Discussion to happen in an executive session. Possibly action afterwards. So you want to add that as a business item. Please. Any additional changes from board members? Good. Thank you. Okay. I make the motion to accept the agenda as amended. Thank you Donna. Thank you, Tracy. Any further discussion? Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Yeah, you've got the agenda updated. Moving on to public to be heard. Public to be heard is a point in the agenda where. Folks attending the meeting can address the select board on items that are not on the agenda. If you'd like to speak during public to be heard. You can either raise your hand in the room or using the hand function zoom meeting. And if you'd like to speak to the board, please be brief, please be civil. Please address your remarks to me as the. Chair of the select board. And if you are attending remotely. Please mute yourself and leave your camera off to unless you're a recognized speaker to avoid distraction. And looking at the, is there any, any comments from the room? Okay. That's he done. Thank you very much Andy for acknowledging me and good evening. I have a request. We've had a problem for many years with dogs who are off leash in our parks and attacking the dogs or knocking people down. Not because they need to, but they do. And people being just afraid of dogs who would like to use the park but done. And just this week I saw this past week I saw a pollchester has made a rule where there are no dogs off leash on public lands. And I think that's a, they changed the ordinance to, to conform to that. And I think it's time to do it. We were in my conservation interest committee, we've been talking about it, and there's more signage and all those kinds of things. So when people get their, their permits to go into india group and use the park with their dogs. But all in all, we know it's a problem that other dogs have been harmed. And we know that other people have been harmed. And eventually someone's going to sue the town, because we know it's a problem. And we don't do anything about it. And I think we need to, you know, really think about, do we need to have a forum. Or do we just need to make a thought process around what this is, because you're going to have 5050 and to me, if it's between a person who wants their dog to be able to run free. We need to understand that versus a person's health and their dog's health. I'm all about the health. And maybe we need to find our own dog park now that our, we're not joined with this extension. It's not part of the town. And the town now does not have a dog park. Maybe that's what needs to happen. So I just would like you to think about that. And think about it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for your comments. Mary post. Hi, Andy. I want to talk about the, what Betsy was just talking about also. Number one, I will say that when I was at a meeting, I don't know if it was how long ago, where you just announced that the decision had been made, that there was a certain area where dogs had to be on leash at my brain is not working, but you know, at our nice park there. And otherwise it could be free. Yeah, thank you Betsy. And I thought, well, wait a minute, we've talked about this and talked about this. And all of a sudden I heard that it was just a decision made by Ali vile. Or maybe that department. I'm not, and I'm not on Ali vile's case at all. I want you to know that. And I really felt like we've been cheated. I feel very, very, very strongly that all dogs need to be on a leash when they're in public place. There are a lot of people that number one are afraid of dogs. And so they can't use half of our recreation. If there are dogs around, there are people that have health issues like the man that came a spoke to the select board, I heard him. And he said he's a brittle diabetic and if he got knocked over or hit by a dog, that would be the end of it for him. He would not have any freedom anymore to be out in the park. There are people, I don't know, it's just not right that we choose dogs being able to run over people being able to use a park. So I hope that you will reconsider or that you will consider having the leash.  I don't know who it was. But he evidently the dog went into a person's neighbor's yard while it was a children's birthday party going on and just went and ate one of their chickens. And that was really quite devastating. So I think that people need to have their dogs on a leash. I understand they get free sometimes, but we're really good in our neighborhood. You know, usually catching those dogs and bringing them back. But anyway, thank you so much. And I hope that you will think about making this leash law for the citizens. Thank you. Thank you. Margaret Smith. Hi, can you hear me. Thank you. I know that in the end several years ago, there were people who deliberately took their dogs off leash in the parking lot, which was against the rule. And just kind of looked at me like when I said something and like, are my dogs not a problem and well their dog wasn't but but my dog wasn't happy about it. And the other thing is, talking about the dog park in a six junction. I donated money to that so can they give the money back or can we still have access or, you know, is it just their dog park I did donate money for that. Thank you. There's somebody on who's called his name is Brad. Could you please mute yourself? We're hearing noise from your mic. Thank you, Margaret. Any other comments during public to be heard. Okay, let's move on to the. Thank you for those comments. Let's move on to the next or first business item interviews and possible appointment of volunteers to serve on the Essex housing commission. We have two candidates. Rupesh, come up to the to the microphone and give you this opportunity to introduce yourself. Explain why you'd like to be on the housing commission. Anything that you think is relevant to and please don't move the microphone. Oh, sure. Oh, it's your job. Okay. So, so, and just share anything you'd like that you think might be relevant to the select word. I think I'm here again. So this is my second introduction. My name is Rupesh. I lived in this community for last about 20 plus years. I'm a pharmacist. I worked in Essex Junction and I'm doing consulting work as well as taking interest in housing. I've experienced real estate for quite a few years and now it's time I have time on my agenda. So we'll give something back to the community and see if I can make any difference in housing. Thank you. Any questions? Board members. Ethan, go ahead. In your words, what's the most important housing, I won't say crisis, even though it is a crisis right now, but what's the number one thing that you would focus on? Well, number one thing is bring new people here. By making housing affordable, which is, like you said, it's a crisis. The demand is so high versus supply. And what the committee can do to increase the supply could be text breaks will be different programs, zoning changes, stuff like that. I don't have the right answer for it, but see what the board can focus on and what I can contribute through my knowledge and do a difference we can make. Any other questions? Can you tell us about a time you changed your mind on an issue? What was the issue and what changed your mind? That was pretty simple. Quick vacation I had. I had a vacation plan for three weeks and something came up and I had to really change my mind, change all the plans that I had the bookings and all that. And that was more pressing versus all the bookings that I did just recently. I'm flying to Tanzania for three, four days. So that was a big change in mind that I had and decision was was more important to, you know, focus on other things and make those changes. Questions, Don? I provided an opportunity to serve on this board and your voice was in the minority when making a decision. How would you handle that? If what you wanted to have happened was the only, everybody said yes and you were saying no. How would you handle it? I had a really strong opinion about something and if 90% of the people will say no and 10% or it could be just 1% that's me. I will first try to bring the data on the table to make sure that my argument is convincing. That's number one thing I'll do. Second thing I'll do is see why I'll try to analyze why other people are saying no to that decision. If it really makes sense to me that yes, 99% are saying no versus 1% that's me, then I'll be part of the team and go with the team. But if my 1% is making like real solid sense that no, I'm right, then I'll try to convince my other fellow members and see if they'll join on board with me. Thank you. And again, anything? Yes, actually speaking to that board, should you be put on the board? Do you have a specific housing goal that you would look for to implement the message? To be honest with you, no, I don't have the goal right now in mind. I'm still learning and reviewing the things that I've said on one or two meetings that they had. And no, to be, I don't have a goal in mind right now. Question I'm going to ask is do you have any questions for the select board? I guess not. I'm good. Right. Anything else? All right, so we will we have another interview to do and then later in the meeting we'll go into executive session. We'll have a discussion about whether to appoint and if we come to a decision, we'll. You can either wait for the end of the meeting to find out if we make a decision or somebody from town staff will contact you. Perfect. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. Hey, the next candidate, Bruce Wilson, wanna introduce yourself. It's an opportunity for you to tell us anything that you think might be relevant to your, your experience or your, your desire to serve. Well, first I want to say hello and thank you for allowing me to come here and present about myself and why I want to be on. I'm Bruce Wilson, born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, been in Vermont since 1989, graduated from Northwestern University, Green Psychology. Primarily, I'm a youth service provider from also community activists. The governor just appointed me to the Human Rights Commission, so I'm a commissioner. I sit on the school board for this school district for Windows key as anti racism. I sit on the ongoing on transit board. Just for justice equity diversity and inclusion. I just was appointed for the county regional planning as an equity on the equity commission. Also, so in years I served on, I was on on the board of directors for neighborhoods and went in Rutland, and also for CBOEO. And so I'm also a real estate investor. I know a lot about it, but I'm continuing to continue to learn about housing and housing developments and what's my board of directors are or previous board of our developers. I learned a lot from them. I have, I'm a youth, so I have opened up a youth center youth centers across the state. Sheet all centers you might remember some of them all in every mall. I open those up for kids, youth and families to have a good place to have safe, fun and healthy outlets. Now I have our gallery is called art so wonderful gallery. It's in the University mall. You look in Burlington, you see all 60% of the murals in Burlington through our program. We also created our own art so wonderful lecture boxes. And what that's all about is giving families and individuals artists opportunities to showcase their talents in public places where they might be able to use it on their resume press kit. Our scholarships, wherever and we I know many that has you know, we started out in 2003. You know, I straight talk from our program is a cognitive program is a help individuals identify things to put them at risk of learning new interventions. We taught that program in every jail or primary every jail. And I'm giving you an individual opportunity to learn what they're thinking ours is and how to use intervention. And we also help them to be to the community successfully, like going to the dispensary house or the Mandela house or other places. I'm a founding member of the Community Justice Centers around the state. That's a lot I can keep. I can grow a lot about the things that that I've helped, but people that I work with people that help me make make decisions on on a program parties events and we have over 50 awards. I must have got to say that. And I'm very thankful for that. I probably got three or four model, but you know, like, if you ever heard of the kids safe collaborative award. That's a very popular war around China County with Sally Gordon. And we have photos and so Sally said, nobody has for those awards, you know, and we're part of also part of CCTV. And assess 2001. So we've done incredible shows, you know, with individuals and a lot of people and catamount dancers, whatever. And the goal is to let the audience and understand what other people are doing in the community, you know, many things they didn't know about, you know, and And so they can learn from our shows, you know. I mean, I believe that What I'd like to see more of is some equity diversity and inclusion here in in essence, you know, in in town. There's not many people who look like me who are a part of any committees and boards and inclusions. I hope during the time before with them on the ballot event and then surveys and trying to get people to understand that there are boards and commission to actually pay $50, you know, $850 a meeting, you know, and how important it is, you know, I'm also the Democratic Party chairman in Windows game. And so, you know, and that that goal is to I was, you know, I didn't actually be that. As a matter of fact, I didn't actually be a lot of these things. A lot of people thought that I was a good candidate to be these things because based on the work that I've done in the state. And we've done a lot. I learned a lot. I'll say this in Chicago. I was my mother, you know, was part of really deep in the civil rights movement. Reverend Jesse Jackson's wife Jackie and Merrill her watch cities come by our house. We should part of a lot of civil rights stuff. I remember going to pick a lines and all kind of cool things like that.  And so my strong, I'm strong on that. I'll tell you funny Joe. I'll tell my mother one day that I went out because she's bring me up in here in Vermont. When I was younger, he's going to show up in Toronto and hang out for the summer and whatever. And I told her one day I said, when I got out of graduate, I said, Mom, I moved to Vermont. And she says, you're going to make a difference. You're going to make a difference. And I kind of knew what she's going to make because it was a white state of America. I was going to make a difference being a person of who looked like me here. And so one day I called my mom and I said, Mom, Mom, I made a difference. I made a difference. She said, what you do? What you do? You probably thought I created rocket fuel or something. I said, it's the second white state now. So I did make a difference. One vote does count. I didn't think one vote at one point. Like, you know, one vote on count, but it really does.  You know, I'm so proud of the, or have a youth advisory board around, around Chinatown, youth make the decisions and college students make the decisions on our programs, projects and events. I don't, every answer, I go, like I'm not a doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, but I know a doctor, and I know Indian chiefs. And so we, if I need to answer for any of them, I'll go, I'll go, I'll go right to them, you know, and ask them, you know, I don't, or youth, I don't, I don't make this. Now, my degree in psychology might be able to make some decisions or may have answered some questions based on the things I know. I think I can make a lot of answers based on the youth that I worked with through all the years. I mean, through the youth centers and youth advisory boards. But I still had to call somebody to text them by an answer. We created youth form boards for the city of Burlington in 2003. It's a new resolution now. You've sit on police commission, planning commission, school boards. And right now we're just got a resolution amended whereas that youth now can make a vote, you know, how wonderful is that they can vote now and they added more items like I don't have to practice or whatever. You know, and I talked to Greg about he's down for having youth form boards here. City of South Burlington. I send them our resolution from a revised resolution from Burlington. They adopted now they have a resolution for youth to be on city of South Burlington. I live in Mayor Christine Lott. They adopted youth form on being on boards and so we're working to get youth form boards all around to help to make decisions based on what their life is. They should, right? You know, we should, people of my age should be making decisions for them. They have so many great ideas and suggestions.  We got events coming up in here in S's, S's in the 23rd and S's experience. I'm also a S's Rotarian. And so we got a big event coming up whereas on the 23rd where families and youth can come off of free and enjoy the old stage and the green events, you know, that's what we do. We've done over 700 events in the state. And so for me, why I think I can make a difference here. I think based on my knowledge, my experience, things that I learned and continue to learn and help make a full decision based on what the commission and board members think, you know.  And I don't, I stand by it. You know, I stand by that decision because based on my feelings, my beliefs, my attitudes and beliefs, feelings, attitudes and beliefs about situations and situations that I know of and situations that's me being a person of African American born and raised in the south side of Chicago. I parked over, but I still was born and raised in the south side of Chicago. And I understand things, you know, some more people can't see some things like I see or feel them, like I feel them based on who I, based on my experience of coming up as a person who looks like me. And so I kind of stand by that, you know, and being raised through the civil rights movement. And that's not my whole, that's not my objective, 100% objective because I'm fair. And that's why I'm, that's why people appointed me to, like the governor appointed me to be on the Human Rights Commission because they know that I'm honest person, I'm a fair person. I'm not going to, I'm going to make sure that I'm going to try to make sure the answers are good. Like I said, I don't, if I'm not a Dr. Law Union chief, but if I need to find the answers, I support from one of them or somebody or a youth or somebody I'll go right to them and ask them.   And here's a funny story. So here's a Wadoff girl say, I really enjoy going to the woods. You know, they love outdoor adventures and stuff. And then from my common school guy said, you telling me we got to go to Paris again for, you know, sort of summer break. And so the Winniesky kids looking them like that, bro, you know, you know, they kind of admit, you know, we're new after Winniesky, but CBU, CBU and even SS kids, they kind of like, you know, some of the things they do, they parents take them. But, you know, from my common school kids in Wadoff, they like, they, they're something. And so to see them, you know, kind of look like that. But you know what, when you ask them, oh, what color is it? They say pink or blue or whatever. What's the favorite song? They all know the same answers as being youth. You know what I'm saying? They all have the same, even though their economics and demographics are different than some might live in high-risk environments. And as their economics and demographics are different, you can take a Wadoff kid or Vermont common youth and even SS youth to like, it's a play half of their SS high school. Guess what? The parents come, the cousins come, they can bring the dog, everything.   But so, you know, I think my knowledge based on we're working with people around the state, you know, working with one thing I like about myself is that when I'm talking to the governor, I talk to Greg or whatever, you know, I'm like, yes, sir, you know, Mr. Town Manager or whatever, but you know, but I still have myself who I am.   And that's from anybody that I know in this whole entire world. I'm always going to be myself with them. I'm always going to respect people 100%.  Let me, you know, honorable governor over the mayor, I work with all of them. And that's what I say. But they know, I think they like me a lot because this is who I am, you know. So I don't know if you have questions about my name. Thanks for your question. Thanks. Any questions? Go ahead, Don. I guess given all you've done and are continuing to do, how do you plan on finding time to serve on the Essex Housing Committee if appointed? Well, I believe this is only once a month, these meetings, right? And so I'm, you know, 30 days in a month, you know.  And no one else like me is on them. You know what I mean? Somebody's got to do it. You know what I mean? And so I just one good thing about is that, you know, we know the people who's in charge of all those things that it's easy to make help other people. You know, I'm so I appreciate that so much, you know, about the people we know. And so if I don't do it, who's who's going to do it? You know, if I don't work with these youth across the state, if I didn't open up all those youth centers and in Rutland, and Burlington, and San Francisco, and Fairhaven, who was going to do that for those youth? Who's going to do it?  You know, so I feel so bad about that. But we're trying to move on to our galleries and our music as we do now. Any other questions? Tell us about a time you changed your mind on an issue. What was the issue and what changed your mind? Yeah, well, years ago, I used to go way back, but I used to be like a lot of people who was youth service providers, you know, make the decision for youth, you know.  So I didn't really talk to the youth. That's when I decided I was going to have youth advisory boards to make a decision on a program. And I stand by it to date. I still have them now, you know, I was not, I could not make a decision without, you know, action. So that was a big one for me, you know, making sure that they're included when I'm making decisions for them. I'll tell you a funny story. Can I tell you one more thing? All right. So with the youth advisory board meeting, you know, Rutland, right on Rutland youth advisory board meeting. And I had Shannon with me. And Shannon was our youth board president at the time. And so we was meeting all the service providers were there and they were talking about the events they did. And one lady talking about she did had 25, 25 kids came to the event. I'm thinking 25 kids, that's awesome. It went into an event where there was no, it was a place where there's no drugs and I caught tobacco safety outlet. One kid, you know. And then so they said, Bruce, we know you had an event, you know.  If it's youth on the agenda, I'm bringing the youth with me. And so anyways, so anyways. So I said, Shannon, you know, go ahead, tell them about that event. And then so Shannon like this, no, no, no, no, no. You know, and they said, what's wrong, Shannon? It didn't go nowhere. Didn't go right. She said, no, I told the rest of our youth, our rest of our youth board said, we're not going to show our face around town no more. It was a flop. She said, they said, well, how many people came? Hey, she said 185. They said 185. You call that a flop? And she said, yeah. And they said, why? And she said, because we usually get over 300, you know. So that's the empowerment of youth. You know what I mean? And that's the empowerment. Now, my job is to get the place, get the license, get the security, but that, you know, that's my job. You know, it's not to bring youth into a place. And those examples that we have for our youth have creating that youth advisory board. These boards around that we do. I laughed at the whole event. It was so fun.  Look, the place where it was in looked kind of empty. But because, you know, it was big, but they was like, is it time to go? Yeah. It's funny. Ethan, if you were given the opportunity to serve on the board, what is one of the first things that you would focus on?   And then they always, they got like 500 residents. You know, they got a lot of stuff, you know.  And I always say is that if they can get the permitting done quicker and faster, then they can build more housing. You know, but it's like Don took him out. I've been working with him since 2013. He just now got his stuff going further Burlington. 330 years he's going to put there.  So, so I think the first thing I would necessarily focus on what I would like to, I'll probably would ask all the board members here, you know, do should we look at the process of getting a place built?   And can we, I know we can change that to 50, but we at least can, you know, maybe we can make it, you know, somehow we can make it improve it or make it go a little faster. You know, so that would be one of my things I'd be looking at, you know, I think we can build some, but these guys can build homes to relieve me. They can build up some places for real. They got tons of places they can really build. Okay. Down a Sunday said Bruce, if you, if we're in Chicago, all we have to do is, if you dig a hole in it and get, since you get tax based and community loving, you just start building, you know.  Kendall, any questions? Yeah, I was just going to mention that to accomplish everything you have, you obviously know how to leverage money to get it done. Do you have any specific ideas for Essex? If you hit the ground running?  It knows all of those answers. And like I say, if I, you know, leverage funding, I mean, that's the question I would have to ask those individuals, you know, because I, you know, like I said, I'm not a doctor, and I couldn't, I couldn't, I wouldn't be able to answer those questions, but I would definitely be able to bring a team of people in the room who would know those answers and would know them like, and you would know them for knowing them, you know, because these people that we work with. So, thank you, sir. All right, thanks, Bruce. Do you have any questions for us? Yeah, so how long is the commission's term? It's a three year term. I believe it's three years, three years. Yep. And is it every month? The meetings? At least monthly. I'm going to excuse me, going to double check right now. Maybe see if there's a specific day that will allow. Twice a month. Twice. Twice a month. And are there any committees on the commission? Like, you know, exactly what the commissioner is saying there, you know, asking about doing leverage funds. Is it a commission about finding, like within this commission, are there any committees that actually work to identify certain areas like development or zoning or leveraging finances or is there any committees that work like community, like boots on the ground? But I'm definitely a boots on the ground guy. Yeah, sir. Yeah, so there's basically three things I'd say the housing commission is focusing on right now. One of them is inclusionary zoning. And I think that's the furthest along. They have a subcommittee working on that. They have another subcommittee working on a housing trust fund. And then they're also as a group going through their own separation process as extension of becoming an independent city. So that's sort of going on in the background of those other two primary work plans. So I also know that like I work with Aaron McGuire, mostly all the equity directors around primary, around Cheney County. Now, there is a committee. I know I'm great with some, some amount of equity and inclusion, something. Essex Best. Essex Best, yeah. And then they get, yeah. And so, you know, I really got to really understand Essex Best a little bit more, you know, because like I said, for me, it's important that I get the answers from the people who know the answer. Because I'm going to stand behind it. And you've told me that, whatever they tell me, I'm going to go to that meeting and say, whatever you say, I don't care. You've just told me. And I'm standing by.  I know Erin McGuire is awesome. She's on my cable show in this town working with the schools. And she would first want to tell you right on the cable show that she's not, she don't look like me. So she, what she does is the best she can and talk to other people who was on that show. And I forget the other lady's name to help her answer the question because they're a person of color.   It just wasn't any, you know, it's something that you have to have within yourself. Life experience, some, you know, somebody can tell you, I can tell you some stories about me being a South Side Chicago and racism here in Vermont and that I felt within myself. You can understand how I feel. You can say, hey, you can feel that, you can understand it, but you won't be able to feel it in your heart, you know, you just won't be able to feel in your heart how I would feel it. You know what I mean? If somebody, you just wouldn't be able to feel like that's how, how could you, you know? And so, so for me, I just think that, you know, I really believe that we all should just work together and get the answers from the people who know, you know what I mean?  Thanks, thanks Bruce. Thanks Bruce. So we'll, I'd say, I told Asher we'll, or Rupesh, all right, that we will adjourn, we'll have a executive session later, we'll have a discussion about whether to appoint and if we come to a decision, someone from town staff will let you know. Thank you so much for stepping up and for taking the time to talk to us. Appreciate it. Just know that, you know, I'm, I'm a, I don't, I don't, I will not make a decision without getting the answers from everybody. That's not how I operate. I will not operate like that, you know. Thanks so much Bruce. That you make me do it, okay? Yep. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Moving on to the next business item, interview and possible appointment of volunteers to serve an economic development commission. We have Ray Garifano here. Please come on up, introduce yourself. Tell us anything you think we need to know about your, about you, about your, your interest in joining the commission and go ahead. Don't move the mic, don't touch it. Sorry. Thank you for having me here. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you. My name is Ray Garifano. I'm the representative appointed this January for the town of Essex, representing the Essex town in the house of representatives in Montpelier. And I have been a resident of Essex town since 2009. I've been a monitor since 2005. I have a very diverse background, personal and professional. I'm an immigrant to the U.S. I'm a person of color. I'm married to an immigrant to the U.S. and we have a black child. So we have a multinational, multiracial family. As most of you have heard me talk about, my daughter's 12, she goes to school here and the economic development of my town is really important to me as a representative of this town, as a resident of this town, as a person, as a mother, and as someone who worked for state government. The economic development of Essex is really important and a priority for me. I have a diverse professional background. Prior to moving to Vermont, I work in real estate development as a project manager for 10 years for a high-end real estate development company. So I understand economic development, real estate business. I have a degree from Champlain College in business administration. And for the last 17 years, I've been a public servant. Most recently, my current position is at DCF working for the Child Development Division as an administrator managing a $10 million plus portfolio of grants to different organizations, to partner organizations, working to provide equitable, high-quality childcare to Vermont families. So for me, economic development comes down to being able to attract businesses to Essex, but also ensuring that those wanting to work in Essex have the supports that they need to be able to live and work and have their children be able to be looked at after I get high-quality childcare, also get good quality education in our school. So it's like a whole package. It's not just about business. It's about business and the impact those businesses have on our community. So I am interested in this position to continue serving my community. I came to my position as a representative kind of by accident, but I've really loved it and I've really loved serving the community and understanding more what the needs of the community are. And in the last few months, when I was serving in Montpelier, I began to really understand meet with Greg, meet with different business owners in Essex, understanding what the needs are and some of the things I'm hearing, it feels like they're aligned with my values and what I prioritize, workforce challenges, childcare challenges, so those again, housing challenges, they're all connected to economic development of Essex. So I want to be a part of finding solutions for the businesses to continue to attract more businesses to Essex so we can improve our tax base and have more people here flourishing and enjoying the great community that we have. Thanks, Ryan. Any questions from board members? Oh, go ahead. I'm going to ask you the same question I asked, Brian. If we elected, will you still have an appropriate amount of time to serve on the Economic Development Committee? I will. I will say so. When I serve during the session, my time is a little bit more limited, but I commute so I don't live in Montpelier. I'm close enough where I can go back and forth. And also the things that I'm going to be working on during the session in Montpelier are very aligned with the work here, childcare, human services work, how we support families and businesses in Essex. And during the off session, I work for the Child Development Division and have a lot more flexibility in my time. And economic development is a true passion of mine. I listen to Economic Podcasts first thing every morning, like that's what I listen to, Marketplace Money. That's what I walk my dog to. So it's a passion and it's something that I'm really interested in. So I will, I'm committed to making time for it. Thank you. Any other questions? I stole all my questions I had. Not you, she answered them before. I like to be thorough. I guess I'm going to ask about more on the business side of things because you touched on a lot of really good points that make awesome sense. What is your vision for business in Essex and where do, you know, the line between commercial businesses and small businesses and agribusiness and all the many different things that we have in this town. Thanks for that question, Ethan. I really think that Essex offers a really interesting opportunity for a mix of rule, suburban and urban, right? So we have different areas of Essex that do focus on agribusiness. We also have a growing population of new Americans that have small businesses and I've noticed that when I've been out trying to talk to constituents, trying to find people that have small businesses, a lot of business, the small businesses that have been started by new Americans are in the city now, the now city. So my interest is how do we make parts of Essex town marketable and attractive to those small businesses that are the economic engine of any community, right? Like a big corporation or big business isn't, they have their space, but I think that small businesses and I will say I've been really impressed with what is happening at the Essex Experience. I think that they have done a really great job of bringing local small businesses and offering opportunities for local Vermont-made experiences that, you know, I think any one of us who tries to go to a restaurant at the Essex Experience, those restaurants are full a lot and there's usually waiting lists and their reservations book up. So I think really focusing on how do we support those small businesses? How do we make sure that they can find the staff, that their staff can have childcare, that there's alternate schedules for childcare for someone who works at a restaurant and needs childcare in the evening, not, you know, the 7.30 to 5 schedule. So those are all things that I have very direct experience with. I've worked in the state government in giving grants to programs that work with businesses and specifically open childcare for those businesses that meet their needs, right? If there's a second shift and if there's an evening shift, we can come up with ideas that will really cater to the small businesses in our community, attract, you know, how amazing would it be if Essex became the place where childcare was a reality and accessible and affordable and businesses wanted to come to Vermont to Essex because they knew that there was a benefit that would actually attract employees and workforce. I also really like to engage the bigger companies that you talked about, like the bigger businesses like Blodgett and the Saxon Hill. I would love to engage them and connect them with childcare providers, staffing colleges, the CTE Center to get, like, the pipeline going and getting them to invest in the social supports that our community needs. Great. Are you seeing? I'm good. Yeah, okay. Kendall, you have any questions? You just had one. I noticed on your application that you put you weren't sure that there was a conflict of interest or not. I was wondering if you would share why or where you might have thought that. I don't remember that. I'm sorry. So the only conflict of interest that I could imagine, and I apologize that I don't remember why I put that, is being a state rep, but I don't think that that would be a conflict, thinking about it further. But I am running for reelection to continue to serve Essex in that capacity and hope to get reelected. But I don't think that that should offer a conflict, but you can all look into the legalities of that and let me know. Well, could I follow up with that then with, suppose that your position as a representative was in direct conflict, their decision with what you felt was the best for your position in the town of Essex, and how would you handle that? Thank you. I'm not sure. Honestly, I sat on that House Human Services Committee last year, which would not offer any conflicts for economic development. I am going to request to be seated on the same committee and generally the House leadership does honor requests, especially for incumbents. If let's say I was appointed or I was asked if I would consider the Commerce Committee, which might offer some conflicts, I would have a conversation with House leadership because as a representative representing Essex, that's obviously important to me and that's a priority, but it's also a priority for me to work locally on the economic development of Essex. I would really like to do both, so I would do my best to avoid any conflicts as a representative. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks, Ray. Do you have any questions for the select board? I would just love to know hearing my background and my experience, do you see anything that I'm missing to fill this position? A tricky question to answer. One of my favorite questions to ask in interviews. It's all about growth and quality improvement, so if anything I need to add to my resume to be considered for this position, I would like to know about it. We'll have executive session discussion later. Maybe you'll be back to me. We should be back to you, we will. That would be great. Thank you. So we will have, as I told others, we'll have an executive session discussion later. There are three folks who have interviewed for two seats. If we come to a decision, we'll come back out of executive session and make the motion and you can either stay to the end, the bitter end, and you're free to go if you'd like. I would love to say apologies. I do have an 8 p.m. meeting that I have to get back on Zoom. Someone on town staff will contact me. That would be great. Well, thank you so much for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from someone. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for stepping forward. Take care. Okay, let's move on to business item 5C. Discussion and potential action about forming a communications union in the district. I believe Marguerite is here to kick us off. Well, I'm coming to you from a different area tonight. Anyway, I'll give you a quick background here.  But I will just say, you know, I think I, this is, this topic was kind of more prescient a few years ago on some of the meetings and now it's come back up again, because there really hasn't been a great solve that has come for it as of yet for how to get those who are underserved or not served at all with fiber in our communities, how to get them that fiber. And I think everyone was hoping given act 71 and the question and what might be coming and unfolding from that, that there might be some other options. And because Chinden County is also sort of unique. Not alone, though, there are some others, Bennington and such that are sort of similar. But because it is unique compared to a lot of rural Vermont or other counties in Vermont. It seems to be an outlier and finding a very obvious or good solution to how to get, get fiber to everyone in the town. And so after looking through all of that, and now kind of coming back together as a collective, there's been a bunch of stakeholders in Chinden County working with a bunch of our neighboring municipalities and such, trying to work through what might be a good next step. And part of that is because this act 71 funding, we want to make sure we can get our hands on what that is, but also it could potentially go to someone else. And so that's why we're here tonight. And so that's why we're here tonight. And so that's why we're here tonight. If we weren't, maybe going to try to figure out how to use it now. So there is some of, some of it has a bit of a ticking clock potentially some doesn't. Some parts of it that is of the discussion. And so that's why we're here tonight instead of maybe a few months from now, and we weren't going in a million other directions. But we're here now to talk about this. So let me do that. And we'll go from there. Hey, Regina Mahoney, Chitten and County Regional Planning Commission. And sorry for the very bizarre background. I'm in a, a camp in the Adirondacks. So, um, uh, planning program manager at Chitten and County Regional Planning Commission. Basically that means that I manage, um, everything that's not the transportation side of things for the organization. Um, and we have been thinking about broadband for at least a year and a half, if not more, really feeling like we've kind of turned over every stone to figure out how to help solve the unserved and underserved folks in the county without going down this road of, of the CUD, which is creating a municipality essentially. Um, but, uh, it really seems at this stage of the game that, that this is the right way to go. Um, there are other municipalities in Chitten and County that have, um, figured out some other solutions and that's sort of unique to their perspective. Uh, the first one I'll mention is Bolton. Uh, Bolton is in Watesfield Champlain telecoms service territory. Uh, and they are considered a provider that can go directly to the state to get the broadband funds. And some of our other towns in the southern part of the county are also in that service territory and also in that same boat. As an example, I believe Charlotte's application is either submitted or on its way to being submitted for that purpose. Um, that is unique to the folks that are in Watesfield Champlain telecom service territory. We don't have that situation outside of Burlington being Burlington telecom as well. They are, they're fully covered. Um, and then this, the second option that, uh, has worked is Milton decided to join the Northwest CUD and they decided to do that a number of months ago. Time flies fast. It could have been even many months. I'm not sure. Um, and they were able to do that at a point in time where, uh, the Northwest CUD was still open to taking on new members at the moment anyway. I think it's probably going to be pretty difficult for them to do that because they're really pretty far along in their business model and their financial planning and how they're going to, um, Work on things going forward. Um, So really what we're talking about here is a potential solution for the Northern towns. Um, including Shelburne and, uh, Williston, which are south of the river because they don't, they're not likely to be well served by, um, But any other solution. Um, So I think that's all I will say to start. Um, I'll, I'll hand it over to Rob fish to introduce himself. And I think he's got a little bit of a presentation for you to explain more about what the CUD is. And then we're both happy to answer questions. Um, As you have a. Sure. Good evening, everybody. Um, my name is Rob fish. I'm the deputy director of the Vermont community broadband board. I've been working with the regional planning commission and county and county town's and frankly towns all across, all across the state for the past three years on building, the communication union districts and now making sure the funding gets where it, where it needs to go. I have a brief presentation that provides an overview. Do I have the ability to share my screen? Nope. Hey, Greg. Um, I can't do that. Um, just because I'm a co-host. Um, I can share the screen or if you want, can give Rob permission, whichever you like. For a happy presentation. Now, Rob. Sure. Aha. Now, if I can make sure I share the correct screen, we'll, we'll have a winner here. So I'm hoping you're seeing a presentation, not my email. So. We're seeing the presenters. Version of it though. Oh, okay. Let's try this again. You think I'd be good at this by now, but. There we go. Okay. Once again, I'm Rob fish with the Vermont community broadband board. So what we're here to talk to you about is communication union districts. I know you were all are familiar with various commissions and various districts, solid waste districts, older districts. You name it. This is another type of district. These districts were created. Several years ago at this point. And I think it's a great thing. Realizing that no one is coming to save rural communities when it comes to broadband. So this was a way for communities to work together to share the risk and to make things happen. The first communication union district was EC fiber. East central Vermont fiber. And they are currently one of two districts that are serving customers. They've expanded rapidly since then as you could see from the first communication union district, they've expanded rapidly since then as you could see from the first communication union district. 208 member towns. Each one of those towns has a representative and an alternate covers more than half the state's population. And it's 92% of the premises without access to 25, three megabits per second. So that's, that's basic cable speeds there. So why are they, why do we create them? Provide structure and governance. Provide a way for towns to work on an issue regionally. I'm just going to say it, but many of you, if you lived here a while, you're familiar with Berlin can telecom and some of the challenges that that resulted when the town used general funds, general obligation bonds, taxpayer derived money to build up broadband. Everybody has great service now, but it certainly created some pain. So this is a way to insulate individual towns. The districts are also not allowed to see to receive revenue that's derived from the tax dollars. So it's either grants, it's loans or it's revenue bonds. To create a CUD communication union district, at least two towns have to vote either at town meeting or in the general election to create the district and then other towns can join by a select board vote. So why do this aggregate demand? And in rural areas, providers not going to come talk to you if you only have a few hundred underserved addresses, but if you're aggregating the demand among many towns, you're creating a business case. So way to make the entire region benefit. If you look at where it's served currently, it's going to be your town centers. It's going to be the densest areas. It's going to be the areas where there's 16, 20 households per mile, not rural areas where there's six, eight, four per mile. This was called cherry picking. And every time that happens, it makes the business case worse for the other areas. It's also a way to solve an issue. And this is more of the issue in Chittin County, where you have a few households that are further down the road than all the rest of them, that there wasn't a business case to make it for that provider to go that extra two miles to serve those customers. So it's a way to allow grant funding to help supplement that. It's also because town boundaries are irrelevant. We're talking wire centers. We're talking where the wires go. Vermont's topography, if you, I'm sure you've noticed it's, it's not flat. We're not in the great plain states right here. Wireless won't work. The wires have to go through different passes around different areas. I already mentioned the risk mitigation, additional funding opportunities. I'll get to in a second in terms of act 71. The other big thing is public accountability. Telecom is deregulated. The state can't do much. The feds can't do much. They all gave up their authority in 1995. There's no oversight. When you have a problem with a provider. Sure, you can complain, but there's very little power to do anything about it. This is a way for the community to maintain some control, regardless of which model, which I'll talk about that you go towards. So there's two different models that the various CUDs are, like actually more than two of several CUDs are doing a public private partnership. So this is what's happening down in Bennington County and likely in Rutland. So that's the Southern Vermont CUD and the Otter Creek CUD where they have a provider that has built out most of the area, but not all the area. This is once again talking about the ends of the roads or areas where there wasn't a business case. So by working together by creating, creating this communication union district, you can work with any provider that you want. Currently funding is not available to any provider that, any provider that is active in more than five Vermont counties. If you look on your telephone bill, that's one of the main companies that's excluded, which makes it very difficult in the case of the case of Essex and a lot of Chittenden County towns to go directly to them and get grant funding to, to help it. Southern Vermont, I'll show you a slide in a few minutes, worked out a deal with them where they will own the new infrastructure, the district. They will provide the grant funding to consolidate it and they will build out all the underserved addresses in the rest of the entire county by early 2024, they say late 2023. The other model and this is what many of the more rural CUDs are going into a public ownership where they're building a network, they're partnering with an operator. Some of them are actually partnering with, partnering with Weitzfield, actually, right just to the south of you or Valley Net, GWI or in Northwest Google Fiber, talk about where everything is publicly owned. It's a public asset, extreme public accountability, but it involves, I think it involves a lot more work because you are building a network. You're not operating it, but you're still managing those contracts. We are, as a state, working to provide up to 60, 70% of the funds via grant funding, you then go to the revenue bond market to complete the rest of the build out. This is public community broadband. So non-CUD towns, as I said, 208 towns are members, the rest are not. Many of those other ones are well served already, down in VTEL, they have fiber to the premise, 100 by 100 throughout their area. There's other smaller operations throughout the state. And other of the towns are primarily built out entirely by cable. So cable gets you a good download speed, but when it comes to uploading the data, which is what's necessary for telehealth and remote learning, and Zoom calls, for instance, you're not getting the same speeds. It's also, it's a copper technology. It's not based on the speed of light. That's what fiber optics do. The only limitation is the electronics on the side. So I'd like to say that the fiber optics are future-proof and currently fibers the only technology that's going to get you the speeds you need for the next 30 to 40 years. Other issues with Chittenden County towns in particular, we talked about split wire centers. There's some wire centers where it's weights field and consolidated. There hasn't been as much study in Chittenden County of the issue. So we've talked about the areas that the state have done feasibility studies and business planning already. But because the focus has been on areas that don't have a lot of cable, that hasn't happened yet here. There's also a lot of existing infrastructure and that's not just about that the cable is fairly well built out. A lot of the infrastructure is underground, which is more expensive. There's also sometimes gaps in infrastructure where it goes underground or it needs to cross a river or cross railroad to get more expensive. There's also a lot more multi-dwelling units up here and in many cases with the multi-dwelling units, they have an exclusive contract when they're built to wire the building. Retrofitting that can be challenging and expensive. So Act 71 requires universal service to every single E911 address in the town or in the communication union district. It has to be provided at speeds of 100 by 100. So any address that currently does not get speeds of 25 three needs to get 100 by 100. So there's a lot of overbuilding a cable that needs to happen. I mentioned how it limits eligible applicants to companies not working in more than five counties unless they're working with a CUD. And we have to distribute our funds based on the underserved addresses. So what this means for, I'm sorry, I don't have the data broken down by a S6 city of Essex and the town of Essex yet, but it is about 200 addresses or it's on a slide later that our underserved don't have access to 253 or greater. So we have to distribute the funding based on using that formula and road miles. There's about $300,000 available for Essex. That's not enough to do a total overbuild to bring your entire community up to 100 by 100 with working with other towns and working with private companies. It could be possible. And this is the other thing where I'm aggregating the demand. Big companies want big deals. As I mentioned earlier, you're not going to attract a national company if you're just a single town. What has seems to be working in the state right now and they're pitching this all over the country right now highlighting what's happening in Vermont. So Google fiber is working with Northwest fiber works and Lamoille fiber nets, Lamoille County, Franklin County and Grand Isle County and the town of Milton. That never would have happened. They're in the final stages. It's likely to be finalized in the next few weeks. It's going to bring 43,000 Vermont households, gigabit speed internet. So it's kind of by forming a CUD, you're raising a flag saying, okay, we have a single point of contact. We're coordinating among the towns. Come talk to us. I also mentioned what's happening down in Bennington County. And as I said, they're partnering with consolidated or Fidium fiber. And they're finalizing a public private partnership. That's going to provide service throughout the entire county. So by, by working together with other towns. You're, you're helping the entire area by attracting other providers or increasing access to funding. So that's going to be, that's going to be, that's going to be the final stage. As I mentioned in terms of with the data, it's in the data from the public service department. It's still not broken down. But it's showing that, oops, sorry. So right now it's showing 162 addresses. Out of a 7,000. Don't have access to at least 25, three. But if you look at the addresses without access to fiber, 7,298. I know a lot of those are going to be in the city. They're going to get some, some build out. But it's like you to think of it, we're looking at the entire community now. And by looking at the entire community, we're going to get service to those 162 addresses that currently really can't. I don't know if enjoy is the word for zoom meetings or telehealth or remote learning, but they don't have access to what's become an essential service. And it's also an issue when it comes to even energy services. And it's also an issue when it comes to, you know, how we're able to participate in various efficiency programs. Though it touches everything in our lives right now. And that's why it's such an important for Vermont. And why Vermont is making the investment. It is. If I can figure out how to stop sharing my screen. So there's a lot of information. I'm happy to take any questions. And Regina can talk a little bit about the next. The process. Any questions from the board. I kind of have a question. And I may have missed it, but is the district going to be set up in a way where there's going to be any, any fee structure or, or I guess I'm a question to be like, is it going to be a profitable to, you know, pay for the service, but to continue to build without being grant only or bonded? How, how would the bond work? So it depends on the model that you go. If you go to the public private, public private partnership model. So this could be partnering with your local telecom provider, say partnering with consolidated, for instance, you may be able to do it with the available grant funding or with a surcharge on, on the bill that each resident would get in order to do like an infrastructure charge. You can also go to the revenue bond market. If there is some public ownership involved in it, and it's based entirely on the revenue of the operation, it's not coming from every single tax, every single taxpayer. That's one of the big things about this.  Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, I was just curious when I first looked at it, I didn't see any downside at all to joining it, but I know this today that the coal chest or town manager for the article out on the front porch forum about, he's not sure there's actually going to be any of that big pot of money that you'll be able to access. So they were looking, I believe, to wait and see. I was just curious, are there any other towns that would join with us if we voted to do this? We've presented to Williston. We're talking to Shelburne. There's a variety of towns, but I also want to respond to what, I haven't seen it. So I'm going to take it, take it, take your summary as it is. We've been waiting and seeing for years when it comes to broadband. Like there's been talk about trying to change the legislation. If you're going to change the legislation, you're looking at June of next year. You're, basically get in line is what my encouragement is to all these towns. Do you want to, you want to seat at the table? Do you want to make stuff happen? Use the tools that are currently available. We can, we can complain, we can lobby, we can try to change things to have funding be accessed in different ways, but we're governed by really strict federal rules on this and a program that was developed by the, by the legislature. So it's like, you can take your chances on it. Or you can do what 208 towns are doing around the state of working together to try to find some solutions and get access to additional resources to be able to find those solutions. You know, I think there are legitimate concerns in the sense of there's still, even if a CUD is formed, it's still a relatively small percentage of funding that could come from the state to help this situation. And it is something. It is another district. It is another thing to participate in. Each of the members would have to have a representative, representatives sitting on the board. And so it's, this is not going to be a walk in the park necessarily. But the reason why I think it makes sense for Chittenden County at this stage of the game is that. The funds right now that the Vermont community broadband board is working with are ARPA funds. And those need to be spent by the end of 2026. They need to be obligated even earlier the end of 2024. You folks know this. And so if there's no interest in the money. Sort of flagged for the Chittenden County towns. By the end of November, even count this calendar year. The BCBV is certainly going to be under an obligation to put those funds towards other projects that are underway and moving along because they've got to be able, they've got to get this funding into construction. Just like everybody else does on, on those grant funds. And I think what are, what we have going for us in Chittenden County is that the providers that come to the table have so many more cable. Folks in the area that they will likely be able to pull in to their service. And so there, you know, we've got the highest density. And so I think there's going to be a lot of potential, a lot of interest from service providers to come to the table. If we do do this. That even though there's not that much. There's not that much federal. State funding to move this along. It will be enough to help them get here. And the public oversight is there so that we can be in. Be well assured that the underserved and unserved folks will get service. And then everybody else, the majority of folks that are on cable will have the option to come on to a fiber. They'll have the option to have a fiber service if they want to make that switch. So I, I think it, it makes a lot of sense also to serve answer your question about the other folks that other towns that are thinking about this. So. Williston is going to make a decision next week about whether to put this question on the ballot. Okay. We will see you next week. Shelburne. Tomorrow night, Jericho, next week, I believe. And am I missing something? South Burlington. South Burlington. Yes. Thank you. And so. There needs to be two towns that have a townwide vote to start this. Then the other municipalities, just the legislative body can choose to join. And. The pressure is sort of on to take advantage of the general election ballot. So each of these menace palates could get the question on that you don't have to have the expense of your own election. And so that's that's sort of the thinking here at this stage of the game. And that's not the only option you could do it locally if you want to but so you've got a little bit more time if you want to think about that but that's an expense that, of course, nobody, everybody would like to avoid. Is there an estimate of actual cost for this? You're talking grants, but there is not a grant enough grant money. What are we looking at as a town of as having to invest in this program. Well, first of all, it wouldn't be the town as we said it can't be derived from from local tax dollars. The other thing I can say to that is when you become a communication union district you have access to some what we call pre construction funds that allow you to do those studies, allow you to do those business, business planning, allow you to hire someone to assist with negotiations with with with an ISP or a private company that wants to do this. Like there are companies out there that are looking for areas to invest in. They're not going to do it for an individual town. They are likely to do it if we can aggregate the demand. Thank you. So what are the ongoing duties for time commitment if joining a CUD? The one good thing is you're following behind nine other communication union districts. So most of the policies that need to be written are written. The commitment is most CUDs meet monthly have a have a general meeting. Some of them don't meet monthly and just appoint an executive committee. Some of them hire an executive director using the grant fundings to take care of everything. There is going to be some grant reporting responsibilities if you're receiving grants but that's whether you're a CUD or a town, there's always there's always reporting responsibilities. So I don't want I don't want to downplay it but it's it's it really depends on the model that you take if you're trying to build public build build public owner. Sorry, my kid is in the background crying. Trying to build a public ownership and trying to do a network that's publicly owned and you have many different contractors that are doing it. It can get to become a big endeavor. If you're trying to facilitate and negotiate good deals with companies that are currently operating or want to operate in your area. It's not that it's turnkey, but they're, it could be done even without any staff. Because we have so many consolidated customers right now on cable. The thinking is that that's likely a interested provider coming to the table to help with this. And in my mind that can be very simple. But what I think now is that they cannot go directly to the state to get this funding. So, creating the CUD can get the money to them. I think there's a whole sort of world of interesting things to think about in terms of that public concept that's going on in the Northwest and LaMoyle and I think, you know, anything really could happen but in a very basic way. A step that needs to happen in order to get somebody like consolidated who's always already heavily here to just inspire them to sort of come in and move forward. Move faster because I don't know if we said this but it is assumed that consolidated will over time build out fiber, even if we just sat on our hands and didn't do anything. But they will be under no public obligation to serve those unserved and underserved. So we're assuming that we're going to be in the exact same position we are today for those folks, even though everybody else who's on cable might then have five or 10 years from now. So, that's just sort of a little bit more Tracy to your question trying to remember why I said that is really that in that situation if that's how it plays out essentially that consolidated is coming to the table to do this. And I think it's going to be very simple. There's not going to be a whole lot to think through and put together and, and, and think on. Thanks. I just wanted to hear from the. I got one more question. And this is this is just like me thinking beyond the book right now, but Burlington. Burlington telecom has fiber from Burlington through a new ski and as extension. Why would we choose or not choose or maybe we're not making any decisions but if there is previous decisions you guys have discussed whatever but is there an issue with Burlington telecom and this program. Not at all. Okay. So there's no issue whatsoever and it's it might bring them to the table table as well. Awesome. That was my only question because I had followed along. I think it was, was it early spring or they started in mass extension. They got their little building up and now they got fiber and that's extension out and and. My father works for him, but he's taught me that they have fiber from Burlington to assets connected fully, which is pretty cool. I don't know that consolidated wasn't even running fiber yet. I mean, that's kind of something I was thinking about. That's all. Thanks Ethan. Other there are some members of the public, I think who might want to comment or ask questions. So if you're online, please use the raise your hand. Feature to let me know if you'd like to speak any comments in the room. See hands and Greg, I do have one if there's nothing from public. If there's nothing from the public, I do have one. Another I just want to hold on a second and see if there's anybody's having trouble finding the. Another couple of folks who have been pretty vocal about this before just make sure they have an opportunity to speak. In order to find the razor hand feature. If you go down to the floater cursor on the bottom of the screen over the. Little menu will pop up. It says reactions. If you click on that, then the raise hand option is in that within that. Alright, thank you. Hey, Greg. Can you hear me. Yes. Okay. Thank you very much for helping me through the raising my hand. I have not used zoom ever. Yeah, so my question was, I saw when we were electing new people in our electric company that they were putting an overture forward that they were going to run the fiber. To support cuts, and that would be Vermont electric co op. So I don't understand why it's consolidated that we have to wait for or even telecom and Burlington. If they're already planning to run fiber, they have the polls, they have right a ways. Can I jump in a little bit on that. Oh, sure. Thank you. The electrical utilities are connecting parts of their grid, like if there's a large solar installation, they're going to connect that they're going to connect the substations. But that is in the electric sphere where it is on the pole, where it is a lot more expensive for to work, and a lot more expensive to do last mile connections and it's certainly not going everywhere it's not that they're overbuilding their entire network whatsoever. It's basically what they call a middle mile connecting connecting various points, the communication union districts are working with the various utilities on like a tariff reduction and various if they need to underhaul to get from middle mile to get from point to point but it's not a last mile solution. Some of this some of the electric utilities looked into it, but decided that they didn't want to, they didn't want to get into a brand new business. They didn't want to get down to that they'd rather work with with another entity that's that's trying to make it happen. Okay. Thank you to your to your, your question about consolidated or brilliant and telecom those are just examples of companies that might come to the table if if a union district is formed. You know, it, I guess, I guess, yeah, if we don't do anything yet where we would be waiting for somebody else to eventually build out and potentially not build out to your location, I know you're, you're in one of those underserved areas. So I think the the incentive here to go to the union district is to because it includes the requirement to build out to your house. It also just opens up more options like yeah we're just throwing out names of different providers but it might be one we've never even heard of that that wants to that wants to move in on this. And there's also the if you have more than one partner that's interested maybe you'll have more than one provider that's going to be providing service to all of your residents and increase competition and drive those rates down. There's a lot of different possibilities that the door is open to when you're you're working together with several times. Thank you. Thanks Greg. Thanks for your comments your question. Bruce come on up. Thank you for that incredible information, but I was hearing the worst sound like I was hearing the worst like going on, going out to pull the know the fiber going to pull the pole. We did you say that. That because I thought fiber was under the ground, our optics. No and not really in Vermont fiber in Vermont in many cases it's it's all aerial where we're on a big slab of granite in many in many places. If you go out to a city or from from Chicago you got to Illinois where it's top soil they're digging in most of it's going to be underground. But here most of it is above ground unless towns or developments or multi dwelling units have have made that decision or that requirement. Ken Brunson years ago they put fiber underneath the ground and on the older fan. I don't know that's why I got that. Under the ground. No, a lot of cities and towns have made that move to put utilities underground and when that that does happen that's a that's a great time to make sure everything ends up underground. Yeah, because you can take away those polls right that's the main reason one of the reasons right to know how those ugly natural polls going up down the road. Yeah. All right, thank you. Thanks, Bruce. Okay, Greg, I see your hand is back up. Yeah, just have we actually had conversation with Wilson or Shelburne or you know I mean do they are we kind of in step here that we're both trying to go down the same path together or is just join it. So I agree, can you comment. Yeah, yeah, so we have, and thankfully, Robin Regina have joined us in some of those meetings and so we've been actually having some reoccurring meetings. And that's how a lot of this got started and suddenly, you know, with the time kind of crunch of November. So we've been working together and that's why they're having those meetings this month as well. Because ahead of that, we've been meeting, I don't maybe kind of sporadically since January and then much more often, I would say since April ish. And trying to just like you said Greg kind of make sure we're locked step in this because that's kind of how the plan will work. The best is by having the aggregate of all of us in there, potentially, or that's how it sounds anyway so so far, you know, we'll see how all of those conversations go and continue to go. But but they are all having them this month as well and some have already had some precursory ones as well but All right, thanks for my great. Greg, you said you had comments. Brian. Not to the microphone, please. Introduce yourself. Hi, my name is Brian Sheldon. I was just wondering if I heard a lot about Williston and Shelburne but nothing about the city of S extension nor Westford are those possibilities for joining us here to you though. Yes, Westford as well for sure. The city of S extension, haven't been part of the conversations I've been invited but I think they're just haven't come to the table yet they don't have any underserved really they have some but really the majority of those folks are in the town of Westford so in terms of like sort of the public oversight of really serving those folks it's it's just a little bit less of an issue, but Westford has definitely been at these at these meetings as well and and thinking about it. Thanks, Brian. Any other questions or comments from the public. Yeah, Rob or Regina maybe just question about the timing in the process I know one of the goals is to get the underserved pockets served, but then there's also the additional benefit of the whole town would be potentially eligible for fiber sooner than later would by joining a CUD would it would it allow the UD to specifically target the underserved areas first I just trying to conceptualize the build out and who gets served when I have to start from one point to get to those underserved in the first place, but it's what we're kind of, I kind of sum this up. So if you if you don't go with the CUD you may be able to attract a provider or your incumbent telephone company may do it, but they aren't going to build to those underserved unless they're made to build to those underserved and usually made to build to those underserved means you're paying for them to get to those underserved. So the CUD is they need to present a plan before they can get any funding to be able to reach all of those addresses. It's also a way to leverage and negotiate for them to contribute more. So the priority of the funding has to be for these underserved what's happening down in down in Southern Vermont and in Bennington County consolidated right now they're building out most of the cabled areas. The phase of it is going to be the grant funding to build out the areas on the outskirts that they didn't get to while they built that core network. But it still is happening happening very quickly one of the one of the great benefits that the the incumbents have is they're already on the telephone polls or underground. It helps accelerate their ability to get the places and lowers the cost. All right, I don't see any other hands up any other new board member board questions. I guess Greg and Marguerite what are you looking for from us tonight. Recommendation says I agree you want to take that one. Yeah, so just if this seems like something that the board is interested in putting forward as a solution, then just kind of moving forward with a recommendation there that we bring forward language for the warning at the August meeting and that we kind of have those next steps for you. I can report also in the August meeting on the Williston Shelburne South Burlington Westford, you know, I can do a little bit of that as well. And, you know, go from there. Hopefully those meetings go, you know, as predicted or as thought so that it won't be a big shock but but I'll bring you the shock if it's a shock so so I can do that. If the board is interested. So our upcoming meetings are August 1 and then August 15. We would need when do we need to warn a vote. Yeah, we would need the language approved by August 1 if we weren't to schedule a special meeting August 9 is the actual the deadline. But if you were going by our meeting schedule but we could also schedule a special meeting if needed. All right. So, given the given the question of the thought that we need to we need to decide what we want to do by August 1. Is there any other discussion any other questions anybody has? I have one. Go ahead, Ethan. Say we decided to move forward and join the union. What's the binding legality of only out from if we didn't want to be part of it in a year or two or five or. So you can leave a communication union district by the same way that you that you join it. The any infrastructure that is built is still owned by the CUD. But that's no cost or liability to the town is my big question. No, no cost or liability. You can enter in other contractual things of like storing equipment in different places or things like that. But that's that's down the line. So there's this right. So there's two, two, two paths we can take here. One is to warrant a vote to establish a CUD. Because that was that was what we would be the question that we would. Or we could wait to see if two other towns do so and then we joined later with just a vote of the select board. So those are the two ways to get into the CUD and I think there's there's maybe some that is there any is there any benefit to having more than two towns do this. What we've seen a lot of. Yeah, truly it's a show of force and a show of unity that's how many of the CUDs first got started where it wasn't just two towns voting. In many cases it was, I think on town town meeting. 2019 just before everything went crazy. I think there was, I think it was about 60 towns across the, across the state voted to create three different CUDs. It's not saying it can't just be two towns but I would encourage share resources share promotion and it helps every other town to be like we're not just one of two or one of six, for instance. So are we ready for a motion any other discussion questions. We need a motion. Any more question there. I just, I'm always checkpoint driven, having been working in industry for years and it sounds to me like we have to communicate succinctly to these other interested parties that we're going to checkpoint on July 31. And not just let everybody go off and have the discussion independently and wave their hands around and wonder what it's going to work or not. It sounds like it's a path we've other towns have been gone down and been successful. So I think we need to checkpoint something at the end of the month with the ones that are going to put the their hand up and be part of it. Assuming that our town will vote for that, which is kind of a stretch waiting till November to make that decision, based on what you're saying the money could be starting to dry up. I could say as the Vermont community broadband board if we know that there is movement to creating a CUD we're not going to be rededicating those funds. And I'll just add that these towns have definitely been, you know, everybody's not having their your meetings on the exact same night so it's a little bit all sort of scattered but everyone's trying to have the conversations roughly at the same time and, and everyone really wants to know what everyone else is doing so we're definitely doing our best to keep everybody informed as best as possible. Well I'd make a recommendation that we jump in and get our feet wet and show them the water's good and move ahead with creating a communication district. Second. Yeah. It was that, Kendall, was that a motion or was that a just a comment? Just a comment but I'll make it a motion if it needs to be. Motion to me. So, do you think that was worded adequately enough? That was a recommendation, not a motion. I think if there's a motion to direct staff to continue working on this and prepare our proposed language to go on the ballot. You want me to try it again then? I was going to say almost that. I make the motion that we recommend the staff research and bring back language to the November general election ballot to be reviewed by the select board at their next meeting. Thank you, Don. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Tracy. Any further discussion? That does feel like your hand up the residual left, sorry. All right. Hey, all those in favor, please say aye. Opposed. Okay, motion passes five zero will look我要. The next meeting I'll be August first time to. Thank you everybody. Don't hesitate to reach out with any any questions. Yes. Yes. Thanks, Regina. Thanks. Have a good night. Yep. Take care. Moving on to business item 5D discussion of public nuisance ordinance. Thank you for having me tonight. Mr. Chair, can I say something before they start? I just want to say thank you for all your work. My pleasure. That's that right to him. He's been solely doing this. So this is to pick up where we left off last fall with public nuisance ordinance to cover topics that aren't currently covered by ordinances through events that have occurred throughout my time here at Essex that aren't backed by ordinance. So the Essex ordinance have been updated since 1990. So there's time for them to be overhauled. And I think this will get us started in the right direction. I don't know if there's specific questions or we just want to go through it line by line. I'll wait. I did have a question, but I think I'll wait. Go ahead. So Ethan, I'm not sure you've seen or seen the you haven't been through the previous discussion. No, but I read through this and I think it's kind of long to go. Yeah, I think we all probably have questions. Yeah, specific questions. Right the way to handle it. Every time we all go around the room.  Lieutenant Kissinger put it all together. It was proposed to the town also proposed to the village. They had adopted it on the town side. I think there were a few lingering questions about some of the components of the ordinance. A couple that jumped to mind for me were the noise ordinance and how that would affect shooting ranges, firearms ranges. I think there are some questions around noise of vehicles, whether that's exhaust and mufflers, the engine brakes on vehicles. We took it put on the back burner for a little bit focused on some other things.  Lieutenant Kissinger is just research into those topics. He didn't include them in the ordinance now because he kind of wanted to have the discussion, bring it back to you. Start where we left off and maybe have a discussion about what some of the issues are and what you might want to address. And then Lieutenant Kissinger can hopefully provide some information, answers today if he's depending on the question. And if not today, be able to do some more research and get back to you with any of your concerns. I have a few, but I'll start with the simple one because Greg just mentioned it and it was one of the first things that came to my mind. And I don't know if it's directly related to vehicles, but I give two situations that I was thinking of when I was doing this. The decibel level, is there going to be a reference for measurement? Let's just say that I'm chainsawing firewood in my yard and a little bit of a loud chainsaw. And my neighbor standing at the property line, I'm close to the property line. He's got a reader. Are you guys going to have a reader and come out and if I'm chainsawing wood for 15 minutes? I was looking in there for like a distance or a reasonable decibel range. And the second thing that came to my mind was with the vehicles was like trackers or lawn mowers or things that make noise. In those areas most people who live next to those things are totally cool with it. But let's just say for instance there was an ordinance that could be enforced that could affect those things. The first one, we would be using a certified sound meter. The PD has two. One needs to be sent out to be recertified. Those will have to be done annually. We would be the ones that would do the testing. And it's a period, a 50 minute sample period. And it's based on the decimal readings that are provided in the ordinance that we would be using. Surprising what people think are loud really aren't loud when it comes to decibel meters, especially when you have distance involved. It sounds louder than it really is for the readings. For the readings, correct. We had a complaint of a loud motorcycle on 128. And I was just using a decibel meter on my phone that's not certified. But that gentleman was driving Harley Davidson and the loudest that I had was 71 decibels. And I was a car at half length off the road. So it's not necessarily as loud as people think it is. And then my very last question I want somebody else to go was about, I don't even know how to word this because it's just Vermont. It's always been Vermont, but the public nudity with that being a town thing. There's some really good things in there that everybody shouldn't know. But does that have anything to do with town and state level? I guess as far as how it's going to say Vermont, but it wouldn't be in the town of Essex. Correct. That's my question. Yeah, so that comes to the question right of what public nudity means though, right? Because you can be on your own property. I think it might be defined. Yeah, what public means is defined in the. Right. Like I can't, you know, so I could before this, but I couldn't leave my house nude and walk down the road to be your own public right away. You can't, right? Correct. Right. But you can walk all over your property. Right. As long as you're not in front of a school bus or whatever. There might be other rules that come into play. But as long as you're naked before you leave the house, you can. I had to ask because it, you know, we all know. Same with public urination and public public in a public place. You can figure your business on your own property if you want any other. I don't want to follow that enough. So how do these changes address the complaints we had about those loud cars that were racing up and down Sand Hill or up and down 15 and received multiple complaints about the loud exhaust and the one sounding like machine gun. People were ducking and jumping off sidewalks. How does this ordinance address that? I think when you get to the noise ordinance, it talks about the backfiring of mufflers, people that are intentionally revving the engine to, to get the combustion chamber to cause a backfire. And that should take care of that type of sound. We can offer language that makes it a little bit more restrictive. I did look for it. And that's why I'm asking. I didn't think I read it. It hasn't been changed since the last time. It's sort of 23. It's, I thought it covered in the same thing somebody had asked me. I thought that in section AA of 23, it's 611 040. It's excessive sound. Yeah, I see that. I think that as long as that wording can be enforceable with the department. I don't know if that's where you had thought that that language was, but that was right. So it could be caused by defect or the operation, but anything that creates loud squealing of tires loud and necessary grinding, rattling is grinding, exploding type or rattling or other noises or other sounds. I think that covers it. But based on your recommendations or public, we could offer some language that might make it a little bit more restrictive. No, I just because we had received multiple complaints about it. Yeah, we have to make sure it was covered. Thank you. So kind of building on that thought, but not that thought. So public places, if someone is standing on the sidewalk, they can't urinate on that sidewalk. But if they're standing five feet from the sidewalk on their own property in clear view of passing traffic, is that okay? Based on the way this is worded, it would be the word public starts getting into very gray areas. And it depends on whether the person is actually visible to the public or whether a public place is their property is obviously a private barrier, an imaginary barrier around their residents. Would we be looking, would we be looking to write tickets to people for being on their own property, urinating? Probably not because we're starting to run into that. Now, if you wrote a ticket for that, it is going to go in front of a judge and they're quickly going to give us their interpretation of what public is and what it isn't. So if that's something that needs to be defined in here as better, come up with a better definition and add that to the ordinance, then maybe that's something that we should do ahead of time, prevent that. Obviously we'd hopefully have a discussion on that person and give them the optics of them doing that, especially in the neighborhood, is not good because you have little kids that could see that and they don't need to see things like that. So if you would like us to do that, we can go back and we can look at what other towns have used for the word public or whether there's a state statue that covers that. I believe that there might be and we can possibly adopt that language to better define that. One of the things I don't want to happen is, I don't want an officer out there at 1 o'clock in the morning trying to determine whether you can write a ticket or not. The better off, the more defined we are, the better. And I just use the urination because that's kind of a very clear image, but translating that to if someone is standing three feet from their property line screaming obscenities at 11 o'clock at night. So where do we draw that line and can we draw that line? Correct. I think in that case, if somebody was screaming obscenities, it would be more covered in the noise ordinance than it would be totally conduct or something like that. So, you know, there's other ways to look at that. So, I see Kendall's hands over there. So kind of go ahead. Yes. First, I'll start off my comments by saying thank you to the chief no tenant. I know that this takes a lot of work and I can appreciate the time spent on that. That being said, I will segue into saying that it's not lost on me that today is the first official meeting of the town of Essex select board. And I don't think that we should be adopting a cookie cutter city ordinance because I understand the junction just adopted this. I think it should be different. The town is different from the junction. I would consider looking at this ordinance and making some changes to it like we do with our zoning. I think that some parts of town can probably use this ordinance and I think other parts of town don't have any need for a public ordinance. And I'd like to hear away and from the public. I think that we have a bandwidth right now with all the budget and stuff and everything to get into a contentious public ordinance debate. And I think it would be very contentious because I'd like to see some of the statistics are actually where the complaints have come from in the town or urban suburban or rural. And nuisance behavior can often be subjective. I think it's in that it can just be very subjective. So that's really the comments that I have for now. And thank you. The couple things that I remember coming up were open container, which also may fall into the question of what's public and what's not. I confess that I walked down the street to my neighbor's house with an open can of beer the night before we talked about this the last time. In my opinion, my educated opinion that would be that would be in public walking down the sidewalk with an open beer. But if I'm similar to what Tracy said, if I'm three feet off the sidewalk on my property, it should be okay to have an open beer. So the language there about what's public, it may need to be circumstantial. One thing that we completely, completely expect, and this is a little bit to Kendall's point is that the town would take a look at this ordinance that we presented and find out what parts of it that they really want or if they want all of it, or if there are sections that aren't needed. And I know that that the open container ordinance came up as a as a result of the point that we received in the in the junction and that's why that was adopted as part of their ordinance. So that's something that that the town would rather not see or doesn't see a need for them. That's up. That's up to you folks. Ethan, I have another one that I forgot about is an express prohibitions. And it is about trash removal. Because I am in a very rural part of town and my trash man comes at 530 in the morning. And I would lose my service if this came seven to nine p.m. So I would just like to throw that out there. So I love my trash company. The only ones that come up there. To Kendall's point, this was a joint ordinance with both the town and now the city in mind to come up with one. And then when they decided to go their own way, it was split up. So the language is specifically the town and the city. There is residual that's left over. The trustees changed the times. It was originally six, but they wanted all the times to be the same. So if the board's recommendation is that we change that time, we can certainly change it to accommodate them. We've already had to address with the city trash haulers or trash haulers that are going to the city of Eskies Junction to make them aware that there is an ordinance that they can't go before 7 a.m. A lot of them do go through there at 530 in the morning. And we have received numerous complaints of people being woke up because of that. Initially, this was presented to us by the change. Robin Pierce had already talked to the trash haulers and they would accommodate by changing their schedules of pickup. That might be something that the town may not want to do and just adjust the times to accommodate the trash haulers to take care of businesses, households early in the morning. So Kendall's suggestion, though, to make things, I don't know how difficult it is for you to have. If Ethan lives, they can go earlier than where I live, where I'm in a neighborhood. Business for the urban complex. I don't know how difficult that is to have a variable. The difficulty would be if you have different trash haulers working different areas or you switch a trash hauler, now you have somebody different. That's where the variables would come in is you would not necessarily be able to notify all of them in a timely manner. And obviously, we wouldn't write someone a violation the first time. We would actually hopefully follow up with that company and say, listen, there's an ordinance, one of your trash haulers in violation of the time here are the times. And this is what the language is in the ordinance. But there will be difficulties if there are different variations for different parts of the town. My opinion is I like to see one time that fits everybody's needs and move on from there. But supposing we changed it all to 6 a.m. and because Ethan's so rural, nobody would see it. If Ethan doesn't have an objection to them coming at 5.30. Somebody's going to have to complain, right? Is that something that... It would take a complaint for us to... I'm thinking about what Kendall had said and I'm just asking here. I don't know how to word this, but it's two questions. I'm going to throw the first part out, but would it make sense? Or is it possible to take, let's say, 15 and go from 15 into the more dense area? I don't even know what this is about. I'm just asking. And then make an ordinance for these areas if there's complaints in these areas. You know, you had a lot of complaints from the now city. They had defined specific things, but is there certain areas, like you were saying, there's large complaints and unsubjective things? Is there other areas that, you know, you might get a call once a year because somebody's up on Osgoode and they're going to shoot a firework now? But that's my question. What is the need in the three parts of town? I think the easiest way to answer your question is maybe define it as commercial and residential. It may be set two times for those specific areas and define it that way than rather trying to... Because that's already defined by zoning. So whatever a commercial zone would be, we pick a time that the residents are okay with. And out in the rural areas, you could probably start a little bit early because it's really not going to wake anybody up if you're on Brigham Hill. I mean, we already have a no shooting zone in the town. Right. You know, if the board wanted to do that, you know, it could follow those same lines as far as that. Are you talking about that specific section of this ordinance? Yeah. Well, not just that. Not just that. I was more thinking of the firearm, the no discharge area itself. Right. Because there's a problem there. There's too many houses there. It's not safe to charge the firearm. If there's a problem in this area and it's loud and, you know, it's just hard. We're saying it'd be easier to do different... I don't know. You'd have to have a book on it.  Yeah, the only concern about doing, like, a noise ordinance with it with similar to what we do with the shooting ordinance would be that somebody could be right on the other side of the outside the no shooting area and making all the noise and then causing problems for the people who are inside it. So you'd fall into that because of noise travels. So that would be the only problem. In my recommendation, I would say that let's determine, you know, what are valuable things to the town residents that either are being complained about or we feel are problematic and like to act on those. If there are sections such as trash trucks, which I'm unaware of unless you are a lieutenant that we've had complaints about trash trucks in the town. We have not in the town. Not saying that we never will, but it's not a section of the ordinance that's actually needed in the town. Yeah, part of the reason for the ordinance is to try and think ahead of things that we might incur that we don't have any authority to to intervene. And that's kind of where we started because of the ordinances are so old currently, as the town's growing, we don't have anything but we're willing to accommodate whatever the needs of the town are restructure wording. Just a question for you, Lieutenant Chief. How far how complicated does it get for you if your officers if there's multiple areas where everything is different. I could, maybe it's a, you know, the city in the town. Okay, that's two different subordinates is that you have to memorize or at least be aware of how many more layers do you create if you get into the now the suburban part of town is different from the rural part of town is different from as extension. You got to be aware where the officer is at any given time to be able to figure out what's the citation was not a citation. Just want to make be cognizant of your job to keep your jobs tangible as well and not having it get too complicated for officers who are reacting in the moment in the field to have to make those really fast quick decisions. Right. Well, what we would do is upload the orders on to the terminals in the cruiser so they have access to the ordinances. As long as they're updated in a timely manner. There shouldn't be too much of an issue there always will be some officers that aren't as a depth of keeping up to date with the knowledge but they at least have the access to look it up if they have any questions. And obviously we want things to be simplified as much as we can but we also realize that there are some things that just can't be oversimplified or simplified that much. And having access to the ordinance is going to it's going to have that the officer will have the ability to determine that. If they have a question they should already be reading the ordinances and have those in mind anyway. But if there's something specific question ticket doesn't have to be issued right at that moment anyway and they can refer back to you know what they were doing so you know we can we can work with differences in the ordinances we can work with that. And I'll go ahead. I would just suggest that before you go too much further that you sit down and work up some areas like that and present a map. So that you could look at some of the areas in the town of Essex, they could use more restrictive ordinances than others. This is one of the things that I remember most about the ordinance discussions that I've been to is that you can't do just one ordinance for an entire community that is so diverse and different than the town. You've got some really urban right close to the city limits that they're going to call you when somebody lights a fire on your deck.  You know, it's you just have to you have to break the town up like that Colchester has done this and that has worked out very well for some of the communities that are so diverse. Yes, thank you. The other the other thing that came up last time we talked about this is the you mentioned at the shooting range question and I understand that there's a Williston court case that says that you can't restrict an existing shooting range. And I understand that we can don't know. I suppose the proposal is to put an exemption in there for existing shooting ranges, but then the question is what is an existing shooting range comes up. Right. So, yes, I have some language that is currently with the attorney to exempt them to put it and writing to make people feel comfortable that is provided them by law. But I think people feel more comfortable seeing that language in the ordinance where we might have a problem is getting people to register with the town that they have a shooting range. And that my point would be to give them protection from the law. And it's a way to delineate or delineate whether or not once this ordinance is a passive accepted, no more ranges could be built. So the ones that are already in existence be afforded that protection but no new ones would be allowed to come in because they're not established law only allows for established ranges to be examined from noise. Yeah. And I remember the discussion we had about registering shooting ranges is that we know, well, it's a good idea to know where shooting ranges are from a pregnancy standpoint, but is there a liability associated with it? It's a double X or it is. Yeah. Mr. Chair, but the shooting range ordinances are not part of what we're considering this evening. It's not on this docket. It's not, but the noise that they make is. But my concern is that they've gone to all this work to get these ordinances this far to us. I really think we need to have a public hearing to the public has some say before we decide we want to go splitting up town, rural, urban, commercial or any of that. I would rather hear from the voters that this is going to impact. Yeah, there's some there's at least one. But I'm not as far as a public hearing go. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just can't see breaking this all up. Sorry. I didn't mean to put your mic on me because this is a considerable amount of time and work is going into this is something we asked them to do.  I can't see us asking them to break them up now until we hear from the public. I'm very impressed with what I've read and pleased that it's covered so many of the complaints that we've heard from people. Other than we need to do the dog stuff. But anyway, we have that prepared to just not that I. That's just my feeling. I just I think, you know, we're for the six of us or whoever to decide. I really think we need to hear from the general public as to what they want us to do for us. That's just my say. Kendall, I'm sorry, but this one time I can't agree with you. I'm going to I'm going to piggyback off what Don just said and be in the middle of half with Kendall, half with Don, because if we don't all print this out and get our highlighters out and look at the things that are important and not important, then we're going to have a whole nother meeting with feedback. Maybe we found things that are important are important. And you're going to we're going to lose a whole, a whole production window between meetings of looking at this and and having conversations with you guys about how maybe we can adjust this a little bit or maybe we don't really need this one piece. That way we're not caught off guard and the town comes out and they love this and they want just this and sign it over. But if it's the complete opposite, at least we'll have the direction. That's my recommendation is that we all look at it thoroughly with the things we want and send send a lot of emails to bug you for a month because month two weeks rather because we haven't worn anything but you know that's that's my recommendation. So the comments I've heard is there's some request for some clarity around what definition of public. What that means there was times there was there was a question about times for trash pickup. There's some language around example shooting ranges that we need to consider. The other thing I wanted to throw in about the shooting range to was was a definition of a private shooting range on private property. So I have a definition that I took from some of my research shooting or sport shooting range or range shall mean an area designed or operated for the use of archery rifle shotguns pistol ski trap black powder or any other similar sport shooting. I like to find as a business shooting range or 117 acres on our road. It's pretty wide open. I don't think there's a I don't think there's a land recommendation either as far as distances from dwellings and all that because unless you're actually engaging and hunting you can just start a firearm right next to your house. I don't know that's all things about firearms because our arms are are going to be the most contentious thing of any of this with sound and everything else.  You can't really make an ordinance that takes that private land ownership. Right. And that's not the goal of the ordinance. It's just a starting point for discussion or us in the residents. An additional question about a table. So in C, it talks about prohibitions for non residential uses. End of a sound generated on the properties being used for other than residential purposes. But then table a has source premises of residential, which I wouldn't think would apply to that section because the entire section is about non residential. So I wasn't sure if like E and though I think there is an excessive following stated limits it. The table doesn't make sense to me where it's at and how it's referenced and I didn't know whether that was just me misunderstanding. I think for non residents uses would be like for the Essex experience when they have concerts there is really nothing there to guide them for what the sound should be. And this would kind of be a reference to decimal readings. Yeah, but what confuses me is that in the table this there's a residential listed for source premises. So if we're talking about non residential I totally understand that that wouldn't be non residential uses. But within the table the source premises of residential that's that's where I'm getting confused. I think just to get that residential square than the rest of it makes sense to you. Well I think what the confusion might be is the table isn't necessarily just for prohibited non uses that could probably be placed somewhere else. Because if someone does generate a noise complaint, usually it's residential that we deal with not so much commercial. So this is something that is not subjective. So I think to answer your question the placement of where the table is is probably not conducive to read in a way that's understandable. Okay, because initially I thought it belonged better and he where it's first really referred to as table a but I mean I'm getting into the weeds here but I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't misinterpreting. Valid point and we can easily move that. Thanks Tracy. Any other changes or any comments. I know there's, I said there's a couple. There's at least one hand up on public. Oh, Betsy. Hi, thanks. Thanks Andy. I'm sorry, I apologize for not remembering your last name. So when we have the call that comes into 911 to go to this certain area for noise violation for the ordinance, couldn't the poor could the 911 operative have the be able to pull up that ordinance and say and by the way this is a rural area and this is the this is the piece to it so that they wouldn't have to be quickly on their toes. What is this a rural or is it suburban or is it urban and what is the rule per each of those things that the 911 operative would be able to tell them this is where this one falls under might make it easier I don't know if it's possible. That's all. Thank you. That's not something we necessarily want to put on online operators because of of calls we don't want to get them tied up. It's easier for the officer to take the call and do the research if he does find a violation. So I'd like to keep that with the officers rather than put that on the dispatchers and tie up that phone line. Make sense. Thank you. Thanks Betsy. Thank you. Take the second find that unmute. Thanks Sandy. Hi guys. A couple questions then that I had the same question that Betsy did so thanks for answering that Rob. Do we also have the capability because I know in terms of that. Do we have like future capabilities as well to somehow tie those complaints into the program that if you wanted to segment them out the officer wouldn't necessarily have to say a breath the program could do that for them. I don't think that program allows you to have ordinances in it the language. It does allow you to pull up the violation for a warning or a fine. So at this point there. There is no way to upload the ordinances in its entirety to that cat our cat RMS system. There's no no way to like code something in that way so it would pop up for a district or something. Generally generally know that she's she's referring to our records management system and generally know we don't have the ability to be able to determine a certain address is in a. Particular location and then and then have that marked in that system where the system will automatically tell us well that's in a commercial area or something like that. We don't have that ability yet and I'm not sure whether that's even on the radar to do that. So right now no we wouldn't have that ability and honestly it's it's we've been we've been doing this for years with this no shooting area. Where an officer will get called to a certain area for a shooting violation and then just quickly have to look at the ordinance or the map to find out whether that's in you know whether it's in the shooting area or not. So it this isn't a big lift to be able to for an officer to be able to determine you know what areas which it's they're going to handle the complaint one way or the other it's not like. You know they're just going to not handle the complaint if the if the person calling is in the wrong area they're still going to give them service. So it's so the map itself then is districted in terms of like color coded or something when they pull the map up. That's the way our shooting ordinances are no shooting area now is coded with with a boundary that goes that goes around that area so the officer can quickly look at a map and find out. And we have that map in our dispatch center and we have it in our officers room and in various places so the officers can quickly look at it so. So that's something like in terms of what Kendall is speaking to in terms of sound no ordinances because there are really we are we kind of are districted without actually formalizing it. So other ordinances could be the color coded to a map as well. Correct they that yes they could be and that's what I was referring to before is we've done this with our shooting no shooting area for a long time where we've sectioned it out as certain areas are more dense than others. And we could do that with other or other sections of the ordinance it would make it a little more complicated, but that could be done if it was if it was desired. And then also when you guys comb through this. I'm not sure if I'm understanding completely right but it sounds like some of this was driven by as a junction as well in terms of their timeline and kind of cookie cutting when we thought we're merging. So, when you go through your complaints or even I know Rob has done such a lot a lot of work so I know to put another load on this is could be heavy left but maybe not depending on how you query that database. How, how often you guys then when you get those kind of complaints like five categories of types of complaints that take up a lot of service calls. Do you kind of take a look at those data sets to see what regions they are and troubles you from that way, as opposed to an like a blanket thing for the whole town. There's you're essentially talking about talking about what what's called them call all management. I think it's called where where we're essentially evaluating how many calls come in in a certain area of a certain type. I think that's what you're referring to. Yes. So yes, we can do that. And like I said before that the issue that we start having with a noise ordinance for instance is that noise travels like a shooting area where you can specifically say that this is happening in a in this residence. It travels so you so you could have problems on those boundaries. So, you know, sectioning things out would would be feasible however it would also bring some challenges. Absolutely. So then that's the other part about the committee is kind of working with each other in terms of our zoning and now we're working on zoning regs and why burns are so important, especially as we create denser areas and for the area so I'm hoping we're dovetailing those together. We live right next to the liquor store the beverage outlet Kevin Cattell store, and we were welcome one morning by bottles and cans being picked up at 245 in the morning. Kevin's a very good neighbor so it only happened once in a recall.  Does that also include other types of pickups in places like ours that we're in the center zone where the high residential zone, we're in a business zone, and we're in all the zone so what happens to someone like us. Yeah, certainly those are the those are the various types of issues that come up is what zone are you in and what what is the problem in your specific zone is there or is there a problem. So that's those are the kinds of issues that would come up that we would have to work through. So and then the other part that I saw in terms the sustained sound as opposed to an intermittent sound, one of the problems that we deal with every single day. I love people just to sit here for an hour or two at certain times a day. It's an it's when that store gets busy next door, and if you can hear the sirens right now but But when the story gets busy right next door. There's a lot of those mufflers pop popping, and it's not sustained so much, but it's the frequency of how often they're doing it in a certain period of time. It's very disruptive. And there's a lot of residents around here. So I don't know how you write that into something, but I am, I am concerned with also seeing just the word trash being used as opposed to other commercial truck pickups that might create those kind of sounds in a residential area as well. Because it is very disruptive. And then the other question, of course, I, you know, the public urination so and I understand that it gets dicey when someone's on someone's property but everyone does have the right to live peacefully and not have their property value go down because of the bad behaviors of neighbors and and be able to go outside and join the yard. Certainly been in a situation where someone was urinating, kind of in a side yard but it's easily viewable by public and the kids school bus goes by, and you can see him urinating so what do you do with that. I don't know that this kind of ordinance cover some like that. It's not happening anymore but it was happening frequently. Not sure why they stopped, but they don't appear to be doing anymore but those are the kind of things that I don't know how to flesh that out a little bit because it's private versus public. And then the, I don't, there's got to be other towns that deal with this that might be doing a little bit better job. And what was the other question I had a couple more other questions so I don't know if anyone else has a question I have to look back at the man Miranda just sparked my memory so if I can just put my hand down and go back and look and then come back if that's okay. Sure. Yeah, no problem. Thank you. No problem.  Yes, Brad can listen. I want to try to understand this nuisance or noise ordinance as pertains to backyard shooting ranges from what I just heard was. There's a suggestion of changing or using this ordinance as a way of getting what they didn't get in the firearms ordinance where we spent nearly two years of discussions and public hearings, restricting new fire, new shooting ranges. Somebody is operating safely lawfully respectfully in their backyard shooting range. Why do you want to target them. That's my question. And it seems like that was the suggestion is it put further restrictions on those that are operating safely respectfully lawfully. So I would would not want to see this ordinance as a backdoor way of making changes to the firearms ordinance. I mean do you want to have another year and a half or two year discussion on the firearms ordinance. I mean that's that you're addressing the issues that we had we discussed for a very long time. Thanks. I just want to clarify that the police were not trying to get anything that was not included in the firearms ordinance they were presenting a public nuisance ordinance based on some of the issues they've heard one of which was noise. They have nothing in there right now about firearms based on some other feedback that received about the noise being a way to target firearms they're looking at some other options to essentially exempt the backyard shooting ranges. But this is just they're not intentionally trying to revisit the firearms discussion from a couple years ago. They're overlapping topics but it's not any sort of backdoor way to tackle something that from a couple years ago. Can I can I respond. Yeah go ahead brand. Yeah I totally agree with that. I think the firearms discussions that we had there were a few people in town that were creating some noise issues and we went out and talked with them and I think we addressed that to my knowledge. There hasn't been those issues since maybe wrong PD can address that and respond to that but I think it's been pretty civil pretty quiet. Thanks. Oh, yeah I can Brad I'm not I'm this is Ron Hogan I'm not I'm not aware that we've had at least a rash of shooting range complaints or anything like that I can't exactly tell you without looking whether we've had any or not in the last year and a half but I don't remember there being a rash of them or anything like that. I will say that the discussion as far as the firearms ordinance goes and changes to that came up as a result of the consideration of this noise ordinance. And that was one of the reasons why this discussion was put on hold last fall because of that reason that came up. We realized that this was going to affect that and we wanted to go back and look at that to see if there was another way to be able to respect all of those concerns. So this is we're here tonight to get, you know, the opinions of the board and get some direction from them and in the public as to what what is being sought to address some of the issues that we that we do know about. Lorraine I see your hand is up again. Yeah, I took a look. Thank you, chair. Yeah, so a couple questions one wasn't the open container. Um, does that conflict at all with the new state law that we can now to have to go from restaurants because those aren't sealed per se. They're supposed to be sealed. They're sealed. What kind of seal is it though it's not it's like a cup and that's right I mean what's considered sealed, and should that be more defined maybe it's all I'm saying, maybe. And then the other question was in terms of force ability of the sound ordinance with an 80 decibel range for the intermittent. How do you enforce that because then it's gone. How do you even catch that. And then the other thing I was saying too is, is there anything in the front mirror in terms of working on abusing our service calls and people who just overload or system with calls that were just basically false calls. And I think that's all questions. So for the instantaneous one. It has to be a spike and honestly Lorraine we would have to be on site in order to capture that. So if that complaint is made. And when the officers arrive, and there is no instantaneous spike and there really is no violation that we can enforce. Part of the limiting subjectivity is having the officers present and observe the violation so you don't get a neighbor that's calling in on another neighbor because they're having disputes. And I'm saying in my situation where happens all the time. It is very difficult to ever capture that and force it. If there's a pattern, then we would try to target that pattern time. If you have a specific time where you're you, you can pinpoint within, you know, 1520 Mr half an hour, providing there's an officer free we could dedicate someone to go up there and try to capture a potential violation to see if in fact there is a violation. Okay, I will pay more attention to that. I appreciate that rough. And then the other two, quite well, the last question about in terms of people kind of abusing calls. And the cost to our town. Well, we would still have to respond to the calls. We can differentiate these types of calls from suspicious calls. If someone's acting suspiciously, they have to be able to articulate why it's suspicious. So we can decide whether or not that is something that fits criteria to go investigate. If it's suspicious is because they don't like their neighbor or that position or that person doesn't dress appropriately. Then we might not decide not to go out there. It's not a violation of law. We're not going to interact with that person. Unless they can articulate, you know, this this person's wearing a trench coat and it's 90 degrees out. That might merit going to talk to that person to find out if we can offer services to them to help them are or at least started a discussion with them. So if we're if we're getting repeat calls that don't really need the service that was called for repeatedly. We do have a way then to hopefully have them choose a better path than making these repeat calls that are not really serviceable. If it's that point where there's a pattern, yes, we could use CJC they do offer mediation. Both parties have to be open to that. But that is another way to alleviate some of the calls for service to look through that to both parties.  You have a choice. You can either do this or eventually you'll get a fine or something because you always have to answer the call. You can never not answer the call. Well, this batch has to answer the call. But if there's a pattern where we see that they're using the police to empower over neighbor, then we would might make the administrative decision that we are not going to go to that that residents for that particular noise call. If it's the same every time. Gotcha. Thanks. Okay. So, my understanding of our, what we've come through here, I think it went through the list of, you know, definition of public. There's some discussion about actually changing the collection times or whatever the brass haulers and also other. Like I said, it's complicated by the fact of where you are. As as Lorraine says, she's lives lives lives in a residence that's right next to her that might. That also falls in with equipment and construction to because. Technically. In the house at 5 o'clock in the morning. Neighbor is not about it. That would be awesome. So, that's not going to happen. There's the language around shooting range exception that we want to potentially include anything else. Another one. General layout. Oh, yeah. Okay. So that would be that to work on these things and come back again at some point when you're comfortable to do that. You don't need anything more from us. And then I think we go to processes. We have two public hearings for before. So we adopt and then have to do public hearings and then an act. A little while my memory is that you. You have the first approval of the ordinance. Once you do that, you warn a public hearing. There are no changes after that public hearing. You do the final adoption. It's basically a two step approval process, but every time you make changes, you have to warn another another public hearing. I would, I would propose that we can chat later when you're comfortable with what you think is the final version will bring that to the select board. If you're ready to accept it and want a public hearing, we can do that. If you're not, then we'll take the feedback and make any changes and see when you're ready to make that first adoption. Right. We don't want to start the public hearing process till the board's ready to be comfortable with everything. Correct. Yes. Right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for having us. Hey, moving on to business item 5e discussion and potential action regarding the creation of a charter review committee. It is possible charter review committee. We talked about this at your last meeting. The idea of creating a review committee of residents to take a look at the town charter look for any updates or changes that might be applicable at this time. I would like to see a possible add and more of a defined purpose of a charter review committ