So with no agenda additions or changes, no need to approve the agenda. So now we will go into public to be heard. So this is the portion of tonight's meeting where if there are any members of the public who wish to address the board about something that is not on the agenda. Now is the time to do so. So as this is the first time that we are using zoom instead of teams, down towards the bottom of your screen, there is a reactions tab or button. If you click on that there's an option to raise your hand. I would prefer to use that instead of the chat feature. So please go ahead if you would like to speak to the board about something that's not on the agenda, go ahead and raise your hand using the reactions. Genevieve, see your hand is up. You can go ahead and unmute yourself. Hi, yes. So it's, it's just a note that to myself that with the creation of a new city of sx junction. First of all, can you hear me clearly. Yes, we can. With the creation of new city of sx junction. It comes to my mind that it's really important to consider it an opportunity to do things differently. I looked at the. I had the description of the job for the manager of a city of sx junction and I know you will come to something different regarding this. And I just want to make sure that things are done differently from usual if we are to attract diverse people. Okay, we are going to be talking about the process for a city manager later on in the agenda. So if your comments have to do with that then I would ask if you can hold on to your comments until that. Okay, I will. Okay. Thank you have other other things that were not on the agenda. Just thanking you for all the work you did for us to become a city. It's, it's an amazing amount of work. I'm odd that I can trust the trustees. And on to Montpelier, you have the legislature pass that to them. So I am not seeing any other hands up. So we will go ahead and move off of public to be heard. And on to our first agenda item. Budget workshop and putting a discussion on the potential use of arbitrage. Okay, everybody. It's gone a hot second and we're on zoom now. Oh, I'm going to make you a host so you can share. Okay. Okay. Everybody. We figured we would just change things up a little bit. Why not have to make me the host against Sarah or else when you hang up or whatnot. Okay. You have to promise to hand the baton on to whoever out. I have everyone is now responsible for helping me remember that. All right, here it goes. The power. Okay. I am going to share screen. Three. Okay. Where did you guys go? First time, sir. No, actually, yes, yes. Let's just go with that. There it is zoom. No, they're all a little bit different. Right. And my screen, they're all with like so. Thank you for there we go. I just want to see your faces. Over here. Perfect. All right. It's still budget season. Okay. Okay. There have been a few, but changes to the budget. So you should just confirming you're seeing my budget memo. Yeah. Thank you very much. All right. So this was the memo in the packet. This is an update on where we stand between the last time we talk budgets and this evening. We have made three changes. So we're going to go back to the last time we talked about the budget. We have a signed excess fund balance. From FY 21 to offset the tax levy in the amount of $43,461. After just, and Brad also you're on deck. I have a lot of emails from you. So we're going to just give you a group effort here in a few minutes. So be ready with that unmute button, please. Thank you. Thank you. The IT contract for FY 23. At $40,000 so that we can continue to get some of these costs in here. To get the city up and running, although I do think that maybe that has changed since. Writing this last week, Brad, that'll be what I'll need your help. Here within a few minutes. And I've added an additional $15,000 for. The budget. We're going to make some changes. We're going to make some changes to the budget. And we're going to make some changes to the budget process. That was not in the budget initially. As of writing this memo a week ago, we were working on personnel in the wastewater budget and thinking that we were going to make some changes to potential allocations or positions. And since publishing this, we have decided not to. So comment for here that there might be some additional changes to wastewater. But I do anticipate that our primary focus this evening to be the general fund. This. Leaves us with a. A budget of $6,383,415. A 13.2% increase over the prior year. The majority of which is raised by the tax levy. We're looking at a 12.5% tax levy increase as it states. Which would be about a 12% tax rate. Increase about $113 over the prior year. Given average grand list. You other. Points I want to touch on before we start discussion. Discussing is that we did have major staffing changes in this budget. So we have a full year of a village. Village manager. Village assistant manager. And we're going to make some changes. We have a full year of a village. Village manager. Village assistant manager slash HR position. We did remove an administrative assistant position. We had previously had the assistant to the manager and an admin person on the village side with shared management on the town side. So which making adjustments to. Dissolve those agreements. We have a full year of the village finance director. We moved a tech services assistant in Brown now from part of the village. And we have a full year of the village finance director. We've moved a tech services assistant for six hours a week of sub time to assist in covering Saturdays. There is a new full time position or there's a position for eGRP customer service specialist. Hitting the general fund in this year. And then there was another adjustment. And there was a final adjustment to another eGRP position. That was mostly general fund in a portion program fund. That's now going to be fully general fund. did have a pay structure change and we had pushed that out to start January 1st in order to help pull some costs down in this budget. I have seen some email communications discussing possibly pulling that back to July 1st. If that's something that the trustees are interested in doing that would add $20,000 to the budget we could easily put that in there. There is a considerable impact on the administrative fees paid by the enterprise funds to the general fund because of the way that is calculated that's calculated it's 50% of the personnel costs in administration and finance and as we just heard we're staffing up in those places and so portion of those costs gets then paid by the enterprise funds so in addition to the 12% tax rate increase that we're currently looking at there's a approximately 10% increase in water and sanitation rates with sewer remaining level because of some low adjustments we had in the last few years. Missing from this budget we have not yet started talking really in the budget about renovating to Lincoln and what that's going to cost and how that's going to be funded. I know that Brad has some ideas about that that he and I have discussed and we did finally get a quote for the HVAC project at Brownnell which is $115,000 and that is in some of the documents that I believe Brad maybe provided in the packet. I didn't look at the whole packet I just pulled up my pieces before hopping on and then part of our ARPA discussion as well. We have just gotten some new guidance oh I'm the host admit okay that's right we've just gotten some new guidance on ARPA the final rule was issued last week or possibly today January 6 January 11th are getting confused in my mind and there are some changes for the amounts and the restrictions on use of ARPA funds for the provision of government services those are actually much more lax than they had been previously though we are still in the process of reading the 400 page assessment. Few other questions that had come up on budget day that I wanted to note was we were talking about potentially postponing some of the roofing projects when we were talking before we knew that there was an expansion of eligible uses for ARPA funds or where we would be with some of the ideas that Brad has this evening we're talking about potentially delaying some roofing projects over at Park Street School or 75 Maple Street the question had come up if we could use the one cent economic development tax for something in the budget that fits the criteria. I think this is open for discussion I wasn't initially seeing anything that jumped out at me when we had this discussion although in reviewing the language on the ballot when this was first approved it really is more loose than I had you know my instinct was economic development but it is more for projects designated by the trustees and then we wanted to talk more about ARPA I have a quick schedule on this memo that we can sort of talk about as we wrap up this evening about whether or not we need another workshop or if we're ready to warn our public hearing and what that might look like on the calendar as we lead up to warning annual meeting Brad would you like to add any thoughts for discussion at this point I do have the spreadsheet up and we can plug in numbers in various places and see how that changes the bottom line she says with a smile or I can read these two seven nine emails from you yes so if you if you go to page 57 in the packet and you don't necessarily have to bring it up but that's where it talks about some of the other questions related to ARPA funds to use in the FY 23 budget and to link in renovations and I think the I'm just going to start there the important question that the trustees need to answer tonight and again we could have another bread budget workshop if we don't decide you know with finality on the budget tonight is do you want to use ARPA funds in the FY 23 budget basically to offset some planned capital expenses which would reduce the transfer of capital from operating and ultimately reduce the total tax levy the suggestion or recommendation in here is to do that to the tune of three hundred and twenty five thousand there is flexibility I think either way to use more or less if you so choose I have I have sent Sarah and Courtney a lot of emails just to make sure we're all on the same page that that what is being suggested in terms of how that ARPA money is being used is appropriate according to the guidance and that final rule did just come out in the last couple days and according to everything I can see it's totally legitimate use of those funds I highlighted some things you know in the packet here that certainly there is a directive for transparency and accountability and public input as to the use of ARPA funds I think you know you have three point two million roughly that that is going to come in by the end at the end of the day to allocate approximately 10 percent of that at this moment three hundred twenty five thousand to use in the FY 23 budget I think is responsible I think you know we're advertising it in today's agenda I would I would advise that we include specific ARPA language in the public warning and and discuss it at the public hearing I think that's one chunk of the conversation tonight the other chunk which we don't really need to decide on is the other future uses of ARPA and and mostly I want to just get the temperature of the board on considering the use of ARPA funds for the renovation of Too Lincoln or do you want to look at using other funds there's the Village Building Maintenance Fund there's the Capital Fund and there's the Economic Development Fund and so we would just like to know as we do further research on ARPA use do you want us to focus on Too Lincoln renovations there or somewhere else or have other ideas Too Lincoln as Sarah said is not in the budget at all so we we need to have that conversation sorry the last piece and then I'll get to you Raj that's your hand is I think of course I asked her to put a couple of these things in the budget and since then have also found I think we we can save a little bit of money in particular the 40 000 on the IT contract I think that we have enough funds because of all of the changing components over on the Village side I think there's enough funds to cover that IT contract in FY 22 money and I don't think we need FY new FY 23 money I also think we can reduce that 15 000 that I asked her to increase the budget by for city manager hiring I think about 10 000 of that is going to be spent before July 1 so I think we could reduce 10 000 there and then there's 27 500 in the budget for a Park Street School HVAC ventilation improvement which I think can be covered under ARPA and that could be reduced and then lastly it's not in this budget but it's something that's been a topic of conversation is redoing the Village website it's not been redone I think in either since 2013 or 2011 there was a proposal for 19 000 to do that overhaul that was not included in the FY 23 budget again with existing funds I'm suggesting that that could be done if the trustees so choose with FY 22 money and the reason that it's important to to have that conversation is whether or not you want to use that money for that purpose and it would add to the annual hosting fee about four thousand dollars to manage annually manage the new website anything you want to add Sarah no but you might have to give that run down again when we have the spreadsheet I will I have it yep I will thank you yep thank you Sarah thank you Brad um Rod you've got your hand up why don't you go ahead yeah sorry I thanks Brad that and Sarah that was a lot I think I've I think I'm gonna hold off I think I found most of what I was looking for going through this at the end so I'm gonna back off sorry okay um then before we dig into the rest of it I do just want to back up for a quick moment and go over for those who may be watching or or seeing that 12 tax levy increase the first time I do just want to go ahead and mention that that is absolutely going to be larger than normal and that is likely that this this budget is going to be an increase that is more than what we are used to and this is overwhelmingly due to the separating and ending of shared finance and shared management with the town and that really until separation is approved by the legislature then our village residents will see an overall tax decrease even though our village taxes are going up so again the tax rate for the village taxes that line item will be going up in a in a manner that's likely more than we are used to and so until those town taxes are no longer being levied against the village residents that is when we will see a net reduction in our taxes so it's not necessarily be too scared when we see that also that is the impact of having a vote to separate also as we go through this overall trustees I really think that what we do want to do and I think we voice this during our work session it's one of make sure we voice it again I believe what we really want to look for is a budget that keeps the village service levels at the status quo until separation is approved up to again try and help and mitigate any kind of tax increases that can mitigate I spoke a little bit there Amber why don't you go ahead get into the meat of things okay so I have two kind of related questions one is if to Brad's direct question about using the 325 of ARPA funds what does that do to the tax levy and do it related to that how how does that how does that work like we just assume that it's it's money in the bag I guess and we don't have it's not like FEMA money where we have to like expend expend it and then get it back we already have it so there is no reason to I'm trying to think of the right word but there is no reason to like put those expenses in in and then have to show the ARPA funds so great questions Amber and I just switched my screen to my spreadsheet is it legible on everyone else's screens okay so the impact of adding three hundred and twenty five thousand dollars of ARPA grant revenue as a non-tax general revenue source brings the change in the tax levy down from the 12 percent 12 plus percent to 3.8 percent and it brings that annual that projected property tax bill on the 208 average two hundred eighty thousand dollar assessed property down from a hundred and twelve dollars to thirty two dollars to answer your second question Amber ARPA funds have already been distributed the first they're distributed in two installments the first installment has been distributed we have those funds we have them in a separate fund in the accounting system and we have the cash on here so unlike you know FEMA which is the worst example of the reimbursable grants but even other reimbursable grants that are more timely we already have the cash so we have the unearned revenue on hand is there any downside like is there is there any potential that if we expend these funds the three hundred twenty five based on the final rule and stuff that is there any potential that we are going to be on the hook because we misspent them for lack of a better word not in a not in accordance with the rule or do you think the rule just came out but the preliminary reading of it and the general understanding of provision of government services is anything your government normally does so hiring and funding administrative and finance staff or funding the the general fund operating budget at current service levels so it's not we're not talking about a new program we're not talking about deviation from the things that we've already been doing we're talking about the continuation of government services and and so I think that that category is broad enough and looking at the general fund and specifically you know I I would feel confident that that does count and the dollar amount is is reasonable to start with the new rule does state that if you received less than ten million dollars you can just go ahead and use it all for the provision of government services so it's actually a shockingly loose rule given some of the other things that come down from treasury did I answer your questions were there more than two and Brad if you have any add just jump right in I would just add amber that I just want to be clear that we're what we're all doing we everything we're working towards right now is the village becoming a city and using arpa as a one-time funding tool is an attempt to hold this budget somewhat still in order to get to the point that we're a city and no longer pay those town taxes as Andrew was talking about and then we'll see that tax change I think the risk that everybody should be aware of is that for some reason we don't become the city we will then face these same challenges next year if we are to continue to be a village within the town so my intention of of advising to use them is that I think this charter is going to pass and that we're going to become a city and we're going to see those tax changes in FY 24 if we don't become a city then we will have to face these more difficult questions and may face again a 12 percent some odd you know increase or or something like that next year so I just want people to be aware of that that's what the strategy is here it's like using fund balance thanks guys George is your hand in relation to the arpa funds yeah it is it's and thanks Andrew you kind of you actually kind of answered my question you with amber um but you went over it so fast I didn't quite get it so I'm going to ask you to go back over again Sarah um and just really to simplify because I I can't understand facing with an unprecedented tax increase why we wouldn't use every single penny of arpa funds available to us right now I mean keep in mind that uh the select board is looking at about a four and a half percent by five percent budget increase so you're telling you're asking village taxpayers looking at something on the order it could be like a 15 16 percent tax overall tax increase this is like red alert why wouldn't you use everything so I my question is to get focused sorry for lecture there but uh how much is how much total arpa funding is available to us this year um and um why and I understood I went through your your projections brad and that's great I kind of understood the logic but can you just kind of really simplify why we aren't going to use all of it what's the what's the downside of not using all of it right now just in a this is simple an explanation as possible oh okay simple explanation so all of it is 3.5 million 3.2 million where which one is it on the village side brad 2 3.2 okay if and we have half of it now and we anticipate receiving the other half in um late summer of this year so by the time we're finished the FY 23 budget we will have you know by the time we're in FY 23 we'll have it all we could budget it all and know that we would have it to spend during the budget year I would not recommend lowering the tax levy below prior year levels by using arpa money I don't think that that's what you're getting at george although you could say why wouldn't we use all of it okay I'm not I'm not asking that I'm sorry I didn't mean to cut you off I just wanted to try to understand why wouldn't you use instead of the instead of reducing the tax levy why wouldn't you pay off some future capital projects or something I I'm just not quite getting what it seems like you were trying to hang on to a chunk of it for some reason and I don't know what that reason is I do think that the reason you know we have we haven't decided what our other uses are what do we want to use the other you know three million dollar two point nine million dollars for and now that we know we could use it all for the provision of government services that really broadens what we you know what the possibilities are and we really haven't had spent a lot of time having that discussion um and so this is using a piece of it to help with this one unique issue that we're faced with now sort of bridge the gap and then leaves us the remainder to decide what we okay but but but Sarah just just to clarify one just go back one quick point by usual tax levy what do you mean what what is the usual tax levy you're talking about um what our tax levy was last year in s extension or are you talking about something else I'm not clear what you mean by that um I can't actually remember saying so what what did I say you said you wouldn't use it to go below the usual tax oh correct so I would not reduce this line here below where it had been in the prior year you know we're going to make sure I am as to what you're saying yeah Brad really nailed it when he said it's like using fund balance right because we only have it this one time and we only you know we have to spend it for a certain amount but if we do no that's awesome Brad was I clear enough are you going to agree with that and if I can add something George yes the usual if I remember correctly the usual tax increase of the of the village is usually below 30 dollars a year right uh it's usually three four percent uh in terms of a rate increase I think that's a good target area second you know there are projects that are on the books that need to also get funding including as Brad mentioned we have work to do at Park Street School we have HVAC work to do at Brinnell we have a water main replacement on Main Street that feeds a third of the village that is going to be pricey that would eventually lead into increased water rates these funds could also be used for those projects and I would suggest a more in-depth discussion of where they're going to get allocated plus the federal government as nice as they have just been in this final ruling which as Sarah mentioned is about 400 pages is also highly recommending and as does VLCT and others having a public input process and that has not occurred other than normal meetings so there you have my two cents okay I'd be happy to explain to the public why we would spend these funding this money I'd be happy to engage in on that okay rush so I'm looking at page 59 with the scenarios um and that seems to kind of cover all 3.2 is that right I did I did do my homework I'm just trying to yes and this feels like a lot sorry it is and and I got deep in the weeds on this memo because I just wanted to make sure you understood kind of those different categories of where the money can come from but what's changed since this memo was written last week is that before we thought only only part of the money could be used for the provision of government services which is this really broad category and now all of the money actually can be spent for the provision of government services not just a limited amount so the bottom line is we've got 3.2 million you're suggesting we use an FY 23 325,000 to get ourselves to a reasonable tax rate use it for some of the projects you've outlined and leave the remaining 2.8 whatever it is to decide at a later date have some public input um and figure it out yeah essentially I think the only other thing that we would want direction on tonight which would affect the FY 23 budget is if you want to put that park street ventilation project in commit commit ARPA funds to that then we could remove it out of the general fund um okay and the only other thing I'd say about the ARPA funds is I think you know we don't know what's coming down the pike for this pandemic um how many more situations like we are in right now we're going to be dealing with and how we might want to use some of these funds at a later date to help our residents we haven't heard from them yet or asked them what kind of help they may want in that regard so I think you know not committing all of it is a great idea right now having a thoughtful community conversation about what we want to do but we do need to figure out a way to get that massive tax that percentage that tax rate increased down um so this looks good I'm just trying to digest it um and doing the giving to go ahead in a park street school pulls out that 27 and a half um but you're not suggesting to do the same with brown ale we could it doesn't affect the FY 23 budget per se it's just a project that was in the building maintenance fund the plan is to still do a $50,000 transfer in FY 23 to that fund so then it would just be whether we move that project out of the building maintenance fund and into ARPA but we don't have to decide that tonight got it I just think I got it all right thank you for that Raj um Amber I see I see your hand is up before I go back to you um Brad one thing I'm a little concerned on uh on page 62 of the memo when it talks about the eligible uses uh it's under the end in terms of the uh the provision of government services and that justification I get concerned how first off it talks about eligible uses hyphen revenue loss and then the second part to that statement of for the provision of government services is to the extent of reduction in revenue and so I realize the final rules just came out that within the 400 pages I'm sure they haven't been thoroughly read I would be concerned if we have to provide some kind of justification as to how we would have lost the $325,000 in revenue and that's why we're using it and if we can't make that justification then are we going to find ourselves in a few years down the road having to pay that back anyway the part of the final rule that has been thoroughly read by Courtney myself and Brad is the part about this revenue reduction because this provision of government services is is so broad and we really want to understand it the final rule now says that if you received less than $10 million in ARPA funds you may use all of it up to all of it on the provision of government services without producing the lost revenue calculation that basically the Fed is saying it's reasonable to assume that under that $10 million threshold you have lost revenue and you may use it for the provision of government services we will have to make a one-time irrevocable election to use that standard allowance I think they're calling it as opposed to proving we have lost revenue but I do suggest that we do that because the lost revenue calculator calculation while it's doable it's calendar year versus fiscal year and it just gets complicated because we did bring on EJRP during that look back period so it looks like we have crazy spikes in revenue so we have scoured that provision of the final rule and we will continue to do so to ensure that that we're in compliance with it. Great I really do appreciate that Sarah thank you as that was my concern I would certainly be in favor of using 10% of the ARPA funds for lowering the tax increase in general I would be in favor of using the ARPA funds for the ventilation projects both in terms of archery school as well as Brown out and using them fully for that given it aligned very well with the attention of the funds and I think could either help to further reduce tax increase and or allow those capital funds to be used for other capital projects that we need in this community I am also sharing my concern with Raj about allocating all of the funds now or even frankly an overwhelming majority of those funds as we don't know what the future holds for us in regards to COVID I think it makes sense for us to hang on to some of these for a few more months to have a good idea as to what the future will hold and also when it comes to the two Lincoln renovations for one I would not be I would not be opposed to using some ARPA funds for that purpose I also wouldn't be opposed to asking our community about whether we want to even look at a smaller bond to fund the renovations act to Lincoln given that that is something that would certainly last for more than 30 years and I think that may be another conversation we may want to have that's all I have on that one. Dan before I go back to Amber and then George was there anything you wanted to add in? No I agree with the conversation so far now getting the clarification on what the funds can be used for and how much I agree I think we should hold on to it some of these capital projects as we all know with inflation cost of building materials such when you're buying something when it's high cost you're getting short money short short on your money where if things prices come down obviously you have a lot more buying power with that that money maybe down the road who knows but just something to think about. Thanks Dan go ahead Amber. I think I know the answer to this but want to ask it anyways does the reduction in the 3 the 325 for the ARPA funds does that affect the utility rate increase? The way I have it plugged into this budget in the way that we've discussed it it does not. That's what I thought at the moment. Make sure. But I'm I just have it plugged in as a yeah as like a non-tax general revenue sore okay I'm gonna my brain is the wheels are spinning but um correct as I have it now no because that is based on the budgeted expenditure for personnel and administration and finance as it stands which is not impacted by ARPA. It's not impacted by the move we just made. Yep okay thanks. All right George. So could you go back and show me show put scenario a and b on the screen Brad can you do that or I'm not sure who's in charge of the screen. Sure I am. And what's scenario a again no ARPA. Scenario a scenario a and b you had back where we were discussing the ARPA funds scenario it's two scenario a and b it's not even spreadsheet it was in Brad's piece. Stage 59 Sarah. There you go and up I think you go up this one more up okay so I got it okay so we've got a total of one million six hundred thousand dollars is that correct this year is that correct. We currently have that cash in the bank and we will get another 1.60 okay 1.60 so we did scenario b but instead of taking 150,000 in the Village Building Fund if we if we if we tack that onto ARPA that would give you uh four hundred and seventy five thousand dollars we're going to use from ARPA is that correct and we're going to deduct that four hundred and seventy five thousand from one million six hundred thousand dollars which gives you quickly do the math what is that about eight hundred thousand uh that that's left over that we aren't using that of this year um is that correct I mean I what we're going to do three twenty five plus one fifty so it's four seventy five minus so you've got over a million you'd have over a million dollars left this year and I'm just asking for um that because because Raj you said it and Andrew you said it you're concerned about keeping some money in there well how much money do you want to keep in there what what are you planning to do with a million dollars um that's a lot of money it's a lot of money to help people with COVID it's a lot of money to you know have as a rainy day fund for next year to help us with stuff but I'm just wondering why not go with scenario b but take the village building maintenance fund and just and and tack that onto ARPA and get that done in and leave that out of the uh or our Sarah does that does that lower us below does that put us below the tax level if we do that well not necessarily I do just want to I do believe that you are aware of this we have to obligate the funds prior to December 31st 2024 right and then we have to spend them before 2026 so as we're long long-term planning that's the period of time you have to work with right um so George I think what you're what you're asking me is what if we made this uh 475 yes 325 bingo are you what you want right back to the thing I was going to do okay so you know I'm more comfortable on the spreadsheet I know you are see I know that that basically keeps our tax levy um at the same level as last year I would like to um I do I would like to look some more at that final rule if we could you you know if we could balance the tax increase have a reasonable tax increase and somehow offset that administrative fee coming in from the enterprise funds I think that that would be yeah reasonable you know that would be a nice balance the provision of government services is very broad I do know that the original revenue calculator had excluded water revenues randomly and so um I don't want to say that we can just go ahead and do that right now but even a reduction in the tax rate you know in the village just about everyone is also a water and sewer user so those two things might wash but some balancing is needed I believe okay your question or did I go off yes you did and you let me make my point thanks okay so uh I don't necessarily want to leave all of it for uh ever but one of the questions I have is so let's say the legislature doesn't get around to or doesn't approve the city this year for whatever reason and as someone said earlier we're in a position of having these positions and paying town taxes as well can any of these funds if we don't spend them allocate them right now and that scenario comes to pass continue to be used for the provision of government services and help reduce that impact so that would be another reason why you know holding on to some and I don't have a number in mind George um yeah but no I know we've got an awful lot coming up and if we can get the tax we can get the budget to a place where people are used to as opposed to what we've got now without committing too much um I am completely confident in the legislature is going to approve the city when I'm not confident about well what I'm less confident about is timing um and and that's minimal I'm not that concerned about it but you know we don't know what's coming up you know it's been a tough month already they've only been there for two weeks and it's been so anyway I'm just so if that can be used then it might if if we're slower to spend it until we see what the legislature's going to do that might be something to think about as all I'm saying yeah and and to your point Raj I think we could be allocating these funds up through FY26 I mean if if we have till 1231 uh 24 um at 1231 24 we at that point are are you know planning for or have hopefully come close to finalizing the FY26 budget so really there are several more budget years that this could be utilized in George Raj those hands hold over no I just want to get in and I'm not going to stray far field Andrew I know you're going to rain us in and just talk about budgets in ARCA but I do want to make a note uh just what what what Raj just said about concern if there's a delay in the uh city charter for some reason and how that might impact us and this point has to do with another business item that we're going to be discussing later on and I'll stop there but it has to do with the manager search thank you I do you want to hit go back to the 475 thousand um this 150,000 from the village building maintenance fund a was a potential source for two Lincoln okay I was thinking if that was going to be for the brown owl ventilation then we needed to add in the offsetting expense no and um so if if I could just summarize to Sarah the other suggested changes so if if we can agree on allocating the 325 or some number from ARPA to go to be utilized in the FY23 budget offset costs and we agree that brown owl and park street ventilation are ARPA directly related and intended uses that's 150 of ARPA so that it still gets us to the 475 of ARPA funding it's just that it doesn't remove the 115 brown owl project from anything because that was just coming out of the building maintenance fund it does remove 275 from the FY23 budget per park street the other suggested movements there's 40 grand out of the IT contract 10 grand out of the community city manager hiring and then adding 4100 if we proceed with the website those all of those changes get us down to a 70,423 increase which I think will be sub 2% and I can walk you through those again Sarah if you wanted to go each of those steps I think I picked them all up but your your park street school R&M budget is now zero do you want to go down that far yeah that's fine okay and you were saying when you were talking about the brown owl ventilation being used by ARPA did you also say though that that would not reduce or that that would not reduce that budget it wouldn't that was planned to come out of the building's maintenance fund so it wouldn't reduce the tax levy and FY23 we would still transfer the 50,000 in there unless you didn't want to add the 50,000 I think it's probably best practice to keep adding money to that fund because you'll continue to have building maintenance it just means that project doesn't need to come out of that fund so that fund would be larger to either be used for to Lincoln or be saved for another building project down the road great I just want to make sure that I understood that thank you Brad I think the one thing I'm missing at the moment is where we're going to increase the annual web hosting yeah plus 4100 Brad who is that that's doing who in in this scenario for the website who is that is that civic plus or is it the current no it's eco pixel yeah the village based company okay so what number did you come up with Brad 74 23 so do I perfect wow nice when the math works out love it when a plan comes together and that increases am I seeing a 4.11 percent increase you are you are seeing a 1.46 percent projected tax rate increase looking at the wrong one yeah which is about $14 I do have the proposed town data in here this is stale it has changed so we should just not look at that on the screen right because we have a final amount I don't have it off the top my hand so on the village side that pulls it down actually I would say below where and what's the what's the total ARPA funds being used for that purpose something like 475 500 540 a moment it's 325 thousand dollars with then the ventilation projects in the building's maintenance fund or in ARPA to take care of those did I get that right Brad yeah so it does end up being 475 325 and in the FY 23 budget and then a commitment to those two ventilation projects out of ARPA in the future okay seems reasonable and then if we end up using ARPA funds for to Lincoln which is not a decision we need to make today but as we saw later on that memo that's right I think it's another conversation you have a full agenda for today but I think we need to have it sooner than later there's not money budgeted for that so if it's not ARPA it needs to come from somewhere or another approach as you suggested Andrew I think the challenge with going to a bond vote is going to be timing of everything and as I mentioned in the memo I think FY 23 is the most ideal time to make these renovations happen at two Lincoln there's very few people that work in that building at this time and if all comes to fruition and you're going to really open these offices on 7123 it would be nice to be moving people over into an environment that's ready to receive them rather than move them over and then shift them out within the next year or two to a warehouse for eight months we you know I think people who work today in one main can speak to the challenges that that brought to to displace them so that would just be a consideration totally agree so for all set on on ARPA there were some other questions I believe that were in the the memo I believe the fire department is one that's the only other one talking into my head yeah that was I did want to take the temperature of the board and see if you were interested in maintaining that Jan 1 start for the pay structure change or if now that we have or bringing you back or doing the back so we're good with January 1st I'm good January 1st the chief was given as well okay I saw some other head nods as well I think we have those items covered them there have been no changes to the capital budgets that were presented at budget day the rolling stock the village capital the water sewer sanitation capital or the water sewer sanitation budgets I do have also actually are you all ready to move on from the general fund okay so moving on from the general fund we do have at this point since budget day the actually Brad I I didn't ask you this but would you like to talk about your program fund budget tonight I have a JRP program fund enterprise fund budget and senior center enterprise fund budget and then there have those were the only ones that we had not talked about yet we don't need to do that this evening we could do that next time sorry not so that I didn't queue you up for that or sooner and then there have been no other changes to the other budgets so I mean I can I'm happy to answer specific questions about the program fund I think the program fund in general is is pretty straightforward in that the expenses are associated with the programs and parks and facilities and administration that needs to be done in order to to run EJRP you know I think it's oh it's somewhere around 2.9 or 2.8 million dollar program fund budget and I think our you know general fund budget is I don't know in the eight or nine hundred thousand so you know again the vast majority of the funding that goes for parks and recreation is coming from user fees I think is the general take and I kind of look at the general fund as the shell of providing you know the electricity and and turning lights on and for some of us administrative staff but everything else is really covered in the program fund thank you sorry to put you on the spot anyone have questions about that about the budget that was included in the packet the other enterprise fund budget that is included is the senior center enterprise funds there are minimal changes from FY 22 in discussing with Nicole the seniors are interested in restarting some small local trips of course this all depends on COVID and and where we are with that as the year progresses there is some there are some fee structure so slight fee structure changes proposed to the luncheon program to help make it still affordable yet sustainable with the cost of the program and other than that there are minimal changes this is like Brad was saying with the program fund this is supported completely by membership fees donations and fundraising with the building being provided by the village and the administration being paid for out of the town budget are there any questions about this little little budget in the larger budget were there any um questions on water sewer and sanitation that have come up since budget day be straightforward i don't have any questions about thank you all um what about on those capital capital budgets all mostly continuation of well thought out and design plans that have been in place and have been working yeah we're in together not i won't not try to give myself credit for that you can take credit for it here sorry i've kept the spreadsheets rolling forward um but you didn't have a great long-term view i do have a question if you can go to the actual capital fund itself yeah so if i'm looking at this correctly the bottom of f y wow the bottom of f y 25 i think it starts to show we go into a deficit yes it does so it looks like uh and that's including with the plan 15 annual increase correct that's correct so it looks like from f y 25 forward we're either going to need new revenue sources or we're going to need um something else i'm sorry did you i just need local options tax in case anyone missed that i just wanted to be clear okay well but George actually might want something to say something i just want to i do want to jump in andrew because and i'm not trying to be political here but you're right we will need to put start transferring more money uh into our capital fund but we will no longer be contributing hopefully to the town's capital fund so you should theoretically be having more money to transfer into the village cap or the sx junction capital fund that was the only point i was looking for Sarah want to make sure i wasn't misreading it we were reading well right with someone whose voice was that that was me i'm trying to decide if i want to go down this road right now so where where we are right now is a one you said 1.2 percent tax increase correct we're still at that 10 water and sanitation right and you're you're trying to figure out you're going to spend a little time seeing if there's a way we somebody's going to spend a little time seeing if there's a way that that can be mitigated yes so maybe i'll hold on this question until we get an answer because it sounds like i'm looking at this schedule it sounds like we're probably going to have another workshop day to answer some of these questions we're not going to come to i'm guessing we're not going to come to a the point where we can warn us tonight so i think that's reasonable that's where i was headed back back to the schedule we could touch on it one more time with that question you know with that last piece i really you know what i'm thinking is that arpa that 325 of arpa so really the only option here not only option but short of changing the way we allocate admin fees which i do think you know look once new staff are on and settled looking at the way things shake out is important and who's spending time doing what and what that looks like so short of trying to do all of that now without new staff and things not shaking out i think really the only option we have is to take some of that three hundred and twenty five thousand dollars that we put in there as general non-tax revenue and reduce the amount of transfer coming over from the water and sanitation funds which will push that tax levy back up slightly so really there's that's the there might be some balancing out that needs to be done there that's really the idea i have right now my goal is to uh grab courtney and brad and pick their brains in the morning but if i so if i'm understanding how that in the village anyway 99. something percent of residents are water and sewer users right there's only a few a handful correct maybe more than a handful so it's not like the whole town where that would be impacting people disproportionately who didn't use water and sewer i'm just thinking this through sorry that's fine that's um because i guess i'm just going to preview what i was thinking um i i don't want to add more to the budget necessarily but our first go around we had hopes of doing some organ stuff and and in that area that we cut and i'm wondering if that's something we might want to revisit this year or just simply hold off because we do have quite a bit coming up in the next 16 months um so that's that's kind of where i was going i'm not anxious to add any more money into this budget necessarily but if there's an opportunity leveraged from the arpa funds um there's just something i was considering but the wastewater the whole water increase thing is concerning too so i guess we'll have to see how that can equalize or shift around first roge i think to your your point maybe a question for the rest of the trustees to think about is if i remember correctly the memo from robin in terms of the ordinance enforcement was something like adding 40 or 80 thousand dollars i don't remember the exact number i want to say it was somewhere around that to the to the legal fees um or to our our legal services line so that that way we would have the funds to have our attorney uh see these efforts through the court process that that would be the the ordinance enforcement portion and so maybe just food for thought think about um whether we want to explore that or not and sarah remind me how much of an increase in the budget is one percent that's roughly what are we looking at 45 50 000 um one percent to the tax levy yeah 37 000 okay yeah so i was thinking that's all right okay i think i hope i did that right now decimals always throw me a little bit well if they throw you the rest of us are in trouble all right so we will um hit some of those that final question how do we balance out this admin fee this right here uh going to water and sewer likely with with our fund making sure that that's um allowable use under the final rule and we'll talk about these budgets um one more time at this point that's going to be planned for the 8th of February um and we'll we'll make it happen so see you guys then oh thank you sarah and i have to make margarite the host again i was gonna say before you leave don't get changed the host thank you so much i almost heard so yeah thank you all here with me while i get back to the agenda here thank you sarah you're welcome and so yeah our next item is to consider warming the public hearing nope kidding because we're not going to do that this meeting we're going to do the next meeting so we would go to the yes the city manager hiring process great and the only other question too andrew is if you all can next time uh just give a sense if you wanted to proceed with the website project or not um it's not in the f y 23 budget but i think can be handled in the f y 22 and we just would like to know if you want us to proceed or hold off um by the way is fine page 65 in the packet talks about city manager recruitment and hiring but i just didn't know got it there you go okay um so here's the memo basically uh the the real um the summary level is that the suggestion recommendation is to create a hiring um committee uh that's been suggested seven appointed citizens including a youth plus two trustees for a nine member body um to begin kind of in march with developing a hiring and recruitment plan uh this is not necessarily the higher recruitment and hiring committee this is the planning group so they will come up with whatever systems and plans there are and there's a series of deliverables suggested in here from this group um and basically they'll do the recruitment um and create a plan for recruitment create a plan for hiring what what kind of interviews are going to happen who's going to be included community member um if we proceed with this we could groups five park transgender uh the need to bring a youth member what would they bring for me uh i would say that it's a part of overall diversity of thoughts within our community and that the youth would be somebody eight uh under the age of 18 um them but four to six weeks to the boards as well um but that was going to be mine and Dan that'll address kind of what you're talking about you know and i hope we have more than one but i want to guarantee i want to sort of guarantee that we're going to have someone that's been engaged long term on um those issues around diversity and all of that um from both the government and representation area and public safety um and like i said i hope we get more applicants um than than just one but i think i think it's nice to see that youth seat there um i think sx high school has a good track record of producing some very engaged and um and bright students around governance and things like that so i i think they'll bring a really interesting perspective so i guess my proposal my formal proposal would be in addition to the youth seat reservation to have a reservation for a seat from the sx best committee thank you roge go ahead amber i just reread and now i'm not sure that i have the question but um i'm on board with this the only thought that i had as i was reading the advertisement was that we wanted to limit it to residents within the village um and i think now going back and reading it it says seeking the assistance of village citizens so i think it's probably clear enough but open the thoughts on that it's similar to a conversation that's had a while ago instead of citizen um maybe resident yeah as we we have non-citizens who do live here and we don't want to necessarily exclude us uh just because you may not be a citizen does not think taxes to live here here yeah the other thought that i had is do you say village residents or folks that own business owners in the village because i i do think it's important to have you know you might not you might not live here but you own a village in the village by them uh is this um i'm sorry did i just spoke over somebody what i was just going to say is in terms of the the uh business owner we could always look for a business owner who may be interested um i if we want to seek the input i think that maybe from a business owner we'd want to try and reach out to some when we think maybe well suited for that um instead of trying to advertise uh throughout all of chitin and county and beyond so try and you know get a business owner who who may uh just submit an application do you understand i think we're looking at business owner that has a business in the village and i assume that's what you're talking about andrew so somebody's not just specified but maybe somebody like a gave handy type or somebody who's invested in the community had multiple businesses here has an idea of what's going on and could bring some valuable insight or input to the process i think i'd rather keep it to people that live in the village at this point especially for this initial formation of the is this spread is this supposed to it says through august is this supposed to just be the committee that's coming up with the process and figuring out how we're going to go forward it's not it's not a screening committee forget for applicants no no this is the planning committee and so i think it's a it's an important distinction roge because you know some of what you were talking about dan in terms of reaching out to um different populations of folks within the community in terms of reaching out to business owners that might be a strategy that this planning committee recognizes that hey we want input on the the qualities and characteristics we're looking for in a city manager um whose input do we want well we want to make sure we get input from business owners so how are we going to accomplish that we want to get input from um from minorities or from the lgbtq community um how are we going to get their input so those are the kinds of conversations i would envision this committee having i think it's it's good to be cognizant of who the membership is but i think you know we could quickly create ex officio seven feet business member best committee member youth member i i don't think we want to go too far down that road um and and maybe just leave it open a little bit but make sure that some of those i think you'll be able to influence the process still at the trustees and we could add that you know to some of these um recommendations or some of these objectives if you want to have some clearer language about engaging the entire community george i think you've gotten it okay thanks um i'm going to just switch tempo here for a second and ask a couple of questions uh we've all been on lots and lots of boards uh and committees uh by this point in our our political careers and i only asked the question why if you don't have to would you have a nine-member board why wouldn't you have a five-member board or a seven-member board which can be act produce pretty much the same product particularly for what you're talking about the initial phase there um but probably do it a lot more efficiently um that's only criticism i'm not i don't have really strong powerful feeling about it but a nine-member board seems a little bit unwieldy um my my main concern and it goes back to the piece what we were our subject we were just talking about but when raj and i were talking about it is what happens come uh may and the legislature the general of this the city charter bill has been hung up in the general assembly and someone has wants more information or for some reason or other we we do not become the independent city of s-exjunction or we have a delay uh to become the the city the city of s-exjunction and then as we were just saying this time next year we're scrounging around trying to find forty thousand twenty thousand fifty thousand dollars to cut from a budget why lock into you know we we may regret locking into a very in a manager's a new manager's contract is going to be very expensive it's most expensive contract that we'll have why lock in when we might need that money and possibly i know that we have brad and we're very fortunate have wendy and brad come forward um but maybe we could look for a part-time manager or we could look for some other scenario that gets a gets us across the bridge until things get cleared up in the legislature and i'm not saying that's going to happen i hope it doesn't happen um i i hope it's a it's a very dim possibility but the thing is by simply waiting one month to initiate this manager search process you would probably have a lot more clarity on what it is exactly this committee is going to do um that's one one observation just want to throw it out there i again i'm not trying to to derail anything lastly in terms of the youth question how about this is a proposal because i'm going to guess that there aren't too many high school students out there that are fascinated and driven by the the subject of municipal choosing a municipal manager um and i i understand that that teenagers want to get involved and i'm all in favor of them getting engaged in the committee but i think this is a kind of a committee i don't i don't think most teenagers are interested in this particular subject again i could be wrong so why don't we say this why don't we not reserve a youth chair but we say if a youth applies will will we will appoint a youth um but instead of because i would like to i'm more interested in seeing a committee and if i look at your your uh what they're going to do it seems to me the most uh interactive and deliberative and peace is understanding the input of the trustees what is it that what are the qualifications that the trustees are looking for and figuring out how to express them in documentation that goes that gets advertised that seems to be the most critical piece and i'm only concerned in one thing from that committee that they get that piece right i don't actually care all that much who's who's in doing that interpretation if high school students can do it that's great if other people can do it that's great but that seems to be the action piece and i just want to make sure we get that part right but again those are my my criticisms i don't want to slow anything down or derail it but i think generally overall the the whole concept is good thanks Andrew can i jump in here go ahead so there's a couple points to this um that i've just listened to um five people is four fewer voices from our community that may be different voices than we've heard before so you know throughout this whole manager search process we're creating a new city the community's pumped we had a massive turnout everybody wants to to get this thing going on the right foot we want to do things a little bit most people want to do things a little bit differently than we've done in the past we want different results we want different we want a different path forward the more seats brings more voices the more voices we have the better result we get um for the planning committee and then for the selection committee as far as i'm concerned if no youth step forward no youth get appointed if one person steps forward from that you know from any population they're not fitting the bill we can punt um i think the idea that it doesn't matter who's coming up with this i don't know if that's exactly how you meant it george but who who as long as they're listening to what the trustees want i think kind of serves to negate the whole purpose of getting different voices in here and getting a different work you know just a the result we're looking for and the result i think the city's the future city's looking for um if we're not concerned about who's making these decisions we might as well just go out and hire a power firm and just take whoever they bring us um i think the community wants to participate i think they have a lot to say um i think it's going to be messy a little bit messy um but it'll get done and i i would hate to um i'd hate to limit how many how many people can come forward and participate in this process um and i and i'd hate to rush through it too quickly and for the sake of getting it done um i also don't frankly mind um you know brad i'm not sure i've read i've read all of this but what what would be the um what would be the downside to waiting a month i mean i just you know george brought it up i don't know um yeah i think it's a valid a valid point george i think um there's a few ways to do that right you could wait a month and see kind of where things go um and revisit this conversation um you could wait even longer you could wait until may really if you wanted to see the bill go all the way through it if you or wait until april if you had much more confidence that it was moving its way through both both uh chambers um i think all of that's fine i think you just need to be aware of of what the timeline is then after the fact but i i think it raises a good question george so what you don't have to answer tonight that should be thinking about is if the city charter does not go through for any reason is does the board still plan to proceed with hiring a village or city manager um obviously village manager at that point with future intentions of being a city manager um because you i i would definitely agree george you don't want to task this committee and have them engage in this work and then say thanks but no thanks we're not actually going to utilize your work maybe we'll use it next may but we're not going to use it this may i don't think that that would be a good approach right can i thank you brec can i just jump in i just want to clarify something and and with just to just to react to roge because i guess i'm just a little confused and we are probably not i think the thing is we're not necessarily in disagreement we're just i'm just confused over who's doing what here i thought the initial this committee that we're setting up is going to set the schedule appoint a chair and then take input from the trustees and sort of come to some consensus of what what that input from the trustees means and try to put it into some kind of job description i this committee we're setting up is on a screening committee which is different i would say that then you might want to have more diversity on that but i i maybe i'm getting maybe i'm misunderstanding so if i am uh forgive me but i'm sorry uh so i know it's my fault so i i'm just not clear uh but but that's probably just me and not not anyone else well it looks like the objectives with input opportunities from the public staff and department heads are you know yes there is the timeline and strategy which is rather dry there's the community profile which could be interesting there's identified desired qualities experience and education the ideal candidate writing of the job posting is going to you know be the initial attraction for whoever is going to apply and identify the recruitment and advertising plan i mean you know all of those things benefit in their own way from having a diversity of voices at the table you know it the it looks like we're just one part of it but you know the way it's written the way brad or whoever wrote it was they're going to actually go out and or in some way seek input from public staff and department heads and us i guess okay so it's not just what we're looking for they're going to they're going to write this job description they're going to write this ad and and i think you know i i don't i don't believe we're going to be spending in ordinance amount of inordinate amount of time you know interviewing candidates and going through this in order i think it's going to be a waste of time i don't think you do either i just i i don't i i don't i don't at all think it's going to be a waste of time uh but i i just in just in again in response to what you just said i think that you know there just needs the only i would say is that there needs to be understanding from everybody on the committee that ultimately that the decision is in the trustees hands and so they may want to give a little more weight to our insight and you know what we think that the job calls for you know integrate that maybe a little more heavily than than the other information they get but as long as they can do that i don't have a problem again i'm still kind of trying to parse out who's doing what so yeah i i didn't i don't mean by any way to try to limit the community engagement in this but i thought that that was going to be down the road when we're actually you actually have candidates and you're they're going to come through and they're going to be they're going to be you know community interview you know interviews of citizens and staff and so forth so i'm a little confused and i'm going to stop talking before i make myself even more confused i think that's um again just overall this committee yes would be tasked with the process come up with that process recruitment the hiring process of actually hiring of actually interviewing and i think that some things that we could do uh set as a nine-member body we can say up to nine members i think it is an assumption saying that we will get seven fantastic community members i think it's a fairly safe assumption that we would get that if not more so i think that we could once we see the applications and once we speak with the candidates i think we can also go from there in terms of finalizing what we want to appoint seven members of the community um or not uh if we find ourselves where we have 30 fantastic candidates i don't think we want to appoint all 30 individuals um because we do want to have some some constraints to the committee to make sure that things can actually happen but we do want to make sure that we can get those diverse opinions that we may not always get roge is that a hand as a whole or is that a new one sorry andrew can i just quickly comment you said 30 actually which i agree with you but since this is a committee you're going to be subject to robert's rules i assume you need a quorum so you have nine you're going to need these five people showing up um obviously more people you get more you're going to have people that are unable to make meetings just as bad as it is for us with all the meetings we have just something to think about yeah i i think um one of the reasons why i don't think we'll have much of a difficulty in getting interested applicants is i know that talking with some residents about some of the open committees we have one of the pieces of feedback i tend to hear more frequently is the lack of a desire to commit to a seat for say two to three years but rather a short-term committee appointment like this that would be a matter of a few months is something that would be much more palatable to many um so i think that it would it would go along pretty well uh trustees if unless there's any other questions or comments or grab for that matter or any other staff um if there are no other questions or comments i know that there was one member of the public who wished to speak earlier on this topic and i know i saw a hand up another community member it might be a good time to get some some public input so not hearing anything from the trustees or staff to to the other of that uh jennedy i know you wish to speak for you were beginning to speak to this item during public to be heard if you're still with us why don't you go ahead and get the tickets off can you hear me we can yes um so i apologize i hadn't seen the uh i thought i trust this packet before and that's all my apologies i tend to go a little fast on things sometimes when i'm very motivated by things um i hear george being a little worried about the process um like the difference and my view in this is if you do think that you've always done you're going to get what you've always gotten we want and i'm not the only one in this village to have a city manager that represents the entire population we don't want another old white male i apologize i'm very direct but that's the way it's always been done here and that's not okay i'm not a feminist i consider myself a humanist but i'm getting a little tired there's too much name recognition in this town and i'm not necessarily myself interested in those families but i am interested in having people who may not have the some experience of others but who know exactly what to say and where to find what we are looking for and i think i'm not the only one in this town to be interested in seeing more diversity it's all well to have trainings but what you need to do is look at things differently if you want to have five people with two trustees you are going to get what you've always had richer whiter same thing we have a unique opportunity to create something different we're a small place that's a big thing because we can make things happen the census numbers indicate that the population of BIPOC people has gone up quite a bit there is more and more people of color more and more interracial couples more and more immigrants and it is reflecting in our population we're not far from Burlington we need to be reflecting this for the future if we're looking for right now it may not be very representative but we have to look towards the future what are we doing we need to be more representative of people across the spectrum people from marginalized communities how are you going to involve them then they don't necessarily look at the internet and yet they are very good to have on board i get very frustrated by the uniformity in Vermont i get really frustrated i think this is an opportunity we can't miss i just ask you not do the same old same old otherwise you're only going to have very educated people who have an excellent background and you're going to get somebody good who's just like everybody else before who does not represent the entire population you will have disconnected people the success of the city depends on our being very creative and i'm going to stop there but i encourage you to look for different lenses thank you Genevieve one thing i do want to just very quickly note i don't want anyone from the public during this conversation to in any way feel that the board is at all being disparaging to our current manager by either having this conversation or in anything that is being said is that would not at all reflect our evaluation of Evan or the conversations that we've had our community has done very well by Evan and we are very appreciative to him for his time here so i do just want to make sure that that is that's being expressly stated tonight so Andy Cooper i know you had your hand up earlier hi thanks Andrew so much um i'm uh i put my hand up um because i was frustrated about the conversation about youth on the committee um anyone that's been coming to uh our school board meetings recently would know that um youth is uh integral integral to a community conversation um to to to to write off youth as though they're lacking in value in the conversation or to say that they are i'm sorry i'm really frustrated i'm trying to say really polite it's our future you know you you you need you need them there it's an absolute it belongs there and it's great that it was Aaron is excited to see it um yeah i i feel really strongly and i'm going to stop there because i don't know how to articulate it without without being overly frustrated thank you for your time thank you any see your hands up yourself hi i would like to also just a couple points that um go along with what Genevieve and Annie said um to Genevieve's points um i do think that going along with the same standard procedures of hiring you're going to get the same results in the end trying something a little bit different bringing more diversity that's going to be reflective of the community is is the best way to go um to Annie's point with the youth representation uh in a selection committee or process um the high school students are amazing having a 18 year old that just recently graduated don't underestimate these children they are a lot more engaged and a lot more in tune than what a lot of the community wants to give them credit for a lot of their engagement is more on a national level because that's what they see all the time but as everybody knows the important decisions the important decisions come at a local level and you want to get their attention brought it back into local government they they teach these things at high school they have after school activities that deal with government and business and these are great experiences to have for those children as well thank you thank you Carmen not seeing any other hands up uh Annie i see your hand is up um go ahead i will just ask to be brief yeah i just realized what i wanted to say thank you um when my when my son was in high school he was struggling to uh stay dedicated to school and um thanks to community support and uh very important people and integral people in our lives he was able to recommit to high school in a new way but one of the biggest arguments we had was when he was a sophomore and the school kept calling me and the guidance comes kept calling people people kept saying you've got to get your son to do his homework you've got to get your son to do his homework so for like half a year i wrote him like that right and then one day he sat there really still and then he turned around and wish i had a video camera at that point on which of course i did not because we were just in a private conversation and he articulated the best laid plan for education i'd ever heard in my entire life to this day it slays me that i didn't write it down and it was four sentences and my same son spoke at his high school graduation as one of the speakers not due to his grades but just to his personality and how he was there please it's so important to give youth a chance to be involved and committed it's so important and thank you to edrp for doing that for my children edrp is the reason that my children are leaders thank you very much thank you any seeing no other hands up we'll go ahead and bring us back to the board um i think that's uh in terms of recruitment uh rod you had mentioned it before about having uh a best subcommittee member i think that's something that would be useful is not just the typical advertisement in front porch forum facebook those types of channels but also uh directly communicating with our already appointed or already appointed committee members the various committees we have such as essence best if the uh voices were in views of voices of inclusion in sx and westward i think that there are some other avenues like that that may be able to help with increasing the pool of potential committee members we have here outside of the particular channels we could also raj go ahead and then george raj you're muted though so close so close like sarah that's my first time on the zoom um rad the uh sample advertisement looks great um the one after this whole you know thinking about this this week and listening to comments tonight the sentence um citizen committee member traits and experiences that would be beneficial but are not necessary uh include um if we can put something in there um oh i just um i this this seems a little it's gonna sound crazy but it seems restrictive right you know i know you say are not necessary um you know if there's a way you can can can craft that into something a little more inclusive even if it's something that says you know or you're simply interested in um helping to create the new city of sx junction you know or we or we especially want to see um people who are recently i don't know what i'll i'll think about some stuff tonight in email you um some suggestions but um i i just want to make that as welcoming as possible um because if we're trying to get other people and i think while they will read the not necessary part people will probably be like oh that's not me um but i i totally get why you put it why you put those those items there hi george yeah so andrew um what do you have in mind if we're at some point we're the five of us are going to have to get together and say exactly what the credentials are and what you know what sort of skill sets we're looking for what sort of experience what we see some of the challenges and so forth um what's the process i'm not even asking i'm not even put you on the spot you don't give me an answer but i'm saying maybe i'll put it this way i'll suggest this could you be thinking of what kind of process you we need to have to do that between now and march so that when we meet with this committee um and and to get to the point about slowing it down and maybe you know maybe just the recruitment process takes a month and a half or two months and maybe by the middle of march we'll have more um a feel of how well this is going to go but to get back to my point um so that whenever the committee gets together we can we we are all on the same page in terms of of the credentials and the skill set and the experience that we're looking for um could you be thinking of some kind of a process like that and and i'm going to suggest that you know because it might touch on personnel issues maybe it has to occur an executive session i don't know or part of it does or something like that but anyway suggest you be thinking of that thanks oh i i do have some thoughts on that and i also have a feeling especially since we didn't himself and just raised his hand that brown also asked us on this issue as well okay yeah i i think it's it's good to clarify george you know the intention of this memo and it's it's important the trustees have this conversation i think the intentions behind the memo is that this is a community grassroots led process and and i i do i did make a note you know i feel like um it said you know rod you read that with input opportunities from the public staff and department heads i think i should have specified with input opportunities from the trustees the public staff and department heads to specifically call that out but i i i think the language george is a little different for me this is not a board this is not a sub this is not a committee that represents the interest of the trustees it represents the interest of the community and the trustees voice will yes be important in that and and will need to be taken into account but they will also take into account the voices of the general public staff and department heads in developing that robust job posting and community profile and so i guess that's where i think that's where there's that disconnect that you're talking about a little bit that i don't see there's being an instrument of the board rather a community group that's fulfilling the process which ultimately the trustees will have final say so obviously it is important to know what you're looking for but and i don't think what you're looking for will be too out of line with what the community is but we don't know that and so we reach out and and have some opportunities for people to weigh in and then you know somebody's going to have to blend all of that feedback together into into a document let me give you if i can just just just follow up andrew real quick for just one minute let me just give you an example i like to get a specific example okay and i and this will go we'll go a little far field so right now we are in a lawsuit against the state regarding the testing of copper in the sludge that gets produced over at the wastewater treatment plant and that's a highly technical issue and it's a very expensive issue and the manager doesn't need to understand it the science of it and everything but a manager has to be capable of a certain level of technical understanding and i could go on for a long time picking out technical legislative legal financial issues like that that a manager a municipal manager has to be able to be engaged with and if this committee i again i don't want to get into that i i i totally support any any any diverse candidate we can find but you know we have to have some basic standards and the committee has to understand that if they deliver a bunch of candidates who we just can't see plugging in to the village well then what are we doing or we're setting someone up to fail so that has to be kept in mind and i think our our input is pretty important i agree and i think there's there's also an important distinction between a job posting which is the advertisement and the job description and the job description you know is already built and and that's something that the trustees can look at i don't expect the community group to really change the job description of the city manager it's pretty standard um and there could be some nuanced language that that you all want to put in but they're not going to change the job description it's more about the advertisement that goes out to recruit those people and give candidates a set or potential applicants and a sense of what it is this community is seeking and i i just want to come back to the youth piece and this is not at all anything that i'm going to fall on my sword for it's a suggestion i think it might be part of a lot a larger conversation for the board as to how and when to utilize that i think if you don't specifically call it out um then you won't get those those type of applicants i think a general high school or middle school kid would not assume that that this advertisement is seeking their participation um i think i did not prepare myself with the research but i could if you all are interested about the amount of research that's out there about the importance of including youth um in adults decision making and and the impact that it has on youth generally of making them feel connected and empowered in their community and so maybe i was opening a bigger conversation too soon with our first committee together out of the gate so again i'm not going to fall on my sword for it but i i just want to put that out there that i think it should be part of future conversations us and maybe that's just a whole another agenda topic someday so i don't want to force it right now but i i do think there's a lot of value in it and i think you know we we do a lot of great things in this community with youth and i think this is a way that the municipality can contribute as well just to help call it out i also wonder about uh in terms of this that advertisement when it says the trustees would like to appoint maybe adding in a diverse seven member citizen committee that way we don't necessarily need to say how many people we're looking for that fit into one of the many categories that we're looking for but just rather keep it more broad great um and then i just also do want to uh in that parents that will know about where input should be sought yes please do add trustees in there yeah do you in real take wherever guidance you want it i guess it sounds to me like maybe there's a little bit of tweaking and work that could happen to this and bring it back next time before we get an ad out or are you sensing you would rather proceed under um i think what we could do is i think we could proceed as well we what we've talked about uh and maybe get a list of the applicants um on that February age meeting and go from there where to george's point about delaying we could see whether you know we need to do some more targeted outreach um whether uh with what we know at that point in time we feel that we do want to solicit more input or put a pause on it but i think for now we could always just put this out and see what comes in and if we need to make tweaks later i just know that there's a lot of i feel there's a lot of energy to start this process sooner rather than later so if we can at least get the the receipts of interested community members sooner rather than later i prefer that uh brosh margarita are you there yes i am i've wondered if thank you how you doing i'm wondering if you if you knew if s expressed how to date for reporting out um not technically but we are leaning at the February joint meeting that is the unofficial official date which i don't know if it's on a calendar yet but but yes yeah i don't see a joint meeting and right i think that's a different topic but that is okay i just wondered if they were going to coincide if one was going to happen before the other okay thanks right no problem so is there anything else we need on this uh and or do you want those applications to come in to staff or to come to you directly you have a preference i don't want great i would recommend that they come into staff and probably direct them to tammy gechel that was very good at organizing things like that i also would hate to have uh one of us elected officials receive it and then be used to receiving or not receiving something no problem so going on to our next item uh 5d a discussion about a village only local options tax for annual meeting i did request this come to the to our board and uh i'll just start talking while the while the transition to the next topic is happening um just based on the select board's decision of their last meeting to not go forward with it if we'll watch this tax for this year it is something that we in the village we talked about for years and we've put off for years in terms of trying to work collaboratively with the town with merger now that that is off the table uh merger is off the table and then we are going down or now we are looking to separate uh and that the select board is not going to move forward with a town-wide local options tax i wanted to at least have us have this conversation about whether we wanted to have a village only local options tax and i know that there was a memo in the packet that should be making its way under the span shortly for those who haven't yet had a chance to read it um evan where there are other i'm sure there are more portions to that that are beneficial for the the trustees or the community to hear that are in that memo that frankly i just wanted to talk about could you i missed the first sense or two i what else from the from the memo would you like to point out oh from the memo um for those people at home um local options tax is a very fancy uh phrase for something that's very similar to a sales tax uh it is a one percent tax on sales if the there's three categories there's food and beverage there is sales of general items and then there's a meals and room stacks which is uh stays at hotels um and things like that or catering at hotels um many of the local communities in chinden county have this tax williston colchester i'm going to go off a memory wanouski burlington i believe shelburn has those uh colchester and possibly milton uh all have these taxes um as well as about 15 other communities statewide um it is a general fund uh revenue meaning that revenues that come in would generally come into the operating fund but it does not necessarily need to be used for any particular operating costs in fact one of uh several communities have portions of this tax that go to capital funding um as we talked in earlier there are a lot of capital needs of any village any town any city um including whether it's fire equipment apparatus uh to excuse me just to get a little wonky today if the village were to replace its ladder truck the starting price would be about 1.4 million dollars and the apparatus lifespan 10 to 15 years so if you were to amateurize that you would need a hundred thousand dollars a year for 15 years to repay and whatever the cost would be of that piece in 15 years you would probably need about 17 years of 100 thousand dollars just to replace one piece of equipment a pumper truck is somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 thousand dollars uh an engine truck uh we have at least one of them in the sx fire department um sx junction fire department um those are just some things there are numerous parks that the village owns that have varying uh pieces of equipment in it whether it's playground equipment or um a shelter um or there are properties that you would like to have a shelter that you don't have um there's all kinds of community um amenities that the community could look at and say okay we want all these things but how are we going to pay for it the local options tax is a new revenue it can be directed where you see fit um it can be used from capital it can be used for buildings it can be used for amenities it can be used as the community sees fit and so um i think a good example is looking at our neighbors and how they're using it um and uh very simply they are using it for capital they are using it for bonds so if you uh you talked earlier that let's say you are going to bond out the uh city hall building and let's say you borrow one point one million dollars um a simple 10-year bond at 4% has 40 000 of interest and 100 000 of bond to pay over a 10-year period that would raise your taxes as you see earlier today by a couple percentage points maybe with the local options tax the citizens looked at that and say oh we'll pay you know 100 140 000 of the proceeds of the bond for the first 10 years we'll go to this bond payment and they will not see any rise in their taxes for that project over those 10 years so it's it's a creative way of using new revenue that's not already spoken for it could get to community needs and wants and uh it is also using a very valuable um but not very well tapped use of people who don't live here who shop here drive through here or work here but don't pay property taxes here but do spend money here but are not currently uh they are helping local businesses no doubt but that extra one percent would go directly into the community um i can tell you that uh a particular family member that i'm very fond of it goes to starbucks um and she she goes there a couple times a week and if she wears to pay that one cent she'd still go to starbucks um and that money that she spends here uh like so many people who drive up and down the route 15 corridor or the susie wilson corridor stop at starbucks and that extra one cent is not going to change their behavior one bit they're going to go um and then the people that come from out of town that stay at one of our hotels or in the area or eat at our restaurants most people they just go to eat because that's the food is good that's what they wanted for the evening and they have no idea what the sales tax is or a meals and rooms tax it's just on the bill and they pay uh with that i'll be happy to answer any questions um about the memo or about the tax and or the process i will add that the state does take the first 31 percent of any taxes created in the village that is their lovely state of vermont ability to pay for many other items in the state budget uh it was interesting to read that they couldn't live in the first 30 percent they also had to add a one percent fee for actually collecting the tax and processing it versus what they were taking uh off the top but that's vermont they couldn't put a fee on top of the fee for the taxing for collecting the fee i mean it could but it does help the state um in many ways uh and they get used to the funds however they see fit um but it's just something that's really odd that um the state that i used to work at took a two percent fee total thank you evan um one thing i wanted to also just frame it with is tonight we're not looking for approval from the trustees or i'm not looking for approval from the trustees to put this on the ballot but really what kinds of questions do you have or what would you need to know in order to make the decision is the intent of the conversation and i think the hand order went to the amber first so i had a couple of questions and maybe one of these questions i'm overthinking too much but my first question was if we put this on the ballot and it was approved in april does that mean that implementation is like may first or you know what when when would we start seeing the benefit of funds from the more more than likely it would take several months for the department of taxation to do its work probably about four or five months uh and you would see your first set of revenues the quarter after it starts for the quarter so let's just say you approved it in april you would probably have it effective probably september october and then you would see that quarter's revenue come the following quarter so we've also heard many times that the state is unable to distinguish between 05452 like it is it is one of the if the town has already said they're not putting this on the ballot what does that do for i mean you just used the example evan of starbucks so it's technically in the town yep so if i go buy a cup of coffee let's just assume that we that we have i should have used the nest okay that's a better example so so the so i guess my question is how does the state distinguish are they going to have a difficult time distinguishing if i buy my cup of coffee at starbucks versus the because it's one and the same the one is not subject to and one so i don't i mean i again i might be overthinking that one a little bit but we've been in talks with the state a little bit one of the reasons why it does take a bit of time to get up and running and establish is the state is going to ask the village slash city for data on the addresses within the village okay and so with the use of the village in the town's gis uh geographical information systems database we can provide the state with all the addresses that are contained within the village if there are any other questionable ones that that's something the state and the and the city slash village would have to work out um if there's something in question as to where they are actually located they also uh one of my um other managers in a local community said they may even go with a questionnaire to the emitters as to asking them what their four digit zip code on the end is at their address if they don't already have it from the state so hope i've answered your question you have thank you um i think the last question that i have is is our is on the memo about how the tax affects businesses such as cbe and global foundry's i think that question has been asked numerous times but know that we we've had an answer to that question over over the years the state has gotten much better at explaining their exemptions there is an entire state code on exemptions um uh electricity and gas used in production is not taxed um there's a whole list and uh that is that's some things so one of the things i watched uh the town meeting i think it was 11 maybe even 12 years ago now 2009 maybe where the it came up and uh there's lots of discussions how would affect global uh i have a email out to their vp uh and general manager uh trying to get a meeting so that they he could give me some input um but in general they have a commissary slash lunch area that they sell food in that would be subject to the tax but i would need him um and his company to tell me how it would affect them and how greatly if it all you know other than their food and beverage but you are not uh subject to the tax for building material any materials that you use in the production of your product through this tax whatever they're done with the state we don't have anything to do with i do think um i'm trying to put my finger on it um but there are some really good faqs on the state's website that were circulated to the capital committee um back started this conversation which i think would be great to include in maybe the next reading file um for the public to to readily have access to because i did see in reading through all of the responses to the survey there were a lot of comments um about the taxation and they were in inaccurate statements about what is and is not taxed so those faqs are really written for citizens um i know you guys included the statute but that's great for me as a lawyer but even me as a lawyer i can't i can't follow that statute so i think that the faqs would be great for for the next round i know we're not deciding on this today but if we can put it back it next time thank you because i struggled do i how much do i put in what are the questions going to be and the faqs are certainly something we can get our hands on quickly and definitely put it in the next reading packet thank you though yep yep well those those faqs are only like a couple pages each they're not not very long uh you thank you amber you mentioned uh the convention visitors expo that is a very interesting uh business because a lot of their business is through vendors um and so it is not a central point of purchase uh and that will take a little bit of of chat with the department of of taxation of how that works um but when they do have point of sale like um uh they had a craft show and they have a central cash sharing function that's easier to deal with than say 15 or 30 or 50 uh independent vendors that are on their site um but i know that they are required those vendors are required to remit um it's just a how that is foreign to us go ahead george thanks andrew uh having just two quick questions and i think i already know the answer to both of them but i'm just being thorough first of all the last time we did this one of the issues that came up um was the impact on local businesses and we had a lot of local businesses come to our meetings and complain and you're gonna you're gonna put me out of business you're gonna force me to move or something like that clearly since we look around in the communities that have local option taxes have are full of businesses that it isn't hurting but i'm just wondering in in setting this up just did you come across anything that had studied this when communities implement this does it have an impact on local businesses do you know are you aware of anything like that my second question very quick just to just a a sentence or two um because i know you just went through this why did the town not choose not to do this way if you could just summarize it in in a couple of words why did they decide they didn't want to do it thanks um you know i i think you all know there's been a lot of issues coming before the town board and um it was very hard to get fine time to get this in front of them and they feel that you know this late in the budget season and in the air they just didn't want to um go through it at this point um as for impact on local businesses you know everybody's different in the local business right whether they're they're selling hamburgers and beer or um countertops or or refrigerators right so one of the things that um it just to use cold chester as an example cold chester did a lot of did some surveying they did some public outreach and they also felt that if they could use some of these proceeds to offset the cost of businesses like some property tax relief um not not tremendous but a little bit they they had some figures that the average person spends this they get a lot of tourism and they get a lot of people coming through their community that derives this kind of money and if they're not taxing the property owners for roads and sidewalks and buildings and upkeep that's a good balance for the use of the tax that's why you'll see in in my write-up you may want to look at some portion I believe it's under number two for some type of property tax and that would go into the general fund and as your if your sales taxes exceed what you think you're doing uh or thought you're going to get you can adjust accordingly if you get less you have rooms to adjust um but you will not have a shortage of projects uh to use the funds on I can guarantee you that thank you George brought your next uh thanks um going back to the zip code thing um so Evan it sounds like you're saying the last four that that extra four might be suitable for the tax department to be able to tell what zone what city versus town because I'm I think the GIS would would sort of work right for for Vermont based businesses but if you're some small business in North Dakota selling something to Vermont technically now you've got to collect this in a minute Amazon has to and and I don't I that's something that come that came up before I just don't know if the tax department hasn't answered for that yet but um yeah and I think that's a problem that can be solved once the once it's known that the community wants to support the tax I could tell you with a conversation with it and GIS we have every address that exists in this in the village we have every address that exists in the town they're in a database we are able to separate them out uh because they're already by the way they're already separated out those that start with a zero one is the village those are in zero two are the talent so they're already we produce maps that are village and talent so uh they were relatively confident with a little bit of work and with guidance from state we could come to whatever they need um and as far as cv egos um I'm wondering about you know they they do do camping back there I wonder if that you know some of that is um that's a private campground non-profit or not they're probably since accommodation and also ticket sales so if for instance a higher ground sells a ticket they might sell it at the box office in South Wellington but if the end venue is an sx an sx junction sorry as a local option tax is that concert ticket because it's happening and being delivered in sx junction um gonna be receivable for our lot um you know with 12 to 15 concerts what is it 12 concerts there a year um there's probably something there um you know and so and I'm sure the community would be very interested in in sort of leveraging that that space um and that's one way to put it um I guess that's that's it I you know the one thing I will say um with the the whole survey and the process that that went out um I think if we do that again and this is just friendly feedback for whoever put it together if we do that again it'd be helpful to sort of present those survey questions with information to lead it's sort of like a leading survey but these aren't political surveys so you know it's sort of allowed so something like the local options tax you know adds a 1% tax to your cell phone you know blah blah blah blah blah bills um you know basically giving them some information and asking them how they feel about it the survey seemed to just sort of ask people how they felt about it and it it left it up to their level of knowledge um and and accurate knowledge or not and so seeing the results um and hearing the feedback that was given to the select board and could have been given to us um I was sort of questioning what we were supposed to do with that um and that's not I'm not trying to denigrate whoever put the time into doing that but there was sort of my question when the survey was presented in the first place is something that was going to go out um because all those years ago when this was presented sitting through that select board meeting or the joint whatever that meaning that was there's just the level of misinformation in that decision meeting was was crazy and I kind of feel like that's where we're at again so yeah I hope this time around we can present like Andrew did in 2019 what is the use case for this what are we up against what are we looking forward to why are we considering this what can it bring us what is what does it go against how much might we make you know I mean that and I think just like in 2019 I think if that use case and and all of this is presented logically to the village um people were will respond if they know that they can get x number of dollars out of the previously um not nonprofit fairgrounds and we can keep the fairgrounds there I think they'll see that as a win-win um for instance you know so provide a lot of police protection and fire protection to that property right and just tax exempt and as far as businesses go you know we are surrounded now not on all sides generally speaking just because I'm sure I'll be quoted there are local options tax collecting towns in our vicinity some of them connected to us potentially yes um and you know as someone who had to collect it my clients paid it I didn't pay it I had one more line on my sales tax return to fill out that's how difficult it was so it never chased anybody away from me and I don't see it chasing anybody away um and I think again that's that's an example like you were talking about Colchester I think that's an engagement uh question you know and so I appreciate it and the town that I forgot is South Burlington right uh which is receiving several million dollars in in the local options tax as does Williston I appreciate the way you brought it back to us um with a lot more info and some background so thanks I just say you know and I know this is I'm sitting here right outside five corners it's now 845 at night and there's cars coming in and out of five corners I have been in five corners at 7 30 in the morning 7 in the morning I see I can see the traffic patterns where people are coming down route 15 from all the all the communities to the east and north of us right you know you know every they're all coming through the community they come in the morning they leave in the afternoon all through the weekend people are driving through five corners all of that traffic is not generated from this community is some a good portion of it is generated from outside the community yet we provide them police protection we provide them fire um our businesses provide them services um and so the question is do you want to also look into tapping a little bit of that traffic and and that service back to your own community it's just a different way of looking at it thank you Evan and Raj uh Dan go ahead yes um yeah I was going to say that I kind of sit on my breath that South Brompton was the one community you forgot but speaking of South Brompton and their former manager Kevin Doran I don't know how many of you are aware but they were early on in the process they had the local option tax and I just caution everyone I support the idea of local option tax it was brought up back when I was running for the board back in 2011 um I remember that discussion then I was opposed to it but things have changed in our community in the area in the county a lot more communities are using it but my caution is that becoming reliant on that it's not necessarily a given that you're going to get as much as you think out of it every year um Kevin Doran went to see if he could get the community to go up to 2% to double the local option tax there and my caution is it's just like drugs you can get addicted to it and you want more you can always find more reasons to get more and it's like anybody you you you live you you make a million dollars a year you can you can be bankrupt you can blow a million dollars a year you live within your means is what I'm trying to say and I would say prioritize capital job capital improvement projects um which help the community anything like Evan brought up helping out the businesses in our community using some of the money towards that so it's it's going back to them I think it's a positive thing thanks Dan and I'll throw it out you know one of the more successful things that we have done in the last couple years is the out and about program I mean that's a very good weekend for lots of local businesses um in in in sales receipts that is funded through the general fund um for some of the for some of those vouchers um it's a great program it could be expanded but uh special events that bring people to the center of the village um and bring the village back into the village I've heard that expression more than once those are the types of ideas that the community could have again for the use of these funds uh Amber your hand is up I hope I didn't cut you off before okay no I I thought of two other questions um one one really quickly is can we also include in the FAQ is the list of towns that's also on the state website um and then question for you Andrew you said you didn't want you don't want us to make a decision tonight about whether we want to put this on the ballot so I'm just curious as to what your thoughts were as to next steps time frame wise and stuff because I do think that one of the most important pieces of this is the education piece and so I want to make sure we're getting ahead of it as quick as we possibly can if we are going to make a decision to put this on the ballot this year so in terms of the the next steps from here my hope would be that at our next meeting we could have answers to the questions that that have been raised on the questions that are in the memo so that that way we can then make a decision soon about whether to go forward and how we want to go forward in terms of do we then want to do any kind of public information uh opportunities specifically for this and or just in the typical mail or that goes out in advance of the ballot to make sure the community understands what they're voting on and Andrew I would imagine uh probably like last year there'll be an information meeting the night before or a day or you know what used to be the annual meeting but because of COVID will probably be virtual that would be also a good time to reprise your local options tax presentation from a couple years ago absolutely um one thing I wanted to just quickly address is one of the questions on here was about how we could use the funds uh for me personally the way that I've thought about this is for one I pointed it out with the capital budget we see that in FY 25 we're going to need more money to help pay for the infrastructure improvements that are community needs so this would be one way to help get funds from people who don't live here so that we were not solely relying on property taxpayers to pay for the capital infrastructure this means by everybody visits this community so that would be be one use for it another use I'd love to see if we have the funds for it would be to start a sidewalk replacement fund one of the things that Ricky Jones had talked about on the capital committee years ago was how much he he wished he had some amount of money to be able to replace those sections of the sidewalk every year so that that way it would be similar to a rolling stock fund of replacing when it needs it instead of doing full sidewalk replacements as that would be a more cost effective way of going about it and then again if there were some funds left over uh some of us received I don't know if it went to all the trustees but an email about a community in Maine who was doing some participatory budgeting in regards to our book and this could be a way where if there are funds we could have a permanent source to be able to have some funding that could be used through a participatory budgeting process to really have the community decide how to use these funds instead of having to be us to present to voters to have them vote on so I think that there are some options here that would be one help to reduce our reliance on the property tax as well as help the engagement community in the budgeting process. Trustees any other questions, comments? We good to to move on. Thank you. Thanks Evan. Thank you Evan. Thank you. Marguerite, I think you're driving. Thanks for bringing up the agenda. So next would be the discussion and possible action about contracts for the town of essence and I'm assuming this is uh this is Brad. Yes and there just there was another agenda item that um that discussed the process for annual meeting and other ballot items. Thank you. I think I was just testing you. Not true at all. What Brad said, discussion about the process annual meeting. Yeah just uh we are expect I sent you out an email all of you an email we are expecting the state to pass legislation that is going to have the ability for town and village meetings to go virtual for the annual meeting including whether you do a information meeting the night but the day or night before um that was passed by the senate it was going to the house I do not know if they took it up as is but we are according to the Vermont league of cities and towns we are expecting it to pass in some form and be signed by the governor and I would highly recommend uh not packing 250 to 300 people into an auditorium uh with COVID. Considering that as of this point in time all of us trustees are remote there is nobody in the room with you Evan um our company TV are they there with you that doesn't matter um considering that we're all remote they did absolutely make sense to continue to do what we did the past couple of years of having a remote annual meeting uh having the the annual presentation so the annual meeting itself be remote mailing ballots I think yes we absolutely want to go ahead and do that again it's proven to be very successful in engaging more people in our community to vote um so I think in terms of the the process same thing as last year and then ending of report. George. I'm muted hang on a second okay there we go um our I can remember last year did we send out a newsletter I mean we all we always have but I can remember we did not do it like did we do we did it last year yeah okay I'm seeing Evan nod his head painfully yes he was another thing Evan all right but I just want to say if we're gonna this might be a good year we mail out a newsletter to be to really um in a in a good simple but direct way um describe the current budgeting situation even though it looks like ARPA is going to rescue us from having this this god awful tax increase um but also to update people on what's exactly going on and I just wanted to raise that that is a significant part of them um and we want to make sure we don't I mean I just think that in a lot of the time we just sort of find some kind of fun or you know off subject to talk about I think but I think it's time this time around we really need to be very directed about what we you know you know right up front with people about what's going on and I just had one other thought that the process of independence it's always meant that village taxes would go up we always knew that this is put to put in the newsletter but the idea is that the town taxes go away and so in this transition period we're experiencing one half of that phenomenon but not the other half there you go yep I will hardly agree with you and to amber's point earlier about like the local office act if we decide to go forward with this and how do we help to reform the community I think one of the things that within that newsletter I think my uh my letter to the community may have been like a page or page and a half I can probably bring that down to a couple paragraphs um and then we can better use that real estate for these types of purposes to make sure that again our community is well informed as to what it is they're both okay great thanks yeah and if we maybe have to throw in another page to again make sure that the community understands it's well worth it get it watch the watch the cost of that Andrew yeah it's expensive we can do another town meeting tv interview Andrew yeah yeah that's true you can do a half hour presentation and in advance you love those yeah they're good times I always love my town meeting tv time yep Andrew there Andrew there are two specific things that I was wondering if the trustees wanted to discuss having on the April ballot one is as you know your current fund balance threshold uh is 10 percent and there have been recommendations or discussions with Sarah over time to increase that fund balance threshold um to 15 or 20 percent I think she used some numbers that they that you should be around based on your current budget would be around 16 or 17 percent so picking 15 or 20 to move that to at some point it sounds like from one of her last communications it was something that was voted on and so it would need to be voted on again to change and then the other question I had is cannabis and whether or not the village uh anticipates wanting to have that on their agenda great question um cannabis I don't think our board has had an opportunity yeah we haven't had an opportunity to really discuss that many kinds of depth so I don't think that's in terms of making the decision tonight I don't think we're there um with uh the fund balance I wouldn't be opposed to going to 15 percent um my only hesitancy in that is again should separation not pass um is that again something that we're we're okay right now and so do we want to keep keep it as a status quo for now um I think as I say I'm leaning more towards keeping it at ten uh but with both of those things I'd like to give what the other trustees have to think as well um and Raj with your hand up why don't you go first just just a quick question uh 30 days is the warning for um the what's the warning time I can't remember is it 45 is I think with the March 8th meeting I think it's 30 to 40 days out Raj so for our meeting is the yeah it's no less than 30 and no more than 40 all right and our meeting is the first Tuesday right first Wednesday wait when's our when's our vote April right so it's that March 8th meeting is our last time March 8th meeting is our last time okay thanks I was just thinking about terms of cannabis and um you know the the town is going to have it on their ballot and if we don't get it on ours and and hear what our folks have to say we'll be beholden to whatever they do and whoever they grandfather in so we have to really we have to really um we have to get on our agenda very quickly in the next meeting or two so we can talk about it figure out what we're doing with that um in terms of zoning checking with the planning commission perhaps and um and and see what we need to do to get on our ballot and get our community educated about it somehow um like I said if we wait any much if we wait a year or six months for the November election the town very well could issue licenses and and those businesses would be here um and grandfathered in should the village decide otherwise so just something to keep in mind go ahead George um I I agree with what we just said completely um second that emotion and the fund balance Andrew I second that emotion for you I think it should stay at 10 percent um yeah I I would it'd be I'd it'd be great if it was 15 percent but it would kick up we would have to find a way to make that happen financially so I would you know keep our fingers crossed whistle past the graveyard but I would keep it at 10 percent right now so far I'm hearing yes we want to go on cannabis in April and keep one balance of 10 percent is anybody in disagreement with any of those and Andrew I don't have it in front of me I just I'll go back and clarify on the fund balance language what what my recollection is is that the policy says that if there's more than 10 percent that you must assign it and so the goal would be to change that to 15 percent I don't think uh I don't believe that the current writing requires you or or um it doesn't allow you to go below that number it just means you must assign over a certain number but I will clarify that just so that we're making we're talking apples and apples okay I appreciate that Evan do I hear you going back I was just gonna say for good governance you you should oh well you should have the 10 percent but I would say that was your floor and 15 is actually better for operations and things such as like we just went through if if if the federal government hadn't come back and and given us funding for lost revenue you would be going you would be possibly dipping into your reserves so that's uh that's one of the things nobody expected a pandemic to come but it did and by the way it still hasn't gone away uh hence we're all here remotely for the most part um and that's what reserves are supposed to help you to do that and or something that you know you just didn't you hoped a roof would go another couple years but it didn't so yeah and similar to that uh with with uh global warming climate change and the ever-increasing severity of the storms that we're getting uh we just had the the halloween storm a few years ago we can have it on the fence for covert and so being able to have a piggy bank to dip into for those types of emergency occasions is absolutely necessary to quote one of my one of my contemporaries savings never go out of style go ahead roger so we have uh i have to scroll up 400 or 500 thousand dollars in the economic development fund and sarah indicated earlier that there may not be very many guardrails on that um guardrails on that so i don't know how i can't recall uh the memo that spells out how much of that is spoken for um if any but that is a fairly significant sum that um admittedly could be spent sort of at any time but that's that's also there um and not a small percentage of the budget and so having that sit there what we were talking about the budget earlier it does you know it's just a it's just a lot of money to be to be in the fund right now so i if we're talking about whether we should raise another serious chunk of money for the fund balance i'm i'd want to talk about what we do with the economic development fund um first i think um maybe if i could a reminder that the property that the village bought in front of uh firebird for a park those funds are coming out of the economic development fund to actually build that space from uh and do some remediation of the soil and build a pocket park so that that well i don't think it's going to take 400 000 i would suggest it's going to take 50 to 75 percent of that yeah i was trying to recall how much right i thought it was less but i was trying to recall how much it's going to come out if we can get some grants that would also be good but um that's on the docket for those so those funds and also um the village has uh ideas um it may want to purchase parking opportunities in the downtown uh from property owners that's still out there so good thoughts raj it it's if those projects get done and there's funds left over you may want to look at um other opportunities to build your reserves by church yeah i i just want to comment raj i don't i i did disagree a little bit with sarah i she i think she interpreted that statement that the second passing of the extension of the economic development fund maybe um um amber will like this a little broadly perhaps i think if you look at the original wording and the original intent it was pretty specific for what it's supposed to be uh spent on and i think that would i gotta imagine that would kind of extend to the second piece and right and by the way it's i think it's going to be 700 000 that's in there now and i i mentioned that i think it might be good to know if we can take a little bit of that or some of that money and use it for another purpose but i would defer to claudine um on that uh i wouldn't defer to sarah and would no disrespect whatsoever to sarah but i would want to get claudine's um because i think there were some pretty specific limits put on that fund vulture right on the number says there's 600 000 now you're supposed to add 115 and f y 23 all that's been identified as 5000 for the one main street project and then he's um they're supposed to come back to you for a request for an actual expenditure and and this is on page 60 in your document the what was approved originally was you know shall the voters add one cent to the tax rate to establish a fund for village capital improvement project designated by village trustees uh so it is it is quite broad well i i did because i think you have to go into the dialogue and i i mean i think you have to go into a little bit more of the background of it and what it's been used for already but i i again i think i would like to get if we're going if we're not even anticipating doing it so it's probably a you know no sense it's wasted breath having this discussion right now but if we were i would really want to have um claudine let us you know just give her a stamp of approval to her i would recommend that anyway the other the other thing i would also add is when we're talking about village downtown capital improvement projects let's also not forget we have the hopeful earmark for the train station we also have the press and connector coming in um this upcoming year so the the potential in terms of continued investments in our downtown are going to be there and i know one of the things that we talked about when we first presented this to the community is from our trip to st albans right and the ability to do things like having a revolving loan fund for our downtown businesses to help with improvements to the sags uh was something that was very appealing to the trustees at the time and it's something that we we haven't really had the time to to explore doing and so i think as we we uh transition to a city and start to have more time to dedicate to our own needs having this type of an account could be very beneficial right and i would add that that fund in the projects that it has paid for so far ultimately you could trace all of that back to a community and to a bunch of community engagement projects that happened years ago but just because they happened years ago that doesn't make them any l