Hi, I'm George Tyler. I'm vice president of the Essex Junction Board of Trustees Village President Andrew Brown couldn't was supposed to do the presentation for us today about merger, but unfortunately he couldn't make it so I'm filling in for him and We're here and thanking town meeting TV very much for this opportunity to Reach out to our Essex Junction constituents And talk to them about the merger ballot question that is they should have been they should receive in the mail and Is on the ballot for this November? and joining me is the Chair of the Essex Town select board and former village trustee Elaine Haney. Hi Elaine George, thanks for having me. I'm here to your presentation and answer questions as they relate to the town and So I want to start out by saying that There the the merger ballot that's that village residents should have received just sort of like One half of a two-part symphony that's going to be happening over the next year The because we are two separate municipal governments on Essex Junction and Essex Town By state statute if we want to merge we both have to vote independently to merge and to dissolve our existing charters and create a new charter and the charter process that that we Decided on with the town Was to create a new town charter instead of just dissolving the village and merging just what was the village into the Existing town charter because there was so much revision required and it was an opportunity to sort of You know with a blank slate create a new charter community We decided to join with the town have the town join us in creating a new Essex town charter and so that's what I'm here to describe today and Without further ado, I think we can go up to our first slide. I don't know if that's up yet or not Is that online? Can't tell yes, go ahead George. Okay? I think that what the first one is expectations and then This gives you information and any a lot any information that you need regarding the village charter we have a Lot of information a lot of the background a lot of the facts and the figures and the numbers and the and the dates I mean how we got here on the s6 junction.org website if you go to s6 junction.org You'll see it. It's all laid out there and there's even a brief video that explains charter So I with that I'll go to the next slide and it shows a little history of how we got here Yeah, it's on okay, and you can see that really this where we are right now is a process that started in 2013-2014 when the village in the town decided to consolidate the manager's position We started consolidating the administrative positions the manager followed by the finance director the town and village clerk And then in 2015 and 16 we moved the s6 junction public works budget Into the town general fund which was a very big step The the trustees are still in charge of the public works department in the village and we still have oversight But and we set the budget But we have moved that budget into the town so now all of us s6 residents are paying For you know having the cost of the of taking care of the streets and sidewalks in the entire community distributed equally throughout the community in 2018 we things were working so well and we with other collaborations and consolidations that we With the town decided to create a governance subcommittee that would look into Changes it changes in the governing structure for the village in the town We looked at a bunch of different possible Governance structures merger wasn't the only one We looked at separation We looked at various forms of status quo We looked at just dissolving the village and moving village services into the town We looked at a variety of options But we settled on the merger that I discussed earlier where we would create a new town charter and Dissolve both existing governments and move everything into this new charter So that beat that process began in 2018 The governance subcommittee Consisted of two members of the select board who also lived in the town outside the village Two members of the trustees who obviously lived inside the village We hired a legal counsel To advise us and make sure that everything we were doing would be accepted by the Vermont legislature and so we began the process of over a year and a half of meeting and We we had little little goals along the way little things that we would achieve and every time we reached a major Juncture we would come back to the two full boards To review where we are and then we would get consensus for from both the select board and the trustees for moving on to the next step And then finally around the beginning of this year around February or so We came up with we were pretty much there We came up with a lot of the transition of plans and we came up with the really the broad outlines of how we were gonna Create this new merger charter Unfortunately We had anticipated holding a vote both the town and the village on the merger charter this November because we wanted to Take advantage of the presidential election Then the pandemic hit and that threw the whole process into a bit of confusion So that the long and the short of it was for the trustees We felt we wanted to move forward with the November date And the select board decided for their version of the of the Consolidation charter they needed to put it on hold They needed a little bit more time to sort some things out and Elaine can speak to that Elaine do you want to jump in right now talk about that I Would simply say that the select board wanted to take additional time to review the draft charter document in more detail We had more questions for the attorney that we engaged So we were able to do that We have gotten to the point where we're almost ready to sign off on this draft version The attorney is going to take one more look and we will be going out to the public in November for their feedback on the draft Very good. Okay, so I if we could move on to the next slide And let me let me get that up And this actually just talks about the highlights I'll actually actually go on to the next one And I think this should say key challenges for creating a unified charter and the two big challenges that we face Number one is taking all of the villages expenditures and moving them into the town general fund Right now we have a sort of a bi-level tax structure a bilateral tax structure Where village residents are also town residents and pay taxes to the town But town residents outside the village are not considered village residents So they do not pay taxes to the village So that means in terms of total municipal tax bill people in the village are paying two tax bills and Merger means moving taking that village portion of the of the tax bill and distributing it now throughout the entire community So in the past When this has sort of been a challenge because it's a pretty hefty increase for people in the town outside the village for the average Homeowner it would be about a three hundred and fifty three hundred and sixty dollar increase right off the bat and we thought that that was Maybe a little bit too much for people to swallow It would you know it would not go down well and not no one wants to see that kind of an increase That would have been for the average tax bill something like a twenty five percent tax increase So we decided in the merger chart of what we would do is we would integrate it over over about a decade Actually for 12 years The reason for the 12-year period is that the village also has a bonded debt We took out money back in 2013 to do some street repairs We have another 12 years to pay off that debt because it was just taken out by the village That means that debt has to just stay with village taxpayers. It can't be transferred over to the town So we thought well Since the village has to maintain a separate a little bit of a separate tax to pay off the debt for the next 12 years Why don't we talk about having the village also? Phase in its operating costs into the town instead of doing it over once so then the increase For the taxes for the homeowners outside the village in the town outside the village would be gradual and the decrease that village residency and Sharing that the village is tax burden with the rest of the community would be gradual over 12 years So it was a bit of a compromise But we thought it was a good way forward The other issue that we we spent a lot of time with was what kind of a representative legislative body do we need? Right now the village trustees are all elected at large from within the village the town select board Is elected all at large from within the town which includes the village? There was a lot of call for trying to create a board that had some guaranteed Representation for the town outside the village some guaranteed representation for that for within the village So how do we how do we what kind of a board did we want did we that meant setting up voting wars or districts? How are we going to do that? So that was one of the other questions we wrestled with so let's move on to the next slide So what we came up with is that there'll be two transitional periods in the first five years we're going to have a seven member elected board and Over the first five years will begin to integrate and consolidate all of the village in town services The other thing that we came up with the other period is it is the 12-year period I mentioned in which the village will pay back its bond to debt The villages operating expenditures will be slowly integrated into the town a general fund we also wanted to Maintain some of the some of the costs that the village presently has like Like side sidewalk plowing and sidewalk make sidewalk maintenance, which the town also does But they don't do it quite as intensely. It's a much larger area They they have sidewalks spread out throughout the community in the village Sidewalk plowing is a really big priority for us in the wintertime because we can't have people and kids walking on the streets So we said well the village will be declared a sidewalk district And so we'll have a slight a little bit extra tax raise just from village taxpayers to pay for sidewalk plowing We also said the village will be a capital improvement district so that some of the capital expenditure costs That the village currently has will stay with the village until we get some of those projects done They were again, they won't be transferred into the town And then we also because we're doing a lot of redevelopment in the village center There are some some incentives that we have in place some tax incentives That are just specific to the village center the village downtown to encourage development So we wanted to create a special downtown district So the village would also the village center will be considered a downtown District for the next 12 years and I'm going to stop there and ask Elaine if you want to jump in if I've missed anything significant here No, George, I think you've covered all the bases on this We talked a lot in the process of putting this together of making sure that the tax impact on Residents of in the town outside the village would be stretched out as much as possible So that the financial impact on their personal home budgets would not be as significant So that's why we went with the 12 years it coincides really nicely with the end of the villages Infrastructure bond and it equates to approximately $26 per household per year in the town outside the village We really wanted to offset the potential Increases so that those residents would be able to plan their personal finances accordingly Right and I think the the next slide sort of just again Re-emphasizes what Elaine and I were just saying the costs it will lower taxes for the average Home in the village by about $35 a year and it will increase taxes by about $25 a year for the For the average taxpayer outside the village in the town outside the village And that that will be every year that will be that that that will be added on but those costs are very much Within line of typical town and village Budget increases that we see in most given years cost of living increases So we thought that these were palatable and this was a good compromise for everybody So I'll let's move on to the to the next slide And again, I'm this is I think I this I'm going back over the This is reiterating the the three districts in the village and we had some questions at another meeting earlier Could these districts in over the course of the next 12 years could they be changed? Yes, they can They can't be eliminated because they're called for in the charter But there's a lot of interest in parts of the town that are close to the village They they want to have their sidewalks have a little bit more maintenance a little more intensive Plowing and maintenance of their sidewalks in the in the wintertime could they join the villages sidewalk district? Absolutely, that's something that the new elected board could do if they wanted to So I think we'll let's move on to the next slide And this one should show the village merger charter proposes two voting wards Ward one will be the town and ward two will be the village and the town charter The town version of the charter has the same features in it Elaine if I'm I'm understanding correctly So we're gonna have two voting wards, which is something we haven't had before here in Essex And right now what would happen is that there would be three represent three seats reserved on the new select board exclusively for people who live within the village three seats exclusively for people who live in the town outside the village and There will be one seat. So there'd be a seven-member board. There'd be one seat For anyone elected at large so you can be from the village or the town It'll be a competitive race for the entire community to create a seven-member board So this is a bit of a this is one of the differences right now that we haven't resolved between the village charter and the town charter And I'll let Elaine explain this in it in a moment But right now what the town is leaning towards is just having As I said the two wards a voting ward for the town a voting ward for the for the village But it would be only three seats from each ward and they would not have that at large seat So they would have an even numbers board the the We thought about joining them on this but we thought The guidance we had the legal guidance. We had said the legislature really wants to see even even numbered board I mean an odd numbered board and so we just decided to go with our odd numbered 3 3 1 Configuration and I'm going to let Elaine talk a little bit about the town's version of this go ahead Elaine Thanks George The significant difference between the town's version of the charter and the villages is in representation Last March are the town held a boat on a citizen backed initiative to have an even numbered select board the house government operations committee, which is the committee of jurisdiction over charter changes did not rule on Whether or not that charter change was something that we could implement So we are in a bit of limbo at the moment Waiting for them to weigh in on that The reason it is in our charter is because the voters of the town of Essex in its entirety did approve the even numbered board We are waiting to hear from the legislature if we hear from them prior to the March ballot when we expect to put the town's version of the charter on the ballot That may impact the content of the charter, but at this time we're expecting that We most likely will not have a resolution by then and so the town charter will have a vote in March, most likely and The committee would receive two approved charters assuming that the village voters approve their version and the town voters approve the town version and we would work with the committee to true up the differences And as I've said before the town is serving two masters on this topic. The legislature approves all charter changes and we can't go ahead and implement something that our residents voted on without their approval. But also the residents are are indicating what they want through a vote. So we need to kind of walk a line between which master to serve and it's it's awkward at the moment, but we expect resolution and we'll be able to move forward. Right. And I want to just repeat what that thanks Elaine what I want to repeat In voting for the two charters only the villages voting on the villages version of the charter this November right now and everyone in the village should have a ballot every every registered voter should have And but in March of next year. The vote for the town charter will be community wide and that means people in the village will vote in their role as town citizens as well as voters outside the village. One of the other features that had that we have in common on both charters is that we would no longer have our budgets determined by voice voted annual meeting our budget for the new community would be Settled by Australian ballot paper ballot, the way the school budget is is presently done. So we'd be moving away from the old traditional voice vote. Annual meeting. And the other issue is that if merger is approved next year, we would have an interim period. We don't immediately become a merge community because The, the, the funding for the existing town and village would have to go through goes through the year following The merger. So we would have to sort of slowly transition and we don't also don't have a budget for the For the new community, what we'd have to wait a year to set up the budget and have voters approved that budget. So there'll be a one year transition period. During that period, the five trustees and the five select board members would become a unified 10 member board and they would sort of represent the entire community and make legislative decisions on behalf of the entire community for the year following immediately following the merger. And I don't know if I'm leaving anything out the lane. Thank you. Good. Okay. I one other thing I wanted to mention because this comes up often is that one of the the features in the transitional charter that we approved is it maintains current water and sewer districts in the village in the town, the village in the town currently have a different water rates and water and sewer rates. It's because they have very different costs and water and sewer are actually not part of the general fund. They're not part of property taxes. They're paid from a different source. You get a separate bill in the mail. For water and sewer if you're in the town or the village. And so that's not going to change at least in the immediate future would eventually change. But it wouldn't change for the next few years. Let me just check and see if there's anything else we're going here. So one of the other questions is if if the village vote is no on the merger charter this November. What happens. What happens is that we have to have a community conversation because the legislature won't approve a merger unless both sides vote for the village has to vote for it. The town has to vote for it. So there's several different scenarios that we're going to have to go through. If the village, the village, if the village votes yes, that means that the town charter would go forward and we would all vote on that. If that's approved, then we have two yes votes and that goes to the legislature for For a new merger. If the village votes no I'm not sure what would happen if the town would go forward with their merger vote or not would have to have that discussion. If the village votes yes and the town vote is no Then there would be no merger. And then again, we'd have to have a community conversation about next steps. So It's a process, as I said, it's it's like an opera. It's going to play out over the next six or eight months and we'll see what happens. But the opening the opening piece. The overture is about to happen in November. And I hope we've answered some questions. And once again, any other questions, please go to the Essex Junction Website. It's got a ton of information. And we also created jointly with the select board, a greater Essex 2000 website. And there's a link from the village website on to that that has additional information and Elaine. I again believe it leave anything out anything you can think of. No, I appreciate the analogy to an opera. Yeah. While the village residents will be going to the polls on November 3 the town select board will be going to the public after that of November to hear feedback on the town version of the Charter. So by that time, we will also have heard what the village residents are thinking and we can move forward together from there. Okay. Okay, very good. And I know there are a lot of questions out there, but I think I should pause. I don't know if Channel 17 town meeting TV. If anyone has phoned in with a question or if our moderator has any questions. No questions. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I think it's, hopefully it's going to be a happy opera Elaine. It's been a lot of work. I think that this was something that was really two years into making it represents a really big collaborative effort between our two boards. And I think if, if let me finish by saying one thing, if merger isn't approved whether the village votes no in the town votes yes or the village votes yes the town votes no. If, if merger isn't approved what happens and what happens is basically in terms of of user services citizen, you know, municipal services, nothing happens. Everything stays status quo tax bills stay relatively the same municipal services stay the same fire department police public works everything stays the same. And we have also structured this so that if merger does happen what what big changes will you see again, not all that much. It's a change at the top. It's a change on the inside that and what slow gradual reorganization of management on the inside. And slow integration of the two budgets, but at the ground level in terms of public works recreation libraries fire departments. Police, all of that will stay we've designed it so all of that stays relatively the same. That was a condition both our boards wanted no one wanted felt that we wanted to hand someone a sacrifice or say someone has to give up a service or give something up. We tried to structure this in a way so that would be maximum stability for the foreseeable future. George, I'd like to add to that by saying that we have been on this path for many years as you out with with your your graphic at the beginning of this presentation, since we started working together we've saved Essex residents close to $3 million in taxes as a result of consolidations and right the important thing to note is the last time we talked about merger in our community in 2006, none of that consolidation had occurred and the vote was still yes. Yes, we know that the community is in favor of working together and with a vote that overturned our decision notwithstanding, we know that we can go forward together and we've already saved many millions of dollars and while the lowest hanging fruit has already been picked. We do know that there's a lot more efficiencies to be achieved a lot more duplication to continue eliminating and some of that may not be tangible in terms of we can actually predict by by a budget line item exactly how much money we're going to save. We know that those efficiencies have value. And so you're hoping to continue on the path that we've already been on for many years and just wait the process. Right and I will add and that's exactly right Elaine and good points to bring up all of them. And as I said at the beginning, we consolidated a lot of people think that that that there's this animosity going on this polarization between the village and the town, and that's simply not the case. No, we consolidated the manager, the manager's office back in 2014 and we've been operating under one administration a shared administration and our two boards have been meeting regularly since then. So we again, we are very close. I think this has been a great effort all around. And that you know in a time when the outside world and national politics are so stressful. The last thing we want to do is deliver a big dose of stress to the local community so we've tried to do everything status quo calm thoughtful intelligent creative way forward for both sides. Now the only other thing I would add George is that status quo is not acceptable anymore. Yeah, if we have a result where we are unable to move forward with emerged community. Status quo is not going to be maintained simply because it is unaffordable for half of the community. Yes, it is also not fair. So we'll continue working towards the best we can towards improving the situation, but working together with merger is is what we both board strongly feel is the best way forward for Right. Good. So I, I'm not sure how long we have here do we have a half an hour or an hour. Pretty sure we have a half an hour but we are hoping that we'll have some questions. Still no questions about 10 people watching the no questions. Okay, good. I would say then for the people who are watching and for anyone else who watches this recording later, please don't hesitate to reach out to the trustees or the select board with your questions and comments, and you're welcome to come to our audience online and share your thoughts there or you can email directly if you'd rather have something private.  So please don't hesitate to reach out with your Exactly, or with your concerns. Exactly. And I'm going to get my, my calendar up here. And on the 27th of October, I believe is our next public hearing on the for the Essex Junction trustees were doing an online public hearing on merger. Everybody in the village and the town is welcome to tune in. The instructions and the link for joining the meeting are on the Essex Junction website. And you can join in and ask any question you want the trustees will be there and we will be doing a lot with presenting a lot of the information we presented today. But you'll also have a chance to ask questions of the other trustees and of staff as well. Are we good. I, I don't know. I think we're good. George presentation and channel town meeting television. Thank you very much for giving us the time. We have a phone call. We have a phone call. All right, phone call. Okay. All right, go ahead, sir. Hi, thank you. Hi, hi folks. How are you? You're weren't getting any calls. I wasn't going to call in but I'm going to help you fill some airtime. Couple questions for you. Okay. I heard talk about a third transitional period. That was the one year transitional period. But I didn't see that on the slide. That's not about transitional period. So I'm kind of curious as to why that is missing. I'm not sure I understand. Did you have another question? Well, let me see if I can handle it. What, what's legally called for by, you know, by charter is we, we have a transitional period where we've formed a new community. We've got it. We, if, if, if let, if the legislative both folks are positive and it goes to the legislature. And another question. Okay, go ahead. Mentioned that the typical increase in taxes of the town outside the village will be about $25 per year per year increasing each year. And that's about the typical increase in taxes that happens normally. So my question is community we've got to get, get, get, get the legislative. I didn't, I didn't hear it. I didn't hear the rest of the question. I thought I heard him say, um, asking about three different transitional periods. And I think maybe what he was referring to as we have the, the interim transitional year with the interim governing board. Right. Then there's the 12 year taxation schedule. Right. There's the five year transition where the manager will be able to consolidate remaining departments, perhaps three different transitions he's referring to. Yeah. And I know it's confusing, but it really was something that the interim period is really something that is kind of required because we have budgets for the old communities for the current village in the town. And I don't have money for the new, for the new town. So there's a necessary transition from old to new that takes place over however many months are left between when the legislature approves the merger. And when we vote money for the new merger, and I guess it would be July or June of the following year. So the, the other transitional, the five and the 12 year are, they're sort of custom. Those are things that we put in because we thought they made sense in terms of integrating the village in the town services and in our finances. Those weren't required by law, but we thought they kind of make sense and 12 years is too long for the manager to wait to integrate all the village and town services, but we don't want to do it all at once. It's not gradual. So there's no big shocks. So we said that'd be about a five year plan is a good, good time limit for that. Right. And I think with the other question that he was trying to ask but couldn't quite get out on pointing out that town outside the village residents will see an approximate $25 per household on average increase for 12 years. Generally when we have our annual budget, that's around what it is in general anyway. Right. And so I'm guessing that his question was so are you saying we need to add those two together and that's what's going to happen. I mean, we cannot predict the annual increase of the town budget going forward. We never can do that. We always know that things like asphalt and salt and healthcare insurance and those kinds of costs are going to go up. They never go down. So we do need to have an accounting, an expectation that residents will see an additional increase, but that would be across the board for every resident. Whereas the merger related increases are limited to the town outside the village and they're temporary. They're only 12 years. Right. Right. Another phone call. Yes. Thank you, Kevin. All right, sir. Go ahead. Go ahead, sir. Go ahead. You're on the air. You can ask your question. Well, we're still, we're still responding to. Now that's a delay, sir. Go ahead and ask your question. Okay. Hi. Elaine, this is at Doblin. You know, I live in the village. I've lived in the village for many, many years. Yes. Hi. Merger versus separation is concerned. The last I knew it had not been warned in three places, three separate places. Is that going to be done? I'm not understanding your question. We're not voting on separation. Elaine, can you hear me? Yes, I can. We're not voting on separation ed. So I'm not sure what your question is, but I do know that the vote for the village will be warned appropriately in all of its locations. Did you get that, sir? I think he's having a problem with this delay, folks. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'll follow up. If he. Is he still there? No, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. You know, we, we approved, um, warning the, uh, the ballot, uh, back at a meeting a while ago. So I, I'm sure it's been warned or it will be warned appropriately. Um, and people have asked, well, can't you put merger and separation can't, so people can pick pick one or the other. No, we can't do that. Um, any ballot has to be yes or no. There's no option available here. Okay. Okay. And this saying it has to be warned 30 days before the vote. Right. I believe it was.  So, um, I, I don't know. I'm not sure. Um, I'm not sure of all the places it was born. I think one of the places it was supposed to go into, um, the Burlington pre-press. And I do know that, that warning things is a little tricky in the community now. I'm, um, the, our, our local newspaper, the Essex reporter, um, is no longer printed and distributed throughout the community. It's online. Um, and so some of the traditional places that, uh, Essex junction and Essex town residents have looked for those kinds of warnings. I have disappeared and the, the town and village clerk have had to, uh, find others as far as I know, Elaine, is that I'm not sure all of the other places where they're warning, um, you know, planning commission meetings and, and trustee and select board meetings now. I believe they're also posting them on front porch forum, front porch forum. Exactly. Right. Okay. That's all we have for questions. Thank you. All right. Okay. Kevin. Thanks. Thank you very much town meeting television. Thank you, George. Thank you, Elaine. Take care.


We had an exciting finish. Tom's River, New Jersey versus the team from Delaware. Delaware's up three, nothing. It's the sixth inning. Jersey hasn't put up a single run all game. They're gonna get the leadoff runner aboard though and hopes up then starts. Now it's different this year. The top two teams from each region are going to Williamsport because they cannot have the international bracket due to COVID. So you don't need to win your region.  You just need to make it to the championship game of your region and you will go to Williamsport and that's what's happening here. This is the semifinal. Winner of this game goes to the championship game against the Pennsylvania team and automatically goes to Williamsport. Delaware's up three, nothing. They need three outs and they're going to the big dance. They change pitchers and this kid, the lefty comes up, goes oppo over the left fielder's head, keeps the momentum going. Runners are at second and third and things are happening. Tom's River is pumped up. But Delaware says, hey, we want to challenge that. His back foot wasn't in the batter's box when he made contact and they go to the replay and it's very true, the old Jorge Pasada. He used to, Jorge Pasada used to kick that back line so the umpire couldn't even see it just so he could cheat back a little bit against the fastball. What happens is this isn't a reviewable play even though he wasn't in the batter's box so the umpire is going to go to the Delaware head coach and let her know that it's not reviewable. Credit to her, she handles it pretty well. She's like, ah, that's frustrating, but okay, thank you and thank you guys and that's frustrating. We got second and third, no outs, two strikes and this ball is sent deep to center fielder. Navigates right underneath, it makes the catch but that's going to score one run so New Jersey is on the board, they will not be shut out. Next batter takes this one one pitch and he's going to ground it right up the middle to score that second run, make it a one run game. Let's go! He's excited, another one one pitch and this one is driven to right field, it's going to bounce, bare hand grabbed by the right fielder to keep the runner at second base, nice play but they're fired up, let's go! Let's go! Next batter, he grounds this, do they turn two? They get the first out, is it the game? No, they can't, he's too fast. Now they're going to intentionally walk the big dog. Number 13 is on first and here's the game. We got bases loaded, two outs, one run game, up steps, Carson Frazier, his uncle made some waves in the Little League World Series a while ago if you've seen or heard about that. Outside pitch called a strike, he's like, oh man, that's not fun, they try to go even more outside to get a swing and miss, no bite, uh oh, hi, big swing, Delaware is one strike away from going to Williamsport, that ball's outside, two two, they're going to come right at him and he's going to send it deep to right center field. It hits the fence on the fly, it clears the entire base as New Jersey was down the entire game and now they are up and they're going crazy, yeah, yeah! Let's go! Let's go! Whoa! Next batter keeps it going, he flares that one into right and Carson Frazier's going to round third, he's going to head home, he's going to extend the lead even more, slides in, immediately turns, pumps up the crowd, let's go! Now they're going super crazy little dance, let's go! And these kids are fighting each other in the dugout saying, come on, cheer, now you cheer, now you cheer and then, I don't know, I don't know, it seems fun but they still need to get three outs. Delaware can storm back themselves but a nice play at third for out number one, let's go! And then strike one, strike two, whoo, perfect pitch and the umpires even fired up, look at that pitch, dotted! Strike one, one out away, strike two, one strike away, they get it, punch their ticket to Williamsport, celebrate on the field, a huge six run rally in the sixth to send them to the Little League World Series, what an insane finish. Going back down to Williamsport, ha ha, all right.


a photo, both takes. What's up Chicho? Always a pleasure. Just enjoying the ride. What's all that's all it is indeed. Again, as Bill Hicks would say, it's just a ride. There are some people who have invested in this ride, right? They sit around, they go, no this can't be a ride. Look at all the wealth I got. Look at all the accumulated. Look at the power I have. This isn't a ride. This is real. And some of us turn to those people and go, look man, this is just a ride.  Right? I'm paraphrasing, Bill Hicks does it much better. What a prophet Bill Hicks was. What a prophet. If you've never watched Bill Hicks stand-ups, please do so. You will learn more about politics, geopolitics, life, humanity in an hour and a half, an hour of a stand-up, than you will a lifetime of watching corporate propaganda.


A significant event took place in Bangkok with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the UN AIDS and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in Law. The MOU was signed on 28th of March at the Asia Pacific headquarters of UN AIDS Bangkok by the Secretary General of Shah Klaw He-Mant Barthra, and UN AIDS Regional Director Steve Klaw's. The other eminent persons present at the occasion included Nandik Rehrich, Director, UN Escape, Jane Wilson, Eda Sity and Naashita Satter from UN AIDS. This MOU is specialised for the first time in a body like Zark Law, an association of the legal communities of the South Asian countries is partnering with UN AIDS to contribute in its own unique way. Some of the key objectives of the MOU are to spread awareness amongst the people regarding HIV laws, to support people at risk of living with HIV and to promote legal reforms and access to justice.


My name is Yves Chiswili Chabu, and I'm a professor in biological sciences here at the University of Missouri-Colombia. And I guess to answer the question, how did we get to the story that we recently published in Onko Target? So when we first started, we really started from the concept that in clinics, one of the significant challenges is to identify therapeutics that are highly selective.   So this can generate considerable toxicities and mobilities for the patients. So we started from the sort of need to come up with a different way to target these cancer cells, but also to do it in a way that's not necessarily required in a priori understanding of the molecular landscape or the molecular drivers of that cancer. So let me just take a step back. So we now know with the precision medicine approach, one can obtain biopsies from the patients and then from those biopsies define the molecular landscape, at least identify genes that are driving the cancer. And that knowledge will then inform the physician's decision as to which therapy is better suited for that patient. So that's your precision medicine space. So and that has led to significant improvements in terms of patient outcome. What we wanted to do was to also think about ways that are not that selective, in other words, to find the strategies that can target cancers more broadly. Now, about a century ago or more, there was this realization that bacteria can target cancer cells. And we had already some data showing that this specific cellular strength that we had could target cancer cells, basically killing cancer cells by leaving the normal cell largely unaffected. So we then reasoned that maybe we can utilize that and go into any vivo model to really test the efficacy of that approach or how good that approach was. So and we turned to prostate cancer because that's where we had most of this data.  And as you probably know this, prostate cancer can develop resistance to treatments and the therapeutic landscape for that indication is limited. So immunotherapy also doesn't work there and hormone therapy eventually leads to relapse for those patients. So we took that specific indication and meaning that specific cancer type and ask, does this bacteria that shows tumor tropism in vitro, that shows selectivity in vitro, can also generate similar effects in an animal model? So that was really where we started. That's really the initial question that we went after. So during the course of the study, what was really unexpected was that although we saw these targeting, so we can see the biologic or bacteria homing into the cancer tissue very specifically, so they're colonizing the cancer tissues and not only they're colonizing the cancer tissue, but they are staying there and they're staying there for at least a couple of days. And that finding is relevant because normally these bacteria get cleared away really fast in the host. But what we saw is that he was able to go into the cancer tissue and stay in the cancer tissue. So that is really important. So you can now have the bacteria that is going to the tumor and then it is colonizing, I mean they have to divide in these tumors and evade clearance. So that was really encouraging for us. So then we asked, so if the bacteria is staying in the tissue, can we, I guess you can let me put it this another way. So if the bacteria is staying in the tissue, you also want to make sure that the bacteria itself doesn't accumulate additional genetic mutation that will make it lose its characteristics. And the characteristics that I have in mind here is really the safety, right? So we had shown that the bacteria itself was quite safe in this animal model. So we didn't see some really significant toxicities in these mice and we had also evaluated it in dogs where it was well tolerated. So what you want then is to have a biologic, I mean a bacteria. So I'll use the word biologic and bacteria almost interchangeably.  So then what we decided to do was, okay, let's then evaluate its genomic stability. And in so doing we could see clearly that it was also genetically stable.  So we had a biologic that was safe and in addition to that it was able to target the cancer tissue and three it was genetically stable even after it colonized the tissue for days and weeks. So that was very encouraging. So then we asked what are the consequences of these targeting effects? What are the consequences of having the biologic going into the cancer cells? And one area that we really wanted to focus on is the ability of these cancer cells to now release immunogenic molecules. So you want the cancer cell to release molecules that can now attract the immune cells to the tomaco environment. Why is that important? It is important especially in the case of prostate cancer because the prostate cancer environment is immunosuppressive. So prostate cancer has enact mechanism to suppress immune cells and exclude really immune cells from the cancer tissue. And because of that even your immunotere therapeutics that have shown great results in say skin cancers they don't work on a prostate. So for prostate cancer there is a need for strategies that can remove that immune barrier so that these immunotere therapeutics can actually work in that setting. So we then reasoned we now have a bacteria that we know is immunogenic. It's a bacteria after all and it goes to the tumor, colonized the tumor and then it is genetically stable in that tumor. Now we will say let's see if it's test the hypothesis that these bacteria can also have a immunogenic effect. That is it can cause this cancer cell to release all these hemokine into the tomaco environment and in so doing recruits immune components in the cancer cells and it did. So that was really satisfying. So we could see from those experiments that animals that were treated with the bacteria there are cancers and this again the prostate cancer mouse model. There are cancers that add a lot more infiltration of immune cells. So you had timing immune components in the tomaco environment and they were there in a higher frequency or quantity if you will than the control mice that were just treated with the buffer. So we thought well this is really this is great right so we are getting an immune stimulation we are recruiting immune components now into in the tumor tissue. That's the case we should expect to see an increase of cancer killing immune cells as well. So we saw a series a different type of immune cells in the cancer macro environment right so cd4 positive cells which are required and critical to activate the cytotoxic cd8 positive cells. So we saw an increase of cd4 positive cells in a cancer micro environment and then we asked if we could also see these cd8 positive or cytotoxic t cells and unfortunately whatever we saw there was really transient right so we'll see some cd8 positive cells but then they'll rapidly those numbers will basically well that's what dwindle down and you get a decrease. So that hinted us it really hinted that perhaps what is happening the cancer cells are deactivating these cd8 positive cells. So they are deactivating the cytotoxic t cells and one mechanism is essentially through these pdl and pd1 mechanism. So we then thought if we could couple the user the bacteria with blockades of the signaling axis so that is we're now preventing cancer cells from inhibiting cd8 t cells we will see a decrease in disease burden so that was the hypothesis that we went in. It was very rewarding to see that indeed when we couple now these immunogenic and tumor targeted bacteria with antibodies that block the pd1 pdl signaling axis we could now decrease disease burden in these animals. So for us that was really and I think that's the novelty of the paper right so that is to use something that one wouldn't even consider using right so you're using a bacteria genetically attenuated bacteria uh nonetheless but it's still a bacteria and and utilizing its immunogenic capabilities to then engage immune components and activate these cancer fighting immune cells definitely a some merit and in this case we could actually see a decrease in disease burden in these mice. So that was really really for us it was really proof of principle that one can use these immunogenic biologic to now break down the immune barrier we talked about at the beginning and allow the immune components or the immune cells or the host immune cells to surprise or to kill of the cancers. So it's a proof of principle and and my hope is that the rest of the fields and all the other researchers out there the community will manage to summon sort of uh to get past this this concept that it is a bacteria and really see what else we can how you can better functionalize it to achieve better clinical outcomes right because that's what we're all into this we're all into this to help our patients so if we can come up with strategies that can leverage these characteristics of this biologic to indeed generate some durable clinical benefit for patients then it's a win-win situation. Now so what is next really so what will be the next chapter so I would think that in addition to and I really hope this happens that the entire community picks this up and try to see better ways of functionalizing it it's a much better outcome. Another benefit of this biologic right so you can use it as a immune or tumor immune activating agent but you can also use it as a vehicle right so you can envision leveraging is tumor targeting capacity to deliver therapeutic loads into cancers right and so you can pack therapeutics into the cells and you can do this it doesn't have to be small molecules but you this is a thing that can be genetically engineered in the bacteria and be delivered specifically at least with preference preferentially delivered into the tumor tissues so that is also a I would think a clear application for this biologic. I think I should also note that there is a potential here to expand this to other cancer types where immunotherapy does not work right and here we have started looking at pancreatic cancer with pancreatic cancer has the same limitation meaning that it's an highly immunologically suppressed environment so these are considered immunologically homologically cold in bar cancers so we are now using that in that indication in pancreatic cancers and we are seeing really beautiful responses in the host we're doing this in mice but we can see from this plane you can see a nice activation of the immune components in animals that are treated in animals that are both that the cancer entered it with these bacteria so you can see an elevation of these cd8 cells in the spline we do see just like in the prostate cancer study we see that it does not always translate right so when you will the splining activation that we're seeing does not necessarily translate into a durable colonization of the tumor by these cd8 positive cells right so it's similar to what we saw in the prostate it's a transient colonization and then I think you have these suppressive mechanisms are enacted by the cancer to keep the immune cells away but now you can imagine even for that specific indication coupling checkpoint locates or immunotherapy with the biologic we can now also then surprise at least that's the hypothesis that we are pursuing we can also press these really deadly and again this the therapeutic landscape for that indication is a really meager and needing additional agents so we would like to see that maybe these biologic these bacteria coupled with with immunotherapy will generate some benefits in animal models and here we're talking about shrinking of the cancers and ideally extending the more life so those are the sort of the spaces where I can see opportunities and again the pancreatic cancer space we we were definitely exploring opportunity for this biologic in that context but I really hope that the entire community and can leverage some of the characteristics of this bacteria to help out to our patients now I should also say that it's not that wild the concept right so people have used athletic viruses and in fact there are trials people using on coletic viruses to essentially generate immune response and therefore kill eliminated cancers so here is a similar approach just like people are using coletic viruses in clinical trials in clinical studies here we're using a bacteria and and is generating some killing locally but also activating the release of these immunogenic factors which then recruits immune cells to the cancer so I think it's definitely a good proof of principle it's a good place to start it's a good place to be and and I think a further development is needed to really even further refine this technology and see if we can evaluate more broadly across different type of cancers right so we are using it you know immunotherapy setting but this we also have some additional data in the context of chemotherapy we're seeing some really interesting interaction between chemotherapies and hormone therapies also in the prostate cancer space so chemotherapy hormone therapy immunotherapy in the prostate cancer space there is some clear interaction between these agents and those therapeutics I think it's very important to mention I don't think there I could say it's in more stronger terms but I'm a big proponent of collaborative research and and this work will not have been possible without the collaboration and in fact if you look on the manuscript it's people across institutions right so we have researchers like a Yale that performs some of these immunological profiling all this profiling the immune landscapes in in all these mice and we also have my colleagues here at MU that played an important role in modeling right so you see we actually integrated all these different aspects of research so we had immunologists contributing we had people that were modeling all these genomic data that we had so all that came together to make this story possible so again I really think that this paper I mean this manuscript really exemplifies the utility and the value of collaborative research across different disciplines right so again so it was genomics it was some mathematical modeling and we had basic cell biology and then you also had people in animal science helping with this and this people in radiology and radio imaging helping with this so it was really team efforts where everybody brought to the table some unique aspects of their strengths and that's how this this paper really came into being so I want to thank every single one of my collaborators and people in a lab I want to thank Bakul a co-author on the paper for their hard work I want to thank Rob who's also first author on that paper and again they worked tirelessly so there was a postdoc and they worked tirelessly to really make sure that everything was done to the highest standard so that was really great those fantastic and of course I want to thank all my colleagues on the manuscript Elke Goulden like a Yale and and our imaging facility here so he was really a team effort and Dr. Stroeber also for his modeling on the manuscript but that was really fantastic and we had a lot of fun with it so so he really the modeling really started as a casual conversation and it really evolved and it was something that we started over the phone and then so Dr. Stroeber and myself our families play soccer together so we will play soccer and at the end of the soccer we start talking about these these concepts how we can model this and then we followed up with phone conversations and again with more soccer and the rest is history so it was it was really nice it was really pleasant