It's something that will... Oh, yeah. It's amazing how clear. We have to have two scopes, really. One is to take the picture and one is to track. Because even the ones that automatically move, they're not accurate enough. Okay. The track, the typography, the electronic feedback into the mouth that adjusts it. It's kind of intense. This is kind of like a real investment. Oh, it is. I do. I am an avid astronomer. That's a little kid. Okay. I remember going up to the contact lens was for reading. And he had trained himself to be a focus on... Oh, yeah, observatory. Yeah, that's the VAS. Wow. He also... keeps the lights up in the audience. Okay. Do they still do an open house? They do. I'll invite you. Because I just remember going. I was just so cool seeing Saturn and you could actually see the rain. Oh, my gosh. I do that with my driver. And it's just like... It's true. We have an 18-inch scope there. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the Select Board meeting. I call the meeting to order and the first order of business. We have two sets of minutes to take care of tonight. Minutes of October 16th, 2018. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Second. Second. So the only thing, Terry, on the public comment, do we typically... I don't know, it's like a political advertisement. Well, he was here and he talked. So that's typically we document that. We have never had that happen before. But he was here and he talked. So that's part of the minutes. Okay. This is a question. It's not a comment. But under number eight, the Moneybrook Crossing bridge replacement alternatives review. I wonder if they should mention that it was fairly well attended. The audience, public participation. I just wonder if that should be reflected in the minutes. Sure. It's just present, but... How would you like to work something on that? Maybe, you know, several, numerous, I don't know, or approximately, what was it, about 10 folks from the audience participated in the discussion. Okay. That's on page two. Page three. Just wondering if we, under the first bullet, under the manager report, talks about the interest revenues running high, higher than in the past. Okay. It was a time when it was quite a bit higher. Yes. So it's just higher than budgeted? Projected. Well, that's true. Yes. Protective. Anything else on page two? If not, I'll listen in favor of the truth in the minutes of October 16th, 2018. Say aye. Aye. Aye. We get on then to the minutes of October 23rd, 2018. Is there a motion to approve? I'd move to approve the minutes of October 23rd, 2018, with any amendments thereto. This is your second. Seconds. Page one. Hearing no corrections to the minutes, I'll listen in favor of the minutes of October 23rd, 2018. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? I was going to make a comment. I was way behind you. So I was looking at the actions and steps and I noticed there's no names against anything. Did we at the meeting identify leaders for each of, or at least some of these? I thought we did. In the end, it's my responsibility. If you want to put my name next to all of them. I certainly will be delegating some of it, but it really is my responsibility to make sure that the request of the select board to follow through on. Okay. Okay, that's fine. So let me try this again. All those in favor of approving the minutes, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? And one abstention. Okay. So we'll move on then to all the comments. Is there anyone in the audience who wishes to make any comment on anything on the agenda or not on the agenda? Seeing no hands raised, we'll move on to the interviews and appointments and we have two people to interview tonight for different positions. First is the development review board and we have Jill Kwan with us tonight. So if you'd come up to the table, you would give us a just a brief. Application call here. Give us a brief resume of your background and why you'd like to be on the EMDRB. Okay. Thank you very much for inviting me to come in and interview today. I had actually saw the position being advertised on the front porch forum and it's something that I had considered earlier within the last five to ten years considered as something that I would be doing. So my background is that I am an attorney and I am actually I work in real estate. Joy and I have had the privilege of working together in the past but I represent a different facet of real estate. I represent title insurance companies. So my sort of what I do is a little bit different than Joy but it's all sort of trending around real estate and I've also had some experience buying and selling properties, owning rental properties, building and selling a couple of condominiumizing. So I've also had a little bit of personal experience on the development side with my husband and I think sort of and then my other experience prior to working for a title insurance company was as an attorney for a municipality. So I worked for Stitzel Page and Fletcher. I don't know if agent Fletcher ever represented the town of Williston but they represented many municipalities throughout the state of Vermont. So early on in my career I was a zoning attorney for Stitzel Page and Fletcher so I had sort of that piece of it where we would you know look at zoning decisions and appeals of zoning decisions and be representing the town on behalf of those. So certainly and then also making determinations on you know does something comply doesn't it comply with the zoning regulation. So all of those pieces of my career over the last dozen or so years has sort of led me to think okay well maybe this is something that I would have some qualifications to do. So that's what led me to interview and that's sort of my background and where I'm coming from. Thank you very much. Welcome. Questions from the hoard. Well actually just a full disclosure thing I don't know if I need to step down. Jill and I actually shared office space together. She is eminently qualified for this but I don't know if our having worked together on a regular basis needs me need me to step down. You don't care. Teresa shared office space together. Okay well worked on numerous projects together so. But you were the same from our work. Nope separate she just is title insurance counsel so I get to work with her but she is you are eminently qualified for this. I'm delighted to see you step up. Thank you. So can I ask what's your motivation you're working with? I don't know if I'm clearly qualified from your work and I guess sitting next to joy but what is your motivation for being on the review board? Yeah I think that's a fair question. I don't I guess I don't have I'm not like pro development or anti development or there's not there isn't a stance or like a political stance that I come in with. I think that I would love to be part of making sure that whatever development occurs in the town that I love and live in is responsible and so to that extent I think that having a voice on a board like that would is something that's important to me so I'd say that's my motivation. Where are you a field hockey coach? In Williston so a couple years ago I started a program for my daughter is grade so she's 8. I have a younger daughter who's 3 but I started the program for her last year when she was 7 just because there wasn't a youth field hockey program in Williston so I started it and last year it was it was good this year it was great and I am looking forward to it continuing to improve. Sounds good thanks. My questions are I'm going to have two fold first one is about I guess the question is there are going to be projects in which you're going to have to take a stance not take a stance it may be the right place to put it but your interpretation of Williston's bylaws might be different than how let's say a developer wants you to interpret those bylaws and so my question is what do you do in that circumstance what is your guiding principles if you will in approaching those decisions sometimes those hard decisions. I mean I think well obviously you have to follow whatever the bylaws are for the town so to the extent that there is not ambiguity then I'd have to do what the bylaws permitted if there was ambiguity and I think that's the circumstance that you're describing would be that I can't say that my own personal influences might not come into play but I would like to think that my guiding principle would be fairness would be able to have an unbiased as much or try to reduce the bias as much as possible in terms of just trying to gather the information, listen to my counterparts on the board listen to the perspectives of others listen to the perspectives of the developer and just try to make the most informed decision based on all of those inputs. Okay. Sounds like a really political answer though doesn't it? I can't answer that so I'll move on to the second part and you probably being an attorney have a good answer for this for some reason this falls on my shoulders so I ask that of all applicants I'm not singling you out in any way and it's the conflict of interest question and the question is is how would you recognize it and what would you do about it? So in terms of recognition I mean there's in what I do there's probably going to be very little conflict of interest because I represent a national title insurance company making underwriting decisions so this is usually after project is built it would be the only time that we would be even ever be looking to ensure something so the conflicts that might come up for me would be much fewer it might be a personal acquaintance or something that where you would I think it would be much more obvious that there would be a conflict you know certainly if I were involved which I'm involved in very little development although I have had a history of doing a couple of projects but the only other potential conflict is that my husband is a contractor and he's an electrical contractor and Williston he owns New England Electric and so there could be a potential there where he's been asked to bid on a project but again I would think that that would be a little bit further down the line in terms of a project having been approved at that point so he usually wouldn't you know get a bid but in terms of trying to recognize a conflict certainly just you know if it's something that I have any kind of personal or monetary incentive that would be a very clear conflict and I would recuse myself in those instances you're welcome further your questions if not we thank you very much for your willing to and I think we'll decide this tonight I hope anyway so thank you is there a motion to be made I'd move to a point Jill Spinelli-Kwang to the development review board for an unexpired three-year term through fiscal year 2020 is there a second second is there a discussion on the motion and and just to verify there is no other candidates okay I see that here there's no further discussion all those in favor of the motion say aye aye may it pose no abstentions congratulations thank you alright thanks for your time I'll be in touch tomorrow so the next person we have is a person who is applied for the town service office James Thornton so Mr. Thornton if you would again take the chair and again briefly give us some of your background and your reasons for being a candidate for the town service office here I'm Jim Thornton at 44 Chelsea Place in Williston I have not had a full-time professional background in community service I noticed that was one of the statements made this would be a good position for someone with full-time community service but I have served on boards with the Burlington Children's Space Spectrum Youth and Family Services Neighbor Keepers and Scouts and other activities where we were involved with dealing with needs of other persons I've also had Red Cross training which doesn't really match this except for understanding the needs and the agencies that might meet those needs when you're dealing with someone in a disaster situation I'm retired I have the time I don't need the money and I don't need the salary that's off so here I sit Thank you very much I've existed in statute for a long period of time We've had a service officer who served us well over a course of a number of years and not a lot of activity but very important to have a position like this for people who do need the help for their questions from the ward Could you go over the duties of the service officer the full duties I could speak to that Rick or Tara if you want to add anything it serves as a liaison for folks in need of social services there might be an inquiry to the town offices that we could refer to the town's service officer help connect them with state agencies, nonprofits to provide assistance and work to come up with a plan for long term support to address those needs that the individual may be looking for help with so kind of a connective tissue liaison person to help out folks in town I guess my question would be is given that explanation are you comfortable with doing that playing that liaison role Yes Eric actually has been very clear throughout the whole discussion between us via email that this is actually a position that's sort of morphed over time and it might morph some more and as of March it might not exist so I'm very aware of that and part of my background is taking a situation and trying to figure out what we're really trying to do here and helping to define what we're doing here Two questions, one for Eric and maybe one for Jim here but did we take this out of the town charter? Is this been a remove? Yeah it's one of those so it would be not requiring the position to be filled but the select bar could still appoint someone to the role we just removed the requirement clause Just reading your application Jim it says historic and architectural advisory committee so you were looking for that as well If this would replace that, no I didn't understand it would I would very much appreciate and enjoy that opportunity If that's a conflict then I would choose hack Any questions? If there are no further questions then thank you very much Jim Is there a motion to be made? I'd move to appoint Jim Thornton as town service officer for an unexpired term through June 30, 2019 Second I was wondering No one's ever said Oh I have a huge conflict I have a huge conflict of interest and I'm never going to let it go It's not and I'm sorry we're getting off track I'll be real brief it's not to try to catch them or anything it's just to see how they respond I think it's a good question but such is life I apologize I did not mean to not ask you No that's fine Would you like an answer? Sure You heard the question I can't imagine a situation where I wouldn't put myself before someone else First of all I pretty well take care of myself anyway and my focus would be on meeting their needs not trying to grandize myself in any way I don't know how else to respond to that I can't imagine having to refuse myself because I wouldn't be involved with any agencies where I would have to do that You know the person personally Fair enough I would still follow I'm not the one that would be deciding the response to their need I would be guiding them and I would be careful to guide anyone Like I said I've learned to identify resources over time and I'm going to have to do that in this case for sure but I would be focused on guiding them toward the resources they need period I don't know how else to respond to that Not sure I have a good answer One thing I can say if you do have questions or concerns If appointed I would speak with Eric or Rick I have had very good communication very clear communication with Eric and Jennifer They've given me the very best answers they could That's one of the reasons I'm sitting here If there had been anything unclear in those communications I wouldn't be sitting here Thank you Further discussion on motion All those in favor of the motion say aye Congratulations and thank you very much for voting to be served So we'll move on to the Library Board of Trustees and I think Steve Perkins is the new chair of the board and we have Marty Fiske as the director and we have a full house I think of the committee members here today Yes, our fellow board members are here in the audience Alright, so I was told I get to do this wonderful report here once a year so this is my chance to hopefully shine for the library into details I just wanted to say that part of my job is to travel around the state and I do programs I give programs, I visit libraries throughout Vermont and almost every library that I visit, they speak very positively about the Williston Public Library and many of those libraries do hold it up as an example of what a library can be in Vermont so I think this committee is a feather in the cap of not only our hardworking staff but also our elected officials that includes the board of the library you and the Williston community at large so we certainly care about this library we support this library and that only makes our community stronger My immediate predecessor as chair of the Library Board Carla Carson said I have to have a theme to my talk last year I think she talked about the Olympics and medals and all sorts of stuff like that I'm not nearly as creative as Carla is but I did get thinking about what happened since we last met and thought that this past year is certainly a mix of trials or at least one big trial and a number of triumphs so I'm going to start with the trial I think you all know about the flood at the library this past winter in January it closed the library for eight business days ultimately about $26,000 in flood damage to the library but that could have been much much worse I think this situation it really showed off our staff's medal it proved that our emergency response plan worked and it illustrated how our building and operations are resilient in the face of a disaster so very little material that I think the community cares about the books was lost and somehow the pipe gods decided to burst one week before the anticipated re-carpet of the entire building so it just helped with that demolition a little bit ahead but certainly thanks to the staff I received a phone call the day it happened I just so happened to be in town and came down between the radiant heat heating up the water on the floor it was kind of a long walk in there and moving things in and out but worked very well and great job with Marty and her staff on that so that was trials so on to some of our triumphs the bookmobile are we'll still call it a new bookmobile it's newer than the old one but it continues to serve the people of Williston we continue to add stops if you don't know it does it's one of our largest preschools during the school year that provides teaching and reading materials and up to 12 story times for up to about 185 children each month so that's the kids and certainly throughout the summer hitting neighborhoods and whatnot to dispense books loan out books and other materials to folks in those neighborhoods but also serving our senior community we focus a lot on children and community and this year we added Williston Woods community as one of the stops so great work there with the bookmobile we have added a number of new services I think as the face of how people use libraries change one of the things we look for are digital services so beyond your traditional print books or even a CD that you can check out from the library but things we have added a number of services over the past couple of years we just barely added a new service in the past what two months September Marty called hoopla but that even allows folks to download TV series or movies from our own library all online the volume of folks who use this is still small because it's a relatively new thing but the growth in usage of this is geometric rather than linear so we keep getting our reports of the library on the percentage growth in usage of downloadable materials so for example audio book downloading is up 35% year over year and you want to compare that to the lending of traditional materials which really kind of fluctuates a couple of percentage points here and there so certainly a growth area for this library last year we were experimenting with what it means to have the school right in our backyard dismissing early on Tuesdays and how that affects the library I have young kids who love to use the library and go there after school and it's a very common thing for students to go after school and it lets out at three but what happens when the students get out at two and they're now at that library for three hours I really credit the library staff for saying this can be a positive and working with the school creating great programs that really was a positive my daughter stays there on Tuesday afternoons and I love to go in there and just see it's a hive of activity and the kids are great they're respectful they have a good time Marty and crew put on great programs for them everything from Lego clubs to movie afternoons so that is really a great resource for the parents of this community on those early released Tuesdays and then some kudos to library to library to Marty Marty is in her second year of a four-year term as the Vermont representative to the American Library Association governing council so this council shapes and recommends policies and best practices for libraries around the world and she's representing our state for that so thank you Marty so those are some of our triumphs you can certainly read about more in the great written report that I'll be putting together for the town report but looking ahead into the future I think you all participated in a strategic planning informational retreat am I correct in that yes so you did hear some of the results of the surveys that the library conducted over the past few months so we're in the midst of that the board will be working hard on that strategic plan so we look forward to what that says in the next couple of months in the short term as a library we're continuing to make adjustments to the current space and furniture working our way room by room through the library to make it more comfortable and accommodating to a modern library user so with that I'm going to end my report thank you Marty you're living that only that talking about early school release we actually have some kids who are there for the entire four hours we close at six so yeah three hours is when the vast majority but we still have hangers on well after that so it's been really really good program Jill and Sarah have put on we sometimes have two programs in the afternoon on those early release Tuesdays we'll have something that starts right at two o'clock and something else that will start at three thirty the only other thing I think I would add is I wanted to recognize that we have had a lot of long term staff some of you may know Debbie's been with us for 32 years Jill Coffrin will be with us for 15 years Kim Piney has just celebrated 10 years Kathy Luca five years Christina I think is seven so we have a very number of very large portion of our staff for a long time and we have to thank you as a select board with the policies that you've implemented for the good employment practices here thank you I remember in the library existed just as the one small brick building and what a tremendous place we've had in town on the wonderful library services that we have here come let's hear questions from the board can you talk a little bit about I just explain the concept maybe it's a way to put it of the using the library in the digital age does that mean I visit the library in a digital sense or does it mean I still go to the library and do my digital downloading at the library it depends we do have a few people who use us almost exclusively for digital services we tend to see them when they come in to update their library card that's a tiny portion though the vast majority of the people who are coming in are regular library users who are supplementing with the digital usage the digital usage is still a very small portion of our total circulation last year it was just under 6% of our total circulation but that's an increase from 2% of our total circulation five years ago so it's it's changing but it is changing very slowly can you give it's a good topic can you give an example of some of the digital resources sure I heard books earlier yes so there are the ebooks they're free to you as a library card holder we actually have three sources now for digital ebooks and digital audiobooks and now we also have downloadable music you can borrow a music album for a week that's on hoopla we have digital television downloadable television series and digital movies those are also available on hoopla hoopla also offers graphic novels which is a form of ebooks that we haven't had before because of the heavy content the graphic content is a little bit different for the service so hoopla is very good for those audio visual types of downloads we've also done a lot more of our communications digitally so we're sending out emails now twice a month that are going directly to people's inboxes and we also have a new service called wow brary that sends out an email to the people who subscribe once a week that lets them know about all the new materials that have been added to the collection in the last week and it breaks it down by genre type age group and the like are there any research periodicals that you have that we don't have access to all of the libraries in Vermont subscribe to the Vermont online libraries so that has excellent resources not only your things like your Chilton's manual so that you can change your change your own oil on your car it has a business business owners section so that you can get articles to help business owners it has general reference it has a section specifically aimed for youth as well as adult juries section has a medical reference component it's something I want to say golly I want to say something like over a hundred titles on just topics if you go to our website it like breaks it down to like what your particular focus is and then there's hundreds within each of that and then we have some that are more specific to certain things we've so we've got foreign language learning that's called mango excuse me you can even learn how to talk like a pirate if you want to but it also has you know Pashtun Arabic French Italian German and the like and that has a feature so that you can speak and get your correct accent if you've got a microphone we've got a to z world travel so it's a good travel database if you're going to be traveling you can do some research on the place you're visiting currency politics you know routes that you want to take public transit and the like with that and I'm totally blanking we have a whole bunch of digital resources for research I need a library card in fact I think yours might have expired better come back soon further questions or comments the bookmobile so how just trying to get a sense of you described who's getting the services from it and I'm trying to think of it from the standpoint of how often is it's not sitting where it is sitting right now so it depends on what the season is so because of the season right now we are visiting the four daycares so that comes out as once a week to a daycare and we're visiting as of January it will be three senior facilities so three times a month almost once a week three times a month for to a senior community that's the winter service during the summer you have the senior communities still plus it is out every Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday through the late afternoon and into the evening and then we're also doing community events so if you were at the Chatter Festival you would have seen us there at the Chatter Festival last question is and I ask this pretty much every year what can we expect in the budget so actually just had my excuse me I just had my budget meeting with Rick today the main thing that you will see is that we're asking for an increase in substitute hours one of those the big chunk of those substitute hours would be to have a summer bookmobile driver what we have been doing is staffing the bookmobile driver by pulling our youth services librarian Jill Coffrin and our adult services program librarian Kathy DeLuca out of the library during the busiest months of the year July and August are by far our busiest months of the year and we've been having to reduce the amount of time to provide their services by having them do the bookmobile so this would have a substitute driver during the summer months for the bookmobile it also has a one dollar an hour pay increase for substitutes to bring us on par to the competitive prices for area libraries for substitute services substitute librarian services then there's an increase for collection materials most of it is to support the digital services that we just started and there is a couple thousand dollars for HVAC system duct cleaning we haven't had the ducts clean since the building was built so that's 1960 for one section 1988 for one other section in 1996 for another the ducts haven't been cleaned since then questions comments really want to thank the board of trustees the library for all their work that goes into running the library along with the staff and you can do a tremendous amount of work for us so thank you very much I look forward to your report thank you so we're running just a few minutes early for the public hearing I wonder if we can skip to the Chapman Lane agreement for about five minutes sure so as the board probably recalls on that rainy afternoon we visited Chapman Lane in October and the board took action that evening to discontinue over a hundred foot section of the road this is just kind of looping back to the beginning of this discussion that evening we looked at the culvert in question that needs some replacement to be upsized and when we started this discussion for discontinuance staff met with the adjacent land owners the land batters who now own that property the discontinued section of roadway and had a discussion about the town replacing that culvert so what we've done is we've drafted an agreement legal councils reviewed it the land batters have reviewed it I've spoken with them at the end of last week and they had one question about snow plowing that they spoke with Bruce about today doesn't directly affect this agreement but just operationally had a question for Bruce and I've heard when we spoke that they were fine with all the language in here what we would look to do is ask the board for approval for the town manager to enter into this agreement with the land batters hopefully later this week so we can get the schedule for the culvert to be replaced this month we have a permit to do so which expires December 15th I believe but Bruce tells me we want to do this sooner rather than later we don't know what the weather is going to be so this would be replacing that culvert in that section of discontinued roadway question is for Eric the only thing I'm looking at is number four the culvert replacement and I just want to make sure I'm sure this correctly up until the time the culvert is replaced and the larger culvert is in service for lack of better words is in use the town still has responsibility for any flood damage that might occur maybe not flood is the right word I'm just trying to make sure I understand I'm not sure that's true now since we've given up the road okay but there as part of this whole thing we all long told land buyers we're going to replace it at the same time or about the same time we're abandoning that section of road so those are kind of an implied commitment at this point so I just want to make sure I understood this correctly we're still carrying some responsibility up until the time the culvert is replaced after that our responsibility is gone we no longer have any responsibility well that yes the last statement is absolutely true there's a question about I mean if we don't have anything in writing saying that we have a responsibility now for that since we've abandoned that section but once we fix it this agreement clearly states that we are not accepting any more responsibility at that point right so we're transferring the property back to them so basically at that point we have no formal responsibility except for our commitment to replace the culvert period I'm just trying to understand the statement that says you know if between the time the section of Chapman lane is discontinued and the culvert is replaced an issue impacting storm water damage arises at the culvert the town will take responsibility for the resolution Jeff that's handy legalese for if anything happens everybody's up for grabs well I mean that's the reality if something happened you're going to go after everybody that you possibly could and see who gets to get themselves out of it we have a hundred year flood and we wipe out the culvert we might have to replace road at that point we're planning on doing this before December 15th I think I live for that kind of danger I mean I get what you're trying to do with your question but you're not going to get the answer you're looking for okay all right says two attorneys so I should interpret this as that's as much wiggle room as should be written into this creatively so for your questions your comments just for Rick the date the date for the culvert replacement the as Eric said our permit extends through December 15th so we have to get it done before that so you will do it our crew is going to oh you will actually deal with your own crew I believe so I believe that's the maybe a contractor I think Bruce is leaning towards a contractor he was waiting to have this waiting to have this executed before we engage a contractor on the schedule some projects we do ourselves but I think Eric is correct that this particular one Bruce decided to have an outside contractor do the work it's pretty aggressive we're already in November so it's not a huge project it's something you do in a matter of a couple days but it's just a matter of schedule okay great for your questions or comments the motion would be in order I'd move to authorize the town manager to enter into an agreement with Daryl and Stephanie Landvatter to replace a culvert on the recently discontinued section of Chapman Line second discussion on the motion all those in favor of the motion say aye aye any opposed so now we can move on to the public hearing and this is on the comprehensive plan amendments read part of the warning under the authority of 24 VSA section 4385 will listen to the court will hold two public hearings to receive public comment on the proposed amendments to the 2016-2024 will listen to the comprehensive plan hearings will be held on Tuesday October 16th 2018 and Monday November 5th 2018 will be proposed amendments to move Chapter 13 the name change from open space to natural and cultural resources the addition of language in Chapter 13 directing the town to refines local standards related to river corridors forested lands protection archeological and cultural resources to better achieve protection of these resources in alignment with state goals of the city in 2024 village master plan as an appendix to the 2016-2024 will listen to the comprehensive plan so the public hearing is now open and not Matt Belanger or director of planning is here to give us a brief overview of what we're being entrusted to do certainly so as you read off in the agenda and introduction these are two proposed will listen comprehensive plan one the village master plan is a complete document unto itself proposed to be adopted as an appendix to the existing plan over time the document is structured such that it would be partially implemented over the lifespan of the plan and further integrated into the overall town plan as we looked at the 2024 iteration of the complete will listen comprehensive plan amendments to the existing open space chapter expanding that chapter a little bit both in name to cover some of the other natural and cultural resources and in particular to add some language that we know is coming in the required elements of plans related to forest fragmentation and meeting a requirement to give some thought to how the town will work to protect archeological resources that last one was important is important it was the one thing that the state downtown board found the town out of compliance on when we went to renew the growth center just about a year ago and they gave us a year to get something adopted in the plan that said we would address archeological resources so we've now identified that this is your second you're the select board second public hearing Mr. McCague identified by email three or four typographical errors to fix and we've also started those and would happily make those part of the adopted draft we've had a article published in the observer or rather an article was published in the observer about this village project maybe some of you have read it not received a great deal of comment I had one local business owner comment that we weren't going to be able to do enough to get out of the village and took a fairly dim dim view of it and I said well we're going to try to get out of the way at least that was all I've really heard since I've seen you folks last in regards to these matters so this is the time now for anyone in the public to make a comment or ask questions regarding the proposals that are before us tonight yes and it was a great addition and a lot of people came had coffee had lunch and breakfast came after school and they thought they could serve to have a cup of coffee and lots of people had meetings there and I think it would be great to have something like that back I support what first was saying because I used to work at that coffee house also and I think it's something missing in our village I don't know too much about the details because it's a historic district where would this would it be a new building would it be just outside the district I'd like to hear more about it because I think it's a great idea also I had hoped a little great house that had the coffee shop could have noted you know a successful adventure and I know that Eric from the Wilson coffee house is really looking to expand he mentioned once about waiting for cottonwood crossing he has a very small shop really going there so I'd like to see Eric even be interested in this I just thought of that today I had a chance to ask him but I'm for it yes kind of interesting because tonight we just did the library on the report and one of the trustees of the library but I was just talking with some of these on your board the other night about the fact that the two reasons that sold us on moving to Williston were the coffee house and the library it was kind of ironic that I didn't realize this was going to come up tonight but the views strong support of the community in the village that really had something that you could walk to and really feel like you were part of the village so I think trying to find a suitable location and who could run that I think would be really a wonderful addition to the village and a lot of the other towns do have coffee shops so while Eric's one you know over Friday is great it doesn't have quite the ambiance that something right in the village would have so I would strongly support that maybe more people would and it was very successful the coffee house when the two women that were very successful I'm thinking what can the town do maybe to pave the way for a proprietor to set up shop I think that would be quite nice I like what Hinesburg has done to myself now which I go to a lot because for lack of a I go to Welliston coffee shop but sometimes I like going to Hinesburg so they put curbs and some parking spots we all think of Welliston because we live here so we know it but I think a lot of people just drive through the village and maybe don't think too much about it because there isn't something to suggest there's something worthy to stop and park and spots right on the street along with curbs similar to what Hinesburg has done I think might be a good idea and maybe to start small just right here in these two little blocks or I don't know if you call them blocks but just these few little buildings here put in one parking spot and they actually that's a wall park and some curbs just to suggest hey slow down here in a village here's some places to park go check out the library at least because that's what we got but then maybe if you build it they will come the proprietor of the coffee shop and who knows maybe a second business thank you further comments from the public we share your enthusiasm perhaps you ladies would like to be entrepreneurs and open a coffee shop somewhere of course comes under the offices of planning and which are also free right if there's no other comments on this tonight public comments we would close the public hearing so feel free before we do that then a motion to close the public hearing is in order I'd move to close the public hearing on proposed comprehensive plan amendments is there a second discussion on a motion all those in favor of closing the public hearing say aye any opposed we'll move on to a considerate adoption of the commitment as a plan amendments should we have Mr. Chair do we have the opportunity to comment or this is your time this is the board's time to comment you take comment now one of the things I really like the section on working out the village master plan over the next couple I guess the next two years putting detail behind it with the kind of the headings and things you had in here and I like the idea of somehow finding a way to put a small amount of we have so little space seems but a small amount of commercial something that would bring people in and I think the library is one good piece but maybe the coffee shop is probably the best idea if you could somehow put that next to the library without moving the statue right so but I was wondering if besides the historic character that you're trying to preserve in the town and a lot of your things have to do with that whether we should have anything there where we promote you know kind of some of the things that we've been looking for to drive into the town you know conservation energy efficiency reducing light pollution use those as kind of you know we're a modern historic town if you will well I think in general the objectives in this plan that call for looking at the land use standards understand that those land use standards or restrictions are in balance with other goals in the plan so you want a place that aesthetically looks like a historic village but one thing we've recognized over the years is we actually have limited say over what happens with things like rooftop solar so you know you will see houses in the village that have rooftop solar panels they don't come under the purview of local zoning one thing the town may end up doing whether it's through the way it looks at land use here or what the upcoming energy plan says is say you know we're okay with a historic village but we're okay with seeing some solar panels adapted on to even some of those historic buildings reflecting that balance between the two I think the way this plan talks about streetscape you know there's a desired streetscape section going back to the 90s that involves things like iron lamp posts well you know Williston Village has never had iron lamp posts but they tend to signal something when you come into a place that it's a place that some attention is being paid to that it's not just a strip along the state highway and tends to identify it as a more historically conscious place so I think a lot of what the village master plan was about was to set a course of let's make a list of everything we really ought to be thinking about in the village and let's say we're going to work through those things piece by piece and there's a lot of in the way this is set up for those subcommittees or task forces of the planning commission or the planning commission itself to work out how is this all going to balance with all these other things the town's trying to do so out of that do you think there's a way to come up with a plan that promotes both historic nature as well as conservation energy efficiency you know the things I think we're trying to go after as a town right so you know for example on on solar panels just because it's it's easy you know what we're going through the energy plan talks about preferred siding there might be a point where the input to the energy plan from the village plan is preferred siding for solar panels is generally in backyards because there's a there's a view shed from the road similar to the way the current design guidelines talk about skylights on houses they would rather have skylights facing backyards not facing the street because it just you know it's a very modern architectural feature it's hard to hide it that sort of thing so I think there's there's room to use those stated desires in this plan and connect it to those other things and there's ways to achieve both both types of goals you know there's tension here with wanting businesses to be able to be viable and not wanting every last inch of the village to be a parking lot you know the person who was critical of the ideas in here of supporting a coffee shop said well people aren't going to go if they can't park and you know there is a there is a limitation there at some point and you have to decide well are we are we okay with parking if it's all behind a building if it's screened properly I like the idea one of maybe a gentleman behind you about the curbs and parking spaces along the road if you think about Richmond or some of the other places that have little coffee shops or maybe Heinsberg they have parking spaces right in you can basically stop when you come through Williston it's unclear right now exactly where you stop it's kind of like a drive-through right because everything is kind of off the road except for maybe the town I guess you can see some parking in the town offices next to the armory but even the school is kind of set back right and the library is kind of shaded so it appears to us just watching out the window every day that a great deal of the volume of vehicle traffic through the village is during the AM and PMP not surprisingly when people are trying to get somewhere and they may not have built time into their schedule to stop but we also know that the civic buildings here in the village the library the town hall etc in the school attract a great deal of their own energy and if you can provide folks who are coming for one of those things with one or two other opportunities that they might take advantage of from time to time that can be really valuable and so we hold the coffee shop idea out there just because we really like coffee in the planning office which we do but because it's an indicator species a different sort of environment and a sort of meaningfulness of place when people say I'll go to the village and have a cup of coffee that someone might choose that over some other location might be valuable so my last question is just on this this framework you have I forget there was a name for it at the end here this is the implementation table yeah the framework is basically just it's just a framework and the details behind this will be approved as you come out with the actual plan right correct so so these are just ideas kind of each of these numbered items in the list corresponds to a paragraph in the plan that goes into a little more detail but almost all of those paragraphs direct the town mostly through the planning office and committees that the PNC staffs to identify or take on some particular aspect of this and present solutions back to back to you eventually for the most part sometimes it means working with VTRANS because we do have a state highway here or working with the business community on economic development type ideas but much of it comes back here as policy you hit upon my one question with the village is what is VTRANS role in this or if I could ask it maybe differently is having a state highway running through the middle of the village kind of a barrier to achieving those goals as it put limitations on it or is it actually maybe a benefit in some ways I'm trying to just figure that piece out well it certainly puts maybe some limitations on the configuration of the road you know VTRANS has an obligation to operate the road to move people in goods safely and efficiently but you know we've seen examples over and over again those street parking spaces in Heinsberg in front of the Bristol Bakery that's in Heinsberg really stunning to me when I saw those go in and I asked the Heinsberg planner you know VTRANS was okay with parallel parking right on the state highway like that and they said yeah you know we've worked it out if you've driven through Danville on route 2 and seen all of the traffic calming and all of the street skateboard that was done there that's a state highway just like this so and as a more local example you know several generations of our own conference plan have identified the climbing lane that approaches the village from Southridge Road for removal and reworking of that pavement to provide bike lanes we just confirmed again because we keep not sure it's really going to happen and we're told yes that climbing lane will go away next summer as part of the repave and that road section will be re-striped to accommodate bicycles and hopefully help calm traffic as it comes up in the village that's VTRANS agreeing to do something that the town has said is important to us so you know VTRANS would be happy to give a piece of state highway to Williston to have and hold and pay to maintain forever and ever you know Bruce can tell you all about his South Burlington experiences of having things in the city that used to be state highway you do get a little more say over what you do with it but you also get a lot of responsibility so I don't see it as a big barrier to a lot of what we're talking about in here but it is a lot of that streetscape most of it interacts with VTRANS's right of way for sure the other question is with the concept of the archeological compliance with I guess where the state is going in terms of I assume statute and I'm just trying to get an understanding of what does this mean in terms of somebody trying to develop a piece of land I'm just trying to get a sense of the impact on them and I'm not disagreeing it's just I just want to make sure I understand well it depends a little bit on what kind of zoning bylaw tools the select board might consider adopting at some point I would generally look at archeological resource like a lot of our other natural resources that our bylaw protects where outside of our growth center almost all of our subdivisions have some kind of open space element and where that open space is based on the subject parcel is supposed to be under our bylaw informed by the location of all of these different resource areas so in part archeological resources could just come in as another element of you know what's on the map for the resources that are on the land when you're making those decisions and it's kind of like Viewshed where you might have really really important Viewshed resources and you might have forest land that maybe it's deer wintering maybe we're going to take a look at it and it really isn't and we really want to protect that Viewshed on that particular parcel similarly you might have a parcel where some of its Viewshed and some of it's got really important archeological resources where you say we really need to stay out of that area in this case and we would seek help from the state in identifying those just like we do for other resource areas so it's another element that gets thrown into the mix and into the balancing test when someone's considering development or a piece of work that might impact something we look at it on our own town land is we're trying to lay out a trail do we want to cross through more wetland buffer or do we want to cross through an area where there's archeological resource sometimes you might have an area with archeological resource where all it's saying is you need to study it further before you go in and impact it we've encountered that with our trails so as much as anything for the private side it's identifying another resource that either if they're at the local level now it's going to be addressed if they are going to go for an Act 250 permit now they know about it that much sooner because they know about it going through local review yep there are no more comments or questions from the board a motion would be in order to adopt I move to amend chapter 13 of the town comprehensive plan and adopt the village master plan as an appendix second is your discussion on the motion very good job all those in favor of the motion say aye aye thank you very much Matt thank you let's move on to the Lake Urquay permit tonight just coming up I'm not sure if you've got anybody else to do tonight but welcome again thanks for hosting me once again another time just give you a little bit of history and to the benefit of the viewers as president of the Lake Urquay association I am coming in front of you tonight to talk to you mainly about the denial of the herbicide permit that Lake Urquay association received from the state of Vermont about a month ago and give you a little history about Lake Urquay for the viewers you know we're 241 acres lake that's been around for over 130 years and been enjoyed by the residents of the town of Williston town of Hinesburg town of Richmond, town of St. George and because of the federal monies that were used back when the Lake Urquay Recreation District was formed the beach and public land is now used by anybody that comes down the road so it's great I happen to be a resident lifelong resident of the lake I've been there for 60 years and so a lot of passion goes into me sitting in front of you tonight we have been dealing with a milfoil weed problem for the last 30 years and it's become more apparent in the last dozen years that it has become such a nuisance that we've had to put methods in place to deal with it and one of the methods that we were applying for was to use a herbicide called sonar or the chemical is called fluorodone that has been commonly used in the state of Vermont throughout the last 10 years in various lakes and reservoirs and permitted by the state of Vermont by DEC natural resources we worked hand in hand with the state of Vermont in the permit process we have 13 board members on our board our membership consists of 70 approximately 70 members that either live on the lake or reside somewhere around Lake Iroquois and so 13 of us represent the group on the board of directors and so back in 2016 we applied for a permit with the state of Vermont we used or requested that the town of Williston be the co-applicant in that process so that we would be able to both align ourselves with the municipality but also come to the benefit of being able to avoid a fairly healthy permit application fee and so Rick and your town office had agreed with us and with your blessing the select board's blessing to co-apply with us and that was back in 2016 unfortunately after working two years with the state and what we felt was a very very good application process we were denied the opportunity back in October pretty frustrating because at the same time we waited almost two years to get a response from that application process which was unprecedented what we felt was unacceptable the state has shifted gears in using herbicide in the lakes or at least using sonar in the lakes they had been using both renovate herbicide and sonar herbicide in various lakes around the state for the last 10 years but this was the first time in Chittenden County that a lake had requested the use of sonar or floridone and so after months and months of waiting we finally got the opportunity to be denied and so we are here in front of you tonight to strongly support our endeavors of working on not appealing that application process and we as a board had unanimously decided that we would not appeal the denial and the reason why we asked for the denial instead of the state recommended that we withdraw our permit the reason why we asked for the denial is so that we could be transparent and really find out what was being shared amongst the state in that lengthy two year application process. A number of individuals came forward at a meeting in Heinsberg that created probably the conflict of the denial and shared many many concerns which we appreciated but it was unfortunate that it took two years for us to actually get the denial from the state. So here we are we're coming in front of you strongly recommending that you support our denial of the application because you are co-applicants on the town of Williston is co-applicant in the meantime we have spent many many many hours in various programs during the last five years trying to both in educating our landowners in and around the lake educating users in and around the lake with voters and we have developed a Greeter program which as you all know we have asked and you've generously financially supported with us and the town of Heinsberg to build that Greeter program plus funds that we've gotten from the state and the Greeter program is basically on weekends we inspect boats and we look for any invasive species which right now I believe that there's identified 50 some odd invasive species in and amongst the lakes in Vermont so we're trying to prevent all of those from coming into Lake Iroquois our main concern has been that we're trying to prevent more in milk while coming into the lake and so we look at because of finances we have hired staff to work on a Greeter program on Saturdays and Sundays which is mainly when most of the boats come into the lake and we identify any problem areas we now have a boat wash station which we're using hot water pressure washer to wash boats and we've prevented problems coming into the lake and I this is our third year on the program and I really appreciate the fact that I can tell you that your funds have really been successful in helping us prevent any further problems it doesn't mean the problem is going to go away it just means that we could help estimate the future problems down the road with that we've inspected over 1100 boats just on those two days a week we're hoping that this year we'll be able to use again federal and state funds municipal matches to add a third day and add Friday to our Greeter program which we then would inspect more boats and if we can do that that's going to help prevent any problems we also have utilized funds to have a program funded that's called Dash and that's Diver Assisted Session Harvesting we have spent over $20,000 this summer on hiring divers to come into the lake to pull weeds unfortunately it's a bit controversial because of the fact that you're not only pulling milfoil you're pulling a lot of other weeds too that are helped with ecological balance of the lake there is also a problem when you pull the weeds that you're breaking off pieces and they self-pollinate or self-propagate and end up creating more of a problem so bit of a we feel it's a bit of a controversy but at the same time our hands are tied to coming in dealing with this weed problem and so $20,000 I'm going to give you a guess at maybe probably controlling less than 5 acres of weed problem we are 241 acres of lake and we're dealing with over 70% of the lake is infested with milfoil and so that's a big number big nut to crack but we're not going to give up because we need to I'm going to tell you because of growing up on the lake and growing up right next to the beach thousands of users this summer obviously with the weather being as nice the boat traffic was greater than it ever has been kayaks canoes motorboats great we have a 200 acre recreation district that's in back of off BB Lane that is used every day of the week year round and you've heard me talk about that many a times it's amazing what opportunity we have as far as natural resources and recreation use I don't want to let this lake die nor does the other 70 members of the Lake Uruguay Association some of which support weed control by chemical some of which don't we're well in tune to who does not want using a chemical in the lake we appreciate that we're working hard to help come up with an opportunity to take care of this problem I come in front of you tonight to bless our decision to accept the denial and not appeal the process so that we can move forward at least in another direction we're going to continue to look for opportunities and I'll be honest with you there is another chemical that the EPA has just approved and that the state of Vermont is looking at called sorry Mike it's called Procellacore and it's there are six lakes in Vermont right now that have applied for the use of it during the 2019 season and the state of Vermont is going to be looking at the opportunity of using that Uruside in the lake we're not going to apply for any permit at this point because we feel that we need to let things settle down redirect our energies and be able to move forward with a decision in the next two years in the meantime we're going to continue our dash program we're going to continue our Greeter program we're going to continue our education program both with our landowners and also work with people like the town of Williston right now we're enjoying an opportunity to look at BB Lane and the restructuring of BB Lane to help mitigate some of the phosphorus runoff and so we've gotten funds Bruce, who has worked with us and one of our board members and we've gotten funds for an initial project phase to look at restructuring that road that's a big piece of phosphorus runoff into the lake we've been testing water quality for 40 years I was told by the initial tester Chip Wright back in at our last meeting since 1980 we've been testing the waters of Lake Iroquois which is really important to us because that's identifying how we're reducing our phosphorus runoff with our programs that we've developed in the last 15 years or 12 years with the board so I'm here to ask of your consideration and I know it's a little odd but you are applicant with us and the board has unanimously decided that we would not pursue a appeal during this process so it's my understanding that if we take no action tonight we will not be appealing that if we took some positive action that we would appeal it we would need a motion to do that tonight questions for Chris I have a question sounds like you're doing a great job with your inspections and boat wash how do you keep the boat wash residue from ending up back in the lake we do it on the opposite side of the there's a green space we're up on the road under station and so it's there's quite a space between the lake and the road where we're washing the boats but we also are pulling we're pulling the no foil out of the water during the dash the four weeks that we had so we're bringing literally trailer loads of no foil up onto that same road with a dump trailer and so we're we collect it at the station and then try to mitigate any problems right there and so to answer your question I think the combination of all that once the no foil dries out it's not going to self propagate so we actually we've created an area that we dump the no foil in a pile and let it deteriorate and then bury it and then reseed over the top of it each year so hopefully that answered your question thank you questions for bruce just real quick did and I think I might have seen it so maybe I can ask for a very quick summary of what was the denial based on DC basically I would say that the denial was that there was a number of concerns of health even though it had been the application process had been approved in other lakes in Vermont I think the state had a very direct decision to with management change to shift away from using that chemical in any opportunity any lakes and we being one of many with the the people that did come in front of the board to dispute it they felt that it was necessary to take a shift change and so did I hope that answers your question just good thank you the next question I guess question is so for the foreseeable future the bent bent think and sick and sick in our our opportunities that's correct are you ruling out some sort of herbicides in the future or just not in the foreseeable future because of pursuing every opportunity that we possibly can in the future we just don't know about this particular new herbicide that is going to be available I'm not going to tell you that we may come in front of you and ask you again to co-apply you know co-apply with us but at the same time we really are taking our time to work through this program it's controversial you know how controversial it can be any use of chemical is but this this particular chemical has been fast-tracked with the state of Vermont to be considered to use because there is such a milfoil problem in so many lakes in the state of Vermont there is one of many and you know and I a bit of me is frustrated because these are state waters you know Lake Iroquois is state waters and it really should be a practice that the state comes in and takes responsibility for this but they're not doing that and they're not doing that in any lakes and in our case it took them two years to make a decision on this process that's a bit frustrating for us because we worked right here in this building for almost a year with the state to help build that program it wasn't something that we just decided oh let's use this chemical you know and then all of a sudden there was management change, shift change and a direction change and we so pro seclicor is being fast tracked? Procella core is the new herbicide that is being considered by the state of Vermont at this point that we've been told by different people in the states you heard it's being fast tracked one of the things before in our conversation that I would like to propose and I don't need an answer tonight you know Williston has been so generous to help us throughout our whole process whether it's Rick's office and Eric dealing with working with the greater program we've aligned ourselves now with Williston, Richmond Heinsberg and St. George and ourselves hand in hand with LIRD the Lake York Recreation District we're working with them on many different programs we would like to create a stakeholders group that is going to develop a direction with us and that stakeholders group is going to include I hope the state of Vermont agency and natural resources the DEC but also members of our communities that are surrounding the lake and Williston being one of them and I know that LIRD is part of this process we've got Jeff Davis who lives in Heinsberg that's part of Lake York Recreation District but he's also on our board but I would like to see us develop a group of people and it doesn't have to be a select board member because I know how busy each of you are but I would love to see you consider at one point appointing an individual that can work with us as part of the stakeholders group and so that two years from now if we've got a direction that we've dotted all of our eyes and crossed our teeth and made sure that everybody is informed and I think that that would make a big big impact in this decision making process as we move forward so I throw that up in the air and stay tuned I really would love to see this happen so if there's no interest in pursuing an appeal it looks like there's not and we can conclude this one tonight and thank you very much Chris so starting the budget process in December so we're looking for your we haven't touched base too much on it I think what we've done in the past is we've asked for $2,500 for the greater program match from each community that we can then try to work with money that we get from other grant programs and then we were thinking about asking for another $2,500 from each community to use for additional millfoil control in and around the beach area and the access area so I'll just throw it out and then I'll have a formal request to Rick here in the next couple weeks and thanks again for all your effort and we appreciate the support that you continue to give us thank you let's move on to the Chittenden community we have Warren the executive director with us tonight and looks like somebody else as well good evening we have Dan Logan with us he's our channel director coordinator so many titles he's our channel coordinator Megan our work is our channel manager well trades good evening everyone first I'd just like to start up by thanking Eric for the effort that he's made in producing the Williston program and what's the name of it what's up Williston exactly and he just brings huge enthusiasm to the work of Williston the work of media making and we're really very lucky to have him we wish every community had an Eric because it's just a pleasure I'm sure you don't want to let him go so again just to recap for the viewers and for yourselves we sent you out a memo which I think you may have had a chance to read and if you have any questions we'd be very happy to answer those we try to come annually to visit with you channel 17 has been in operation since 1990 and this election season that makes it something like our 42nd election season if you had all the town meetings and all the general elections not even the primaries so this is a very exciting time and over the past month we've covered about 31 races including Williston State House race and over 100 candidates have appeared in channel 17 just for October we have started as you know in the last year, year and a half to cover your meetings live and I think what's interesting about that is that the regular viewership sort of steadily increasing but more importantly when there is something of great significance to the community people are tuning in I think significant numbers not only to the live YouTube coverage but to the archives where we on channel 17.tv so we also I think I just wanted to mention that on YouTube you've got now the transcripts so you can search the meetings by transcript there's a little box so that's a great feature a lot of people find that quite useful but the bigger picture that I wanted to address with you tonight is that as you know over the past well since 1990 since we started we've been aware that cable revenue is was going to a road and the last 18 months has really been the time where cable revenue is starting not only to plateau but to decline and this has been exacerbated by a big adjustment that Comcast made in January of this year according to their accountants they had to reclassify some revenue and this was a gap decision it was a one-time adjustment but it resulted in about a $50,000 decrease in revenue for channel 17 and also for RETN and VCAM respectively the other two the public and the educational access operations so we've been assured that that adjustment was a one-time thing and in order to address it we are coming to request that you consider in your budget process increasing the contribution that Williston makes to channel 17 which is currently $6,000 and in increasing that to $12,000 and if taken together of each of the member communities were able to do that which we would consider to be quite generous we would be able to offset that fairly significant gap in terms of the overall revenue kind of plateauing and steady decline it's like half a percent a quarter it's sort of steadily going down due to cable cord cutting we're addressing that and augmenting that with annual campaign and membership drives along the lines of what you might see in Vermont Public Radio so we're changing and adapting our revenue model we haven't raised lots of money that way in the past but we're getting quite focused and our goal is to start to really significantly increase fundraising in that way as well and that will help offset our operating and capital needs which as you know you know we're delivering I think great value for the work that we do but it's a very capital intensive business as you can imagine so happy to answer any questions on the memo that we gave you Dan did is there anything you wanted to add? No, wait till we do some questions. Great. Thank you very much we do appreciate what Channel 17 does for us and it helps our party secretary to give us some good minutes as well and I think all of us have appeared before a campaign time at the station but one final other questions for Laura. How many communities do you support? So the service area, the Comcast service area in this region is seven communities so it's Burlington South Burlington, Essex and Essex Junction, Williston, Winniskey, Colchester part of Colchester, small part of Colchester, a few hundred subscribers and also St. George. Thank you. Is there any way to get to understand what our viewership is for the Williston programming? So we have internal web numbers which I didn't have ready for you for this memo. We have the YouTube numbers but we don't have any way of knowing how many cable subscribers tune in. We sort of extrapolate. Comcast won't even share the number of cable subscribers in the service area anymore with us. We're going to try to pursue that because your allocation of resources are essentially based on the number of subscribers you have relative to the other members. We don't think those have changed dramatically but in the past we received those numbers in order to make sure we were providing service and representation in equal way. But Comcast is very close now about the information that they'll share so we don't know. But what we do know is that as I mentioned before when there is an event of significance people tune in. We also know that the more municipalities help spread word which I think Williston gives it the best effort the more we're able to build audience. Please do. We don't have any way of telling when we have more all-encompassing programming like the senator race or the big forums that we hold for the elections. When we break it down into YouTube we don't really have any idea of where those viewers lie so there would be presumably a significant amount from Williston of the four, five, six hundred people that we have tuned into those as well. And I imagine people say to you oh I saw you on them. So it's very hyper local. I'm reluctant to use that word but that's the case. It's extremely granular media to the community that it serves. We were just in Wineski this evening and you know essentially they have this similar experience. Oh I saw you. Oh you're doing this. I mean it's a really important gesture to open the doors and it's also really important for the community. It's also worth noting both presenters before us at both meetings referenced and how important it was for them to get their message out to the viewers beyond just the people in the room. Yeah, exactly. So we don't have to no question that you're asking but anecdotally we know. I understand. So thank you for answering the best you can. I mean I'm always looking for how we can get more participation from the public. It's one of my things I'm always looking for and I'm always looking for where we don't have a lot of residents sitting in the room beyond staff in Williston. So I don't know if it's through I've been asking Eric for his help and I know Eric's doing his part in doing his own show here for Williston but maybe we could advertise but maybe it's on our Facebook page. I don't use Facebook so I don't really use it anymore. But I don't know if there's a way to advertise this because again maybe people just for whatever reason don't want to get out of the house especially in the winter months or the long budget meetings we're going to have coming up. That's a good thought. I've done some link sharing on YouTube channel from CCTV's YouTube channel but certainly try it with a little more frequency. This has got to be more interesting than about 95% of cable programming right now so they've gotten really lazy in cable programming. I think also the unreality decade exactly right. And I think that when there are issues that people I mean you always hear from people when they're here, they come right. I mean I imagine page 2 the folks in Lake Eroquois are going to be interested in that presentation and they may be watching it tonight or they may go and watch it later on. So there are ways I think to work with the individuals who come here and ask them to promote things and maybe that's something we could we'll talk with Eric a little bit more maybe in brainstorm some innovative marketing because that's a question we have also but we find that once people start paying their taxes that's when they start really caring about what goes on in their municipal government. I mean you say oh could we get more 20 year olds watching channel 17 well you could but until they're really paying the tab they're not going to be paying too much attention. Questions? Good question You mentioned the 6000 contribution to the town lakes could you I guess maybe this might be a question for Eric is that based on I assume that's out of the annual budget operating budget is that based on a formula or is that okay so there's a formula used to make request to each of the member yeah so this is the formula that is the foundation of all formulas the earth was built on this formula the trustees the trust of channel 17 was built on this formula and it was based on the subscriber numbers so essentially Burlington gets six meetings a month South Burlington gets five meetings a month and the other communities get three meetings a month so that was based on the distribution so those so your formula in Williston is the same as Essex and Essex Junction and Winniski so those communities are each right now paying $6,000 into the pot Burlington is paying $12,000 into the pot and South Burlington is paying $10,000 into the pot so it's you can see how the math is working there so we're asking all the communities to double their contribution so it's not based on population or cable subscribers so it's a function of cable subscriber revenue in effect because cable subscribers Williston are contributing so they get a service that sort of commensurate with their numbers I missed the part about the meetings per month the three six what does that mean so those are based on the original actually probably the most recent analysis was in the mid 2000s of how many subscribers each community had and so Burlington is by far like one and a half times what everyone else says at least South Burlington and then the other communities are roughly the same however many those are they used to add up to 30,000 okay that was how we allocated votes on the trustees and production services was based on the subscriber breakdown thank you any further questions thank you so much for coming today thank you good luck tomorrow thank you let's go on to errors and omissions for 2018 to create some assistant assessor is here and it looks to me like we probably can skip skip the first three pages and go directly right to the last three that changes that impact dollars that's correct just go on to that has money right that might be at the bottom of page three yeah it starts with ID 14104 082013 Kimberly and what we try to do with errors and omissions again it's based upon factual information, square footage possibly a labeling which would affect a labeling of a segment within a sketch that could affect the square footage so that's what we tend to key in on if someone does come in after grievances and we will sit and discuss their situation and we always let them know that it's factual some are not significant the first two are quite small a couple thousand dollars on the Kimberly property it was a new structure and we had a labeling problem with that one the second one was an older construction that somewhere along the line the sketch was mislabeled with all two-story and it should have been one and a half and we agreed that we should change that this year the last one was the solar sense the file ID is to be determined that was a new parcel for a 500 kilowatt solar array facility on the Fontaine property on North Williston Road and the communication between Bill and I I guess went south or north and we missed it and we discovered we had done so so and that number of 835,000 $620 is their number so I don't think that's not a number that we created that was their number that they sent to us in the letter that we miss so so the net effect I think on one page at the end it's and again that one is taxed only at the municipal level the state collects the education funds in another format for solar at this point in time so the net effect of the municipal tax impact is $2,189.94 to the good Any questions for Dick on any of these? I just want to make sure I understand and I'm sure you explained it just great but the net impact was positive revenue coming into the tax and we'll be sending out new tax bills shortly so motion would be in order I move to approve the corrections of the 2018 grand list as proposed by the Listers discussion on the motion seeing none all those in favor of the motion say aye thank you thank you so now we go on to line item transfers and Jennifer I believe you're going to talk about this one and the next one as well good so line item transfers and we do have a memo from you on this so line item transfers something that we do every year about this time when we budget for merit increases or any union negotiation dollars we always put that in the manager's budget under discretionary wages and then this time of year I come to you and say this is how we'd like to allocate those funds within the different departments most of these increases are the 2% increases for all town staff that happened on July 1st that was in addition to the cost of living increase this was the merit increase granted by the town manager with select board approval we budgeted a wage increase for the fire department of 3% was in their actual budget after the union negotiations that increase ended up being 6% so this is an additional 3% that we have in here something that we'd like to do effective November 24th is increase the starting wage for our public works crew we've gotten the most recent wage data from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns wage survey that they do and we're very far behind we have two open positions right now and rather than hire those positions at a lower wage we'd like to post that job at the higher the new increased wage and in order to make that fair for the employees that have been here for multiple years we're increasing wages for 5% for all employees in that department we still will have some work to do in the budget process but this is what we felt like we could do now with those discretionary dollars questions for Jennifer and other proposals this is the first time we're contemplating this highway and water sewer technician salary increase this is the first time we have first time in the couple years that I've been here last year we did do a wage analysis of the positions that we looked at and this year we are looking when you say we're behind what does it mean can you say we're way behind quantitative what does that mean sure our starting wage is 16-20 an hour right now and the starting wage average starting wage is about $18 an hour for those same positions so this is all about making our wages competitive that we can so we don't lose people to other towns I'm doing the same job but a 5% it's not going to get to the average it's not getting us there it's not even a dollar it's moving that wage up to $17 an hour and so we hope through the budget process we can move closer to that we will be doing a merit increase the cost of living next year as well and seeing what that additional gap is do we have any concept of a total compensation package value of a total compensation package that we look at so we can compare to other other places rather than just salary we did that maybe not for tonight but maybe for our budget process sure we did that in great detail for the fire union negotiation I think we showed that with you as well but yeah looking at that whole amount it's about 30% our benefits are about 30% of salary or an additional 30% value what you're suggesting has a lot of value the problem is it's extraordinarily difficult to we can calculate our own but then to look at every town every town has a different mix it's quite as easy maybe we should ask the league of cities and towns to help us with that at one point they did do an analysis for a limited number of communities and they charged extra for that service it was not part of their regular service I was just wondering with reading ahead a little bit the healthcare costs didn't go up maybe not as much as I expected but still continuing on their meteoric rise yes in general I think they did provide that information in this year's survey we just got that a little over a week ago and so I haven't really dug into it that much but I think they did ask us for a lot of benefit information and they were trying to ask for it in a consistent way so that we could compare ourselves against other towns but I haven't had a chance to dig into that they're comparing the type of benefit not actually the cost so that's the tricky part is marrying those two up at the end of the day we're comparing apples to apples right total package like you did for the union employees so we'll look at things were the questions for Jennifer again emotion would be in order I move that to approve the proposed line-up and transfers as outlined in the memo dated October 26th 2018 second they were the motion to say aye aye they opposed speaking of health plan renewal for 2018 again Jennifer I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to do this again so I'm just going to take a moment to say I'm asking we are moving to a plan that has less cost for our taxpayers it's not very often that we get to do that but we are currently enrolled in the gold plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield and this year once again for that same plan within the exchange they increased the premium a small amount 3% but then they increased the deductibles again which is that happened to us last year and that's very costly for the town especially with our union contracts if the deductible goes up that HRA funding that the town does also goes up so the town covers that difference for our town employees we don't have that in place so town employees would then be required to pick up that difference which is about $250 for a single plan and $500 for a family plan worked with Vermont League of Cities and Towns their health insurance services and they shared with us two plans that are available that we qualify for as a group and the one that is the most like what we have right now is the one that's offered through business resource services so with that plan we can stay in still a gold consumer directed high deductible plan it does not offer the blue rewards but it is a very comparable plan there's one small difference in the plan and we can have lower premium rates for our employees who contribute to that amount plus the town picks up a large portion of that premium and our deductible rates stay the same which was a huge bonus so we are asking to move to this plan over the course of a calendar year it is about a $40,000 savings to the town 20,000 of that we'll see in this fiscal year 20,000 of it will be in next fiscal year and we'll I'll walk through that during the budget process of what that looks like for next fiscal year questions so can I ask if I look at the premium for a single person at $625 a month that's approximately 20% of what we're paying the salary so a large chunk of that 30% of the cost of employing people in terms of benefits absolutely how does when you go to two people and a family does our town do we pay for that as well minus 10% which the employee pay so do we pay 100% of that so for two people it's 1251 a month we charge the employee $610 125 so that person gets double the benefit benefits wow so that would be like 40% but we somehow through the demographics of the entire staff we only have an overhead for all benefits on top of salary only of course only 30% because the higher paid employees this is a smaller percentage so this would only be a good so most of our employees that are higher paid just figuring out the math in my head some employees choose to opt out of our insurance and we do pay them monthly stipend for not being on our plan but yeah there's about 14 people right now on our plan how much, what's the stipend we give them it varies town employees are at $250 a month police union is at $500 a month and fire union was just negotiated at $600 a month we're going to be changing the town employee stipend up to the police amount so we give the employees that money if they don't use our insurance and they need to have proof of insurance with someone else they can't be part of the exchange on their own getting a discount from the state they have to be part of another plan so if my husband has a plan I can be on his plan I have to show the town that I have that insurance and a copy of that insurance but the rates Teresa that we are looking at is $625 so if you look on the second page there the BRS association rates so the rates that we would be eligible for this year that's the that's on the same pages and just the next there's two pages of this report I was looking at page 2 anyway maybe it goes from $625 to $598 yes very unpaged okay for the two person plan the premium is going down from what we would have had to pay that's a good discount about 15% thank you the adult child aspect of the BRS association rates they don't have that rate so if you are a two person if you're an adult and one child you move to a two person plan if you're an adult and more than one child you are a family and right now we don't have anyone that would fall would move from an adult and child plan to a family we don't have anyone that's in that situation this is not a negative comment or anything like that but it's a little bit odd that somebody like BRS would I shouldn't say would offer this but people are going to join that association they get the group whatever simply to get the insurance maybe not simply but that's the primary is that common? yeah and that's the option that we have because we are a group with the exchange rate any person can opt into the exchange a single person can opt into that exchange whereas in a group plan you have people that have different experience with health insurance so they can offer that exchange rate we've actually purchased insurance to that association of the past I didn't realize that aspect you actually join an organization so you get access to those insurance products if you will and actually we fairly recently joined the Chamber of Commerce and they have another that's a separate group and we could have bought insurance to them but the other thing is that the deductible is going up the same rate as the exchange my last question is are we getting in front of the budget when we approve this are we approving a budget line item for the next year ahead of time by yes and no we have to have everyone enroll before January 1st so we are for our budget because it splits years and that's why Jennifer said the savings is maybe 40,000 but we're only going to gain 20,000 in the current fiscal year which you already have budgeted and the other 20,000 is for the next year but then we don't know what the increase will be January 1st 2020 thank you so we are hoping to use some of those savings that we have this year to do some in-house wellness initiatives to keep people thinking about because that's what the blue rewards program was you received a card from Blue Cross that they would load money onto if you completed different wellness activities and so we want to try to keep that momentum toward wellness going here town-wide so after there's no more questions there is a suggested motion I'd move to authorize the town manager to sign the business resource services group enrollment agreement to offer the Blue Cross Blue Shield consumer directed health plan to eligible employees effective January 1, 2019 second as soon as question on motion all those in favor of the motion say aye aye any opposed thank you we went out to traffic calming policy we postponed discussion this from the last time but I think there's only a few differences in what we've seen before Eric I think you're going to talk about that yep so after our last discussion the board asked to have the town attorney review and provide some feedback especially looking at liability that may be written into this the town attorney Bob Fletcher is reviewed and he reports back to us policy in its current state does not raise any legal concerns in form staff the policy in its current state does not explicitly impose liability for failure to adhere to its provisions or attempt to regulate anything other than the system making process around traffic calming has some additional comments from Mr. Fletcher took under advisement in this latest redline version you'll see notably section 1.3 that's been added in we want to reiterate that nothing in this policy is meant to or will diminish or interfere with the select board's authority and responsibilities under Vermont law to control town highways ultimately we're looking at having collaboration and good dialogues with these communities but the powers of the select board fall to regulate town highways so we don't want to have anything appear in this policy that would differ from that and along those lines with Mr. Fletcher's suggestions trying to make sure there's language in here that doesn't look that someone could perceive that some of those powers of the board were being taken by residents being involved in this we sort of want them to be involved and have dialogues but it's the select board's final decision of how to control town highways so that's why I thought it was so are were you done I'm sorry oh yeah so I actually read when I was reading this again for the third or fourth time I got the impression that maybe some of the language gives that impression in here so I was kind of wondering whether there were three things I was wondering about so one is it's unclear on the processes that Bruce wrote how the select board gets involved in deciding if an engineering study should be done rather than just Bruce in the residence because throughout this process it talks about coalitions and homeowners and associations and by the way if it's anything like ours the one I'm in have no power outside of maintaining common lands and facilities in our case the pump station it was the storm water pond until recently thank you very much but you know so we get as a homeowners association vice president kids at the bus stop this morning dropped a cup of coffee and left it in the street what are you going to do about it? nothing but it's not a homeowners association it's probably my guess is a lot of these things are drafted the same way so that was in here but should the process be more clearly articulated that before Bruce starts talking to groups residential groups about things that they might have and things that they asking them about the kinds of traffic calming things we should install or what they like as a select board look at those things first otherwise it seems like we're getting behind the hate ball he goes and meets with a coalition or a group of homeowners says do we want to put in speed bumps the way the process is written he does all that and then comes to us for approval and it seems a little backwards it seems like he should come to us before doing an engineering study the purpose or the reasoning behind the study and then secondly if he thinks the study some kind of improvement or some list of improvements we should review and approve those before he proposes them to residents in that way we're not coming up against something the town public works director has already agreed to so what you want to do let's go get it stamped by the select board it seems like we should be part of that process and my last comment was it seems like we need and this is something I brought up at the very first meeting I just haven't seen anything come in here yet when we see a study from Bruce however it's done it should have at least a few aspects in it before it comes to the select board definition of the problem how effective are the solutions to the particular problem he's trying to deal with with some reference in other words when we saw the solutions from I forget the name of the company Huyland Tanner maybe I don't remember to be honest or maybe it was a consultant I forget but they come up with a bunch of different suggestions they didn't really have anything behind those but how effective they were with any reference and the effect of the solution and the surrounding residents with references in other words maybe if we had something like that the speed bumps out in front of I forget the gentleman's name whether those would be would that be problematic and the last is the effect of the solution on pedestrians to me this is a small piece but each of these should be covered in whatever he's showing to us and that way we can make an informed decision we can ask the right questions whether it's so that's what I read rather than going through I noted in the plan all the places that I found these things but it seemed like the process was kind of doing all this stuff with the homeowners and then coming to us after they've approved whatever things they would like to see it seemed a little backwards Eric I know it's getting late you probably don't want to go online that's fine I'm just thinking did it make sense? kind of what the entry point looks like for the board in this process is that what I'm hearing kind of both the entry point for the yeah I guess from the board so that we get to go to engineering studies an XYZ neighborhood and this is why we want to go do them because doing an engineering study implies we're going to spend some money and do something so we should at least get some headlights into that and why we want to do it and then before we I don't want to say make commitments to homeowners because we're not but imply we're making commitments basically meet with them on a bunch of solutions without any feedback from the board that we would agree to spend money on those and I think the ones with the humps were maybe the same way they they met with homeowners they got agreements and then Bruce came here and asked for approval to spend money well I think we authorized the scoping study on good okay did we so maybe if we just wrote that in here that we would have a process because it doesn't read that way we're managing though certainly don't want to micromanage Bruce that would be my only concern with adding things like that and is that you would we want to refer this back to staff for review and come back to us again yeah I think so I agree with Trace's overall point that I think the three point for the select board should probably be a little bit earlier I do I don't probably agree with the idea that the engineering alternatives should be presented to the board in huge detail as a matter of policy because I I don't want to get into the weeds on stuff like that basically and it's not just that I don't want to I don't think it's a good idea but that being said it sounds like it's possible maybe it could be finesse so that the board comes in faster in the process and then that way board members won't be us forever can if there is an inquiry that needs to be made with more detail that needs to be brought back to the board they would have a quicker opportunity to do it we talked about public works kind of defining which level of response of public works defines it as a level three response that would merit a study with that staff recommendation then having come to the board to say this is what we recommend doing the study for x y and z reasons ask the board to support that and then before with the study then it would continue on with the results to be shared with the board at that point and a path forward develop from there I think you would want to share the results right and then basically agree that it warrant some actions and then give basically giving Bruce the okay go ahead discuss with residents you know we agree that some action should be taken some physical action right either signs or bumps or whatever the right thing and again I'd like you to consider and I'm not looking for huge amount of detail but enough that would prevent the kind of situation we had just that he's looking at the different areas that could be trouble right pedestrians you know what we call those people that aren't cars using roads is it at risk users or I forget that there's a term for the time modal no no no it's for people like bike cyclists on the road there's a name for the user that implies that it's a riskier use you know it's a at risk kind of they don't have a 5,000 pound metal cage around them so and the effects of you know surrounding residents of the just doesn't have to be in infinite detail not looking to do engineering but just want to make sure we don't create another situation and it you know can't stop everything obviously we can't anticipate everything but we can so sounds like we're for this back to to staff to come back to us with some suggestions could will Bruce come with the next one could Bruce come as well or is that not sure I guess I don't know we'll have to evaluate whether it's something I mean he's had I don't know if he's done this or maybe it's Eric it's actually Bruce has done very little oh never mind I'm sorry I thought it was Bruce's I thought Bruce was behind he's been consulted on on okay sorry nice piece of work though just very quickly if I could just be clear the input we're giving or you're taking away from this is to clarify where the select board kind of gets involved and at what point okay good thank you work on some new language for for the next draft here developing policies longer term step-by-step process as you're probably figuring out how long have we been working on this it's a brand new concept and so I understand why the board is taking its time just to keep in mind too though this is going to be as we just like other policies we the board has adopted as we implement them we learn through that and make changes and adjustments and because of the policy those are relatively easy to make but I these are all good points for financing it's a process government's a process moving on manager's report I have three things I wanted to touch on the first one is the budget review schedule I've included several different documents one is the actual schedule when we would be meeting with each department one notable piece is that this schedule as it's presented now would have us review all departmental budgets before the end of December the exceptions are stormwater, water and sewer and there's a reason why we don't often have the rates from the parties that we buy the water from or the sewer rates that we send the sewer to and so we usually don't get those until late in December it's in the budget done sooner than early January but in any case we would have those ready and reviewed by the select board in early January so that gives you pretty much well an extra few weeks to provide input back to the staff and have the staff respond to different questions and directions the board might go in on the budgets so that's the first piece of the schedule this I guess I'm looking for a little bit of reaction you know in the face but it doesn't look significantly different but on the other hand there isn't a whole lot you can do with it we're doing it during select board meetings rather than not entirely you know let's see December 11th meeting is devoted entirely to budget and we're proposing to start the meeting early and run to about nine o'clock so we're running from six to nine that meeting and the December 18 well December 4th I should start right from the beginning is just an overview of the budget it'll be 10, 15 minute overview and that's the night you'll actually receive the document and when I say budget I'm talking about both capital budget and equipment fund budget and general operating budgets talk about December 11th December 18th is a regular select board meeting I proposing to vote most of that to budget stuff although I do have the first hour set aside for just regular agenda stuff so we're going to have to work to stick to that schedule and then we have a public hearing scheduled for January 8th January 1st this year falls on a Tuesday I believe and so this would be the first meeting after that and that's when we would talk about our utility fund budgets and have the budget hearing at eight o'clock and then a regular business after that and if there's time we can even start budget deliberations that night so that puts us early January a little a week or two earlier than we've had in the past I almost have three meetings of budget big budget meetings two and a half or almost three and then there'll be opportunities during the month of January for shorter discussions or longer depending on which direction the board if needed we could even schedule a special meeting in January just to talk about budgets beyond what we already have scheduled so we have that flexibility there's a lot of stuff to go through it is as over here it gets us through most of this stuff earlier anyway so we can have more time to actually concentrate on the final document although one of my goals had been to hopefully cut down on the number of meetings in December that doesn't seem like it could have that doesn't do it but but we could do that but then that pushes that later in the January and the board has less time and the staff has less time to respond to the board there's no possibility to do a Saturday meeting a long eight hour meeting just to do this if we were to do a Saturday meeting I would not like to do an eight hour meeting dealing with budget for eight hours it might help though to do a half a day session or something on a Saturday if you look at the December 11th meeting that's a three hour meeting and so what I think you're talking about is doing that on a Saturday but are you talking about doing that in December so that's it's just a preference I certainly understand that because it's busy time for all of this but we're kind of out of time for this month or what about the last week in November we won't have the budget done by there I've just started as you heard I had my first Jennifer and I had our first budget review session this morning and we've got a bunch of departments to get through and we've got to put it all together and make it into a cohesive document and it's a short month in November we've got Veterans Day we have two days off in Thanksgiving week so it's just a tough month and we're still putting the final touches on the capital budget we don't have that done yet either I suggest we go to the schedule that's presented to see how it goes this year and we might want to make adjustments next year I wish there was another way around it the other piece of this is the public input public outreach whichever way you want to look at it public engagement I guess may be the best term there's a I believe I included the thing from Eric I'd give him a memo so there's a memo from Eric and he outlines some concepts including primarily doing a first step like a survey of what people want in other words do they want to attend like a budget academy type thing where they learn about the budget process are they interested in less formal methods of communication you know what are they hoping for as far as engagement in the budget what kinds of things would they be interested in that seemed like to me a good first step budgets generally aren't that exciting for people it may be that it's just going to be a struggle but any reactions to what Eric's proposing budget 101 is a great idea get them CEUs for it too we could try that but it's my concern is we put a lot of effort into planning it and preparing for it I think that's likely what about just further for the channel 17 broadcast making sure people know when they're happening and what topics are being covered seems like we could do that every week every every day we have our broadcasters here we could advertise that I know a lot of people are in the front porch forum I know a lot of people are getting away from Facebook there's so many places to cover these days I know actually people may not be aware there's a competitor front porch forum next door and there are a number of people in Wilson that are participating in that it doesn't seem as active a front porch forum it's similar it has people chatting back and forth about different issues anyway looking for my input in terms of pathway methods the third and the fifth bullet would be where I would focus what's the interactive online budget are you talking about the pathway methods what's the interactive online budget simulation there's different tools out there I know there's different modules out there maybe some different price points I'd look to see what kind of other strategies people have used in the country for engagement thought with this survey mechanism is again an idea of what members of the community would want to engage with before we use staff resources to develop those outputs if we get overwhelming response on a couple of these it shows us where the focus our energy if we throw things out there maybe a couple of people engage with this and we've used dozens of staff hours to develop it I think the third bullet is has the potential for a lot of input and that's great I also think probably a lot of that input will be very hard to figure out how to build that into the budget the comment that says it's too expensive it's a great comment but it doesn't give us much direction for okay what do you recommend either it doesn't get funded or what have you with the board there's the idea of the inputs and the outputs for benchmarking this we've done these different output methods we've done A, B and C reach X number of people then there's the way of getting people to get feedback as well the inputs method the board more interested in the output matrix the input, a combination of both I think an output is one way communication where you have flyer, video the closing the loop on it would be an opportunity like the mapping thing we did for the sidewalks where they could engage and provide feedback as a part of it definitely the latter is desirable but I'm not sure at what cost either money wise or time wise it comes at time wise from staff perspective it comes at the concept of providing an input and then having town residents talk about how they react to that could be very helpful I don't have a good example I'm too tired right now let's say in the budget we say well we're considering eliminating the fire department you know it'd be really interesting you know you could see where it'd be really interesting to see what the feedback coming back from that I don't know if you see these examples I'm not hoping on that but I'm sure it will be in the paper getting that concept of where are we spending our money where do you think we're spending our money well and where are we not doing that of course usually when they tell us we're not doing a good job of spending it's the money's the things we have to spend money on that's you know again that brings up an interesting point is that I want a huge amount of input I want people to show up at the meetings but a couple things first of all I don't know I don't know how much we should expect from people everybody's super busy these days it seems like everybody's overwhelmed and I think the electronic media just makes the feeling worse the other thing is that we are elected to represent the people and the third thing is they get to vote on the budget at the end they get to say you know you guys got it wrong or you got it right so I want a huge amount of input but that being said I'm going to understand if my neighbors say as wicked cool as it would be to go to a budget meeting I'm I'm going to go to my kids play instead that's absolutely true and we've experienced that for however many years now but I still think we need to try I agree I like the trend and we have some new tools available to us and yes is it going to have a huge impact on the input? I should think like something is just throwing this out as a possibility is that you know maybe there are plenty of programs that can be used these days to do a graphic presentation with a voice over you know you put that up on the town website or a town Facebook page or whatever you put it out on the porch forum and at the end of the three to five minute presentation on the police budget or the you know Parks and Recreation budget you have a you know go to the town website to offer your input in our you know access portal or whatever that might be a way to get people to engage what's really important in terms of budget feedback it's not I don't know if it's called you would call it fixed spending but discretionary versus necessary right we have to pay our firefighters we have to do water we have to do things there's a list of things we have to do and we're trying to do them as efficiently as possible when somebody sends in a note that says the fire department is too expensive well we're doing our due diligence we're checking you know we have an answer for that but it would be nice to get feedback on the discretionary things in our budget right those things that we spend money on that aren't necessarily you know we have to do them they're kind of like spending $12,000 on cctb I'm a big proponent of of public television so but I don't know if everybody is spending $10,000 on fireworks yeah that was me I tried to kill the fireworks during the great recession you know with conservation funds and other things are we spending our discretionary fees in the right place and I don't know how big a part of the budget there but that would be nice to get feedback I think we've got some little bit of direction I think we will proceed with a survey and try to kind of put this going to be a process that we're not going to have in place you know for this particular budget elements we will be able to do for sure but I think this is something that's going to grow over time so we're just going to have to try different pieces and this year we can try some pieces and next year we'll try some more pieces and see what works we've kind of left Jennifer out of this I don't know if you have anything to add to what we've been talking about but we're setting up engagement sessions that we're actually and we're giving people an opportunity to weigh in on the budget but it's actually an opportunity where they can have input there's nothing worse than setting up an opportunity to give input where there's nothing they can do about it anyways you know our wages, our wages we can't say oh we're going to take away the health insurance well we can't do that that's the difference between discretionary things and non-discretionary things the other thing is what do you do with one person's feedback on the town of 10,000 to somehow I don't know if we could be so lucky to get 500 people's feedback on one topic or maybe it's like 10,000 there's a point we'd love to get feedback from 500 people on the other hand but I'm getting a curse from 500 people I'm going to move on thank you for that input so the next time I want to touch on economic development focus this is an issue that came up during the select board retreat and I just want to let you know that there's a couple things one of my guests in my memo here but we recently had a meeting with from global foundries so we had a good interesting discussion and we'll have to see there's some changes they're working on but I'll share a little bit with us but we aren't quite sure where that is all going to end up and as we get more information and as they're able to release more information you'll be hearing more about what their plans are and what they're concerned about no I don't think I didn't hear anything what you were saying that I was I didn't mean to ominous other than they're an international company and they're competing at an international level and so they're concerned about things that affect their bottom line like the cost of electricity was one thing they mentioned and you probably saw in the news with Green Mountain Power I think it was it's it kind of freezes their cost it doesn't save them money necessarily and so that is still a concern that they have because if they for example had to buy electricity just across the lake they can buy it cheaper than they can buy it here so that's kind of things so if there is any red flags kind of area we also I have a meeting I think it's Thursday with the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce and so we'll be have an opportunity to share our concerns and hear and get feedback from them as well but one thing that we talked about during the retreat was having a representative from the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce come to the select board meeting and so I wanted to give them some guidance as to what the board is looking for and so I presented kind of an outline of some of the questions that I'm anticipating the board would have but I just wanted feedback on those to make sure I'm on the right track I guess the question that I have hopefully you looked at the questions that are proposed and any additions that you might want to make I will move on to attract business that's what we want that's kind of the main and the last thing that I wanted to touch on we've actually touched on a little bit already was the public works department I did two ex-interviews one way around today it's a small department for us to lose two people just before winter we're creating a bit of a crisis in the department what were the reasons did they the ex-interviews are confidential but one I can tell you one is retiring he's well he's older than 65 and the winter months and the plowing is wearing on people the other one's leaving because he is in a serious relationship and his girlfriend's moving has a job in Rutland and he's moving down to Rutland for neither one are those two but we are it's a tight labor market so when we advertise for openings we get very few applicants and we've done a lot of advertising and we've had a fairly unusually high turnover rate within the department partly because the labor market's tighter and we're hiring people that wouldn't necessarily hire they're marginally qualified we hired someone a few months back that has a CDL so that was good but they have never plowed before and so we're going to have to train and plow and that's on top of the two openings we have I think you get the picture we're struggling to figure out ways around it maybe bringing back a retired employee or two to help out in the storm maybe contract out some additional work whatever it takes we're going to try to get through it but my concern is that the level of service is going to be less than what we would hope for if we had a full staff so you're telling us not to become attached to mailboxes that more cautiously on the town roads we're obviously going to do our best for sure and pay is a part of that it's not the entire answer but it is certainly part of it we we're trying to address the pay issue and we're partially addressing it now and we'll address more I'll probably come July 1st any thoughts I'm just speaking out of turn any thoughts on sign you have crisis here you're heading into winter with down staff who knows what the snowfall is going to be any thought of signing bonuses well I've considered that over the years for police I've never considered for what I say considered I thought about it and rejected it it's a slippery slope and what ends up happening is if a bunch of communities do it then we all have to do it and then you don't gain anything because everyone's doing it I've strongly opposed signing bonuses and tried to encourage all the managers not to do it because it's just once you do it everybody's going to do it okay as I said the economy is a major factor right now and the job market's tight that will turn around too at some point and will suddenly become a lot more attractive to where people now work for private companies that are doing construction work you know if those companies don't have as much work then suddenly people are looking for more stable type of employment and probably in the past when we hired people they've stuck with us because they know it's a good stable job and we assuming we can get our pay situation to work out we'll offer a very competitive wage we also offer excellent benefits and certainly that's an advantage we have over many businesses so that's what our goal is I would think of a labor market we have to be looking pretty good better benefits probably than most yes that is a help for sure and stability even now if you work for a construction company in the winter months you're not necessarily guaranteed you're going to have employment so we do have some advantages and Bruce has got a couple people we might be able to hire but we'll have to see that's all I have for the CDN business we do have a catering permit I believe yes this is for an event scheduled for November 28th 400 cornerstone drive and catering permit is cater is for a company called monkey house doing business as the monkey house it's monkey hospitality LLC and it's going to be all inside it's a business and the event runs from 4 to 10 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. it's at the avida institute staff doesn't have objections any questions for rick on that if not a motion is needed move we approve is there a discussion of motion I'll listen to the motion say hi hi is there any other business to be brought forward tonight let's go in twice thank you all good luck tomorrow