluation, a use valuation, get him out in the community. There's some good public relations that we can do with an animal too. Son of a chef, a German chef right here, so. No, it's actually a lap. Yeah, and I'm happy that we can bring Wes in so that you can get a chance to meet him, but I just wanted to start the process of if this was a viable idea. Again, I think it's gonna be a much more program that we're gonna use much more often than we are for the motorcycle. And this is where I'm kinda doing work, yeah. You gotta use the plug, the limited plug. What are you doing? Speaking of PR, will you have a new details or something on that car that you're using to let people know we now have a K-9 unit? Cause I think it's important that people know that. Yep, we plan to do a whole PR thing, both in the Essex Reporter, if it's approved. We also intend on him being around and doing community interactions in the park and in those places. The vehicle would be marked as a K-9 vehicle, yes. Yep, so the people are aware what it is. Other questions? Okay, what's the board's pleasure on this one? All right. Somebody? Or the wealth. All right, now I move that the select board and manager, it says and manager here, approved a police K-9 pilot program. The program will be reviewed each year and on the third year or sooner, the police department will provide a K-9 program outcome report and recommendations for the future of a K-9 program. Okay, thank you. Second. Is that a second? Okay, okay. Any further discussion about approving this K-9 pilot program? And again, we'll be able to use the funds that you get from surplus in the motorcycle to offset some of us, a lot of the costs. All right, then all those in favor? Signify by saying aye. Aye. All right. Pass it unanimously. Thank you, we wish you good luck and we look forward to seeing you. Thank you. Okay, so we're moving on to business item 5G and as long as we have you up here chief, this is the replacement of an in-car video system. And it only seems like a few years ago we said, we approve this one, but it was 10 years ago. 10 years ago, almost 10 years ago. Yeah. So as you can see from your memo, actually we're the first police department in the state of Vermont that had in-car videos with a VHS in the back of the trunk when I first came here, if you can believe it. We have had two separate systems from them. We went, when we got rid of the VHS, we went to a hard drive system. And then about, I think it was 16 years ago, we went to what is now called the DV1, which was produced by WatchGuard, which is a camera and actually a DVR burner that sits up in the headliner of the car that burns disc and burns video. So we've been using a WatchGuard system for about 16 years. The most recent system is nine years old and we've been out of warranty for four years. One of the things I wanna, I guess, point out because one of the things I'm gonna do is we're gonna talk right to the finance policy immediately. One of the big things we're asking for is permission to sole source this purchase. As I said, we've been a WatchGuard customer for 16 years. They are pretty much the industry standard out there. And we would like to reuse some of the equipment that we have that we can only reuse. An example of that is a server and a workstation that some of the stuff gets loaded to. We can only reuse it if we're using equipment from the same manufacturer. If we moved to a different manufacturer, we'd have to buy that equipment differently. However, I think the other things out there that are important are the fact that we've been with this company for 16 years. The equipment has out way outlasted the warranty period. We've always had cooperation. The other thing I would tell you is the big players in the games, this is these are the systems they use. We're not state police three years ago. They also had the DV ones, they converted to the four REs, which is what this system is. Main state police, DV ones, they converted to the four REs. There are some unique features of this system, not only the warranties, the support from the manufacturer, the beefiness of the equipment. There's a couple pieces that I think are important that you understand. Right now our officers and records folks spend about probably 20 to 40 minutes per shift dealing with DVR, DVDs. So what happens is an officer goes out in a car, they have a little body mic that they take with them and they take a DVD and they put it into the DVD burner that's in the car. That DVD burner, when an officer's out working records what they're doing when either they turn the lights on or they turn their microphone on. If they have an incident that's an important incident they can take the DVD out like a DUI and they take it into the office and then they have to put it into the system to catalog it and then they have to catalog it, they burn one copy that goes into evidence and it sits there. We then get a request for the state's attorney's office to then produce the DVDs which records then request from the evidence technicians to pull the disc out. We have to make three copies of the disc and then send them down to the state's attorney's office. We have to do that for every single disc that we deal with. So there is a significant portion of officer's times and records staff time that we are having to physically interface with this equipment. This new watch card system when the officer drives his cruiser into the back of the car, the video is automatically uploaded into our network onto a server that's there. The officer basically just says this was the case and it's done. When the state's attorney's office says, okay, we need video. The records office goes in and looks on the system, logs into the system and says, okay, this video, this video and this video, check, send, the video is uploaded to a server in the cloud and the people that we're sending the video to, the state's attorneys and defense attorneys are sending an email link where they can go and watch and download the video themselves. So we are no longer burning multiple discs to then have officers hand carry them to the state's attorney's office. It literally is gonna be a revolution for us. I will tell you that there are agencies outside the state that are doing the email delivery. There's none in the state that are doing it right now, but there are many that are doing it outside. So it works successfully. We will actually be the first one doing that in Chittin County, but the systems themselves, we still, like I can tell you for the state police, they still burn to a disc and still do it that way. So I would tell you that it's features, those features and a couple other features that only WatchGuard offers is why we're making the request to sole source. And we've definitely hit the threshold. We're talking about $82,000. The good news is, is we would like to go to our equitable sharing, which is our money that we receive from our DEA officer, where they're involved in cases and assets are turned back over. We get a portion of those and we save those pennies and we save them for exactly this type of thing. We have money within that. Within that fund to cover this purchase completely. So there'd be no impact on taxpayers at all. We are purchasing a five year warranty on top of that. So the first of when we bought this, the last time we only had a three year warranty. And so you kind of are flying by the seat of your pants and paying for repairs for a few years when you don't do that. We've got enough that we can buy an extended warranty with these. The last thing I would like to tell you is this potentially positions us for the use of body cameras. So our cameras that we use now is a camera that sits in the car. And I can certainly if you're interested, I have flyers that talk about the different cameras, but it's basically a camera that faces forward. And this one actually has a wide angle, almost 120 degree angle. The problem is, is an officer can still step out of the vehicle and walk away from the vehicle and you'll lose all that video. And I'm sure you've seen that in the news about. And that's why you see a lot of police departments that are moving to body cameras. The nice part is this is completely, you can completely integrate a body camera. If we made the decision and what we're looking at is coming back to you probably in a few months with a proposal to start like we are with the K9 program, a pilot project for body cameras to test them out and see do we want to move to those. I can tell you 99% of the time they are fantastic. They're quite often we may get a complaint about an officer and going right back to the video and playing that video answers the question of yes or no, that happened. So WatchGuard makes a video, a body camera video that again some of these agencies use that will completely integrate into this system. We would buy that and it would plug right in and work. And that gives us a video outside of just the car. And I'd be happy to, if you go to WatchGuard site or if you want I can send links. It shows the difference on a motor vehicle stop. They have a couple of videos where they had a shooting where an officer involved shooting where the action started in front of the car and you saw it happen. And as it moves off to the field to the left all you can now hear is audio. And it shows with the video, the body camera, you see all of that. The other nice part about these guys features is if three people are wearing body cameras they all integrate to each other. So if I come up on scene and Evan's body camera is on and mine's not on, it will realize that it's on and my camera will turn on and start filming from my angle. And if someone else shows up it will turn on and start showing from their angle. So the technology is incredible. We have positioned ourselves with Rob Paluba's assistance. The last two big storage units that we bought for storage of data are these huge storage devices that have the ability to expand. This was one of the reasons that we were talking about doing that. The ability to integrate building video, store video, car video, potentially body camera video and deliver that in one package to someone like the state's attorney's office. So I'm looking for, we'd like to use the equitable sharing money. I'm looking for permission to sole source just because of what we're trying to do with this company and some of the features are specific only to them. You said the state police use WatchGuard but they're still burning DVDs. They're still. But they're likely to go also. I don't know. So there's a difference between storing in the cloud literally storing your video. Because we have storage on site, we would not be storing in the cloud. State police looked at it and it was so cost prohibitive to store their video in the cloud and they don't have local storage to be able to store locally. So what happens is we would store locally on our big, huge, called SAN storage devices. And when we were shipping out video, basically what happens is we lease a server that sits out in the cloud. And when we say send to the state's attorney's office, it uploads that video up to that server and that's where the state's attorney in defense can get it so they're not connected to us. We have no security issues. So we are not, we're storing locally. We built the infrastructure to be able to store locally and because of that, and that's why state police didn't go within the cloud because it was cost prohibitive. Thank you. Okay, questions from the board about this. Irene. I'm really getting a body camera. Oh, I was just checking to make sure that was just an example. All you will see is me sitting in meetings all day, fending off ideas from the chief and from Dennis and others. No, I don't get a body camera, but we have discussed this and I like the idea of pilot programs so that we can see the resources and how it will play and we do get from time to time a complaint about an officer or as we've all seen on TV, a grainy photo of what's being shown from the police car and all you hear on the side is screaming, yelling, get down or whatever and then unfortunately gunshots. I'm happy to say that Captain Hoy came from St. Albans. They've had body cameras for years. Captain Hoy said once you have them you won't get rid of them. They're fantastic. And the technology these days with the picture quality is really unbelievable. The real question is data storage because as you get up in resolution the size of the file is immense. And that is one of the sole source and I'm happy to provide you, WatchGuard has provided us a sole source letter. WatchGuard stores video in two different formats, a high res and a low res. So we have the ability to pick what we're, so if it's a case that's not important when you say not important case it keeps only the low resolution file and so our storage is much less. If it is a serious case like a DUI, when you say DUI it stores it in high resolution. So it's that type of cutting edge technology that these guys are thinking about and putting in there that again is why they're the top dogs. Policy would say when they have to be turned on. So we already have a policy in reference to mobile in car use of the camera system. We already have that. Like I said, I'd like in a few months to come back to you with a pilot program for the body cameras and we would have a policy for the body camera use. It would be pretty close to the car camera use. But yes, it would say when it has to be on, when it has to be off. There's obviously certain restrictions when you're going into where people have expectation of privacy right into someone's personal home. So all those things need to be covered. I can tell you there's lots of agencies have been doing it. There's a lot of policies out there we would probably, they've all been vetted. And so, yeah. So it would be good if you have links to be able to give them to Evan so we can get those in advance. Give them before you do come forward so we can get those if they can be given. Questions or comments to the chief on the request for the sole source for watch guard? Anybody? Elaine? Any questions? Nope, I'm good. I'm good, thank you. Okay, yeah, that was very clear explanation. Thank you. All right, what's the board's pleasure then on this one? So we are looking only for a motion to have it sole sourced? Correct. But the recommendation has that in there though, right? It does. Yeah, so specifically from watch question? No, no, I was gonna offer to do the motion but then I got confused when. Go with the motion. Okay. I move that the select board authorize the Essex police to use up to $81,000 of equitable sharing money to purchase 10 replacement in-car video systems from watch guard as quoted August 14, 2018 and additional network updates required for the new systems. Second. Thank you. All right, any further discussion about approving? Pardon? He mentioned it from that vendor. So I think that's. Yeah, yep, yep. Okay, any other further discussion on approving the replacement of the in-car video systems sole sourcing to watch guard for 81K? Okay, hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Okay, great. So we were unanimous on that. So three there. Very good. Good luck with that and doing great. Thank you. Very exciting to hear what's going on there. The change is very positive. Moving forward. Thank you. Okay, we're on to business item 5H and Greg, we're gonna hear about the V-Trans request for right-of-weight documentation. This was an interesting one to read. Going back to 1851, some old timey looking maps and stuff, very cool. So you wanna? Sure. So V-Trans is doing some project work at the intersection of Vermont Route 117 that's for the road and North Williston Road as part of that. They did some research and then they asked the town to also do some research to figure out if I guess the width, right-of-weight widths of the road. Shannon and Dennis worked together. Shannon put together a lot of old documents from Deeds and that old timey language that you just mentioned. And found that North Williston Road is a three-rod road. Or 594 inches, right? 49 and a half feet, very round number there. Yeah, that's what a rod is, I guess, about three of them. Who would have known? So a recommendation that have the chairman write to V-Trans and tell them about our findings and offer them to do some more research if they still have questions about Route 117. Okay, because that beech tree is gone and so is that other tree. Yeah, right, the trees that are references. I went and checked today and there was no trees there. They're gone, interesting. Okay, so what you're looking for is approval for the chair to sign the letter to send to V-Trans, telling them our findings and that more work is needed so that we can retain it right away. Is that right? Basically that, we found the research that's needed for North Williston Road, Route 117 is not, the information is not readily available. Okay, okay, all right, questions, comments? Anyway, Elaine, anything, any questions, comments on this V-Trans request for right-of-way documentation? No, it was quite entertaining from a historical perspective. Yeah, and that handwritten document even was fascinating. And that was the best part. Yeah, even the translation wasn't quite clear because it was kind of hard to read. Okay, then what's the board pleasure on this one? You would want to authorize the chair to sign the letter? Andy? I move that the select board authorize the chair to sign the letter to V-Trans. I'm not sure you're saying what though. What's the, what are the words? Authorize the chair to send the letter to V-Trans. That has been drafted and is in your packet. Okay, thank you, thank you. Irene, any further discussion about approving the chair to sign the letter to V-Trans for this right-of-way? Just a comment, it seemed like that the memo that was included ended abruptly. That's why I asked the question, why it seemed like there was a page missing. I'll check on that, I just noticed the same thing. There's no signature or so. But I think we got it. Yep. Okay, so any further discussion? Okay, hearing none, all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. All right, we're unanimous today. In lieu of the real clerk being here, I have the document free to sign. Thank you, deputy clerk, I appreciate it. Okay, now we're gonna move on to our last item of business, which is five aye, and that's the minutes of September 10th, 2018. Do I have a motion? I would move approval of September 10th, 2018 minutes with select board member corrections. Okay, thank you, Irene. Do I have a second? Second. Okay, thank you, Andy. I think that was Andy, right? Yep. Okay, all right, we'll start on page one. Page two, Irene. On line 73, please, I'd like to insert the words on other paths after the word preferable in the middle of the sentence. To indicate, I'm not looking for more lighting on that same path. I wondered if everybody else would want them too once they experienced them on this path. So on other paths? On other paths. Okay, anybody have an issue? We're good, okay. Anything else on two? Page three, four, page five, Irene. On line 218, please. While I am amazed at all that Charlie Baker adds to his workload, what I said was that the organization, I was amazed at all the organization has taken on since he started as executive director. So instead of, so scratch his word? On 218, basically scratching most of those words except for the that. Thank Mr. Charlie Baker for all that he adds. On 218, we're taking out he adds to his workload. And adding something else? And then we're adding the organization has taken on since he started as executive director. He isn't single-handedly doing all these amazing things. He's tapping his fabulous staff. Everybody okay with that? Is that clear, Kathy? Okay. All right, anything else on five, Irene? Sorry, one more. On 223, please. We can keep the first three words, but what the question really answered is what they considered quote the first mile end quote. And then we're on to page six. And page seven, Irene. On line 321, please. I suggested that Ms. Subject give an update as a trustee. So those three words are the ones I would add before public to be heard, during public to be heard. Okay. Page eight, or Andy? Page seven? Page eight. Page eight, okay, what's up on eight? The page with very few words on it. Line 345 should be struck. There was no motion associated with the reading file. All right, good. Yeah, so we're going to strike all of 345. Irene, did you have something on page eight? Yeah, Michael Plagueman's name on 347. Is that misspelled, Mike? M-I-C-H-A-E-L, right, should be. What line? 347. Michael is spelled incorrectly. Page eight. Okay, how are you? How are you? What is it? Thank you, Irene. Sure. All right. And anything else on eight? Okay, you're done. All those in favor of the September 21st, 2000, no. On the September 10th, 2018's luck board, minutes with corrections, signify by saying aye. Aye? Aye. All right, most of the passes unanimously. Wonderful, now we're on to consent. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? I would move it. Select. I'll only approve the consent agenda. Okay. Second. Thank you. Thank you, Elaine and Irene. All right, comments on the check warrants? Anybody? Okay, we got those signed this time? A lot of them. Yeah, right, yeah, it was there. Okay. Any further discussion? I'm not approving the consent agenda. Okay, hearing none, all those in favor of the consent agenda, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Oops. Aye. Okay, consent agenda passes unanimously. We're on to reading file. Any comments from anybody? Irene? Where to begin? I'll offer one comment first. I will also plan to go to the Essex Rescue Community Engagement, I don't know if anybody else is. Whether we need to warn that or whatever, but I'm also going to ask. I intend to attend as well. Great. I think our policies, you don't need to warn those, right? Just checking. As long as you're not conducting business. Yep, if someone else is meeting, you're not conducting business. It also happens to be Columbus Day. Okay, good to know. Probably a pasta. Let's see, I want to just let you know that Greg Morgan put together a tour with an official from Quebec who does economic development and is looking to establish businesses in the Northeast, including Vermont, and the representative from the state economic development, Gail, I can't remember last name. Stevenson? Stevenson. Was here, and Evan was there, and Greg Vridiger? Jim. Jim Brown. And took him on a tour of the RPDI area. Took him around the village and the town and met with some key folks along the way. And it was a very positive reception from the guy from Quebec. Very impressed with what our town has to offer and he thought immediately of some companies that he's anxious to go back and talk to, whether that turns into anything. Nice. But, and thank, I thank Greg for organizing that. And he's talked to Greg and then he did all this and it was a wonderful day. Really impressed him. Jan, I think his name was, from Quebec. Okay, anything else? Morgan is tireless. He does, he works tireless. He's amazing. Can I call folks to pass in to the item about the housing conference? Which item is that? That's seven, seven E. Yes. I just wanted to clarify. So there's the convening of the housing committee members in Chittany County. That's October 29th from six to eight PM in Winooski. But then also mentioned in the same email is the November 13th and 14th high housing conference which is gonna be held in Burlington. And in my email that's in the packet I had asked about covering the cost of that. I think there's multiple trustees and select board members who are interested in attending that housing conference. And I just wanted to bring that to the group's attention. Okay, thank you. Okay, anything else in the reading file? I'm sorry to go back. So if anybody does wanna go to that, just let me know and we'll take care of the registration. Thank you, Evan. I definitely would like to go. Okay, if anybody else decides to let Evan know, any? I just wanted to, Irene and I are in, actually Mike are going to the town fair this week. Irene and I have talked about the Thursday sessions who's gonna cover which ones. And so you can take your two that you said were your preference. Okay, thanks. So that we're not duplicating, we'll come back with more material. Excellent. When you're there, can you ask them for things to consider policy? Yeah, in fact, the session about select board members and library trustees is on there because I asked for it last year. And the record retention is offered, actually they're offering it in the morning and in the afternoon. That was the other one that I asked for. So yes. An interesting one for the future, maybe in the near future too. Just looking at the way the marijuana laws are going to see what kind of. Yeah, that's one of the afternoon sessions. Is it? Super. Okay, that'll be good. So we can try to get ahead of that before any laws change. Super, okay. Irene? Thanks to Evan for including the Abrams, Stevens, Gravestone, Dedication, Surmoney program. I was there as was Dan Caron and George from the village. And I just wanted to request in the future, maybe Max, if you can't be at something like that where the town is able to speak, if you could tap someone else from the select board. Cause I just think it's awkward for outside the village residents to have no one speaking on behalf of the funds that have been donated by them. I mean, I appreciate that George could do it for all of us, but it just doesn't really seem fair. Thanks. Thanks for the feedback. Thank you. Anything else? Lots to read. Okay. Then if we have nothing there, no need for executive session. No, sir. Okay. Question, do we know what day we're going to review the winter operations? Is it the next meeting? 15th. Yeah. Now that's going to be a busy time. We're going to need to put a time limit on the firearms thing. And just to draw that to your attention, that's going to be at the high school. That was not in here, but it's going to be at the Essex High School cafeteria in the November 5th as well. And in that agenda that goes out, it'll be good to have a time limit set for that discussion because it will easily take up the whole meeting if we let it. Okay. Then if there's no executive session, there's no other business. I'm going to do a turn. I'm going to entertain them. Thank you. Irene, do I have a second? Second. Mike, any further discussion about adjourning? Hearing none, all those in favor of adjourning, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. All right, it's unanimous. We're done. Good work tonight all. Thank you. Thank you. And good work.


I'm Tom Mackie and I'm Trudy Jacobson and we're joined today by special guest Dr. Ronnie Mather who's associate professor of psychology at SUNY and Paris State College and also interim dean of our Center for Distance Learning. Welcome Ronnie. Thank you Tom. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Hi Trudy. Hi Ronnie. Yeah we are as well so what we really want to do now as we're approaching the end of the course is really dig deeper into what metacognition is. It is such an important part of the meta-literacy framework. We've looked at models, we looked at the meta-literate learner model several times throughout the course. We really want to take a closer look now and try to have a deeper understanding of the background of the term and how it fits in with meta-literacy. So first let me just ask a really basic question. What is metacognition and how and can you provide an example for us? Yeah I mean metacognition had a fourfold root in the history of ideas. The first probably was in classical epistemology, classical philosophy. Plato was interested in metacognition. His ideas around knowledge, his idea of knowledge as justified through belief is a metacognitive argument. So metacognition has been around since Plato and you can find other examples of it throughout the history of ideas. Its second root is probably in biology. I've read your text with some interest. Biology has always been interested in the way that complex systems monitor themselves. So I mean there is a biological element which I'll come on to later. The flaw was very interested in feelings of knowledge as well as verbalized knowledge. So there's the biology element and then of course you talk about in your text behavior, the sociology of action. In the 60s and 70s the sociology of action perspective was very interested in the reflective monitoring of behavior. So there was this aspect too and finally of course then came John Flavill whose text around in the 70s actually introduced metacognition into mainstream psychology. And that has continued right up into the present day with the cognitive neuroscience. So there's a four-fold root. I see aspects of it in your text and throughout your text. So those were the four principal origins I would say of metacognition. We did refer to Flavill in the first chapter of the text because we saw that as important as well. That's a really important context for having understanding of metacognition. So you asked for an example. Let me give you a very basic example. If I ask you to remember a telephone number, how would you do it? So let me give you one,<PHONE_NUMBER>. Mainstream psychologists have often been interested in short-term memory and how it actually works. And since 1956 psychology undergraduates have been taught that individuals actually can memorize about 79 digits. But what we've actually found is the numbers closer to three to five. So you will remember that number and the way telephone numbers work is they're chunked. So you'll remember that 0418810 and then you'll do 334 usually is the way that your memory works. And people are conscious of that too. They will know their own strategies for remembering phone numbers. That is metacognition at a very basic level. That's an excellent example. I think we've all done that. Yeah, really. So these strategies that people use, I mean, it can be taught. Those are based in sort of psychology or absolutely. I mean, one of the one of the models you have of the meta-literate learner, it seemed to me to have three sort of elements within it. The first one, of course, is people learn through repetition. And actually repetition is a very bad name in modern educational theory. But you will not learn anything without repeating it. And of course, you don't need to repeat something by rote. You can repeat it by reformulating, paraphrasing, etc. So what I saw in your model there was a form of repetition that is extremely interesting. So I mentioned the phone number. You'll have about 30 seconds of short-term memory to remember that phone number. If you don't rehearse that information within 90 to 120 minutes, you'll forget it completely, which will then commit it to long-term memory. So I see within the meta-literate learner an assimilation of information and then using it almost immediately. And you have to use it almost immediately, or you'll lose it. The second aspect that was very interesting is your emphasis on visual literacy. A picture literally is worth a thousand words. Because it leaves within memory. There's a dual encoding. A picture will leave a verbal trace, a conceptual trace, and a picture trace, too. Whereas texts will only read a verbal trace. So I see that too. And the third aspect, of course, is communal participation. Human beings learn better when they learn collaboratively. I see all of the three aspects there of good learning practice. Interestingly enough, repetition is coming very much back into the fore with regard to educational psychology. That's a great point. It was interesting, too. We were talking earlier how in traditional models of information literacy, the metacognitive piece hasn't really been emphasized as much. It looks like it's going to be with the new ACRL framework, which has been influenced by meta literacy. But we're talking truly about how previously, what were the aspects of the four domains that we've introduced that you saw as part of information literacy originally, but now has been greatly expanded to the four domains? And before, I think it was really the cognitive and the behavioral aspects of being able to find, evaluate, use information. But now the metacognitive piece, and also the affective piece because very often people are sort of stymied by sort of fear, they can't do it, or everybody else can do it better than they can. And so why should they try? So these two new components really, I think are really making a difference in both how people are teaching it, but also if people are aware of it, sort of how they learn. Oh, there's clear, there's the clearest evidence of the affective component in the scientific literature on in this area with regard to educational psychology. Even within the scientific journals using double blind experiments, there was a recent one in science 2011. And the researchers found that people actually in high stakes exams, who wrote about their fears and reflected on their fears actually did better in the tests after the fact. And there's also there's also a strong belief now in the idea of people. People people almost certainly have an implicit understanding of their learning capacity, which is almost certainly wrong. It's formed, it's formed very, very early in life. And it's it's probably the reason why thinking about thinking, metacognition is so important is as it challenges that idea. People it challenges people to reevaluate their capacity to learn through the affective moment through the behavioral moment. So that's why the thinking about thinking is so important. It's a really good point, too, because I think learners today, they might make assumptions that maybe they're not a good writer, or they're not good at math because of an early experience they had. But if they're giving that thought that reflection later on, that might completely change their their thoughts on in fact, it's interesting because we've talked about how working with students in an environment and encouraging them to use technology, they might come into the classroom and into an online environment with certain assumptions about their own abilities with technology. But if they're if we encourage them challenge them to actually use the technology, and then to reflect on that use of technology, and where they succeeded, exactly that that's going to have a huge impact on their own thoughts about themselves. Oh, yeah, confidence is critical in matter, in metacognition. Absolutely, it's absolutely central to the to the way that people feel about themselves. And I mean, that that's one aspect of metacognition. We sometimes metacognition sometimes it gives people the impression that we're that we are not we're talking about conscious thought, conscious manipulation. But it's not purely that I mean, there's great debate in the in some of the scientific literature about metacognition in animals. And whether it's and whether animals are capable of metacognition. There's some evidence that they actually are, which would mean the metacognition is is prior even to language itself, which would be which is primordial as it can get. There's been, as I said, significant attention paid to this this idea. There's also attention paid to how can I put this inner language human beings spend a lot of time talking to themselves. They might not the either in their within their heads or or literally talking out loud to themselves about 25% of their waking states can be taken up by this. Yes. So it's a very, very important aspect of being human. So there's been a lot of philosophers of mind have been fascinated about this internal conversation and the way that it enables metacognition. And there's been very, very technical debates on whether it somehow reflects natural language or somehow different from it. But there's got there's absolutely clear evidence that Meg and Flavo was very interested in the feelings of metacognition. You know that tip of the tongue phenomenon, like what's the Queen's family name or what's Elton John's real name. And then you know that you know that. But you feel that you know it even even it's even pre discursive. So again, there's been great speculation whether whether metacognition is actually really hard wired into the brain or the capacity to do so. That's an interesting dimension. So this is something that's already happening, whether people are thinking about it or not. Right. Do you think then that there are because I think we often think that, you know, thinking about one's own thinking, you by foregrounding it, people will be more aware of it. If people are already doing this, what's the advantage then of having them be even more aware of this activity? They have increasingly, it's increasingly important that they are conscious of so doing those. There is considerable literature that people who think that learning capacity can be increased, their own learning capacity can be increased or far better learners.  If you think about thinking, if you think about your learning processes, you're going to become a better learner. It really is the same. The scientific literature is very clear on that. So it has to be not not only the telephone number example I gave was somewhere between consciousness and sub and subconscious. So it's a good example. But the more conscious you are about learning, the better a learner you will be. So, Ronnie, can we go back to your question? You mentioned that communal learning, you know, is more effective learning. And I know very often learners say, I don't want to do it that way. I do better sort of on my own. So is there sort of a medic cognitive piece that goes along with the communal? Yeah, the question is, is that people often that the benefit of having a conversation or online or face to face is that people will repeat what they've learned. They will move from it to some other position and it will be constantly repeated. I think that's the most important thing. Somebody who is learning on their own, I would advise them to test and retest themselves. In many ways, that's what conversation is. It's a retest. And that's why the conversational, the peer element within online learning, for example, is so important. You're retesting your knowledge. And certainly, I would say to individual learners to emphasize, I would emphasize to them, the importance that they test and retest their own knowledge. I see chunking in your own book, your eight subheadings. Usually, there's usually about, you could go through it in two goes, eight concepts. So ideally, and almost as a matter of instinct, authors chunk their texts too. That's why an index is so if you were reading the first four concepts of the text, and you've been through it, and you wanted to check your knowledge, a simple test within 90 to 120 minutes will do that. It's just the way memory works. So I mean, again, to give an example of that, if that phone number was a bit, that I quoted earlier, was the phone number of a friend you'd had 25 years ago, and you'd forgotten the number, if I brought it to memory for you, you would remember that number easier than a completely foreign number, which shows that it's in there somewhere. I have a related question to that example, which I think is such an excellent one. And we think technology and emerging technologies is a key part of this and being able to adapt to the changing environments. But I was just thinking about that idea of how people remember and we kind of foreground this idea and that the chunking even of the numbers as you described. But is there a downside to the technology too, in that now that when you meet someone and you put their phone number in your phone, and people aren't remembering it the way that they do, or even having the rapid dial, you know, you're pushing a number instead of the actual number, even in this search engine capability, where sometimes, oh, we always say, oh, wait, let me look, let me Google that. Is there any kind of fear of, is there any downside to those technologies in that way? And this isn't quite the same thing, but I noticed now on my phone, if I start typing something, it fills in the rest of the word for me, so now maybe I don't even have to remember whole words, you know. There would be, there is, at the minute, is only speculation purely because we're still basically running around with the same genetic programs we had in the Ice Age. So, yeah, I mean there's speculation, but that kind of social evolution can happen fairly quickly. So there's been no definitive research on how this will affect our cognitive capacities to do, so I think there is a debit and a credit. One of the credits I've already mentioned is visual literacy too, in the way that Facebook, Facebook seems to me to work, because it works as a narrative. We've seen the power of the narrative in audience research with regard to soap operas that have ran in Europe for 25, 30 years. When the script writers get the story wrong, the viewer is writing and correct them on the biography. So some of these British soap operas that have ran for decades have continuity editors, because they have to remember, over a period of 25 to 30 years, how these stories have developed, and the characters have developed. Again, it's to do with a visual encoding of information, where again there's almost a visual encoding of somebody's life and narrative structure. So if somebody's presenting information, they really would want to think about not only textual presentation, but also visual if they really want to have an impact. Absolutely. In the multi-modality of that, that's such an interesting example of Facebook as a narrative, because that's really what it is. It's a timeline. So you have your individual timeline, but at the same time, it's intersecting with everyone else's timeline, and it's happening in real time, and you're constantly getting updates and status updates in terms of what people are doing. And it's very interesting that we're seeing this shift from the status updates that were very textual to the images, and now I think we're seeing even more of the video dynamic as part of that timeline. So people are actually taking videos of their cell phone or finding something on YouTube, and then that becomes a part of their daily narrative. And then that comes back to sort of the value of information, both sort of in and of itself, but also when you say, you know, YouTube videos, knowing the ethics of being able to use those things. So it's all sort of interconnected. Yes. And the idea of the producer, because the producer now with the cell phone, they're recording their world, they're making little animoto videos that are more produced, and then they're sharing those with this audience, automatic audience that they have on Facebook. I think the status updates too have this metacognitive piece to it. And again, I'm not sure if people are thinking about this because they're providing this daily update, but it seems to be a reflective, kind of an instant reflection in terms of what's going on in their lives. And then the fact that they can like something that other people are doing, or they comment on what other people are doing, there's an ongoing sort of commentary that's part of that narrative throughout the day. I mean, the metacognition may have arisen, literally a reading of your own mind. It might have arisen in an evolutionary sense with the ability to read other minds too. And that's perhaps why Facebook has become so popular.  Again, just that's an insight from evolutionary psych that said it's the two, the ability to, as I said, understand yourself was somehow related to this capacity, to understand others' intentions. We really learned an awful lot about metacognition here today. And again, to hear of this outside of your own discipline brings a whole new perspective to it. And so you've been great today, Ronnie. We really appreciate these insights. Thank you so much, yeah. Taking this much deeper, so we really appreciate it. Thank you. And I just want to say to everyone else, as you're reading through the materials this week and as the course is winding down, think about your own thinking.  And think of all those different roles and roles that you may have already played out throughout the course. Yes, definitely. And I think I'm going to be figuring out how much time I'm spending talking to myself. And if it's less than 25 percent, I'm okay. And I'm going to see how many phone numbers I can actually remember. So thanks very much. We'll see you next week. Bye.