Hello, thank you all for coming here out of curiosity did anyone hear about this project before what armory wow okay great hello thanks for inviting me okay so what this project is about the goal is basically to bring cycles and work in the same space and workflow and use that for creating real-time experiences for this we will reflect a subset of Blender API that makes sense for real-time so basically if you know Python BPI you will kind of know how to work with armory because the data is more or less the same and also similar to cycles the the core of the of the Genshin is also independent so we can take it we can integrate it in other tools I recently saw the recycles implementation in Cinema 4D so potentially we could we could take this solution and apply it to other places but what this project is not about is we don't want to fork Blender basically it all works mostly like an add-on and optionally you can take the Blender version which has the player built in but it's it's a separate player that does not interfere with like the rest of the Blender like it's a it's a single patch that you can apply to Blender build it yourself if you want the source is already up on GitHub and yeah this way it's basically to fight fragmentation we would not want multiple versions of Blender and eventually it will be a nightmare to keep that up also what is kind of a challenge that's some people think that this is a full cycles renderer in real time which cannot happen because path racing will always produce better results but what we do is we sacrifice some of the quality to shorten the render times and lastly this is also not PBR viewport for Blender so there is no duplicate we're going on because the renderer is separate of keeping simple and yeah so this was probably I've been working on this for maybe over two years and everyone told me this was the dumbest idea ever because like building a full rendering engine and hoping for like getting a funding for it getting it useful to people and not just being a toy so it needs to be a lot of better not just not just as good as other solutions and that's where the Blender come in so number one is editing this is one of the first shots that I got from August two years ago everything really simple it was basically just exporting the assets and running the simple scene and thousands and thousands of our frustration and joy but mostly frustration we get to something like this it's still not perfect but so what this bring us is that I don't think other tools have is a completely unified workflow when everyone works in the same space everyone operates the same interface you don't export anything there is no new programs to learn for artists there's also use Blender ecosystem and if you already know the basic of Blender you will have very easy way of learning how to use armoring more and like I said the the building player is a separate renderer but to keep things ruining running in synchronization we send the messages between the two processes where we listen to the operators from Python and we translate those operator operators to the armory so if you move an object in Blender viewport the changes will reflect immediately in the player and if you import new new assets or do model changes the changing will stream to the viewport while running so to do user it should feel like completely seamless experience yeah to actually make it live since it's a real-time renderer it's recommended to use hacks which I will explain later but you can it is also possible to use Python not it for all targets but eventually it should be possible to use for all targets yeah one more random screenshot and you can also JavaScript and if you don't like coding at all there are logic nodes and they look just like you would expect from other the the thing that I did not anticipate before was that since this is running running in in the cycles mode we can basically render the scene in armory and sideways with cycles and what this brings us is that we can compare these scenes and basically see what's wrong with the real-time renderer and very very easily improve the output based on this that I I don't think there's a thing like this built in other tools like out of the box you can align to viewports and you can see exactly what reflections are of the lighting is bad and another advantage is that you can render like you will do in-game with armory and you can render cutscenes with I don't know cycles and you get much much better realistic graphics in cutscenes and eventually it is it's not impossible but the goal is to take any cycle scene and render it in real-time but of course it's reduced quality so this is an example of comparing the two cycles I'm not sure this one this one is cycles and this one is armory so the lighting is still off but the the reflections are kind of head of all right and how to improve this improve this further is we need the solution for global illumination and that's moves us to part two that's about the renderer and this is I think this is my most favorite thing about armory but yeah like I said the renderer is written from scratch because I wanted to keep it very very small and the less code the better so it will be easy to maintain going for going forward and since it's kind of a specific renderer like when I needed to build the same format that matches the basically what what blenders gives yeah so all the time there's now lots lots of notes built in but I picked five that I think are maybe the most important those are basically draw world note which if you insert this into the render path you can reference notes from your world setup what this means is if you drop in the sky notes it will it should it should just work if you drop in environment texture armory will take it and generate pre-filtered maps so again it should it should just work and you can actually if you don't like the built-in shaders that transform the these notes you can also rewrite the shaders which one you want you can also reference compositor nodes and reference all the lamp lamps in the scene and this way it was also super easy to add new features like stereo rendering for visual reality where again just a new node was added and only the parts of the scene that may make sense to render twice was put under the draw stereo node so it is very easy to share the first on the shadow maps or other data and do only work that you really need to and another easy addition was grease pencil integration you can play the video back doesn't work all right that doesn't matter it's alright well basically you can use the grease pencil data and integrated with the rest of the armory feature so it will run in the browser or all the other targets you can also insert the code into the render path and this way for example it was super easy to achieve effect like dynamic resolution scaling where if the frame time is getting too high for complex scenes we can lower the viewport resolution and it will look a bit worse but it's better than getting big shot shuttering what I also think is that it's a great place to prototype new 3d rendering techniques because you don't need to care mostly about anything apart from shaders you don't need to set up the render code for doing all of this and when you're doing this you can easily replace the nodes and see what's wrong what's happening when you connect them differently and another point that I think is quite nice is it's good for learning the high-level workings of the renderers because again you can run it sidewise with the nodes and you can modify it and you will see the output what happens immediately for example if you disable depth clearing and you will see that the depth is wrong and this also allows to completely throw away the rasterizer and maybe I don't know where that would happen jump to path racing because there is no any ties to forward or deferred rendering it's all dynamic my experience with this was there was a great presentation about rendering in the new Doom when they did not use deferred renderer but forward renderer with thin G buffer so basically you render the scene as usual but you only store normals and depth and this way I was able to prototype in just a few hours and for some scenes it actually turned out to be faster than deferred rendering so when you are building a project you can experiment and see which one is the best for your type of experience by default there's also a classic PBR node included so it is very easy to import PBR ready assets these are the mega scans these are against standard PBR textures the I think there only like three types of palms and they are rendered over over again with geometry instancing if you drop a node to hate connector you can very very easily get facilitated displacement going on it's it's not late it's not yet adaptive like in the latest six cycles I think when they're two pots point seven eight is the latest but eventually I hope it will be also adaptive yeah and this is a hotel room bar Pietro who was very kind and share this model he was working on with me and it turned out quite quite good but the lighting under under the table it's still it's still it's still quite quite off the shadows are a little bit over the bed so to improve this we need better global illumination so there are there are two ways there's offline solution where since again there is this big advantage of having cycles running alongside we can render the probes using using cycles and pre-filter them and use them for real-time rendering this was one of the tests and can actually see the red team on the balls on the right and the blue team on the balls on the left but to make it fully fully dynamic I started working on voxel cone tracing there's a video but I'm over it doesn't work yeah it's all it's again it's very simple right now the scene is voxel eyes in a single pass and then the lighting is calculated one more condition and again there is a nothing pre-baked you can move all the objects change the materials and the reflections are quite good this is not yet as good as I would like and the last part is how they're gonna deploy this and run this that's where a technology named car comes in it's a it's very very small library but it gets rid of the all the annoying stuff that you want to get there are very very little dependencies and no graphics API specific so we don't touch any open GL code any directory decode this is all handled by car and my favorite part about guys that there is no recompilation so if you want to modify something in the engine it's like you would modify something in python you change a line of code and you can immediately see the results and this I think is quite important for contributing because we were easily so yeah as mentioned by using hacks we can target any language like C++ for desktops and JavaScript for the web and for performance critical code we can still use C++ library to get away from graphics API we use car and to not lean on any render technique we use armory and this is one of the demos you can play online it's thanks to kydros everywhere and it actually fits under one megabyte and yeah it's almost done and release will be I call it preview zero because it's still it's still far from where I like to but it will be out today there are some documentation but really not much and it may not work at all also it will be paid for now as I would like to keep it small and have time to support all the problems looking to them properly but if anyone has ideas how can I make it free then please get in touch with me yeah there are some examples and that's it thank you


Governor Yasawika of River State has promised the presidential candidate of the New Nigerian People's Party and NPP Rabu Kwakwa's logistic support for his campaign in the state. We can make the promise during the inauguration of the Imbutawan internal roads in the Umuhua local government area of the state. According to him, the former governor of Kano State has what it takes to be president of the country. We can also make the same pledge to the presidential flag bearer of the Labour Party, Peter Obie. Those of them who are remaining in the party, those of them who are going with me will go with me. But those who are remaining, I'm going to share their support with you. And they did. And they did. It's unfortunate we're not in the same party. But God will help. And the appropriate... God will help. People like this are people that will talk about leadership of the country. Yes. I have no... I have no apologies to make to anybody. I said it to Peter Obie when he came. And I want to also tell you that if you are coming for campaign here, I will give you the logistic support for you to come. You are the former governor. The difference between you and me is that you are former... I'm the president. You are former minister and former minister. So why will I not accord you all the necessary support, protocol and logistic support? On his behalf, Rabbi Kwankwasea described Governor Wike as a member of the Kwankwasea group. Kwankwasea said Wike was always standing for the truth. Hence, he's a member of Kwankwasea. Your Excellency, without putting ready cap, I can tell you you are a member of Kwankwasea any day, any time. Because in Kwankwasea, you don't have to put ready cap. Let me say that many people have made so many mistakes. Many leaders don't understand. Some leaders are very rigid. Rigid in the sense that whether they are failing or winning, they will stick to one idea. They will stick to one aspirant or candidate, not minding the consequences, not minding the feeling of the people that are involved. We have seen people in my former party that all what they want is ticket. To get presidential ticket. They are ready to do anything to have ticket. I can tell you as Governor Wike has been saying, any party that cannot control two of the three states, Kano, Lagos, and Rivers, he has been saying it and people are not taking note of it. And by now, with Congress out of that party, Wike is still struggling to be there or not to be there. Somehow things are moving. Certainly Lagos is not their own. One begins to wonder where they will get their votes to win the election of 2020. Don't forget to press the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


So yeah, you know here today obviously for Fletch and he's had over 200 nights in the Royal Children's Hospital He's had three bouts of brain surgery 13 weeks of chemotherapy and various bouts of radiotherapy Yeah, he's currently You know in a more positive light We've just had some good news on some of the tests that he's had and the treatment that he's had But yeah, definitely obviously it's a massive thing on his family and himself and it's a big fight so you know today I get to Show Fletcher a little bit about what we do And then you know at the same time promote the cause and make sure that everyone gets behind the Royal Children's Hospital This is good Friday People say that fire fighters are courageous or brave and all that but we got nothing on these children These children are the ones that are courageous and these nurses and doctors and the Royal Children's Remains It's a massive thing and it's not just Fletch It's it's all the children but yeah He's a big part of the Royal Children's Hospital and obviously in their hearts through from my children And when I was a kid in Royal Children's to you know Fletcher's a really good family friend of ours He's family and and to watch him go through that and you know And the job that the Royal Children's does really want people to get on board and you know Just donate like crazy


They all follow me to order the first item on the agenda is an executive session. I'll be looking for a motion. I'll move to find the premature public knowledge regarding confidential attorney-client legal communications would clearly place the town at a substantial disadvantage and further move that we enter executive session to discuss confidential attorney-client legal communications made for the purpose of providing professional legal service to the select court under the provisions of Title I, Sections 313A1F of the Vermont statutes, and invite town attorney David Rue, Public Works Director Bruce Hoare, and town manager Eric Walsh to join. Mr. Rue, second. Second. Sorry, discussion on the motion. Very not at all. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Four ayes, and we will head down the stairs to do our business with the executive session. Just out of the executive session, I think we'll continue on the agenda as described, and then we'll get into a discussion of what we discussed at the executive session. So we have the minutes of January 3rd before us tonight. For approval, is there a motion? Oh, you are here. I'll move to a pre-subjector modification. Is there a second? I'll second. Page one. Just a minor change that Gene Jensen is not Jensen, it's Jensen. Page two. At the bottom of page two, the very last thing that says under budget deliberations, we're just going to discuss it in allocation of $75,000, about $50,000 in the ERF. We might have talked about $75,000 at that time. We did, because this was the January 3rd meeting, and at that point we were still thinking $75,000. You're absolutely right. Wrong meeting. If we could go up to the top of the page, it's item number five, Winooski Valley Park District, and it's in the middle of the paragraph, the sentence read, the requested allocation from Williston is 6.3% greater than last year's amount based on the fair share analysis, comma, not the amount of park acreage in a member town. And first of all, I wonder if that second part of the sentence, not the amount of park acreage in a member town is needed. And part of that is because this could be interpreted that the 6.3% increase is due to a different way of calculating our fee. And I don't want that to be the impression at all. They've been very consistent in this fair share analysis. We've questioned it in the past and wondered if it's fair for Williston, but it hasn't changed. And so I wonder if the sentence at a minimum should be rephrased. Not sure exactly how to do that. And whether it makes sense to delete the last part, it might have come up, but we didn't discuss it and we didn't complain about it. Probably simpler just to eliminate the, talks about the amount of park acreage. So what I then recommend is the sentence be changed to the requested allocation from Williston is 3% greater than last year, period. Sounds fairly. Is that sound reasonable? Everybody agree with that? Jeff, you mean 6.3%? That's what it says. Did I say it wrong? You said 3%. Just making sure. I apologize, 6.3% is correct. Yes. Anything else on page two? Page three. There are no other corrections. Allows in favor of the motion to approve the minutes of January 3rd, 2823. Say aye. Aye. Any abstentions? Ted. So let's be 301. And this is going to be time for public comment to make comments, either people in the room or folks on Zoom to make any comment on an issue that they wish to make. I have someone on Zoom, Terry. Okay. Terry Merrin, I'm going to connect you right now. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Great. Okay, I'll make this quick. I know you guys are running late. So my name is Terry Merrin and I'm a member of the Williston Conservation Commission and I'm a member of the Canman Community Forest Committee and I'm the chair. I'm a member of the Green Mountain Audubon Society and I'm an avid birder and go over to Catamac Community Forest and bird quite often. I have a membership at the Outdoor Center for Skiing. So I use the Catamac Community Forest and multiple activities. And so since 2019, the town has become a steward of this parcel of land. I believe it's the largest piece of land that's the town owns. And it serves many functions from wildlife corridor to wildlife habitat, recreational area, educational facility, a grassland bird and bluebird programs or our site is over there. Forest management area for timber harvesting and for forest birds and invasive management and the list goes on. There's multiple things that happen over at the town forest. And I know the Catamac Community Forest Committee sent over a memo to the select board and Eric on December 8th. So you've seen all those. And I just feel that we have an obligation as stewards for this parcel of land to be properly managed and nurtured as a forest wetlands and open lands for future generations. In order to do this, the Catamac Community Forest Committee needs proper funding to manage the invasives and perform the forest management and provide educational opportunities and to take on new projects when they come up. The committee has asked for an increase of $2,000 to achieve these goals in the upcoming fiscal year, 2020-24 budget. And I hope there is a way somehow to increase the operating budget in the future so that the committee can continue to be good stewards of this land which they have committed to doing. And I just feel that it's such a great asset to the town and the surrounding communities that we should try to find that extra little bit of money in the big scheme of things. It is pretty small, but big things can happen with it at the town forest. So thank you. And if you have any questions, I'd be willing to answer any questions. Thank you. Are there any questions from the board for Tara? Well, Tara, hey, Jeff Ferris here. So your understanding is the kind amount community management force, which by the way, I am the select board representative on requested $5,000 as our operating budget, not the $3,000 that made it into the budget. The only reason I ask that is I'm on page 112 and it notes that the fiscal year 2024 requested amount was $3,000. And I wonder if we need to change that to five if that's what the community requested. I believe when the budget was put together, that number was put in my staff and then the request from the committee came in after the draft budget was put together. We can certainly, however the board wants to land on it, we can change the topic. Yeah, not a big deal, I get that. I just, as I look at this, I can see why you recommended the three, that's the case. It's up to us, I guess, to decide whether five makes sense. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? If not, thank you, Terry. Okay, thank you very much. Any further public comment from anyone on Zoom or in the room? No one on Zoom. Okay, I think in the interest of time we'll go to the interviews and appointments tonight and we do have any person interested in being a trustee of the Little Brett Church, so, Marge Butterfield, if you'd come forward to sit at the table with a microphone, and that doesn't amplify, so if you could speak loudly, that would be good, it just records your speech. So we do have your application in front of us and if you'd give us a brief introduction of yourself and why you're interested in being a trustee on the Little Brett Church. Okay, I'm Marge Butterfield and I live on North Williston Road and I've been there since 1985 with my husband. And I'm interested in, I've been actually, the Old Brett Church is a beautiful and historic building and I've always admired it and it's such an integral part of the village. I would like to help in the stewardship of it. Good, and I think you have somebody close to you who already serves on that block. Yes, he does, my husband, John. Are there any questions for Marge from the board? What is, we ask a lot of folks on the committee, but just what would you see or what would your priorities be for kind of moving the Brett Church into the future and moving forward? It would be nice if we could have it used more. One thing they have done in the past is small weddings and I think if we advertise, I think people outside of Williston don't even know it's a nice small venue and if you could maybe even advertise in the local papers for surrounding towns, you could get, I mean it's perfect. They could just, even just a wedding if they, I know it's not accessible for handicapped people, but if they had their wedding there they can have reception somewhere else. But I think if we advertise we could probably get a lot more smaller venues for weddings and hopefully maybe concerts again. Okay, well I guess I'm gonna ask the difficult question. Do you see an issue with you and your husband serving on the same committee? No, I don't. Okay. Actually we can bounce ideas off and get somebody else to work with. No, I don't think it would be any problem. I don't have any questions. Yeah, yeah, I'm not trying to be difficult or anything. Oh no. I think this is very unique from, I don't know if we have this situation anywhere else where a husband and wife are serving on the same committee. So, yeah, anything. It's not nepotism because we're not paying anyone to do this job and it probably comes into the conflict of interest, the question which you usually ask. I doubt you two have ever disagreed in any discussion you've ever had. I don't know. I don't know. But would it be possible that you would not necessarily vote the same way that David would? Does that come out right? I'm sorry, could you repeat that? I'm sorry. What I'm trying to get at is the concept of you will be an independent trustee as opposed to you will be a team of two as trustees. And I guess that kind of, now that I'm verbalizing it a little bit, that kind of is the crux of what I'm trying to get at. I would say we'd be independent and I would hope that we'd have meetings again because there'd be other trustees that we can all be discussing things together. Of course, yeah. The concern is when you have a husband and wife who are both on the same committee would be that you're gonna vote as a bloc, you're gonna vote together. And that's why I came up with that joke. And I would like to hear from you, no, you don't see that being the case at all. You two very well might disagree on whether we need more weddings or more concerts or how much to charge for blah, blah, blah. Okay, all right, good, thank you. Any other questions? If not, then the motion has been proposed. Move to appoint Marge Hutterfield to the Old Brick Church trustees for an unexpired five-year term through June 30, 2027. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion on the motion? I just want to double check that you mentioned it can't be nepotism because there's no money involved and I just want to make sure there's nothing in the town ordinances that would prevent this. Wouldn't be nepotism anyway because our husband isn't hiring or we are. Okay, thank you. Very helpful, yeah. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Thank you very much for your interest in doing this. We appreciate it. Well, thank you for your consideration. Thank you very much. I think we'll now go to the discussion we had in executive session regarding water system connection fees and I'll ask Eric to give a brief overview of what we discussed downstairs and then the motion. Thanks, Terry. No steps looking for the board to consider a motion just to clarify an administrative practice of how we assess our water connection fees for commercial and industrial users. Typically we look at environmental protection rules in the state to come up with what the maximum daily demand is on the water system and in circumstances where there's not a specific instance listed in those rules rely on the engineer from the applicant to provide those figures for us. We take that figure that multiply by the rate per gallon set by the select board annually to arrive at the connection fee for the applicants to join our water system. Thank you. So I'll be looking for a motion to go forward. Do you want to do it since you're at awarding? I moved to clarify that water system connection fees are calculated using environmental protection rules for the state of Vermont and further move that when a process or applicant applying has a use not covered by the environmental protection rules that the water system connection fees will be based on the uses estimated maximum daily demand in gallons per day that could be used by the applicant subject to a review and approval by the boilers and waterers. Is there a second? I'll second. Is there a discussion on the motion? Sorry, I do have one question that I, as I was listening to Ted read it, it refers to the environmental protection rules and I think there's some 21 or 24 of these EPRs that they're DEC rules and there's some 21, 24 something around that nine. Should we identify which specific rule? The reason I'm wondering if that's a good case is because the rules that actually somebody who's reading this that they would apply, first of all, they may apply a different rule than the one we think should be applied. And the other point would be is that there could be differences in how the two rules define not defined but set what a maximum daily demand is. The chapter one rule, which is the wastewater and potable water rules, might be different than the chapter 21 rules, which is the water supply rules. So I wonder if we should specify which environmental protection rule we are going to apply. Does that make sense? Would we be problem if we specify something of some one rule and other ones apply? Well, this would be for our connection to our water system and connection to our water system only. It wouldn't be connection to our sewer system, for instance. We could be saying the word applicable. Again, that could be, there could be disagreements of what's applicable. My understanding is we currently use the chapter 21 rule and I would advocate that that's what we should continue doing. We use the chapter one? That basically the same language and listings as who you're talking about. Okay. And they are for wastewater and water, potable water. So that is the one that we need to use. Okay. I'm not disagreeing. The chapter one rules are for smaller users. The chapter 21 rules apply to water systems. And so I'm going to leave it, I don't know which is the best. We're not talking about water systems though. We are talking about water systems. Right. We're talking about people connecting to our system. Right. And that's why we've been using, that's why we use chapter one rules that cover both wastewater and water supply. And give gallons per day for most things. I looked at the two lists today. Yeah. And they're basically comparable as far as imp grounds, hotels, industry, a lot of red pumps and water. Okay. So the concept is Bruce, if let's say an industry was wanting to connect and they needed to get a permit, the permit they would get would be under the chapter one rule, not the chapter 21 rule. That's right. We are water systems. Yeah. Okay. All right. If you're comfortable with the chapter one rules, I still think we should specify, so exactly this conversation doesn't happen. Not a good point, but better that is that those are the rules that we use. Okay. But this is all great. If we can come up with a like the legal definition of the rules that we're talking about. Right. Chapter one of what? They're oddly, they're oddly, what's the word, cited. I don't really know exactly how to cite them. They're considered the environmental protection rules. And within the environmental protection rules, there's some 21, 24 chapters. Chapter one, which is the wastewater and potable waters. I didn't get it quite right. I'm sure. I know it just from the wastewater side is a specific, one of those specific chapters or rules. And we should cite the chapter. I believe we should cite the chapter one. And I can look it up for you. Find out what the right, so should be tabled emotion. Could be tabled or if we're not ready to act on it tonight or we could table until later on in the meeting. Yes. Maybe that makes sense. It's just have somebody look it up and get the right citation. I found the webpage, but I, it's similar to what you were describing it, Jeff. It says these are the DEC rules and regulations summary rules by chapter, then it lists each chapter and chapter one, as you referred to the, it's named drinking water and groundwater protection division and the rule name is wastewater system and potable water supply rules. Yeah. It's also what we refer to as the regional office rules because they're administered by the regional office program. But I don't know how to correctly cite it. I'll be honest with you. When it comes to citing things, I usually turn to our legal folks and say, I don't appropriately say this. Another idea is could we vote on, could we adopt the amendment, the clarification tonight and then at our next meeting, edit it further so that we're sending the appropriate clarifications to the appropriate. We could do that. We could revisit the motion that was made at this meeting take a person to who voted in the affirmative to make that motion to revisit, if that's not the right word, but we could do that, yes. Yeah. Okay. So if there are no amendments, then to the motion that was made and there's no further discussion on it, we would all call for a vote. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. I think we have four ayes. So if that takes care of that, we can add it. And we'll move on then to the Certificate of Talent Highway Mileage. And Eric, when I speak to that and the Bruce, if you have anything to add to it as well. This is an annual exercise for the board. This time every year we bring before you our certificate of highway mileage. This is a basis of all our town highways by classification in town. This is an important document every year for the VTrans mapping division because it also determines our local aid dollars based on our roadway types of classification of our total mileage. Fairly easy and straightforward this year. I think there's been no new additions to highway mileage in the last year. So our total is 94.492, which is what we've had in previous years. As for the board to consider a motion to adopt and that would be your signature on the form to submit this. Bruce, I need to add. No. No. No. Any questions regarding the issue? If not, a motion is in order. Move to approve the 2023 Certificate of Highway Mileage. Is there a second? Second. Is there a discussion on the motion? There are none. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Then we have the mileage. Moving on to the UPWP annual work plan projects and Eric and Matt, I think you're gonna speak to this. Yep. I can just, a brief introduction to the board. This is another annual exercise that comes up for each January. The unified planning work program is summarizes the projects for the Chittin County Regional Planning Commission's focus in the coming year. Each town in the region is asked to submit requests to be included in this plan. Typically the Planning Office and Public Works Office submit requests for the board to review each year. Included is a memo from Matt and Bruce that outline these requests. I've asked Matt to speak to their request a little bit more because it's advancing our affordable housing discussion and we're finishing up a needs assessment right now and it's a brief opportunity for the board to have an introduction to that from Matt as it relates to this request. And then Public Works also has some requests that are similar to prior years. Turn over to Matt. Terrific. So first I wanna note that this UPWP request from planning or this slate of requests, which is one request this year is a little different from last year when we had, I believe four or five different work items we were asking for help with. All pretty much precipitating from the form-based code project. One of those last year was the preparation of a housing needs assessment which Eric alluded to. That document has been drafted by the Vermont Housing Finance Agency under contract with CCRPC and we are working with CCRPC staff to finalize that needs assessment document right now. We hope to review it with the Planning Commission at their meeting on February 7th. So if you're just so excited to read the needs assessment and can't wait for me to come talk to you about it, you'll find it on the Planning Commission's packet for next time. We know from reviewing that draft and I think we kind of thought even before we had set about to preparing one that we would find evidence that there was significant need for housing and affordable housing in Williston and Chittenden County. That certainly has proven to be true in the draft that we're reviewing and select board members may recall the reason that we wanted to do this needs assessment as a follow-up task to form-based code was that it is a prerequisite for the town to consider bylaw amendments, specifically inclusionary zoning where some amount of projects over a certain size might be required to build some of their dwellings as perpetually affordable at one level or another of affordability. I just wanna speak a little bit about the request, the follow-up we are requesting from CCRPC this year because we're backing away from necessarily presupposing that inclusionary zoning is the only solution to what we expect the needs assessment to say the town needs. In fact, we're gonna back away even one step further and say, here's the data in the needs assessment, town of Williston, First Planning Commission and then hopefully select board as well. Do you agree with or endorse taking policy actions towards the amount of housing that this needs assessment says is needed and if so, over what timeframe, how much of the challenge do you wanna take on, how quickly, the numbers we have are not necessarily down to the individual home, but they do express some orders of magnitude that suggest that some fairly significant policy changes might be needed to make meaningful progress on the need and we know that policy changes around affordable housing are likely to be controversial. Inclusionary zoning is controversial, adjusting Williston's growth management system, a process I've been through twice now and Williston is always controversial and growth and development in general is controversial. So we're hoping through the exercise of reviewing the needs assessment and talking about it with both the Planning Commission and you folks that before we start down the road to policy adjustments, we have some understanding from the elected and appointed officials of the town about what is desirable and what you'd like us to work on so that hopefully we bring you back a policy package that is in line with what you sort of turned us loose to do and so part of what we're asking for help with the CCRPC is to do some goal setting with the Planning Commission about affordable housing needs coming out of this document and then to help us work on those policy changes. So that's the request. We hope to use our recent experiences taking on other big policy changes in zoning and Williston as in Taft Corners, put that to good use in the way we would conduct this process. And I'll just note finally, this is probably one of the last really big policy changes this and village bylaw, which is well in progress that we'll be taking on ahead of the beginnings of the development of the 2025 comprehensive plan. One of the reasons are UPWP requests are pretty light. You may recall we wrote a municipal planning grant request and we are looking to go out and fund a very significant deep public engagement process through FY24 leading up to the development of that town plan. So that's why there's only one, that's why it's this one and I'm happy to answer any questions you have and excited to be sharing the needs assessment with you very soon. Good, thank you. Questions? It's kind of funny how everybody kind of looks at me. I'm totally fine with what's in this. My question is about inclusionary zoning. I'm a fan. But I also wonder, are we too far along in terms of what Williston will be able to provide in terms of housing for inclusionary zoning to be effective? Way to say is 10 years ago, if we had started with inclusionary zoning, Williston would probably be very different from a housing makeup standpoint than it is right now. But I guess my question is, is looking forward, is there enough room in terms of the housing stock we hope to gain that inclusionary zoning will make a positive and significant difference? If that came out right, in achieving the goals that we want in terms of housing and types of housing and cost of housing, those considerations. Luckily, this is a little bit of a mathematical exercise. We can look back at what we've achieved through our sort of more incentive-based system. We can look back and imagine if there was a required affordable component of some amount in the projects that we saw, say in the last 10 or 15 years, what that might look like. I caution looking at that too finely detailed because one of the other elements of inclusionary zoning is, it may mean that some projects simply aren't feasible. It's particularly small projects and a lot of it depends on how you set that threshold. So would we have the same number of homes today if we had inclusionary zoning for the last 10 or 15 years? We might have more affordables, but we might not have as many homes in general. So that's something to think about and certainly something to look forward as well and say, well, what is the likely build out and what might requiring an affordable component look like? And again, we have some examples of nearby towns. We talk a little bit about that. We'll certainly talk about the administrative challenges of managing perpetual affordability as a town that has a housing trust fund, but there's some significant challenges we face in managing perpetual affordability as a town through deed restrictions and covenants that I can talk about when we get there. I think also with the work that was done around the form-based code in Taft Corners, there is a lot of opportunity and a lot of development potential now for compact smart growth and missing middle-type developments, the kinds of residential projects that can be of a significant enough to scale to integrate affordable homes. I also think there are policy changes that could lead to more projects like the recent Champlain Housing Trust project that's partially open now, where you have the conversion of some existing structure building, in that case a hotel, two affordable homes and there are policy changes like the ones the select board made a little over a year ago that can further encourage those kinds of projects to land in the right places in Williston. I think about it a little bit about piggybacking on the development energy that we think is going to continue to be focused on the town, but I also think about it, are there some attractive landing places Williston can create through policy, through budgeting, through infrastructure investment that will bring some of those outside parties in and say this is a great place to do a project that takes advantage of low-income housing tax credits or that takes advantage of some of the other federal and state programs that are out there to incentivize the development of affordable homes. So there are some policy things, there are some ways to ask for housing to be integrated into projects that might come to Williston anyway. There's also things that I think that can be done that might encourage more affordable projects to come to Williston. Again, that's why I wanna start with some goal setting because I don't necessarily have a clear direction from everybody in this room or the planning commission of to what level can we talk about encouraging housing development to come to Williston. That's really different from the historic dialogue around housing development in Williston. It's a big change, but I think as the needs assessment will show, the need is significant and it is greater than it really has ever been. It's a question back to the community of what is the level of desire to go after that. Okay, all right, good, thank you. Yeah, yeah. Any further questions? Good, not thinking of that. Looking forward to that discussion. You're looking for a motion. Oh, and that. I don't know if you wanted to do public works at the same time. Yep, there's some public works projects as well, is there any questions from the board that the first can speak to those? We would need to do that first, yes, thank you. Bruce? I would just ask you a yes, if you have any questions, put it on set and bring those all with me. I know it's mostly in there. I could speak to anything that anybody would have a question about on those few projects. One's a stop sign study, one's a couple of our speed studies, one's for looking at Mountain View Road and the white edge lines. To move those out a little bit, but then there's a space that we already have out there. And I think that just about covers what we've asked for. We do see a number of complaints about speeding on an old premium road for sure. Speeding where, I'm sorry. Old premium road. Yes, old creamery. And then the one is just to look at the speed limit between Williston Road to old creamery on Elk Hill Road. And if you remember a few years ago, we did change that speed limit from Williston Road up to the entrance to South Road, basically just up over the bridge. Yeah, that's difficult coming down into town from there to be at 35s. Yeah. Any questions or views regarding the public works? No, that's good. And then that case, we are looking for a motion. Move to approve the project's proposed for inclusion in the regional annual unified planning work program for fiscal year 2024. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion on the motion? Very none. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. We have four yes votes. So thank you very much. Thank you. And we'll move on then to the town meeting article retail cannabis opt-in request. And we did get an official request from Graham Central and Eric and Matt, would you please speak to this? Yep. So as Terry mentioned, the board received a letter that included your packet from three business owners who have a retail cannabis establishment in Malpillier asking that the question of allowing retail cannabis sales in Williston be added to the town meeting 2023 warning. As a reminder, state statute allows municipalities to hold an opt-in vote for retail cannabis sales. Should a petition for such an article be received by the deadline of this Thursday, January 19th, which meets the requirements for a petition article that would need to be placed on the warning. If there was not a petition received, it's at the board's discretion whether to add this article to the warning. There's no petition received today. I don't have an indication that one is circling in the community to my knowledge right now. I've included the written request from this group. I believe they're business owners out of Malpillier. They haven't presented in their letter whether they're Williston residents or not. I've communicated with them a couple of times since receiving their letter and inviting them to speak this evening but I haven't received any communication back and I don't see them here or on Zoom so I can leave it to the board's discretion. You have this request for you. I also thought this might be a good time to preview with the board. I included a BT Digger article that came out on New Year's Day talking about local cannabis control commissions. I've been chatting with Matt about what he's starting to see a little bit in the planning world and going back to the board with more information and possibly thinking about it and considering standing up a local cannabis commission whether or not there's retail sales allowed in Williston there's still other uses allowed under state statute now and the article on BT Digger I think paints in a good picture of what Burlington is looking at and we're seeing that with other towns too with a lot of information that's being transmitted for potential approval by a little bit and there's a lot of, at the state level there's a lot of information that is currently needing to be redacted and thinking about what that means from a zoning use approval standpoint. So similar to when we, the board serves as the liquor control board. I checked with planning to make sure that the application meets the planning requirements and kind of getting ahead to our conversation here but looking to potentially see if there's a similar avenue for there's a local cannabis control commission. It's got the overview request for the board tonight. The board was interested in adding an article regarding or retail cannabis opt into the warning. I'd suggest I have a draft warning for your consideration for action tonight. If you wanted to revisit that article, I'd suggest having the town attorney draw that up and call a special meeting next week to consider approving the warning at that time. Matt, do you have any comments? Yeah, so mostly what I might be able to contribute to this is to refresh the board's memory on zoning provisions that were adopted in Williston in anticipation that an opt-in vote might happen at some point. And also to provide a little bit of perspective of what I am seeing out in the broader planning world of how this is going. And so first, just keep in mind, Williston adopted bylaw changes allowing for retail cannabis with a DRB approval in the mixed-use commercial zoning district, i.e. the big box zone down by Wal-Mart Home Depot, Gardner Supply, Town Fair Tire, et cetera. And in the Gateway North District, the commercial area around Route 2A up near the Essex Line. The Gateway North is impacted by a provision that says it would not be allowed on a parcel within a thousand feet, or sorry, I think it's a hundred feet of essentially budding a residential parcel unless it was a cross Route 2A. And when we did the form-based code in Taft Corners, that was part of the logic of adopting it as an overlay was that we would leave the underlying zoning districts there and not touch them largely because we had just gone through this effort of deciding where cannabis retail might be allowed. And we might clean that up eventually. I.e. make the TC form-based code district its own zoning district and get rid of the underlying districts but that would have an impact on the cannabis boundary. We didn't want to do that as part of that project. So a couple of things. When we reviewed this, Act 164 had just very recently become law and what Act 164 has to say about local authority under zoning is quite brief. And we thought in 2020 when that happened that it was very likely that the actual authority of a town to deal with retail cannabis under zoning would likely be shaped largely by the activities of the state cannabis control board. And at the time I was reviewing my memo, I talked about it in terms of rulemaking. Hasn't really been rulemaking around this that I can discern but there's been a lot of statements made by the cannabis control board. And the ones that have really stuck out for me are a statement that you can't regulate cannabis retail any differently than any other kind of retail. Well, we do in our zoning bylaw. We say it needs approval by the DRB. Not all establishments of a retail use in an existing building have to go to the DRB. Most of them are administrative. Because the state law contains a buffer zone from schools, the state CCB statement has been you can't have buffer zones in zoning. Well, that 100 feet from a residential parcel is a type of buffer zone. It may be in conflict with if not the way the law changed under Act 164, it may be in conflict with the way the state CCB sees the world. Before you on maybe somewhat shakier ground than I thought we would be with what was adopted in 2020, I anticipated that the ground might get shakier under our feet as this plays out. And those are the primary ways in which I think it might be. So I don't have as good a prediction today as I might have before about what might happen if somebody applied for a retail zoning permit. And I said, yep, you got to go to the DRB. And they said, no, the CCB says I don't have to, you can't treat me differently than any other kind of retail. I've interacted a little bit with some fellow planners on this as well as staff at the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, I would say broadly there's quite a bit of frustration among folks who do local land use in that, again, the way the law changed under 164 is very brief. It says you can't do anything to cannabis retail in zoning that you couldn't do to anything else in zoning. Well, zoning lets us do all kinds of things. We can require certain things to be conditional uses. We can require certain things to only be allowed at a certain density, which is another buffer that we did. We said no retailer within a thousand feet of another retailer. We don't treat any other kind of retail that way. But zoning and the zoning authority in Vermont has allowed communities to treat retailers that way before. So I'm a little bit concerned that the town, if somebody just read our zoning, they might assume the town had some authority that it might not end up having vis-a-vis retail. So broadening out a little bit more, we have not said anything specific in zoning about any of the other tiers of cannabis license, growing, manufacturing, et cetera. Where we have had cannabis manufacturers want to come into town, my statement has been, I'm going to treat it like any other kind of manufacturing and take it through the permitting process. And I will see it as being allowed anywhere else that manufacturing is allowed. So we've had a couple folks, processors or manufacturers, where can I go in town? Well, generally the industrial district, great. Can I get a permit? Okay, let's look at your wastewater. And a permit is signed and we have, I think at least two that have been through that permitting process in the industrial part of Williston. Growing has been a little more of a challenge. Nobody has asked me for a permit for an indoor or outdoor growing operation. It does not enjoy the same exemption that other agricultural practices enjoy from zoning. But Williston's bylaws certainly allow a broad variety of agriculture, not just exempt agriculture in our agricultural rural residential zone. Indoor growing, when I've been asked about it, I've said, well, I would treat that like a kind of manufacturing. It's typically going to happen in an industrial building. But I am aware that a state license was pursued by somebody in Williston at one point to grow out of their home. And I'm aware of that happening in a couple of other municipalities. And I'm also aware that there's some sort of growing and maybe more happening in some location in a rural part of Williston. And I'm not privy to where that applicant has not sought or asked if any zoning approval is necessary. I don't know if it is because they haven't told me what they're doing. And their address is covered by the confidentiality provisions in terms of their state license. And that's some of the frustration you hear about the retail side from the Burlington City Council in the Digger article. So broadening out a little bit more just, we do have some neighboring communities, Charlotte and Stowe are two that have attempt to address all of the different tiers of cannabis production and retailing via their zoning. In other words, keying the allowed uses to the tiers of cannabis license and then saying what zoning districts they can go in and what permits are required. And the thing about that as Eric said is if that zoning permit is required, then if this group were to convene as a local cannabis control commission, it would be able to inquire of me via Eric, are they in compliance with zoning? And what is being said in some communities is that if you have that system in place, well now you've got to tell the zoning administrator where this is going, because the zoning, they have to know where it is in order to know what zoning districts it's in and whether it's permitted and under what process. And then that information is recorded in the land use permit. And I believe the select board sitting as cannabis control commission would be privy to it. But this is all stuff that a lot of our neighboring communities are figuring out and it's a bit of a challenge. So I think when I talked with the select board about putting a retail opt-in vote on the ballot two years ago, sort of said I really can't give you a complete picture of exactly how this is all going to work out and exactly what level of say you might have. And I'm afraid I'm still a little bit in that scenario. My perspective is it does make sense to become a control commission to review licenses. It probably does make sense to look at some zoning bylaw amendments for all of the various tiers of operation at some point. But the question in front of you right now is would you put it on the ballot to opt into retail? And that's up to you. And I'm happy to answer any questions about the zoning as you have it or the particulars of what we think the permitting process might look like. I just say that when the individual talked to me on the phone probably five or six weeks ago, she had or he at that point had spoken to Matt about the process and referred to me for the process tonight. Although I thought I had mentioned to that person that sooner than later than later it was better. And this is gonna take in my mind a lot more discussion than we have either tonight or certainly before the ballots are up. So questions for Matt? So I'm not, it was just for Matt, but they submitted a letter, but that was just a letter of mostly inquiry versus the actual petition that they needed to file. Yeah, they're asking the board under you have a control of what you can put on the running or not. So you have no legal obligation at this point unless we got a petition on Thursday to place the question on the line. Yeah. And a petition would have to be signed by so many residents. Five percent of our voters, about 414 or so. Other questions or comments from that? My question, Matt, is in, it's based somewhat on that Digger article, which was a bit of an eye opener for me is which should come first? The town to get it stucks in a row, meaning we understand what it is our zoning. It sounds like right now we don't totally understand what it is, what the process would be in which a retail establishment would be allow permitted to come into Williston. And my question is, is it important that we do that before this gets on, becomes a question on the ballot? Or is it something where you can have the question on the ballot and answer these, you have time after that to answer these questions? Does that make sense? Yes. I believe that if an opt-in vote is taken, it takes effect more or less instantly. Erica, you correct me if I'm wrong. My, I'd have to double check on this, but there's always a 30-day appeal period for a referendum on any ballot item. So essentially if there was no appeal on the vote 30 days after town, any day would be effective for the town. So, and just let me make sure I understand. So literally we could have our vote at town meeting if it was on the ballot. And we, and it's a positive vote, enough for more people vote for it than vote against it. Within that 30-day period, somebody could submit an application to the State Cannabis Control Board. They do their thing and send it to us and we would have to, we would have to act on it. Yeah, well, right now they wouldn't send it to you because you're not a Cannabis Control Commission. I believe you have to decide as a select board to become that and to take on that license-reviewing authority. Yeah. That's my understanding and then the challenge with right now is everything is essentially redacted that goes to the commission. And we would want to understand if it was meeting zoning, first of all, to recommend any approval from the commission. So Matt, let me ask the question slightly differently. Is it your recommendation that we wait until we know more and maybe do some tweaking to our zoning before the select board would choose to put this on the ballot? It is. It is. I like to recommend in favor of the community having as full an understanding as they can of the outcome of any policy changes they make. And right now, I think there are communities adopting things that the state CCB may or may not believe are acceptable under the provisions of 164. And I think that's just gonna take some time to shake out. Knowing what I know now and having heard what I've heard said at those CCB meetings and information sessions, I feel on a little shakier ground about some of the zoning we drafted two years ago. That doesn't surprise me, but in this particular case, I think a wait-and-see approach is a little more prudent in terms of being able to predict your outcomes. And I just, I'm gonna point out the reason why I'm asking these questions is because I am not particularly concerned about whether Willison does or does not have retail cannabis, whatever, whatever stores, whatever I should refer to them. I'm not particularly concerned about that because I look at some of the things we already permit. You can buy tobacco, a pretty addictive substance in Williston and alcohol. So I'm not concerned about the retail, I'm not concerned about there being retail in Williston. What I am concerned about is the process in which that approval happens. And it just feels like there's too many questions and too many, it's out of our hands, types of scenarios that does influence my decision about whether we should read the select board should put it on the ballot. If you had come to us and said, I'm very confident, I know how applications will come. I'm very confident that our zoning is tight in terms of it well describes where it can happen and where it can't. I would be telling you a different answer. So the question for us tonight then, is there any interest in going forward with putting this on the ballot for town meeting this year? And I have not heard there's any interest in doing that. I wouldn't phrase there is an interest. I definitely have interest. I just don't think now is the right time. Yeah. I think the timeframe between this moment and when we'd have to, and get it at the actual warning finalized of next week, it don't think gives us or you all or the folks in town even a chance to really consider what they want. And I would love to see this on the ballot a year from now potentially. But I think we do need more time to have it as a town figure out the zoning and figure out the, you know, all the different things in Act 164 and all of that. So. Right, I think you've brought up a good point and Matt also alluded to it. Right now, if we were to put this on the ballot, meaning us to select vote, we'd want to provide voters with a very robust information about the initiative. And it sounds like right now we can't because there are so many unknowns. Yeah, I think the legislature did not collectively do as good a job as they should have on getting this ready. And I think the cannabis control board similarly is, it's very haphazard. The idea that we, they issue statements but not policies or regulations is actually what they should be issued that say that we can't treat this any differently than any other business.  And, you know, originally if we hadn't passed the zoning that we did, we wouldn't be able to regulate where in town at all it was.  But there are so many other things that the state did not get ready for by way of example, I am very much in favor of the 0.08 blood alcohol content DUI standard. It's a public safety thing. People who drive high on marijuana are also a danger to public safety but we don't have the testing mechanism in place where it would be efficient.  Come on back to the station and, you know, the case gets thrown out. There's just so many things that are not in place that I can't be in favor of this at this point. So I think that the determination is that we will not place us on the ballot for this town meeting. So we'll move on and thank you Matt. We'll move on to the ARPA funding allocations of Merrick and surely it's probably about time for you to come to the table as we're starting to do all of the financial stuff here. So these next few items will kind of run through where we are in budget items and there's motions for the board to consider on all these tonight to wrap up the budget process but certainly if the board would like to make any additional adjustments or changes you have room to end time to make those. So we tend from staff to kind of, I put these in a sequence that I felt made sense to consider approval. Certainly we can discuss each one as we go and staff take direction from the board on these items here. So starting out with the ARPA funding allocations that we've discussed them during our 2024 budget development process the last couple of months for projects and funding sources in the fiscal year of 24 operating capital budgets. After last meeting Shirley and I were reviewing the structure of ARPA allocations and we discussed previously we designated ARPA as its own fund for allocation, authorization and spending. In my transmitted budget proposal last December I had ARPA funds included in the operating budget for general operating revenue of 125,000 and for the police retention incentive final year about $9,500 to cover that expense. As we review this further our suggestion is removing the transfer of the retention and incentive ARPA funds. That's essentially flowing into the general funds along with the expense and instead consider authorizing the expense directly from the ARPA funds among others that have been discussed. From an accounting standpoint this would achieve the same result as an effect the general fund bottom line could be decreased by the retention incentive amount. So we're thinking instead of transferring the money into the general fund to then allocate that purpose we can just allocate that purpose from the ARPA funds. Essentially we have a revenue going in and expense going on the general funds. We achieve the same effect accounting wise and then it also the bottom line could be a little bit lower as well as a result there just with the movement of funds. So we've included in the agenda summary memo and the updated ARPA funds allocation table that we shared earlier in the budget process of your consideration. Just to recap what's been discussed here to date that's included in this memo and I've suggested should the board wish to consider it a motion to allocate these funds as a record. So the operating budget revenue transfer in $125,000. The capital budget transfer in of $176,000 listed in capital projects in the proposal before you. The police retention incentive year three $92,500. The purchase of the second sidewalk plow discussed at last week's meeting for $70,000 and the police department service delivery analysis report discussed at last May as well for $30,000. The total of these allocations would be $493,500. To date that would be about 1.2 million in committed ARPA funding and we've about 1.8 million uncommitted. I've got a memo I've written as a later agenda item for process for outreach report on ARPA as well to people should consider that as a motion. Any questions for Eric Reardon in the ARPA funds? No, it's not about the ARPA funds. I guess my fault, my bad is I didn't realize the police retention incentive is a three year program. I just, I didn't realize that. So what's my point? I guess is it going to continue next year or? As we presented last spring would be in May of each year. So May of the 22 is the first year. This May is the second year and then third year we had spent it at 2,500, 2,500, 5,000. So this budget right now is the 5,000 number one in a year three amount that can be proposed to be funded with ARPA funds. So you in the next budget, the fiscal year 2025 I can't believe I'm even saying that. You may come back with either no program or a new program retention. Yeah, but my thought with the discussion initially was a three year program. Thinking of using ARPA funds here for expenses that aren't ongoing. So I think we have a union contract that's up another year and a half after that as well. As it stands right now it was a three year incentive program that's seemingly working. We've maintained our staff. We've attracted a couple new staff members but there's also retention or recruitment incentive as well. As your question, Jeff, we'd have to reassess it in the future, but this was the largest piece of the discussion the board had for year three for the incentive. Other questions for regarding ARPA? And ARPA in terms of this budget versus ARPA in terms of next steps. Only for this budget, yep, okay. A motion is suggested. Move to allocate $493,500 of the American Rescue Plan Act funds as our one in the memo dated January 17, 2023. So your second. All second. Sorry, discussion on the motion. Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. So we have four, yes votes. Moving on to the general fund budget for fiscal year 2024. So after last week's discussion, staff worked with the director by the board to identify possible budget changes to return the amount estimated to raise by taxes just below the original proposal transmitted last December. We're presenting to you this evening an estimated rate increase of 3.23 cents. This equates to a projected $32 per 100,000 of assessed value property value. For me at home in Wilston, the $300,000 assessment would mean about a $98 increase of the year or about $8 per month. The budget changes we've identified over the last week and thanks to Shirley for leading this process. We've found some expense reductions and some revenue additions after we did a final thorough examination with each department of their budgets. This overall budget bottom line represents a 6.3% increase over the FY23 budget. We're able to make it a little bit lower than the manager's transmitted budget with a 6.5% of partially due to rethinking about the allocation of this as well and what makes most sense from an accounting standpoint. Shirley's prepared in your packet an updated document that we worked off of last week that shows the changes proposed reflective of the discussion at last week's meeting proposed for this evening with this budget number and on the back of page two of that is a breakdown of the accounting of where changes made at last week's meeting and then expenditure proposed reductions, income, revenue proposed increases and the net result coming to that estimated tax rate to raise the funding at that 3.23 cents. Questions for Eric regarding the general fund budget? Yes, before we move off of this, last week we talked about the concept of is there items that we want to consider cutting as a way to offset some of the increases and I'm having trouble understanding what your recommendations are there. Sure, sure. If you have the back, Jeff, of one with all the charts. Yeah, I'm trying to find one. I can give you one. Nope, nope, here it is. So go back to that and you'll see kind of that second cluster here. These are proposed reductions and then below that are proposed increases and the movement of those resulted in our net result of the tax increase that was comfortable to what was transmitted in December. Okay. So I can highlight a few here. Kind of thinking separately from the ARPA funds movement because the task we looked at was identifying about just over $70,000 of general funds expense reductions or revenue additions. So we found a couple reductions in capital for the police department with some of their thinking of their project funds, the firearms replacement, traffic safety, capital equipment replacement. We also across departments looked at our vehicle fuel prices. We had data from last October, November and we're seeing a favorable trend that the prices have been decreasing the last couple of months. So surely analyze those with departments and we're able to decrease the fuel costs based on the current financial environments that was in police, public works and fire. We've just, we're just wrapping up a new vendor for our ambulance billing service fee and it's lower than what we've used with various city before. So we estimated finding about $10,000 in savings with that just kind of came up in the last week or so as we work through that agreement. Also some reduction in the training expenses of the fire department. I had a little bit of money for the PD study and funding it all through ARPA, moved $5,000 out of the manager's budget for that. With the recreation and parks, remember we had increased the seasonal position from 30 hours to 40 hours and a meeting with Todd and Bruce about the timing of the addition of buildings and grounds position in November. Todd, a recreation and parks is comfortable in keeping kind of the status quo that we've operated with a seasonal position at 30 hours per week for summer of 23. Understanding as we go into the following summer with having that other buildings and grounds position that would shift a little bit for the good and we'd have that person assisting the departments as well. So Todd was comfortable with not needing that additional 10 hour increase given the change for the full time position. So we were able to scale that back about $7,700 on that personnel adjustment. The library found a little bit of savings in their postage and maintenance lines as well that they were comfortable with removing. On the revenue side, we typically take our revenue estimates very conservatively so we leave some room for improvement and we took a final good look at it and we were comfortable in some additional recreation program fees and field use fees based on historic use and that's just over 9,000. Same with the planning department where we're comfortable with additional permit fee revenue. I've probably spoken that and looked some more at our previous year's experience. We had somebody who's just an oversight initially as booking some public works, revenue under General Miscellaneous that was a good catch by Shirley giving everything a final look. We're comfortable increasing our interest in our revenue about $2,500 and local option tax that try to take a really conservative approach every year. Honestly, I felt as we were trying to go over the top here I felt comfortable increasing that to the last 5,000 to get us there in a bunch of balance. That was our, essentially our size over the last few months. Okay, good. Thank you for running through that. The only other question I have is we heard Terry speak earlier tonight about the Catamount Community Forest full disclosure on the Slack board representative. What I can say about that is being on that committee has made it, it's very clear to me that that is a shoestring budget. There are things that when you have a resource such as the Catamount Community Forest, it takes resources to maintain it to have it reach the potential in terms of the goals that we envisioned why we wanted that property in the first place. We, as a community resource. And I don't know how else to put it other than 3,000 as an annual budget isn't enough. I don't know what else I can add. We asked for 5,000. I said, well, the committee asked for 5,000. That's probably not enough also but that's what we felt comfortable asking for. So I would ask that you consider and a $2,000 increase to that because it's gonna help that resource. May I suggest that the budget is just essentially a suggestion that how all departments will work. My guess is that they probably will find a couple of thousand dollars somewhere within the budget to increase that if that commission decides that they want to have more money and request it from the select board. And that would be my guess is we've got a budget in place right now. We are proposing a budget in place that would take care of all the current requests. Okay, and that's fine. The things that I would never even thought about when we were deciding whether the town should go ahead and purchase, well, we brought in a great ally to helping that happen. Things like invasive management or trying to protect the habitat that's there for things like birds. It's been an eye-opener for me that like anything, that costs money. Indeed. I might suggest, I mean, we are gonna discuss it in a community engagement with the ARPA funds. So, I mean, obviously that wouldn't be a, you know, a specific yearly allotted amount, but to maybe dream bigger for the cabinet and committee and see if there are projects that could be funded through, you know, ARPA because that is, I think, truly the intent of those funds was to, you know, for the greater community benefit and there is, you know, kind of no greater community benefit than the catamount for us, so. There is the historic barn. Yeah. So, but yeah, I mean, I would definitely encourage them to look at putting their foot into that ring. Okay. Any further questions regarding general fund budget? If not, I'm looking for a motion. I'll move to approve the general fund budget for fiscal year 2024 to be considered a town meeting in the amount of $13,977,877, of which $7,217,643 will be raised by taxes. Is there a second? Second. There's very discussion on the motion. I remember when it was under 10. Okay. Well, I'm very curious what it was the first year I was on the select form. Yeah. That's a lot of money, but it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money, but it's a lot of money. All those in favor of the motion to say aye. Aye. Aye. We have passed that. We're going to capital budget and program for fiscal years 2024 through 2029. So in making the changes here, I thought it would be easiest to summarize them with just our sheet in your book that shows the next year's funding. So the changes you'll see in here, I'll just call them out. The police traffic safety equipment decrees 2,500. The police firearms have been zeroed out as that expense just occurred. So those are two reductions in that line. Then I've inserted at the top section the DPW facility solar array purchase of $125,000. Your next agenda item coming up will be looking at the resolution for that that you discussed last week to add to the ballot. It would be essentially a capital purchase in FY20. Probably a good idea to have in the capital plan. Questions regarding capital budget. Eric, do we need to have the sidewalk plow in here? Yeah, oh, thanks for bringing it up, Shirley. So we've authorized the ARPA funding for the sidewalk plow. We could make that purchase right away. It's available. That would fall in FY23. I can double check it. It might be good for the board to have a record of amending the FY23 capital plan just to reflect that purchase. I'm not sure it's 100% necessary, but I can confirm that. That's why I wasn't showing up the FY24 because first confirmed I still have one available locally and he's anticipating with your allocation of the ARPA funds today to go ahead and order the machine hopefully we can get one. Hmm. I mean, it does make sense. I believe because we're using ARPA funds, which in a sense fall outside of our budget process. So, and it's that concept of having a duplicate piece of equipment in case the one piece of equipment goes down, we have really no backup. So. And with supply chain issues being the way they are, if there's one available now, this might be the one that's available for their foreseeable future. So, yeah. Yeah, those are essentially allocated. So up here in the floor, we'll go ahead and place the order then. And when you do administratively update the capital plan, I can bring that before you go next month. So there is a motion suggested. We could adopt the fiscal year 2024 through 2029 capital plan and program as presented. Is there a second? Second. Is there a discussion on the motion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye.   And we just kind of pass them with not a lot of comment, but it's because we spent so much. Yeah. Getting to this for two months. Yeah. Did I hear a little culmination? Right, right. Did I hear a yes vote like you would feel? It's like a bird. Did I hear a yes vote? I'm sorry? Did I hear a yes vote? Yes. We have four yes votes on that one. So we're moving on the necessity resolution on the solar array purchase. Kind of working my way down your warning right now. So you've approved the budget question. So my next piece of business here is as discussed last week, town attorneys prepared a resolution for the use of the unexpended bond proceeds from the 2013 general obligation bonds for construction of the public work facility to be used towards the purchase of the solar ray onto the roof of the facility. This requires a ballot item at town meeting and to enact that ballot item, it requires the board adopt a resolution. So there is a motion suggested to adopt the resolution. Move to adopt the necessity resolution for town meeting 2023 to consider the use of unspent bond proceeds to purchase a solar array on the roof of the public works facility. Is there a second thing? Sorry, discussion on the motion. Just one, hopefully quick question. In the third whereas it identifies, what I'm going to call the balance, unspent proceeds of 132,000. And then in the fifth whereas it identifies the solar project at 125. My question is, is does this need to address the difference, the $7,000 difference there? Or no, because we're not doing anything with that. Right by the town attorney and he didn't say I need to be called out to resolution. We've essentially made the accounting change in the budget for that. So Jeff, we are doing something with that. We're using it to reduce the, to apply it towards the principal in the budget. That's right, yes, you're right. Thank you, I should have remembered that. But that does not need to be, it doesn't. There's no further questions for the motion. We moved already, we need to pass that right now. Right, to vote. I just need to call the vote. Yep. I'm losing it. As I said, it's been a long budget. Yes, we were in discussion, sorry. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. And there are no negative votes. So now we're moving on to the necessity as a resolution for the ambulance bond. I'll pass these around. Oh, okay, thank you. Save you a trip from signing another day. So this is the second necessity resolution. As discussed upon the warning, a bond item for the purchase of the new ambulance. May recall the voters approved this at town meeting 2022 and we use language for a short term borrowing after consulted with our town attorney and the bond bank. We felt it's best to kind of cover all our basis to re-worn this question for the possible bond sale. We feel essentially this would be a way to get a lower interest rate and save the taxpayers some money on this purchase. Town attorney, I checked with him, say this question was defeated by the voters, then we can still fall back on our approval from 2022 for short term financing for this purchase. Check with chief collect last week. It sounds like the assembly of the ambulance is moving along. We hope to have this delivered sometime this summer. So we can work out the financing here. Questions regarding this? So it's kind of the bottom line is we can get, we can now get a better rate through the bond bank than we can through a commercial bank, guys. That's our goal. And what we're seeing recently is then at the time we have kind of all financing options available, we can bring back to you the best rate of that point. Okay. Any further questions? If there is a motion, I'll keep track of it this time. Move to adopt the necessity resolution for town meeting 2023 to consider a sale of bonds to finance the purchase of a new ambulance. Is there a second? Second. Is there a discussion on the motion? Very none. I'll listen to hear the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Sorry. We'll pass that. We're on to town meeting, warning for 2023. So those motions culminate in a warning for the board to consider this evening at certain final form. I've had the town attorney review the initial draft. I've plugged in the budget numbers that you've approved this evening. The article is written for the two bond related questions and then the additional articles are election local offices that I had town clerks that are amazing review as well. As discussed previously, I've structured town meeting back to our pre-pandemic format with a meeting business conducting March 6th and the Central School Auditorium with the articles we've seen in prior years. I've also chatted with our 20 land who's been elected town moderator for a number of years and said if so elected at the meeting, he plans to attend and resume his duties. So we had at least one candidate for moderator who may be available at the moment to take care of that piece. Also connected with the school district and they would, they'd like the opportunity to present their budget following the town's town meeting. Then we'll go into a public information hearing on the articles for town meeting and we'll have a representative from the school district or to walk through their budget for folks who are joining that evening. So back to the good old days. I'll say good for the last couple of years. So I have this warning for the board to consider this evening. Your deadline to approve the warning had it posted as February 5th, which is the 30 day window. Should you like to discuss anything further, do you have opportunity to delay action on this or you've approved the article so far this evening. So if there's any mechanical or administrative structural change you'd like to make, we can still make that as well. Any questions regarding the proposed warning? I'm looking for a motion. We'll be approved the official warning for town meeting 2023 as presented. That's for a second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. We have taken care of that onto the ARPA community outreach. Outreach, Eric has a memo on that. So I've been wanting to get into this in the new years. We're wrapping up the budget process for the last couple of months to think, for the board to think about our ARPA community engagement process. So I, we've kept our rate. We'll have about $1.8 million of unallocated ARPA funds for the board to decide how to allocate by the end of the 2024 calendar. Share the updated allocations to date with you this evening's party materials and a number of capital projects for the town, operational projects, ways to offset revenue for a couple of years, step down to reduce tax impacts. I decided to reach out to fellow managers in the counties, kind of where they are in their process and where their boards and councils are. I can say we're right about with most of them at this point. There's been kind of a broader array of where towns are. Town like, for example, one end of the spectrum, Colchester, Alky and all their ARPA funds towards their sewer extension project that they approved with a bond built for the ballots last year. Other towns haven't spent any ARPA money. Some towns like us have, and South Burlington has been spending ARPA money on capital projects. Some positions they have reduced their force from during the pandemic to bring them back. Other towns, Essex, Shelburne, South Burlington, they've done some initial community surveys and their boards and city councils right now are kind of sitting through the feedback they received and thinking about a priority approach and then how to kind of discern those requests and how to make those allocations and what methodology they'd like to use. I've got kind of, in consulting with my peers in the county, some approach I'll kind of outline for the board but they will feedback and we can enhance this and change this as you see fit here. I'm thinking a comprehensive engagement strategy, similar where Brett was on the steering committee for the beauty center and I'm getting some good ideas from our consultant on that as well. But really we can get something that's going to people, getting feedback, having other mechanisms, whether it's in presentations, some online, some kind of postcard mailers, things of that nature, the thing about making sure we reach everyone but meeting them where they are. We would find it's, especially people who haven't engaged with local government before, it really needs to take a proactive approach of getting people excited and involved in it. So I'd like to try some strategies with the budget the next couple of weeks of kind of going out and meeting with residences of some communities, maybe having just some open hours here to stop by and chat with me and then surely if I can convince her to stay. Talk about it, just talk about the budget. The board I know was looking for some more engagement around it's meeting last week. So that's one strategy I'd like to try and then we can kind of pivot towards this with some lessons learned there. But I think that's one leg of the stool. A good feedback from the city of South Burlington, they asked their policy advisory committees and boards for ideas as well. I'd suggest the select board may want to consider something similar where you could look to the boards, the committees just to give you some ideas kind of made that the Catamount discussion a while ago. So you can get some feedback from your appointed commissioners and committee members. And then at that point, there's gonna be a lot of information to work through. Staff identified some larger infrastructure projects to be thinking about as well as we worked through this a little bit last year. And then it's coming up with the board to think about what your priorities are and then how you want to go through the information and analyze it and if there's a rubric process. I think other towns are kind of at this stage right now kind of wondering, okay, we've got all these great ideas and all these needs, but how do we make that decision? And it's a tough spot at the board. It's not something that's come up before adventure to say, I'm likely to happen again in the near term, I think it's better of money to look at. I shared in my memo, BLCT is kind of guiding frameworks here that look at prioritizing good governance, leveraging our heart but hate with these other sources coming out there and investing in best uses for long-term recovery to try to think of a delta between those sections of the Venn diagram here. So timeouts for a little bit. We, something from the board to work through coming up into the spring and summer months, I think. So my thoughts and kind of the next steps if the board also in this direction, I can keep this moving, certainly open any feedback, suggestions, changes you have at this time. That looks very work. I think it's great. Yeah, I mean, we, as much as we would very much like folks to come to us to engage in these processes, you know, we know that there's so many demands on people's schedules and times. And so, yeah, so we can go to them and get them involved. And it sounds like across many departments I mean, the community centers steering committee and Matt has some project as well in the works that he's gonna go to the community for. But yeah, I think that this is a great plan. And obviously, while the money, 2026 seems like a far off day right now, it's coming quick. I don't have good input. Other than I would like to see as much community involvement in these decisions as possible. But how we get that, when I looked at that process where we adopted the form, or we developed and then adopted the form-based code, the involvement there would be a great goal for the involvement here. I think that's a lot easier said than done. So I don't have much constructive input on this, sorry. One thing I would suggest is we do have a captive audience at both town meeting, but probably more important at the Australian ballot. And maybe there's a way in which we could have something there. What was it, the Doyle survey? I'm not quite sure that's the exact, but if there was something that, I mean, rarely do it, it's difficult to get that much of Williston to go through a room in a day. So maybe if we could take advantage of that. And yeah. Yeah, it'd have to be both an introduction, here's what we're asking you and why, but also a maybe a feedback mechanism that could, but that's as far as I can go. I'm thinking that night of back in person town meeting we could have a table with the graph survey and we've got something similar with the community center survey that night too. I've seen where the committee lands on their process. And there might be like a flyer we can have. What is ARPA? Why is this question, why are we asking you? Because your money help us decide or that may not be the best way to put it, but something along those lines. Other counts. We'll move on then to managers report. So if they did board on the tax sale property removal from the 53.94 bills, I checked with Bruce today and the structure's been mostly removed by the contractor they started I think yesterday with them psyching up work to do still, but so that project should be wrapped up. I don't know the final cost is yet, but we are getting 5,000 towards the pay for it from the community cleanup fund of the solid waste district administers. And that's money that accumulates, spend it on a project that will accumulate again. But I do know it will be likely well over the $5,000 when it came to the other abatement and analysis of the structure before we can even remove it to make sure there are no hazards. I'll keep the board updated on where we land there. Matt mentioned earlier the housing needs assessment that it is wrapping up and the planning commission will get that in early February. And I'll need to speak about planning for, having a presentation with select board and coming up this winter as well to walk through that. I've seen an initial draft and I think the results, I don't think they'll be surprising but the magnitude and the metrics are quite interesting as I saw that early draft.  And once that's finalized, I'll just email to the board directly so you have a copy of it to begin looking at. And then we had our first meeting of the Chichin County Communications Union District last week. It's been an interesting meeting. They needed a chair. I said, I'll do it if you need someone. And I was quickly appointed chair of the Chichin Union District Board. So happily I'll carry the ball on that. I think we're gonna advertise to see if there's any community members interested too and I might ask the board to resume an alternate role or something there. But right now I'm the chair, so I'm moving forward. And final updates, the recreation space, lease agreement, the landlords accepted the changes I've discussed with the town attorney after our last meeting. I expect to sign a tomorrow and they'll sign it this week. So that's just about set. And we'll do a little up-fit in the building and we should hopefully be in there in February and we'll start off the programming. Right? Feedback has been really, really positive. People are very excited within the community to have this additional space. So yeah. That's all ad for managers reports, sir. Pardon me? That's all ad for managers reports, sir. Other business, there's one thing that we do need to decide on tonight and that is the town report dedication. The poll has been completed through Eric and we had one person who received three votes. We had three people who received two votes and one person who received one vote. And it was a thought that we had that since the last two town reports really have not recognized any individual that it might be at the time to recognize at least the four people who received the most votes. So if that's acceptable to the board, we will go forward with that. No, I totally agree. Having to choose one is hard because they all deserve. So let's, based on who deserves recognition, not who is the most deserving of recognition, which I could never feel comfortable saying. I know the answer. So we'll go forward with that. Yeah, great, thank you. Any other business that we need to take up tonight? Because of our business that we did tonight where there'll be no meeting next week. So that's our big thank you for all of the hard work that you've done in the past two and a half months on putting this together. Thank you all very much. And if there's no other business that people have, I will say we're adjourned. Yes.