This is video tape number three. So I wandered around trying to find great smart people who could impromptu entertain you and inform you until you could be located. Here's Swift. Obviously this is totally impromptu so I hope you have no expectations whatsoever because I will surely let you down. However, since Dia was kind enough to inform me that there was a spare spot for which I could kind of spew all my soapbox garbage, here going to be my victims until Simple Nomad shows up. I have several things I want to talk about. The first of which is quality of service and IP version six. Obviously Cisco and some of the other router manufacturers are scrambling and or have already had implementations. These are in place and so we're rapidly approaching an era where at least we are able to deploy IP version six. You've heard estimates anywhere from five to ten years down the road.  I want to take an opportunity just to express my dislike and concern over and I think there's a distinct lack of focus on some of the key features of IP version six. They're being called features but really if you break them down and if you really consider the implications of the features are bad. Let's just keep it at that. The first of which is of course, I'll cover the good stuff first for those of you who are not completely familiar with IP version six. Obviously IP version four is what we're using now. It was designed back in the 70s, late 70s by the government and it was not designed for the massive traffic that we have on the internet. The initial initiative to create a new addressing scheme and addressing space was, somebody correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe it was an IEEE or IETF initiative. So it was your internet engineering task force and everybody knows the IEEE. The solution that they came up with was IP version six. I'm not exactly sure why they skipped version five but hey, maybe they just want to stick to even numbers or something. I've heard the spec, I've looked at the implementations that are out there, especially the Linux implementation. Okay, I'll just talk with you guys. I've also looked at some of the stuff that Cisco's got out there and discussing it and of course obviously the RFC. IP version six is, someone told me and I'm not sure if this is entirely correct but I'll use this anyway, that version six actually has more addresses available. The addressing scheme is larger or more numerous than there are grains of sand on the planet earth. So until they make computers about the size of grains of sand, which I don't know how long that'll be next year or so, then we won't run out of schemes. Did you have something to add to that? I thought I'd write this closely. Every proton can have an IP address. There you go. And it's something like, it's addressed in, I want to say the 32 sets of colon delimited, usually it's written in a colon delimited format and there's 32 sets of two with hex addressing. So somebody can do the math in their head, not me, but that's a lot. And anyway, it's 120 a bit correct, right? So the biggest problem that I have with IP version six is quality of service. Quality of service is built in to IP version six. There are a number of things that are built in, the large addressing scheme, the authentication. IPsec is actually a lot of it. The IPsec implementations are supposedly compliant with the implementation that's set forth in the RFCs covering version six. And so a lot of these things are already in place as far as, at least in theory. And most of them do work in the implementations that I've seen, especially in the line explosion. And quality of service for those of you who don't know is to keep, is to regulate traffic, not necessarily to shape traffic, but it is to regulate the traffic going through massive core routers or even on a small scale. But really the goal of quality of service was so that large providers could take traffic that was considered low priority like us. There you go. That's what I'm getting at. My biggest problem with IP version six is that IP version six, even though it's called quality of service, it is quality of service. It's quality of service for the corporate and the rich and the customers who can pay. Because what's happening in a lot of ISPs, and I'm sure half of you here probably will work for ISPs and you can probably be able to nod your head in agreement that when you go to the bean counters, they tend to want to know why is it that I'm routing traffic for other people who aren't paying me anything? Isn't that something wrong with that? Forget the fact that the internet was founded on that very idea and that they wouldn't even probably be there if it wasn't for that fact. But why is it that we're routing traffic for other people? And especially priority traffic because some old router implementations, especially if you only get technical and push with TCP flags set like urgent and push flags are given higher priority just based on the fact that they have flags set with TCP header. And so your router is actually pushing your traffic a little bit depending on where you're coming from and what kind of flags you have set can push traffic a little faster. And so it's interesting to these people, these what should we call them pony hares or bean counters that they're basically giving a free service. And they don't seem to understand that the fact that there's traffic coming in as well that other people are routing their traffic for free, that idea just doesn't seem to take hold very well. But IP version 6, see IP version 6 is the fix to all this. It's wonderful because you combine the fact that you can use quality of service and type of service routing which means that if a packet comes from this guy that pays me a lot of money, I want to route that at high priority. If the packet comes from Swift trying to tell that to his machine, I want to route that to the lowest possible priority. And not only when I say priority, I don't just mean dropping packets, I mean latency as well.  It'll actually lower your latency if you are at a lower priority and your type of service flags are set as a lower priority than someone that they have set at a higher priority. Well, obviously this opens up a whole range of things for hackers to try to screw around with. But the biggest problem, one of the big things that face the hacker that tries to hack IP version 6 is it is quite secure. The implementation, I won't say quite secure, but it's much better than IP version 4 because it has built-in crypto. You have built-in ND5 authentication headers. That's just one way you can do it.  Shower, whatever kind of hashing that you want to use or checksums that you want to use to make sure that the packet came from the guy who's, you know, Simon checks to you at the end of the month. And so my biggest problem with it is that. Another problem is that I've been, I've kind of, this is where I'm going to go off the deep end here, but I have a lot of conspiracy theories about IP version 6 because some of the big encounters love it because they're quality of service. Those who understand it, and I'm sure that that idea is really going to catch on soon. It is catching on, but I think it's going to catch on like wildfire when it actually shows up in business journal or something. But I think that the other big problem is that people fear it because of the IP security implementations that are already, have already been established and being put into practice even in version 4. We've sort of torn out that little module because everybody was screaming for it and stuck it. And most, I think any IRS version of past 11.2 for Cisco routers has got some level of IPsec implementation into it. Some of the routers have actual crypto wicks in the column that you plug into them. That is basically a facility for you to tunnel from one end to the other with a crypto tunnel. And some of it, some of the other routers have the AGS routers. Paul, you can probably correct me on this. You have worked with AGS stuff. I'm sure you have. Look at the stick on his face here. Have you worked with the crypto stuff for the AGS? No, because I've killed all the AGS. Well, they have the crypto modules, the black box modules, the VMe cards that you plug right into the sides. Have you ever seen one of those? AGS. Well, I guess it's AGS pluses that I'm thinking of, but they're still AGS models. They're rare, but they do it. They're pre-IPsec and they do exist. There does implementations. And so you have one side who causes the crypto, you inflame the crypto mass hysteria. And then quietly, while we're pushing Steamyhead trying to get crypto pushed through every orifice that we can possibly get it into, you end up with, you end up, we're actually trying to help IPv6 alone because we're facing the same problems that all the businesses are facing, lack of address space, lack of authentication, that type of thing. But to sort of wrap up and to keep from being redundant, my theory about version six is this. The internet, we'll see if my prediction comes true, but the internet's going to turn into something akin to television, if IPv6 takes hold and takes off. Because those, the teaming unwashed hordes are not the ones, as I said before, signing the checks to Sprint and MCI and Quicks and everybody else who's got Sonic Networks stretched across the world. And sharing traffic and another factor is the fact that all these links now are sharing traffic with voice over IP. And there are a number of implementations and a number where obviously Cisco's got to be pursuing the market or more. That's the last figure I heard. And so WERS is the most popular. But not everyone, not all networks, especially when we talk about great big MAEs with Sonic running through them, not everybody has separate links for voice over IP. So they would really love to be able to push their traffic over yours. And I'm not completely against having video conferencing and that kind of multicast traffic with higher priority. But the problem is that priorities and type of service keys are not, the point is that they are not based on the service. And that's the illusion. They're not based on what you're doing. They're based on who you are paying. And so the people that have the money right now, obviously the corporations have went, I'll go off on a tangent here until a simple sentence shows up. Has the sentence showed up already? Okay. Let me just interrupt him midstream. So he loses complete stream of thought there. First of all, if anybody is looking for area A, the newbie area, you get to it through by going through the hotel. Access it that way. Number two, this is obviously not the newbie area. So if you have no idea what he's talking about, you probably shouldn't be here. Because it would make a lot of sense to you. Number two, you can hear earlier the whole thing about putting cigarettes out on the carpet. Bad notice. I've gone through some sensitivity training. So last year I would have said, thank you.  I'm going to say help me understand.  Did mommy not let you put the big boy pants on? Don't put the cigarettes on the carpet. Put all your friends back. Put it out in a cup of coffee. Put it out on the ashtray. That's what belongs. Put it out on the ceiling. Put it on the ceiling. If you're wearing a staff shirt, don't say that. So I'm going to let him hop back on. After this we're going to Mr. Belchow. I believe I'm giving you a quick speech. And I'm going to turn back over to you. And I have a special announcement on the AGS. Cool. All right. Well, I'll wrap this up if someone else is going to hop on. But let me get... How about this? All right. Back in about...in the 1900s, in small towns, there were about, say, a town of 30,000. You would usually find about... sometimes around three, as many as nine newspapers in a small city. And what happened was, towards the 1950s... Well, let me take this back one more step. All the people that owned these newspapers, they were family-owned. The media, there wasn't this big corporate media state. All the newspapers were family-owned. And what happened was, they... they managed to... because they weren't public and because they didn't have to report what they made to the SEC, only to the IRS, which is obviously not available to all of us, maybe some of us. But anyway, what happened was that they went quite a while with the illusion that they weren't making any money. And so no one was really that interested in newspapers because no newspaper was a losing business. And newspapers were really crying a lot about how they had to... how they had this great operating cost. And they really did. There wasn't a lot of margin around the turn of the century, but that all changed. Towards the 1950s, people got the notion that they could actually really give away newspapers. And they could... And at the time, the only way to do that was to sell advertising. And so they... that's...  It's not local content anyway, or at least a proportion of it. So what happened was in the 1950s, all these people who had owned newspapers for generations, like there was a... there was this law, and I don't know if it's still in the books, but at the time, the third generation that gets passed down on inheritance from a large estate, there's a great big inheritance tax that they get hit with. And because they were... because these newspapers were privately owned, the inheritance tax just killed these people, and they didn't want to pay it, obviously. And so what they did instead was they incorporated before dad died.  But at the time, they incorporated as small, you know, corporations. And then in the 60s and 70s, as things marched on, they started to merge. All these newspapers, where what happened is, you had communications companies, number one, that were buying up newspapers. Then you had these mega-rich people like Rupert Murdoch, who would go out and buy a newspaper in one city, and then they would go to the other mega-rich newspaper bearing and say, this is actually relating to computers. I'm going somewhere with this. They would go out and buy another newspaper, and then they would kind of get together and they would do something called collusion.  Sounds good to me. Okay, boom, and they did it. That's the fact that, like, maybe you have things like syndicated columns where one guy can write and 80 papers get it. What happened was, you had a focused conglomeration of all the media entities, and we're all familiar with that. I'm sure that's common knowledge. But with IP version six coming into existence, and with the internet just exploding all around us, I think it seems like it's glaring me in the face that it is the next logical step. And I think we've all seen how... I used to work in an ISP about two years ago, two and a half years ago. It was a small ISP, and we had about 500 customers. And I ended up... I wanted to move out of the city. I got tired of living there. So what I did was I ended up selling a lot of my customer base to another ISP, and just kind of switching everybody over. And so I guess you could call that a merger in a way. We were incorporated. But then I came back, right before I came to DEF CON, they had been bought out by Morris Communications, the ISP. And then I asked a guy that worked for the Globe News that was also owned by Morris Communications, why are you buying up ISPs? And he said, well, I talked to the vice president about that, and he said, it just sounded like the thing to do. It sounded like the thing to do. Okay. The internet is the next big thing. And I wasn't around, but I have a feeling that television was sort of along the same lines because I have seen some of the old commercials back in the 1950s when people started actually going out and buying TVs. And it did occur to me, and it also occurred to a guy named Benjamin Bagadiki who wrote a book called The Media Monopoly. You should definitely check out that book if you haven't read it. It's an excellent book. It's not a conspiracy theory book. The guy goes through and documents everything he says. But it seemed apparent to him that back in the 1950s, commercials were so silly that they were a joke because you had a lot of programming that was very serious.  But nowadays, commercial programming is so brainless that when it does come on, it just basically, it just flows right along with the programming. And marketing people have a term that they're using. It's called the buying mood. And the buying mood means that you're not thinking. So when you're not thinking, it's easy to sell your product by just showing you a lot of boobs or showing you, you know, whatever you want to see and a fantasy, essentially.  Obviously, I'm not pro TV here. However, when I'm sitting in front of my computer, I'm interacting with it, right?  That's it. I mean, that's as simple as that. So I'm thinking. And it occurs to me that when you can control who gets the high bandwidth and the broadband access, or the broadband access, server access, where they can actually, where they can set up servers on T3s and Sonnet Nets, like Sprint, MCI and all the others, and MSNBC, these types. It occurs to me that at some point, they're going to realize that I'm not in a buying mood. And that's bad because when I'm not in a buying mood, they can't sell me stuff. And so the solution to that is to make it so hard for me to use the services that I want to use and make it so easy for me to just get on and watch, you know, Baywatch or some dribble on my, you know, internet at will every episode, marathon with just, you know, a tad of commercial programming. It seems like a much more profitable enterprise. And I don't think I'm the first person to think that to dream this up. Call me a conspiracy nut. But anyway, I am about to talk that and I don't want to get redundant on you people. I'm sure most of you have probably had the same exact thought, but I wanted to just kind of lay it out on the table and, you know, if anybody wants to talk to me about it over beer or something like that, I'd be happy to do it. So I'm sure, oh, we've got questions. Cool. Discussion. I think quality of service is, I think type of service flags in the IP version 6 headers and quality of service shouldn't have been engineered. See, it was engineered for these people. IETL, I mean, it was engineered by engineers, smart guys, people who are much smarter than me, I'm sure, but it was engineered by people who somebody was signing a check for them. This wasn't a free standard. Nobody came up, nobody wrote this and submitted it. This was a task force that actually came up with this. So my, this is the whole OSI versus TCP thing or TCP IP. The OSI approach has always been get a whole bunch of people, pay them a lot, put them in a room, come up with a really cool standard and see if we can get anybody to implement it. And the TCP IP model has been well, whatever happens when you put a whole buttload of people in the same room together, in the same network together, whatever they seem to sort of converge on, that's what would make the standard. Once you've converged on it long enough, then do it. And that's what I think should happen to IP version 6, personally, if I could have my way over everything, I would like to see the type of service flags in IP version 6 be directed towards service. You know, not, and the services be somewhat logical and not keys like, well, urgent flags in IP version 6 are set by originators and originators are authenticated. So, meaning if you're, let's say you're CNN and you're paying Sprintnet, well, you automatically get priority. And that's kind of weird. I mean, it may seem like a great marketing idea and it probably is. It'll probably make a handful of people a whole lot of money, but it's not going to help me. And so I would like to see things be a little more practical, directed towards the actual type of traffic that's being passed. And I think, and yes, I think version 6 should be re-engineered. I think that it should be more practical as well because the addressing scheme is, right now, the implementations are, because of the cryptography that's involved, are shaky and untested. And I just think that it should have been one of the things that were sort of thrown to the masses and then regurgitated in some usable form. Anybody else got anything to say? This guy.  You form it from 8. Right on. Downstream. Broadband access is everywhere, sure. It's really sweet, you think there's really going to make any difference. Like, I know that with your network, small ISPs are having a problem getting...  Do you think there's going to make any difference? Do you think technology is going to advance for the next years and years where people at home are going to be able to get in a band that's going to make any difference? Ooh. Like, what for grace is that to pay? Well, that... I see things blue, I mean, like... I think I know what your question is, because I've had this discussion, again, like over beers and let me paraphrase for you. You've got so much bandwidth out there. You've got so much...  And there are some of the problems. I think the problems that we were just kind of discussing like, you know, your upstream is saturated or you've got, you know, some kind of routing problem or there's a technology problem like some... I know that with some DSL loops you end up having a shared collision domain once you get out under the fiber and then you get saturated there. But I think, you know, technology's going by loops and downs and I'm sure... I don't know whether everybody would share this with me, but I think that those... the bandwidth problems will be resolved as far as being able to pass a lot of traffic. The problem is that when you get down to the core of the net it really... I mean, you're getting into the 2 gigabit stuff nowadays and even bigger, you know, with the dual and triple and quadruple distributed fiber EMAEs and this kind of thing. But I still think that as our needs grow, let me give you an example. Take cable TV. This was the same deal with cable TV. Everybody out there's got a video camera.  Lots of people. Lots of common Joe's have video cameras. There are laws in most states and I don't know if they're federal statute, but I know that when cable was sort of being tariffed and people were just trying to figure out what to do with cable when it was a nice new thing, they said, we need to make sure that the common man has to have access to cable. We need to make sure that the common guy has got a public access cable channel and that he can get to it, you know. I still use that in Colorado Springs where I live. There's a very public access cable channel.  I turn it on and I see, like, well, crap, basically, you know.   So I turn over to Star Trek.   There's so many more. There's, there's cool, there's seven of nine for Christ's sakes, you know.  And I see the same thing happening with broadband access.  I don't have a production studio and broadband access, here we go. We're streaming video now. We're streaming audio now.  I see me being the public access cable guy screaming, I'd be between sixes bad, you know, or bad is good, baby, go with government, you know. I mean, for something, you know.  So, and really, I feel like that completely drains, that completely puts stress on people, new users of the internet who are never gonna experience what I experienced. They're never gonna experience at least 56K line to the university and thinking, God, I am God, you know.  So, I agree with you, but I don't think it'll make a difference. Anybody else? Actually, the internet too is like a buzzword. That's what, is there anybody from CNN here? From CNN, guys. Yeah, that's what people like CNN and other clueless individuals use for, for, for Virgin Sick. Not saying you're clueless, it's a valid question and I had to ask the same question. But... Internet too. Internet too, actually the internet too encompasses a few other things. It encompasses some of the larger backbones that they're trying to build like with the universities and that type of thing, but they are deploying IP version 6 on those networks. So they're kind of synonymous, not exactly, but usually when you talk about internet version 2 you're talking about a whole spectrum of things and it's really, it depends on who you're talking to, whether it's CNN or NBC or whoever, you know, time. Anybody else? I'll vacate. The author's name is Bing Bagadikian. That is an awesome book. It's awesome.  But it's really good. Bagadikian, we can find it. It's published funny enough. It's published by some kind of independent publisher because he couldn't get it published by any of the corporate publishing houses. They didn't like him standing there. Anyone else? Anyone else want to question? Back here. I'll end it here. There have been too many assumptions that I wanted to say. I'll start with the assumption that IP version 4 did not, you know, IP version 4 was a D-O-D-Y. Well, IP version 4 did not, you know, IP version 4 was a D-O-D-Y. Is there an assumption that people like you and I, I mean, I would never trust the D-O-D-Y because it's not about anything else, you know? Yeah, for sure. So, I think it came evolving because you came up with a new stuff. And the protocol is true. The protocol is a tool of infrastructure like that. Right? I'm not sure if you can get it. You may not, but it'll be first on you if you run out of addresses. Especially when people get out class C's like they were free. You! No, Paul has done us a big favor about hooking us up and we could probably use it out more than that. But just to address that, I think there is a critical difference and the critical difference is that IP version 6 has sort of been thrust upon us by the industry. IP version 4 was adopted in lieu of OSI, SNA, and all the other standards that were available. You know, we could have done all these other things, but we sort of said oh, this is cool, let's do that. The guy back here, you had a question. This is true, you have a valid point of view. This is just a difference of opinion. My opinion is that the model works fine. The deal is that there's not an immediate there's not an immediate I'm reaching here there's not an immediate gain for passing someone else's traffic. So we have a very short-sighted corporate media state. And if your bottom line and your shareholders are not happy and I think that that's the attitude that was spawned in version 6. Version 4 can still be profitable and it can create an atmosphere that's very conducive to learning and advancement. But I think that version 6 could be the same. I just think that there's a critical difference in that you know, this was not again, this was not designed by someone else and we just kind of adopted it. based on us. Looks like we've got another speaker coming in. THANK GOD!  Thank you very much.


One. Welcome to ongoing election coverage by town meeting television. This is one of many forums we are bringing to you in advance of local elections and town meeting on the first Tuesday of March, that's March 2 2021 town meeting TV. Election forums introduce you to local decision makers and connect you with the issues shaping your community. The topic of today and the title is Essex merger. Wait, what? Still not the solution since 1958. I'm Christina bell.  And we are here with Irene renner. She is a town resident and voter and a former select board member in the town of Essex. And we are also with Ken senior yellow. He's a town resident and voter, and he owns a business in the village of Essex junction. Before we start, I wanted to mention that election and voting will be different this year. There will be a informational forum on March 1 and an Australian ballot on March 2. So I'm going to go over that in advance of local or related to this issue. So I can. We'll go over that at the end of the program as well. And now we can get started. Ken Irene, welcome. Thank you. Christina on behalf of kind of myself I'd like to thank you for moderating tonight. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm going to go ahead and bring the board in behind the scenes and town meeting television for hosting this forum. Your meeting coverage provides a crucial window into what goes on and local government all year long. And it helps to grease the wheels of democracy. I'm eager tonight to discuss why merger as proposed. Still isn't right for Essex. So what I thought we might do right up front. So why is it not necessarily true? Well, nothing can be further from the truth. I got active in a merger task force in 2005. But in 2006, we did vote on a merger plan. And the results of that plan indicated that a number of people did not vote on it. And so that was the result of that. Which was curious to me because it was an issue everybody seemed to be talking about. When I looked into those under votes, I realized the ballot question was on the back of the ballot. So a lot of people missed it. In fact, so many people missed it. The number of under votes exceeded the margin of victory. And at that time. The vote had been yes, by a small margin. So those folks are sort of disenfranchised. They didn't even realize the question was there. So I worked very hard to get a revote in. The next year, January of 2007, so that everyone could have a chance to focus just on learning about merger and then going to polls and seeing that one and only question. Unfortunately, for me, in some ways, that vote reversed and it came out as a yes vote. So from then on, I'm, I'm known as someone who doesn't like merger and that's not true because actually in March of 2007, I earned a seat on the select board. And from then on, I worked on consolidating a number of departments because fairness and taxation was very important to me. And I think that is a way of bringing the community together, not dividing them. So I brought up that chart. And I guess I have to share my screen first. Okay. Because I should do that. You can skip it if you like. Now here you are. You who are watching this live we welcome your questions at the end of the presentation so that may be around 630 or 645 depending on how things go. The number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. So I've worked with Irene for a while and I know that it can be difficult. She's a nitpicker. She's a fact checker. She's a detail finder, quarter of facts. The problem is she's right most of the time. So what I've encouraged folks to do is not necessarily believe what she has to say, but at least listen and check the facts. Yes, I hope you'll hear us out tonight. And I think what we have is new information, which is something that you don't often hear about in the merger conversation. It seems to be the same old arguments. And if you read the newspapers in 1958, that names of the players are just about the only thing that's changed. But what we'd like to do tonight is just dispute and discredit two of the popular Pharisees that we have about merger right now. So the first thing I thought we would do is, and this is surprisingly a problem, is try to understand exactly how town and the village relate to each other. And just what is it that's merging. Okay, and what's merging is the town and the village. Have you got a map for that. I've got a map for that. So you can think of the town and the village three different ways. The first think of it as two distinct municipalities just like Jericho and under hill to separate municipalities that each have their own governing body, a select board in the case of the town, a board of trustees in the case of the village. They both have the ability to levy taxes. And they both have a separate budget. Two distinct municipalities that operate independently in terms of their government budget and taxes. Second way to think of it is geographically. Excuse me, can you don't have slides showing up so if you are sharing your screen we're not seeing them. I am sharing my screen. Okay, that I do not see. And the audience is not seeing them either. I'm afraid producer. Is that true. I'll try it again. I'm not seeing your screen right now can how about there it goes there it is. All right, so there we go so go back very quickly so we have the municipalities select board trustees for the two different governing bodies to municipalities, and there are separate taxes. There is separate budgets. Second way to think of it as is geographically. So, here's the village of S extension town of Essex reality is they're not separate geographically one overlaps the other. Not cookie cutter overlap and this can be confusing. Now I know it's confusing because until about two years ago, I was puzzled by why is it that my town hall is in the village of S extension and the police station. It was mind boggling to me. Now I understand that the reality is, it is in the town, and it's also in the village. They overlap dirt and stop me anywhere along here. I need to answer a question I mean, okay. Third way to think of it is population wise. Here's the town and the population. People who live in the town are members of the town voters of the town citizens of the town. They vote on village issues of village budget village select board members. They are residents of the town simple as that. If we put in the boundary of the village. It creates two distinct areas and we do refer to them. We're still talking about the whole town. We call them the town outside the village area and residents within it, and the town inside the village and the residents within it. When you overlap the village, what you've got is a situation where the folks that live inside the village, they're dual citizens, they wear two hats. I don't know if my video is showing but you can think of it. We can see. I'm a villager. I vote on village budget. I'm a villager in Texas village board of trustee members. Same person. Now I put on my town hat. I'm now voting as a town resident, and I vote for my town budget, my town select board members. So that's one of the distinct differences for town inside the village folks. They're dual citizens. Another difference of course is if your account outside the village resident and voter, you do not vote on the village stuff. You don't get a chance to vote on the village budget. That's a significant distinction. We'll get rid of the house. So Irene, what exactly is it that's merging. So merging would be the town and village governments, their assets and their budgets. So that's what we'll have after the merger just the town, just the town select board, just the town budget and just town taxes. True. So what exactly is the problem that the merger trying to solve. Well, as some village residents have noticed, they are paying twice. They take taxes to the village for certain services, and they pay other taxes to the town for other services. One point that's popularly made to justify the push to merge by the villages to get rid of some of those extra taxes by sharing them, as well as by seeing them go away as you saw on that map. First question and issue is what do the town residents get town inside the village residents get for their town taxes. That's the first big complaint that we hear right.  Let's take a look at two tax bills. So here you see on the left, typical town outside the village tax bill.  And so here are the town tax components. And here's the corresponding, well it's not for the same property obviously a town inside the village slash village tax bill and you can see there it is. So what we're going to talk about is this part. The town inside the village, the claim is that very little value is gotten by the town inside the village residents taxpayers from this portion of their tax bill. You can see that they've got a second portion that says village taxes, and that's where the pay twice idea comes from. So let's focus on just this top part. What I've made here is a pie chart that shows all of the taxes collected by the town as a whole. And then I divided up into the portion that's contributed by the town inside the village taxpayers and the town outside the village taxpayers. What you can see is that town inside the village does in fact contribute quite significantly to the town budget to the tune of about 41%. Significant. The claim is that very little value is received for those taxes. Why dug in. And I'll grant you over time this situation has changed. Currently, the situation is such that significant amount of that revenue that the town inside the village contributes it does receive back in benefits. Let's take a look at it bit by bit. The first part, most significant part without question is police services. The police budget, when you combine it with the debt service on the police station that we just built 1980 not just built but still paying for about $5 million total split at 5050 wise 5050. Well Sarah Macy split it 5050 when she did her separation analysis. I just got information from the police department that indicates that in fact the number of calls that the police department delivers to the town and the village is very close to 5050. Exactly impact for last year it was 51% 49% 51% in the village 49% outside the village. So 5050 split is quite reasonable I think Sarah nailed it. You can see that almost half of the 41% that the taxpayers inside the village contribute to the town budget they get back in police services. Next, this next item is very interesting I mean you were there when this was established why don't you talk about the next component. I was there when we decided to consolidate the budgets of the highway departments and public works and the town decided to give the village a debate essentially on the taxes they were paying to the town. And now they get a check cut to them to pay for their highway. Wait what. You're telling me that the town cuts a check to the village for $1.2 million. I'm just about yes.  Yes, it does. Okay, so that's a straightforward transfer obviously so there's another significant portion of the 41%. Next, you were also there when this part was established I believe I was we combined the town and village managers into one unified manager, we combine the town and village clerk into one position. And it's now based out of town hall, we combine the finance departments, and so forth so there was a whole lot of consolidation that went on and the budgets got consolidated and so. And now the town and the village share a significant number of personnel town manager assistant manager, human resources finance director clerk assessor, I hearing. And I do know that and I have figured it into this the village does contribute about over a little over $100,000 to those, but added all up. So let's track that part divided by two. This is approximately what the town inside the village is getting in benefits for that sector. Next, parks and recreation. So I took a look and the budget for the town for parks and recreation, totaled up about $600,000. I divided it 5050. This is a question. Some of these are does the town inside the village benefit from the town parks. Irene, what do you think. Well, I think we all know that the village has a wonderful park at maple straight with a pool and fields and things but there are nine other parks outside the village which also receive heavy use from all residents of the village including the jewel Indian Brook reservoir in its park. John was out recently and is being very heavily used during coded times. It sure is. All right, so to sum this up. The idea that the town inside the village town taxes. There's no value received. Doesn't really to me anyway doesn't seem to hold water in fact it looks to me like, depending upon how you classify some and I haven't talked about fire which is question for those are very, very small, compared to the rest. Population sensitive services, the village definitely benefits from, especially the police, obviously 90 to 95% is returned in direct benefits. That's a lot bigger than zero. Okay, can you talk a minute about why the graph is divided the way it is 5941. Sure, well it's not that difficult taxes property taxes are based on grand list. Can you explain what that is. Yeah, the grand list is properties in the two district restrictions or the total town actually and then you would consider the town inside the village as a separate area when you're calculating the village taxes. You multiply that times the tax rate, and that gets you the taxes it turns out that town outside the village grand list is currently larger than grand list inside the village. And growing faster I might add. All right, moving right along. Now if you just tuned in, we are here today with Ken Cinello and Irene. We're talking about the Essex merger. And if you're having some questions as you're watching, you can call us at<PHONE_NUMBER>.<PHONE_NUMBER>. Those questions will be open for consideration. At about halfway through the program at 630 to 645. Ken, if I may interrupt. We talked about the one fallacy that village residents don't get anything for their town taxes, but one of the other ones is that the town is not paying its fair share and if you could go back one slide please. It looks to me that the town is not only paying half, which I would consider it's fair share, given that the town outside the village population is half of the total, but they're paying 59%. So it almost looks to me like the town outside the village folks are paying more than their fair share. So we're going to talk about since we're going to be looking now at who's not paying who's fair share of what it looks like is the village taxes that we're talking about when we talk about fair share. So the other side, the other portion of the equation for merger and taxes is the village tax budget. Back to the tax bill. Now we're going to talk about the second portion of the story, which is only paid by the village. That's this part here and you can see it's quite significant. So, I went to the annual the village annual report and grabbed this pie chart. And what you're looking at here is the revenue that funds the village budget and where in the sources of it. And what I noticed right off the bat is that a significant portion of the village's budget is funded by the town of essence. Now remember it's my look quite like a lot of money is significant portion of a $5 million budget.  It's large but it really should be considered under that fact. So, what happens. Well, here's the village budget currently residing and managed and maintained and voted on within the village. If we merge what happens to it. Looks like all of those funds start to come from everyone. The whole town now has to share that budget supply the revenue necessary to fund that budget minus the red slice of course because that now becomes it nets out to zero. Sure. So that's an important concept to understand that's one of the most important parts of what merger does. And that's what really results in the what we call the tax shift. So we're going to take a closer look at that now. Another important part about this besides the tax shift is that that budget that gets shifted to the whole town. The folks that live outside the village, they did not vote for any of it. They did not decide what makes it up. They did not have any say in what makes up that budget they cannot vote on village matters. They cannot wear the village hat. Sarah Macy showed us this chart. Which is excellent. This is a good chart and shows basically a way of representing the tax shift what they've done basically is instead of putting the tax shift all in one year, they spread it over 13 years. That's what the merger plan contains. There's a special tax district to manage that. The problem with this, and what Sarah said last night is that the average tax rate goes up $25 per year. That's not quite true. It's not $25 per year. It's $25 per year per year. It compounds. I've made a little chart to give you a sense as to what that looks like. Here is what was presented. This is those same numbers. It's been 13 years. And now if you compound it, it looks like this. Wow. So, over the course of the 13 year plan, town outside the village taxpayer that has a $280,000 assessed house will end up paying an additional $2062 over the course of that 13 years. Now, to be fair, this could be a lot worse. The $330 in year one right through. So what I call this is this is this idea of shifting the taxes this way, like boiling the frog. Slow, hardly notice it. But in the end, you're going to be paying the full boat. Question questions. Nope. Okay. There's another component to this story. In addition to those taxes from the tax ship where the town is absorbing the budget of the village. The town also has a tax increase every year. It's typically in recent times $40 or so for $280,000 house. Well, how does that factor in and how does that figure in, especially considering that that $40 idea came based on a $15 million budget. So if the village budget is included now in the town and there's no cuts, which is what's been proposed. It won't be 15 million anymore. It'll be more like 20 million. So the increase of 40 is very conservative. And here's how it looks. So I would have said on top of but underneath really underneath the normal town tax increase you will have the additional tax shift. It adds up. That's the concern right. Sure does. There's another way to look at this. Let's put our village hat on a little bit here right. It's also promised that there will be a tax reduction. The taxes go up outside the village because they're absorbing the budget. And town inside the village now has to pay less of the budget so they get a reduction that's logical. And here are the proposed and estimated numbers again granted these are estimated based on assumptions. One of them being the grand list, not growing, which is not true because the grand the grand list grows, the tax rate would go down, unless the budget matches reasonable assumption we can work with this. If the proposed tax decrease due to merger is averaging $36 per year. And it turns out that the average tax increase from the town is $40 per year. You're not going to see a tax decrease. You're going to see a smaller increase, but not a tax decrease. Folks, if you don't believe me on this, I want you to find the government official, a trustee, a select board member, town manager, ask them face to face. As a village taxpayer can I expect my tax bill to go down due to merger. That's a good question. It's a good question. I know the answer. But I think you need to find it out for yourself. Don't take our word for it. Don't take our word for it. That's right. No, honestly, check the facts. All right, so the other thing that happened yesterday is there were a lot of benefits pros and cons that were presented by the trustees and staff and one one select board members and one trustee and staff yesterday. So let's go through some of those Irene and talk about them. The game. I'm game. All right, here is one. Oh no, this was not one that they mentioned sorry. This is one that I thought of. So this is what puzzled me. What kind of a negotiation is this really for my village perspective. So the village is going to share all of its assets it's town hall, it's fire truck, it's fire station. With the whole town, which is great. Appreciate it. But it's going to have to keep and maintain and pay off. It's that.  Checking first or there aren't any hidden student loans of course, but you. I don't understand this. Now, why isn't Irene you have any idea why it is that the village is going to keep and pay off its debt. The only thing I can imagine, I mean, the official answer is that the law requires it. And yet, back in the 60 late 60s early 70s when Essex Center was a village and it dissolved the town outside the town of Essex took on its debt as well as its assets so I'm a little I don't know why if the law has changed since then or whether this is sort of a gift to the town outside the village of minimizing the tax shift by maintaining the debts in the village for as long as they need to be paid off. Well, clearly for that to happen with Essex Center, they had to vote, obviously you couldn't adjust. You know, so that would have been the necessity here. Right. That could have been put into the merger vote itself, I think. Another item that was mentioned, well, one item that was mentioned yesterday is that the new merger plan has Australian ballot we call it budget to vote. Budget to ballot. That too. That too. So that was listed as a benefit of merger, which really kind of surprised me because we already voted to do this. Back in November. The only fair thing you could say was well, the merger plan doesn't take away something that you already have.  Thank you. All right. They claim there will be a reduction of duplicative services. What do you think I disagree. First of all, I think the phrase duplicative services is not accurate. I've never seen two different departments provide the exact same service. Because the electorate that preceded us would have never allowed that. There are two fire stations with two separate fire departments, but in addition to doing mutual aid for each other they go to their own calls first, as I understand it. There are two libraries but they have very different programming they have very different atmospheres they have different collections. So I wouldn't say that any of the things that look like they're similar between the town and the village are actually duplicative. I would say that most of the real duplicative services have already been combined. I think that's a fair statement, or paid for by the town directly with checks. Yes. How about this one. The services will be available townwide. I think that's a tricky one because right now there is five star childcare in the village but given the demand for that I think they would have expanded into the town outside the village long ago if they had the resources. So I think that's a good way is the buildings and the staff to allow for that expansion. I mean I don't know of any business that doesn't take advantage of demand when it has it and clearly, the demand may double. If you double the number of people who are paying into each R.P. Right to the way I look at it is you take a budget that services, the needs of 11,000 people. Take that same budget don't change it any spread it across 22 million people. 22,000 not 20 million. Thank you thank you. For those services that are population centric, obviously, merging doesn't cause the roads to double. But those services that are population intensive. Well, those are going to be a problem because they're going to be demanded by twice the population potentially. Yes, so that's going to require either more resources more money obviously, which I never hear anything mentioned about that. Or additional rationing. All right, next. Tax equity merger will achieve tax equity. That's a mantra we've heard for a long time. First of all, tax equity is sort of in the eye of the beholder. And that orange and blue pie chart. If you define tax equity as people in a certain district paying for the share of taxes that you would determine by population. That's overpaying right now. So, equity is sort of fluid. And again, who's to say that it's equitable for folks outside the village who've never voted on a village budget to now have to pay for those three and a half million dollars of services right and I think that's the key. We've already demonstrated it granted this is more recently in the last 10 or so years tax equity or tax town taxes has largely been achieved. The village taxes that are really the problem. And the problem with the problem is that only town inside the village villagers get to vote on it, the town outside the village folks have never had to say in those taxes nor this merger plan. That's important. How about fewer voting days that's been promised. Oh yes. This, this idea stems from the fact that there are votes now in March and votes in April. The April votes right now are the school board vote and the village municipal votes with the merger the village votes will be gone. Yes, and the town vote in March would remain. However, the school board when asked this question on Monday night of this week indicated they have no desire to move their election for to March they really like having until April to determine their budget so this is not only something that's not going to happen anytime soon from the mouth of the school board members themselves. But it's also something that's not at all related to merger, similar to this budget to ballot second bullet that you have here Ken so why it's being used as a selling point for merger is beyond me. Two slogans I hear constantly will be stronger together or will be one. Well, I think we already are one town in fact we were chartered as the town of Essex back in 1763. So I don't think that we aren't one we happen to be a nested community and that's worked out quite well for us in our circumstances. We are quite strong we've attracted a lot of industry. We've got terrific schools and a great reputation we've got not only a downtown and suburbs but rural areas. I can't imagine a much stronger position than any town could be and so again I have to question why this is being used to sell merger I don't think we're weaker without merger or stronger with it. About this one. One municipality can no longer apply for the same grant twice has that been happening. And we've milked it. Similarized municipalities don't have this advantage of South Burlington with a very similar number of people can only apply as one city, but we, a town and village often apply for the same grants, state and federal as two different municipalities. So this summer, we gained $30,000 from two grants that we were able to apply for from two different directions. We give that up if we merge. And then Irene I want to let you know that we're just a little more than halfway through the hour. 635 and please continue. Thanks. Thank you for that point there appreciate it. We can get carried away. Last point on this chart on this slide. Representation, how does that change. Well, once again, we've kind of been able to double dip as a town and village in the same place. Because on county boards like the regional planning commission when I was a planning commissioner I sat next to someone from sx junction. And again, Colchester in South Burlington could have easily raised an objection because they're similarly sized municipalities population wise, and yet they didn't have that advantage of being two municipalities so they didn't get two people at the table and this was just for other boards as well in the area. So there's actually an advantage to being two. There is but I don't see that when I look at the benefits and the pros and cons shall I say of merger I don't see these laid out in there and that disappoints me I wish that we're being more fair to both sides of the argument. That's why I prefer the slogan to together. It's worked well for us and that's why I think status quo since 1958 has been once one out of the ballot box every time. Okay, so let's wrap it up, and then we'll take some calls you ready for the last slide. Sure. So what we've done is made this little diagram or cartoon I guess. I mean, what are we looking at. My screen is being hidden. Sorry. There you go. We've got a picture of the merger plan and you know, at first glance it's neat and tidy and it looks terrific. Above the water, nothing to worry about right and yet underneath those of us who've done a deep dive have some serious questions about some of the features of the merger plan. We already mentioned the tax shift that was the graph with the bars that grew and grew and grew. There's some hidden costs to merging. There is some unequal representation ahead of us. Let's talk about some of those hidden costs because I heard a little bit of mention of those at the village budget meeting. What did town manager teach have to say about the future housing for emerged town. Sorry. I seem to recall in the reporting on that budget meeting that there was going to be some issues with building or housing the new government. Oh, of course. Yes indeed. The town manager unified manager now mentioned that with all these consolidations we might need say a central library or central municipal building. And that of course would bring mega costs to the equation, either buying land or if we could find land that we already own somewhere. A building is not a cheap proposition 10 million or more is what I remember hearing him say. There are things that are again not being talked about in the merger plan or the documentation that's marketing it that I think is a little disingenuous when it doesn't talk about some of the other costs that would be ahead if we merged. So I also see unequal representation here but I heard quite a bit last night about the fact that three plus three charter changed that you and I put forward and managed to get past actually is in the new merger plan so why is unequal representation here. Well, for one thing. In the time between that when the merger plan passes and the next March election so for almost a year, there will be an interim select board for the new town, because merger hasn't yet taken effect and the people on that board will be the village trustees all five of whom are from the village and then the select board members, several of whom also live in the village so we're talking about lopsided reputation representation to the tune of perhaps eight out of 10 of those people being from the village and when they're going to be spending the budget that we vote on in March, planning for the next year's budget and making all kinds of decisions about merger in between. So that's the cause to think that that won't be equally representing the equal populations within the town. And that's what that refers to I see. Yes. Okay, another hidden below the water items special tax districts. We have some four special tax districts coming in the village as part of this merger plan and again for a group of leaders in the village who've always pushed for tax equity it's kind of curious to me that they would set up new taxing districts as part of this plan. So you run them down quickly. Sure, there's a capital district capital replacement district which would pay for some of the capital for at least five years we're not sure why it is in 12 years that's one of the reasons. Several select board members have questioned the completeness of this plan because there's a lot of moving targets and different deadlines and different timelines for things and that's one of them it's a capital plan district. There's a sidewalk district that ensures that village streets continue to be plowed by 730 in the morning on a snow day. And there's a downtown know that they took that out of the plan. There's a debt reconciliation district. Yeah, take care of the debt that the village is keeping got it. That's what you referred to on that slide as bullet one. And there's the, the district that helps the tax spread out over those 12 years as you showed the bar chart. Tax reconciliation. Yes. There's, there's four special taxing districts which will tax the village and I'm not sure if that's even worked into some of those charges we saw. That's a lot of juggling for the taxing department to handle it seems like in fact I remember that being mentioned that one of the select board meetings that the savings for example for the sidewall tax district turned out to be about $2. And how did one select board member says the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. It's one of the services and that has to do with as we talked before. It's one thing to not have enough childcare right now to service the village through each ARP but if you have the entire town paying for that recreation department all of a sudden you might have double the demand for childcare and camps in summer and how are you going to meet that demand, are you going to be doing more rationing, or are you going to be charging a lot more money so you don't have to rush it. Yeah. Right. It's more than just the feed you have to find the building. Absolutely and staff. Okay. No cost savings. Well, one would hope that there'd be some belt tightening on at least the town or village side, if not both, and yet we have not seen any cuts to headcount or anything else predicted as an incentive to merge you know if two companies merge, they shut down one factory and they move everything together and they lay off half the people from the ol factory but that's not happening where people serving people here and the population here only grows because it's such a popular place to move to and so you need the town clerk to process more absentee ballots every election or mail out more ballots if they're mailing them to every single person who's a voter. And then you only have more people applying for zoning variances and permits to put a new porch on their backyard you know their backyard so I think that we have a hard time seeing a lot of people getting in any situation, but certainly just throwing the two different groups of services together is not going to have any inherent savings. It's not intuitive no in fact their staff is going to grow unified manager asked last August for six more staff members some full time some half time, some part time. So I found that curious that they are so short staffed and if I could back up a little bit we've been told that millions of dollars have been saved through those consolidations we've done in recent years. Well that was in the chart. I'm afraid that a lot of that money that was supposedly saved was on the backs of existing staff who kind of doubled their workloads in order to make it all fit and you know. That's not fair to anyone to make them do both the town and the village work without hiring people to help them. So, again, if it was artificial savings that we're being told came out of consolidation. It's no wonder to me that we need staff now desperately whether or not merger passes so we're certainly not going to see any headcount reductions. So the one last item. I hope we have some calls. Awesome identity. Christina what. If you're listening and you would like to ask a question and call in the numbers<PHONE_NUMBER> that's<PHONE_NUMBER>. And we will open up the line for calls in just a few minutes. Last but not least. aspect of the merger plan. The loss of identity this is something that came out of the last merger plan vote there was a proposal to call the new town the town of Essex Junction. And there were people who live out in rural Essex especially but also people ask centers that I don't live in a junction. That's not the name of my town that I moved to. And that's always really important and so I can understand why people from the village would not want to see say the name, or the cute logo that the village has which I love, come off of all the trucks and all the signs in the village you know that's something that a lot of people identify with and celebrate and if it becomes the town of Essex that's what shows up on the trucks is my understanding. All right so that completes the presentation part of the show. And I will stop sharing my screen. There we go. And with no calls we have an alternative plan. So let's see if we do have any calls coming in I'm going to check with our producers they're going to chat to me if they see some calls coming in, and I'll let you know. We're not going to be singing a song. No song. Never mind.  Let's see. I'm going to ask, I've just chatted to the producer to see what they're seeing on the calls. So we'll go through some, some trivia that we learned in the process of doing some of these analogies. So we're, I will see it up on my screen if we, if we have calls that we can take. And so I'll let you know, and how about we, yeah, let's move to some facts that you may want to share. Yeah, just interrupt us at any point. This is not so significant, although interesting I think anyway. So I'll go first Irene. Unless you, you're Bernie to tell your story. Go for it. So what I learned was interesting was this, you saw it on the tax bill, there was this online item on the town outside the village only tax bill town highway tax. You know, I've been always hearing that Oh, it's the village town inside the village that has the extra taxes, but apparently there has been a tax paid only by the town outside the village residents. So I learned, thanks to one of the select board members was big on history that that started in 1917. And I haven't researched it thoroughly but it makes sense that what was must have been happening was there was that tax inequity problem that was recognized and this was a way to resolve it. The town outside the village collected extra tax to fund maintenance of its road because the village was taking care of its own. And we have a caller. Excellent. So we can get someone to someone on the line to ask a question. Hello caller you're on the line. Can you state your name and your question. Hi, and you're live. Thank you. This is Tony Morgan I live in the village. And I think that people all over Essex and the bill both the village and in the town, feel like one one community and want to be one community. We've been working hard over the years and in particularly in the last two years to become one, because the alternative sucks.  I think we are all better together. So I think that you can find pros and cons. But it's like what's what's really valuable here. Is there a question there Tony. Yeah, is it how important is it to people to really work together and be be one community, because of, you know, how what more could the village do to how much more do they have to give to have Irene and can be be happy with a merger. We've really been over backwards. Tony, I have a question for you what town do you live in. She gone. She gone. Yeah. Well, that was a good question. The answer is simple. We are one community. We all live in the town of Essex. Can I say more. I'd love to add something if I could. Yeah, I know plenty of married couples who sleep in separate beds. It doesn't mean they're not married. It doesn't mean they don't love each other. But there are times for being a part. There are people who go on separate vacations because they have an interest in something my mother went on a cruise because my father wasn't interested. She took a lady friend of hers. It happens all the time in our lives. It doesn't mean that the relationship is strained. It doesn't mean that we don't love each other. It just means there are sometimes times that it's behooves us as we talked about with the grant opportunities. Why not continue to be two communities because those two communities have a lot of history and culture in common. And as we just saw a lot of budgetary things that we do not have in common and if you force one half of the town to take on. Whether it was debt or current expenses that they didn't vote for the level of animosity here will go through the roof and I might be blamed for that, but it's not my problem if people did not carefully think through how we should share expenses and tax increases in a way that is indeed fair to people rather than having to say the town outside the village paid 59% rather than half. You know, I think there's a new data has really opened this up for me. Christina. Irene, thank you for your comments. It looks like we have another caller. Let's see if we can. Hello you're on the line. Can you state your name and state your question. Yes, my name is Patty Davis. I live in the town outside the village. And guess what money talks. If we pay 59% then we don't pay 50%. So whatever that last caller mentioned, I'd like her to hear what service benefit are the town outside the village residents going to leave in the town outside the village for this tax increase, say a new building for our own daycare, or what we want to walkable bike, bikeable community, because we, you know, we want things. Yes, even if they're duplicate because we live here we don't live in the village. Okay our fair share. Please show the graph that shows the annual 3% tax increase that we pay each year and the shift merger to show that last woman what we actually pay compared to what she paid. Thank you. Thank you we have another caller. So, before we go to a graph if we can find that graph let's send ready in time right here. Okay. Tyler can you state your question. There's the graph. What are you referring to. She's simply saying that for the town, but we said earlier for the town taxes. There's tax equity, possibly more than tax equity in the direction opposite from what was originally what is said constantly that's that's the line that we hear all the time not getting value from my tax dollars. That goes down to the village budget, which the town outside the village has absolutely no control over. It looks like we may have another caller. Let's see if we can get them on the line. Hello. Hello, are you there. Okay, there we go your live caller. Can you say this is from Essex. And I have a question. I understand the village has already passed its own version of a merger. And I also understand that it's governance model is significant well is somewhat different. And that differences could be rather significant between the governance model. That's in the town plan. Can you talk about that. I thought about that actually. So let's imagine for a moment a day in the near future and this merger plan passes both plans go to a committee with the state legislature the governance operations committee. They are going to be like King Solomon. They are going to have two merger plans different. They can pick one or the other or maybe come come up with a combination. Think of it this way, if they pick the village version, just go with that and say that's the plan, put it to the legislature and it passes, they will have passed the plan that half of the town did not vote for it. Let's try the other way around the town plan gets accepted as is, and gets passed. That plan would then become the, the charter for the whole town which the village villagers wearing their village hat did not vote for. And finally, if they come up with a half breed plan something that they combine together a hybrid. That'll be a plan that nobody voted for. So, I would not want to be in the shoes of anybody on that governance operations committee if that happens. So the answer to your question is stay tuned. So it is five minutes before seven o'clock. And I want to remind voters that town meeting will be different this year, there will be an informational meeting live streamed on March 1, voting by Australian ballot Tuesday, March 2. Do you want to Irene or Ken say any closing. It looks like we might have one more caller. That's cool. Do you think we can we have time to take it. I have something to say but feel free to take the call. So let's take the call and see if we can also put in some closing thoughts. Hello caller. Hi, yes. Can you hear me. Yes. This is Margaret Smith. And I just want to say thank you for the excellent presentation. And my question is, is this going to be available because I would like to be able to let people know where to view it and the other, the junction presentation to as well. Are they going to be available online. Do you know. You can find the recording of this broadcast, you can find this and more forums like this at www.ch17.tv. As well. Do you have a place where you can make the PowerPoint that you have available. We have a website. We'll put it up there. It's no merger now.org if it's not showing up on this screen. That's, that's where we are basing our information. No murder now.org and w w totally separate, but where this recording will live if you want to recommend it to friends. www.ch17.tv. I think I'll let Irene wrap it up, you know, this is so new to me. I've only been involved. Thanks to Irene. Year and a little over a year and a half now. So, you know, a trial by fire. Irene has been involved with local government for years. So she's earned the right to say something to wrap up. I did want to go back and address something that Mrs. Morgan said and it had to do with us being one and, you know, the good feelings we all have for each other and I would just like to clue her in that at all of the meetings that I go to, I go to most of the select board meetings and most of the trustee when I hear someone like vice president of the village, George Tyler saying, you know, we need to spend down that $400,000 before any merger takes place. That doesn't leave me feeling warm and fuzzy. So if you Tony feel like you really want to merge, I would just encourage you to tell your elected officials that you don't show up at a wedding, or at the altar without your dowry, you can spend down everything that you've agreed to put together. And so, yeah, I still am a fan of a free and fair merger. I've yet to see one come across my plate in the last 16 years, but I keep hoping and in the meantime, I would encourage you to go to separate and share, which is a terrific plan that Ken came up with when he first arrived on the scene, probably because his mind wasn't clouded with all these old plans that the rest of us have looked at too often. And it actually has working in three towns in Maine where they have cooperated. They do things separately. They have separate boards, but they come together on a quarterly basis that they manage other shared services together. And I think that that is more of a solution that will help preserve what's unique about both the town outside the village and the town inside the village in ways that merger never will and it really will be happy ending for all of us. And in the meantime, I would just have to urge you all to study this plan and to please vote it down on March 2. Thank you. Thank you so much Irene and thank you Ken for your presentation. Thank you for tuning into town meeting TV. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks to the collars.


Welcome to another episode in the 23 part collection. This is 23 Michael Jordan videos in 23 days Today we are looking at the most savage Michael Jordan stories on when he absolutely Destroyed his opponents and the trash talking stories that happened even before the game had even started these stories are Insane hilarious and funny and they're told by NBA legends that were involved on these days So without further ado, I don't want to keep you guys waiting The one thing I'd love for you to do is hit that like button these videos take a long long long time to edit So I'd really appreciate it. Let's aim for 5,000 likes for the next episode tomorrow Be sure to hit that subscribe button for more MJ videos coming to you in December and There is a full playlist below in the description and on the top right of your screen And if you click on that playlist, you'll find all the MJ videos that have been made so far Full video links and credits are on the screen right now and in the description box as well If you want to watch the full interviews and clips in their entirety But I don't want to keep you waiting So welcome to the day that MJ told Byron Scott He was gonna drop 50 before the game and the day that MJ told Chris Weber to not even try Because it's gonna go out and score 50 as well these stories are insane and I can't wait for you to watch them enjoy But Jordan didn't talk until it was a big moment. So during the early part of a game He wouldn't say anything Is any Jordan stories that that come to mind for you, you know what one time and it's not even talking one time We played the Bulls and we're in the playoffs. We get off the bus Jordan parks inside his Ferrari before the game and Joanna Jordan the cool. Do I was from Chicago with play against Jordan the summer those type of things and so we would talk to Jordan because I felt like we had nothing to lose and Let's just give it our all and have some great stories to tell our kids about so yeah Jordan Oh, he would talk from them if you wanted to talk he would talk And you know, I know I have that old-school like type of mentality I learned from the OGs like you know MJ and you know, we're talking and chopping it up and we're getting off the bus a smoking a cigar And inside of a non-smoking building Jordan smoking a cigar before the game Before the game before the game With his feet kicked up Smoking a cigar with his uniform on you know, you're smoking a cigar before the game, man He's smoking a freaking cigar before the game is it's over.  And this is when you supposed to say man, shut up, man We want to be about the beach off and I think we beat him that year once or twice that year in a regular season So we feel we felt like we matched up pretty well against him. This is the only time I let a teammate down I feel like I threw a teammate under the bus and we let him down. We all pointed to Calvary I've always proud of myself on being like the best teammate but this night I let my man down because we both look back and said Calvary got to see him But Calvary Cheney walks on off the bus after this and we all look back like this would be your victim this evening Calvary Cheney, now I think about he didn't say nothing He planned it but He gave us 55 in the playoff game 23, Cheney leading the ball Michael Jordan leading the ball, Leber passed on the 3 Michael Jordan is back as is Dennis Rodman Jordan already off and running they're gonna have to find a way to shut him down Judovin with the Asserts and it came to Orlando choose that I for game number three Michael Jordan with 20 points He's tied in giving up the offensive rebound and sticking to Howard Jordan, Jordan back by Cheney, off the field Yes, Leber with full game Jordan that's too easy Well it's over to Ty the series and Juan here's Jordan going right Here's a look at all the different people that have looked at Michael Jordan It's been mostly Calvary Cheney taking the brunt of Michael's attack I think it's in the fourth quarter they make a run He's going crazy in the fourth quarter and I'm doing everything And he's just making shot after shot after shot and there's only something that you can do All you can do is just try to slow him down And he makes this crazy fade away going to the baseline Over his left shoulder toward the baseline and I swear it looked like he was It was like he was like parallel to the ground on the fade away And he makes it, the crowd goes wild and he lands on his ass We had to call time out We call time out He sprints to the sideline, he sprints to his bench After the time I let him know, hey, yeah, we're going to win this game And then we come out of the time out And then we come out of the time out And we're standing next to one of them He just, so actually I'm standing, I think I'm standing there He comes up next to me and he's like He's like, Cal, are you tired yet? I said, am I tired yet? I said, are you tired yet? That's crazy And we just started laughing So at the time that was when he had a really really good game He goes 22 for 35, 10 for 10 from the line Just a game where Jordan scores 55 points He's murdering them the entire game But like I said, he's just Everything with him is like I said, it's a mental game Yeah, mental game And he's going to beat you mentally too We were a young team, man If they were to cut us together We lost to that Bulls team, that 72 wins Bulls team In three games by seven points in the playoffs In one game they had to hit it at the last second shot Not that we were going to be that good But still That next year, yeah, they should have cut us together Yeah I never felt at any point And I watched every second That he was either hogging the ball or taking bad shots I was the only one who could get to my offense generated You know, initially, and I just got into that move He was like 55, you know, in the playoffs In the playoff game He gave Cowbert 55, he didn't give you 55 He probably gave me about 17 though But we just, I mean, Cowbert looked at his two It was, it was He looked at his so helpless Like really, really you're going to do that to me Sorry about that, Cowbert Give me your best Michael Jordan story Michael Jordan story You guys remember Anthony Peeler We played against him in the form And it was my 10th year in the league So it was my last year with the Lakers at that time We had drafted a guy, Anthony Peeler Yes Okay, so we got Out of Missouri, right? Out of Missouri So we got Chicago Bulls company in town And unfortunately, I got a spraying ankle So I heard my ankle So the trainer's like, I don't know if you're going to be able to play tonight And I was like, well, we'll see, you know, let's just wait till game time You know, and so Did you say fortunately?  I said, man, what's up, MJ? He said, man, I heard you ain't playing tonight I said, no, I'll spring my ankle He said, who's guarding me? I said, Anthony Peely, he said, the rookie I said, Anthony Peely, he said, 50 She said, 50 She said, 50 What a guy Hey, no call What? And so No hesitation No hesitation So I go home, I come back to the game, got my suit on You know, the players go out to warm up and then Anthony's coming towards the bench And I say, Anthony, listen So I told Anthony Peely, listen, MJ He said he's going for 50 tonight So what you don't want to do is piss him off Right Yeah He's probably gonna go for about 50 tonight on you So just don't piss him off You know, just be cool Yeah I said, this how you guard MJ I said, don't be all physical and trying to body him Because he's gonna go around you, man I said, back up, giving space, damn to shoot jump shots Challenge him, he make him, he make him Right Play off his weakness and at the time it was his jump shot I got him, I got him Okay Every time MJ scored, he looked at me on the bench Told you They're getting every bounce Speaking of clear jump shots Michael Jordan now a stand Not only that, but he's talking to the guys on the sideline He ended up with 54 Ken Smith and Peeler derail Michael Jordan Now that is a major task That's your answer then For the Lakers, start doing the job Michael pulls up just inside Michael is strutting, he's strutting going back Trying to post them up early here Getting every bounce Speaking of self, you know he has a field tonight Michael Jordan pulls up from the perimeter Shot over Peeler and Jordan has 14, having a field night Six seconds to shoot for Chicago Jordan spinning around Perkins Gets inside The basket of bulls and the three bulls Yes, Trinity Michael already has 16 6.05 to go in the half Bulls by four He knows Jordy's turned around over three Get in it, it's a five point bulls lead Under a minute to go Jordan saw that open Open offensive set that they've been running A lucky bounce as it pair him high off the rim Michael Jordan with a double clutch Michael Jordan for three For 24 Jordan against Tony Smith There's the double team Jordan splits it Draws the foul Pits the jumper He has 32 a chance for 33 Williams and Jordan on the floor Michael Jordan loves Hollywood But the good defense And Jordan with a big jam All of that is well and good But the reason why they were so successful Is that they only turned the ball over 12 times You get 33 seconds to go back in A couple that make them take some long jumpers here Six on the shot clock Jordan Stolen by Jordan Three on the lookie Nice move 10 seconds Here comes Jordan off the bar and around Over Elden Campbell Oh my Michael Jordan And Michael has 54 points in this game So a demand could do basically Whatever he wanted to do on that basketball court 54 What 54 And Mr. Dunn Byron Scott is out Byron has trouble Here comes Michael I remember Toby said 50 54 I love it That's how bad that boy was Whoa Michael the bad dude Mike with a bad Bad man And how good were those stories? If you enjoyed them please help me up by hitting that like button Let's aim for 5000 likes for the next episode tomorrow Be sure to hit that subscribe button if you are new And here are two new Michael Jordan videos I think you will also enjoy So be sure to check them out I will catch you guys tomorrow Take care