Okay, like to call the select board meeting for Monday, November 1st, 2021 to order first item on the agenda any agenda additions or changes from staff. Then from staff, any changes from board members. Okay, then we can move on to public to be heard public to be heard is a time of the agenda where folks can bring issues before the board that issues that are not on the agenda. If you'd like to speak during public to be heard, you can either put your hand up in the. The meeting app or mention in the chat or if you're in the room, you can raise your hand physically. If you'd like to speak to the board, please be brief. Please be civil please refrain from using inappropriate language address your remarks to me as a select board chair. Please do not attack other members of the public or or our town staff. Also, if you are in the meeting online, please mute your microphone and turn off your camera to limit distraction. And in and inadvertent interruptions. And with that, I will. I see Betsy Dunn's hand up Betsy. Thank you, Andy. Good evening. I am one of a number of aspects citizens that regularly attend the select board meetings. We are engaged with current events, because we don't always agree with the select board positions and our vocal about it. We are called devices. In reality, we are engaged citizens, something I think you should want. And at these meetings, there is no back and forth during the citizens to be heard. We talk and most of the time you listen, but no response ever comes. I would like you to consider a new approach to citizen engagement. There's recently come to my attention that Burlington has started to have NPAs, which are neighborhood planning assemblies monthly. They are advocacy groups. They are organized forums where neighbors can learn and be informed on current public issues. And the public can advise their city council of their concerns. Presentations on the presented topics occur with anyone chiming in on the issues. These presentations can be made by public officials and residents by signing up and submitting the topic ahead of time. This will allow our elected official to understand town issues and for the residents to understand the select board positions. I ask you to consider this idea to engage the town in the democratic process. Thank you. Thank you, Betsy. That's a, that's a interesting discussion and we can consider it. Thank you. Hey, I see Margaret Smith. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, Margaret. Okay, thank you. This is an issue that came up two or three years ago about a persistent hum that people were hearing. And I've started tracking it. I've heard it every night for the last week and probably before that. And I don't know if anyone ever resolved the problem of where that hum is coming from, but, but I will say it is disturbing my sleep. And I would like to somehow pursue this further to see if we can make that noise go away. Thank you. I would need more information as to what where, how, what time. I've received no other complaint for this. So I would need more information. You're welcome to call me, Margaret, tomorrow and give me details. Okay. Yeah, thanks. I will. And I did ask one other person if they'd heard this particular noise and they said yes, but I'd be happy to give you a call. Thank you. Or an email. Thanks. Thank you, Margaret. See, Mary post. Hi, yeah. Responding to what Margaret saying. I seem to recall that we had the same issue. A couple of maybe a year or two or three years ago, I'm not sure. And people were writing about it, wondering if they anybody else had heard this. And everybody was trying to figure out what it was. And I think they kind of thought that maybe it was coming from a lumberyard. But I don't know if that were was ever resolved, but I know this is not a new issue. And it seems to have started again. So I just wanted to add that. Thank you. Thanks, Mary. Yeah, this does ring some bells. I do remember seeing it discussed in front porch forum. And then there was a suggestion right that it was equipment running at during the nighttime at a lumberyard. Right. I don't know if there was any, any intentional action that that took place to address it or whether what, or whether it's even considered a problem. I don't know. We'll need more information. Look into it. Okay. I see Irene, I assume that's runner. I'm in my car. I'll be in the room shortly, but it's boring. I'm going to start from here. So, in advance of your budget session next, there are still many questions around what in the senior center folks there, having the past raised a number of funds or activities for supplies. With COVID, of course, they were unable to hold things like their crafts bizarre for the last two years, but they do want to revive the activities there. They do want to do more publicity. And I think it would be helpful to all of us who are part of the senior center to understand. But funding the village if any is putting in what funding the town is putting in and that's supposed to go to and what the expectations are around any fundraising that the seniors themselves do. Thank you. Thank you, Irene. Yeah, we have not seen the budget proposal yet for the senior center for anything actually something we will likely be talking about during the budget discussions. Thank you Irene. See I don't see any other hands online. Any hands in the room. Look and see if there's anybody on the phone. No phone connections. I see Melissa. Hi, I have to duck out early because of the day of solemnity. And I was wondering what the talking points are surrounding tomorrow's election maybe others have already placed their ballot but you know the pros versus the cons. Is there going to be a list of notes from from the meeting. Some or where would I find because they can't stay. Melissa that's a that's a village vote. The select board has no. Okay. No input or discreet jurisdiction in that if you go to the villages website, or if you go to sxbt.org and click on the village of sx junction. There, there's, there should be links there to all of the information that's been provided to voters of the village. Doesn't it have bearing in both areas. I guess I'm kind of surprised that you're not talking about it. Having lived in both jurisdictions myself. We are talking about the implications later on in the agenda. That's the, the agreements that we're talking about. That's what I'm talking about. If, if there is going to be some kind of overview, the, the minutes, I guess, from the meeting, are they posted. Minutes. I've been out of state and I've come back. So I just don't remember. But you're probably aware that it's a holy day of observance. So a lot of people are not supposed to be working today. And then they have to go in tomorrow uninformed and place a vote. Anyway, you didn't really answer the question you're sort of circumventing it so take care. So Melissa was trying to answer the, the select board minutes are all posted on the town's website. If you go to the select board tab, they'll they're all in there tonight's meeting minutes won't be posted until likely the end of the week because we have by statute five days, five business days or so to get them posted. So today's minutes will not be available until later in the week. But all of our prior minutes are all available online. And you could also look at today's the package for today's meeting has the current The agreement says they stand while we're still negotiating the content of them. If that's helpful. Right. Thank you. Let's see. I don't see any new hands. So let's move on the next item on the agenda is the public hearing to discuss the survey of existing class three town highway number 708 blurry road. So this is an extension of the public hearing that we had started during our last meeting. We reopen it. I can start by just kind of a brief description of what we're, what we're talking about here tonight. We're here to see whether the select board will approve the flurry road survey and direct staff to seek all the necessary deeds and documentation associated with this survey. Flurry road is a point one six mile view shaped road off the towers road. It's right across the street from the intersection of towers road and clover drive. It's listed on the state highway map as highway 708. And again, it is a class three road. Flurry roads boundaries have been historically difficult to establish. There's really no documentation to speak of on file. We do know that it's not depicted on our tax maps at this time. But it has been class three road in the state of Vermont since 1943 at least. The problem right now is without a survey. Technically we can claim per state statute three rod right away. That just can't be accomplished out there due to restrictions and. The structures that are already been constructed along the frontage of this road. Staffs recommending we claim a to rod. Right away, which is 31 feet wide centered on the existing road and the survey that we had you had in your packet last week. Depicts that to rod right away. This public hearing is part two of a two part process of approving the survey. We had a site meeting last spring. And two weeks ago, to discuss this survey with the property owners that have butted the. And there was a few alterations to the survey at that point. Our new survey is references all those changes that were made at that site meeting. Moving forward, the process will be if the select board chooses to approve this survey tonight. We would file this in the land records. Number 1, number 2, we would have our line survey or go out and set monuments. Along our right away. A notice of completion will be sent to all the abutting property owners. With the notice of appeal language, which allows them to appeal to the select board. If they have an issue with the survey. And then the clock starts ticking to the 120 day waiting period. For the notice of completion. And then the appeals process will expire at that 120 days. Once that 120 days has gone by, staff will work with our legal counsel. To show up all the. And finalize them and get them signed and put into the land records. And I, I believe, uh, mick leddie. Is here with us. He's our legal counsel. And I also had Joe Flynn here, land surveyor to answer any questions you folks may have. Hey, thanks, Aaron. Any questions or members. Thanks to Aaron. I know we just had a lot of discussion around this. Uh, previously, um, I think one of the reasons we. Had asked about continuing tonight was there was specifically one individual who. Wasn't able to remain during the meeting. Um, have we heard back from either him or his legal counsel? Um, just kind of. I want to make sure that we've given everyone the opportunity that they need to. Yes, of course I have, uh, um, I have discussed this with. Uh, Mr pelkey. Um, the town is going to provide him a letter. Which we have. He, I have talked with his legal counsel. Um, he reviewed the letter. They both accept it. Um, I think, and so I did send this off to Mr pelkey registered certified mail. Um, I told him that, uh, after the 120 day waiting period, I would file this in the land records as well for. And to behold, so I think, I think, I think he's okay. Awesome. Great. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Other questions. Um, this is a public hearing. Are there any, uh. Comments from the public either online or in the room. See any hands up in the room. Online. I see Mary posts and but I'm not sure if that's real. Mary, did you want to comment on this? No, my hands not, not up. Andy. Thank you. Yep. Sorry. Monkey teams artifact that seems to be flagging me. Um, okay. Seeing there's no, uh, Doesn't appear to be any additional public comment or questions. Okay. Motion to close the public hearing. Make the motion. We call this public hearing on, uh, where he wrote. Thank you, Don. The second. Second. Thank you, Pat. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed. Hey, we've closed the public hearing. Um, we'll be back in a little bit later in the agenda, so we'll come back to that. We have a second public hearing tonight that I will open for the dog licensing and control ordinances. Um, who's going to speak to that? Do we have, uh, There he is. Thank you very much. Um, proposing to the select board for passage is the dog ordinance. Um, as we mentioned last thing, the ordinance has been updated since 1996. And there were some shortcomings to the previous ordinance. Uh, one did not allow a fine for dogs that went under unregistered in, uh, the town. Uh, also we've updated that all dogs must have a collar.  Um, there's something less than a vicious dog complaint and outlines how to do that. Um, we have language in there for confinement of animals and vehicles, which is consistent with Vermont law. And we've added running at large, uh, revision, uh, when dogs are off, um, their own private property that they must be on a leash. Um, whether it's on a sidewalk parking lot and these can be on a sidewalk parking lot. And these should coincide with what, um, the park has instituted for, um, their, uh, dog restrictions that Indian brook. Thank you. Um, Any questions from board members. If we've discussed this a number of times. Um, okay, then I will open up to the public for comments or for questions. Um, any comments or questions in the room? See hands, um, Any, I don't see any hands online. There is one person who's on the phone. Like to speak, go ahead and speak now. All right. Oh, Mary post. Excuse me. Yeah, just a quick question. I'm sorry. I haven't been following this, but have we made any decisions about, um, having dogs at the reservoir having to be on a leash? Yeah. Um, I'm not sure Mary to answer your question directly. I know that that falls under the parks and rec. Um, and their regulations within the parks. Yeah, the parks, the park policy is that. Dogs are allowed off leash outside of the parking area. And the swimming area. Yeah. Well, my concern is that I do remember going to a meeting one time when a man came there and he was, if I recall he had a lot of health problems and he said that if a dog were to jump on him, that would kind of like end his life, not kill him, but he wouldn't, he wouldn't have the life he has now. And I know that there are, I read from reading various things about the community. There have been dog fights. There are dogs that are not in the people's control. So I think it's time for us to make, I mean, do you have any authority over the rec department? Who's the man? So the, the, the, um, yes, we have authority over the rec department, but the, the, or the ordinance change that adds in the potentially vicious dog. Definition. Uh, It allows some action with regard to a dog on dog interactions. Um, and the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the vicious dog is only, only, uh, comes into play if a, a, um, a human is, um, the vicious, the potentially vicious dog, I believe could also be, uh, brought into play for a dog on dog interaction or, uh, for threatening dogs. Um, Well, what I'm thinking about is that I think it's time to have a really, really good discussion. Um, and I think that if a dog is on a leash, you don't have a dog there that could have health problems. A lot of us are getting older. You don't want to be jumped on. Um, and I love dogs. I'll have dogs all my life. And I would never, you know, but, but people don't want to be jumped on. Some people are afraid of dogs. Um, There's all kinds of stuff. And if a dog is on a leash, then everyone can enjoy the park. And if a dog is on a leash, there's part of the community that cannot enjoy the park. And I really don't believe that it's that cruel and mean to a dog to have that dog be on a leash. If he's in the park, they can go to the dog park, or they can go to other parks around here where it's not as big an issue. I really hope that we will try to get the dog's leash also to keep the water cleaner. So Mary, that's, yeah, that's a different discussion separate from the, this ordinance, this is a discussion that a number of people have asked us to have. Okay. Thank you so much. Yep. Thanks, Mary. Any other comments? Okay. Seeing none. Make the motion. We closed the public hearing on dog licensing and ordinance control. Okay. Thank you. Don. Second. Okay. I heard Tracy Tracy. Thank you for the second. Any further discussion? Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Motion passes. Hearing move on to business items six a consider approval of flurry road survey documentation. Do we need to have any further discussion? Go ahead, Don. I need to recuse myself and voting on this issue. Okay. Obviously. All right. All right. Any, any other discussion? Do we, So we want to make a motion or do we want to anything we need to do other than make a motion? Okay. Go ahead. I think I can make the motion here. I make the motion that the select board approve the survey of flurry road as per title 19 of state statute. And direct the staff to acquire the necessary deeds. And then we can make a motion. And then we can move on to the second item. And then we can take the motion from all of betters to document the flurry road right of way. Thank you, Sue. Have a second. Second. Thank you, Pat. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? A motion passes. Four zero with one extension. Thank you, Don. Moving on to, uh, for all ordinances again, we just need a motion. No other discussion unless board members want to have discussion. Go ahead, Tracy, did you have something? No, I was just gonna make the motion, go for it. I mean, that can happen after. No, go for it. I move the select board approved final passage of chapter 404 dog licensing and control of the town of Essex municipal ordinance effective immediately. Second. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you, Don. Any further discussion? Hey, hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes five zero and this is effective immediately. Is that, that was in there, right? Mr. Chair, can we remind the audience that we've asked for quiet while the board is discussing and talking? Yes, side conversations, please if you want to. Would you be able to protect a little more too because you're part of your budget? Oh. Is the, is this, is the sound, is the sound not working? Can you? I don't hear you either. Ah. My apologies. My apologies. Thank you, I have nothing to say to me. So, we're getting started. We'll see if we can address the issues and yes, I will try to speak louder. My apologies. Okay, moving on to business items, six C presentation and discussion about retail cannabis. Who do we have on deck for that? Robert. Thanks. So we have Melanie, Melanie Needle from the Regional Planning Commission and Melanie is Mariah with you as well. Mariah is joining from another remote location. Great. Yes, I'm here. Great. So welcome. So I, so I'll share my screen for my part of the presentation and then I'll give Mariah control and she'll share her screen for her part of the presentation. So let's just start with introductions. I'm Melanie Needle. I'm a senior planner at the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. Mariah, do you wanna go ahead and introduce yourself? Sure. Hi, I'm Mariah Flynn. I'm a resident of Essex and also I work doing substance misuse prevention. Public health in Burlington and I'm excited to be here kind of thinking about what that looks like for our community. Thanks, Mariah. Okay. So I'm sharing my screen. Does that work for everybody? Can you see the presentation? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So again, I'm Melanie. Thank you so much for having Mariah and myself on your agenda. We appreciate the time. So the title of our presentation is preventing substance misuse and supporting healthy communities and thinking about retail cannabis in the town of Essex. As we discussed just a little bit about our backgrounds, I'm a senior planner at the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. I've also been a steering committee at the Chittenden Prevention Network focused on substance misuse prevention for youth. I was representing CCRPC on this committee, also representing CCRPC on the United Way of Northwest Vermont's Prevention Center for Excellence. And as Mariah also discussed, she's the Coalition Director for the Burlington Partnership for a Healthy Community. She's a steering committee member at Prevention Works for Vermont, also the Chittenden Prevention Network, as well as the Prevention Center of Excellence from the United Way. She's a village resident raising two teenagers at Essex High School. And she's the steering committee member at the SMART approaches to marijuana for Vermont. So tonight we're gonna talk about, we will give you an overview of Act 164 and the authority that it provides municipalities. We will talk about a few data points relating to youth and substances and also talk about the risk and protective factors for substance use, the municipal strategies to reduce youth use and resources available to municipalities in thinking about health in the built environment. Okay, so Act 164 summarized. So what Act 164 did was create a tax and regularly legislation for the state of Vermont. It enables legal sale, purchase and taxation of adult use cannabis. Adult use means it only applies to people under, or of the minimum age of 21. Act 164 created an independent commission within the executive branch. That's the Cannabis Control Board that is currently doing its rulemaking to regulate and license adult use cannabis in Vermont. Public consumption is not allowed under the Act 164 legislation. 164 also set limits for THC content in cannabis flower as well as limiting the content in cannabis concentrates. Act 164 has also provided taxes and fees regarding state licenses, local licenses, sales and use tax, as well as excise tax. And 30% of the revenue allocated, or 30% of the revenue from cannabis sales is intended to be allocated to afterschool and prevention initiatives for youth. It's likely that this revenue will not be available to prevention organizations until after the retail establishment gets set up. That may consume a lot of the revenue. Also in Act 164, towns can vote to opt in in the retail sale of cannabis. So what this could mean is establishing Cannabis Control Board for licensing. Municipalities cannot issue blanket prohibitions and cannabis shall not be regulated as farming under Act 164. And also, if any municipality opts into retail cannabis or integrated licenses, that doesn't pertain to cultivation, testing, warehousing and distribution. Those types of cannabis uses are not subject to municipal opt-in. So the timeline for Act 164 is really important. As I mentioned earlier, rulemaking is not final, it's still underway. The expected final adoption of rules is March 1, 2022. And then after that, May 1, 2022, licensing can begin for small cultivators, integrated licensees, testing labs and integrated licensees may begin selling cannabis and cannabis products to the public in those towns that have opted in. And just a point of clarification for folks wondering what an integrated license is, that is a licensee licensed by the board that engages in cultivation, wholesaling, manufacturing and retailing. And so if an integrated license is in an opt-in town or if an integrated license is in a town that has not opted in, then the retail cannot happen in that community. And then on October 1st, 2022, licenses are issued for retailers and retailers may begin selling cannabis and cannabis products to the public in those towns that have opted in. So that was kind of a crash course in Act 164. What the town of Essex should consider at this point is whether the town should schedule a vote on whether to opt in retail cannabis. And prior to doing that, it's been practiced around the state and other municipalities to survey residents prior to a vote to find out what residents think about having retail cannabis in the town, what businesses think about having retail cannabis in the town. Also thinking through whether the town needs to hold information sessions prior to an opt-in vote, thinking through the tourism that could result or be impacted negatively from retail cannabis taxation, what are the impacts to health and youth and safety. Also thinking through additional topics about details of the cannabis law, town regulations to limit youth exposure and also establishing a cannabis research committee that oversees this kind of work and establishing a committee that has broad representation, including perspectives from health, safety, youth prevention. So if you choose to hold a vote, there's no deadline for voting. The town may choose not to hold a vote, which is okay. If you do choose to have a vote, the municipality shall affirmatively permit the operation of such cannabis establishments by either a majority vote or by an Australian ballot at an annual or special meeting warned for that purpose. And then in this opt-in vote, the town could consider either asking about just the retailers or the integrated license. And again, the definition of integrated license is cultivating, manufacturing, warehousing and retailing. The question can also be put on the ballot by the select board or via standard residents, 5% signature collection process. If opt-in is the favorable choice, then the next step is to work to establish local regulations in alignment with state rulemaking. Again, rulemaking is still underway and we won't know the rulemaking until March 2022. If the town of Essex ends up opting in, the next steps are establishing a local cannabis control commission, which will act similarly to the looker control board and then taking a look at where there are opportunities to strengthen regulations to protect youth. Youth are very vulnerable in this situation. So the options for doing that include either zoning, licensing or by ordinance to ensure that retail cannabis locations are not too close together. So for example, a density rule could be one retail store per block or in terms of buffer zones, the cannabis control board has already had proposed buffer zones of 500 to 1,000 feet from schools and libraries and other areas where youth congregate. And then also looking at sign regulations. Advertising of cannabis is very impactful for youth. It's a risk factor that Mariah will go over in more detail. Just a general thought about which way to do the regulation, maybe the most straightforward approach would be doing the regulation with the cannabis control commission. So you have one body in the town overseeing it and not like duplicating the regulation. So having the cannabis control commission as well as the development review board, it might make sense to consider centralizing all the regulation with the local cannabis control commission. So just some things to think about down the road if the town of Essex ends up opting in. So in terms of the impacts of retail cannabis in Essex and on youth, the town of Essex already has a framework establishing the principles of health in the built environment. In the Essex town plan, Heart and Soul was identified health and recreation as one of the core values for the town of Essex. Also in the town plan, it says education and activities that help all of us know how to be safe, smart and make healthy choices. And also goes on to talk about substance use, education prevention and services. So the regulation options that I talked about in the previous slide helped to implement these principles of health in the built environment. If the town of Essex chooses to opt in or if the town of Essex chooses not to opt in, then you are implementing the principles of health that are talked about in the town plan as well as in the ECOS regional plan which talks about healthy community design. So ensuring that retail cannabis is cited away from where youth congregate and the youth are protected in the built environment.  Does that work for you, Mariah, or do you want me to just keep going and I can next slide it for you? Sorry, there we go. Either way, it's fine with me. I can share my screen. Let me just make sure that I'm on the right slide so that I share at the right place. Here we go. And now I have to figure out how to share my screen. Top right corner next to the leave button. I think mine's a little different, but... Okay, does that look right? Can everyone see that? Yep, yes, we can see it. Wonderful, okay, so as I noted, I've been working in prevention, substance misuse prevention in Burlington, and I'm kind of excited to be talking about this issue here in the area I live in. So I think one of the things that Melanie kind of alluded to and that the town has already put into the town plan is that towns often don't get enough credit for their, our responsibility to set public health policy at a local level. And that a lot of these decisions that we make right now can have really long and lasting impacts on the health of a community and the way that the community either thrives or doesn't. So it is not a decision that should be taken lightly. And I'll say kind of just offer my own pieces that there are some towns that have voted on this issue already. And I think that I'm really glad that our area has been more thoughtful and has delayed this. And I would encourage us to continue to think about all the things that need to be researched in order to make sure that we put the right policies in place. There's long-term impacts for these types of things. So when we're thinking about prevention, ultimately the goal is to help kids or that I would say our goal is to help kids develop in a healthy way and to not develop a substance use disorder. And so for people who develop an addiction or substance use disorder, nine out of 10 of them started before the age of 18. So 90% of people started using early, right? And so our goal really as a community, as parents should be to delay that or for age of first use or that or heavy use while kids brains are still developing. And one of the reasons it's really important that we're talking about this when it comes to cannabis is that right now in Vermont, marijuana use or cannabis use has been rising in our state. And we're not seeing that with a lot of other substances. So alcohol use rates have been dropping in the last few rounds of survey collection or the last few years, but our marijuana use rates, which is how the question is asked on the Vermont Youth Risk Behavior Survey has been increasing and particularly vaping of marijuana or cannabis. But one of the things to note is even though our use rates are dropping in some areas, Vermont still has some of the highest use rates in the nation. So there are things about the way that kids are developing here that we should all be taking a look at. So I'm glad that we're talking about this. And I thought I would share just some of our local data. So this is from the Essex High School Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which is a survey that students take every two years across the state of Vermont. And these are the results for our district. And the kids just took the survey again, I think last week. So we'll get new results sometime in the next year as they compile all of that. But one thing to note is that here in our area, the places where we wanna be taking a look, obviously, or there's an increase in vaping or e-tobacco use products and an increase in marijuana use, or at least to study not dropping of marijuana use, whereas we're seeing some dropping as you can see for alcohol and cigarette use. So Vermont uses what's called the Vermont Prevention Model, which says that in order to, which is just a socio-ecological model, which says that in order to effectively prevent substance misuse, we have to engage at strategies around that at all levels. So we have to look at policies and systems at the physical or the community environment or the physical environment or the community and the culture and the social norms that we live in and then think about what resources and supports we're providing to people at organizations and within the relationships that they have and for individuals. So one of the risk factors at a community level is if the community norms around substance use for youth are unclear or they encourage use. So I just went out and took a couple pictures of our community to show some of the ways that other substances that we've legalized, like tobacco and alcohol, are showing up in terms of what our community prioritizes or what are the norms around use and how advertising looks for those things. So these are just from some of the retailers in our area. And then a protective factor, so a thing that helps reduce substance use, helps prevent and reduce substance use for youth are policies or norms that encourage non-use. So that might be like signs that say that properties are substance free or community events where things are promoted as substance free, particularly if those events are ones where kids are attending, where this Maple Street Park sign where it says that alcohol and smoking are prohibited. So there's a lot of ways to do that. These are just tiny examples. I just wanted to show some visuals, but there are kind of risk factors and protective factors for supporting prevention in kids. And we can talk a little bit more about those too. Oops, forgot I put a little arrow in there. So one of the things that Melanie started to talk about earlier was things that you can do with content, ordinance that you can put around content neutral advertising. So one of the things that we know kids are much more likely to be impacted by advertising and promotion than adults are. So, and particularly what's called like point of purchase advertising. So ads that you'll see right in the community versus in a newspaper or online. So those types of ads have been shown to have more impact on kids because they're walking by them every day and also adults that are going to those places usually have in mind what they're already have in mind what they're gonna buy. So this is just some research that's showing that there's some cannabis is a fairly new thing that's available legally, but some initial research is also showing that exposure to marijuana advertisements or cannabis advertisements are having an impact on kids and that how often kids are being exposed are increasing favorable attitudes around use. So just to think about again, at a community level, some of the root causes of use substance misuse or community normalization of use having it available lots of places where kids are access how easy it is for kids to get and available or how easy it is for anyone to get and sometimes they can give it to kids too. And then low perception of harm. So that's some work that we have to do. There's definitely some data that shows that the perception of harm around cannabis use has been steadily dropping over the years for both adults and kids. Even at the same time that the potency continues to rise and the actual harm and the consequences are increasing. So there's some work that we have to do there to help educate and raise awareness. And then some of the strategies. So these, so we've listed here some of the strategies that research shows can help prevent use or use initiation, youth initiation and use. But these are really not specific to cannabis. They're just specific to legal products, legal adult only products. So thinking about buffer zones near places where kids are gonna spend a lot of time, which is one of the things that Melanie also talked about in density maximum. So not the more retailers you have in one area, it can show kind of again that normalization of use that this is something we do a lot of in our community and that can give kids the perception that use is regular and normal. And then I've talked about prohibiting use at family friendly events. Thinking about prohibiting advertising. For all the reasons I talked about having clear warnings at stores or however we think about how products are available in ensuring that there's clear warnings about the health risks, a local options tax. So as the community decides whether that's something they wanna think about, one thing to note from the research is that youth are highly influenced by price and that is one of the ways where we can look at taxes the way that helps reduce youth use. And then I would just encourage us, this is an issue where we're all still learning across the nation what's gonna happen. And so data is really helpful in thinking about how we respond. So if the more that we can do to collect data and figure out what the impacts are the better. So I don't know, Melanie, you feel free to jump in here if you wanna add, but Melanie made these lovely maps just so you could see what it looks like to have buffers around the schools. So here's, hopefully you can see the visual there's a 500 foot buffer or a 1000 foot buffer around SX elementary school and SX free library. So we took the two youth friendly places in that area then also around SX middle school and Founders school and then also around the high school Fleming and Summit Street. So just so you could see a visual of what that would look like if you were to create that. And one of the nice things I've loved about working with CCRPC is that they've been able to help us create a lot of visuals for Burlington. So I really appreciate this kind of the visuals are really helpful when you're thinking about policy and I wanna encourage folks to continue kind of using that resource. So Melanie noted this a little bit as well but one of the things that I often or the folks in the prevention community often note to this that even though we recognize that community level prevention really has an impact on substance misuse in a community. Oftentimes public health isn't really at the table where those discussions are being made around policy at a community level. So the more that you can build public health or prevention representation into these decision-making bodies, the better off will be as a community. And the one thing that I would really stress is that this is, at this point in the game, folks have been looking at this issue for quite a while. So there's so many great resources out there right now. We've listed a few of them here just kind of helping with looking at preventing substance misuse on a municipal level or supporting health. There's this great website out of California where they're putting together all the best practices around how to advance public health and both public health and equity as you think about doing this work. So this is just a tiny tip of the iceberg of what's available to help make informed decisions around this. Thanks, Mariah, I guess. If anyone has any questions or comments for us and the agenda allows us to talk more. I don't know how we're doing on time. Board members, any questions? Two, go ahead. I just have a question on the integrated licensing and you were referencing that the opt-in at the community level is really only about the retail piece. So it sounds like there could be integrated licensed facilities that are existing even if we decide to not opt-in and they just would not have a retail component. Is that accurate? That is correct. So cultivating, testing, warehousing and distribution are not subject to any municipal opt-in. So you could still have those uses in your community. The opt-in is for retail and for the retail component of an integrated license. That's my understanding. Can I add to that though? Sure. Sorry, so what they're actually referencing there in the like who can start in May is actually the existing retailers. So right now what that means is it's the dispensaries, the cannabis dispensaries, so we wouldn't have to worry about that in our area, we don't have one, but so what it means is those places that have already been dispensing cannabis can get a retail license to dispense it commercially as well or to sell it commercially as well essentially. Yeah, that's really all that they gave kind of permission for they were trying to make it so that folks who are already ready could start earlier. So can I guys just ask for a clarification on that? You're saying that currently an integrated license would only be available to currently operating medical marijuana facilities? No, so anyone can be common integrated license, but in May, the only ones that will be ready that they'll be giving licenses to is the ones that have already been existing as a dispensary here. Yeah, I mean, and also my understanding is that you could have like an indoor cultivator coming into the town to do the growing in the town that's not subject to the opt-in rate. And it's also cannot be regulated as an agricultural use. And so if there was indoor grow warehousing in Essex, it would be subject to land use regulations just like any other use of similar nature. Go ahead, Tracy. So from my understanding, the medical marijuana, the dispensaries, the cultivation and the retail had to happen separately in different locations. I'm assuming that Act 164 or maybe the other one changed, but that will now allow the combining of those as long as it's within a municipality that has opted it, is that correct? I don't know the full answer to that. The integrated license, it's everything. It's growing, it's manufacturing, warehousing, distributing and retailing. The retail component of an integrated license can only happen in an opt-in community. I guess it doesn't make a difference. I was just more curious having been involved with zoning for medical dispensaries. So it doesn't pertain to this specific conversation. Yeah, I'm not sure if they have to be in the same location. The definition of integrated license, I don't think it says that they all have to be happening in the same location. So you can have a warehouse in one town and the retail arm of that integrated license in another municipality if that municipality opted in. Any other questions? Pat, go ahead. Can I get some verification around the idea of a cannabis control board from the material that we've provided, it seems to say that it would have literally zero effect to create locally as the licenses are going to be distributed at a state level. Am I wrong in misreading that or I guess I just, to me, it seems like there's literally no reason to create one locally. Well, so I could add to that and then maybe Melanie if you have something else to add. But what I might even suggest, from a prevention standpoint, which is my area of expertise I would say, there are benefits to creating another licensing arm within a city or municipality so that you have more local control over licensing. We don't have the ability to do that around tobacco licensing because of the way the state statute is written, but we do have that with alcohol and so far still with cannabis. So you don't have to necessarily think of it as a cannabis control board, but you could think of it as a licensing arm or board of the, but that would allow, and then what you would do is probably the most effective way to do it would be to create the ordinances or the zoning within your town to regulate people the way, regulate the licenses the way you wanted them and then the local control would just be to think individually about each. So you have the ability to essentially do a second layer of saying yes or no to a license in your town, right? So they get a state license, but then at the local level at the town of Essex could say, no, we're not gonna grant the specific license for whatever reason, because it's too close to the library or something or whatever reasons we decide that makes sense for that. So that just gives you kind of another layer of checks and balances to say, let's make sure we can rate the community that we want because the state will likely just say yes to all the licenses like they do with the alcohol licenses for the most part. Yeah, so I just to add to what Mariah said, the rulemaking under how the local cannabis commission is gonna happen is still underway. So we don't really know, but the benefit of having a local cannabis commission or cannabis board is what Mariah said, it gives the municipality the ability for example to provide conditions to the licensing, so you can do the buffer zone. So right now, the draft rulemaking is 500 feet from a school or library, the municipality could choose to increase that up to 1,000 feet. And you can also include more regulatory practices at the local level and kind of centralize everything with the local cannabis commission. So unfortunately, the rulemaking is happening. I think the conversation is, the town should consider having a conversation about whether they should opt in or not and think about the safety and impacts to youth at this point and just get a sense on where residents are. I see Robin Pierce, you have your hand up. Did you wanna add to that? Thanks, Andy. I spoke with the attorney, the state cannabis control board a few weeks ago, which is basically the foundation for the memo that Patrick's talking about. His tick was that yes, a municipality can opt in. After that, our best controls as the memo says is through zoning and through nuisance regulations. I don't see any benefit to have no local cannabis control board this deciding zoning issues. We're updating land development code. We're talking about having an overlay district in certain areas where certain retail can't happen, not just cannabis. It would also be other things that we think wouldn't be appropriate on routes to school and stuff like that. I really, I agree, I don't really see any benefit to local cannabis control board. If the state, if we opt in, the state gives them a permit, boom, they're gonna permit. It's just another retailer. We're controlling the retail. So we should be controlling that through our zoning regulations. Okay, yeah. It just makes it simple. Well, gonna have maybe, sorry Patrick, maybe the planning commission, the zoning board, thinks one way and then the local cannabis control board says, well, we didn't really wanna have that happen. It's just sets up potential for conflict. Whereas if you have the rules under there and they're black and white, everybody knows what they're living by. Okay, yeah, that was, I mean, I guess that's why I wanted some clarification on it because it did seem like zoning might be the way to go with this, but from my interpretation at least, I was not under the impression that if the state gave them a yes that a local cannabis control board could then come in and say, no. Obviously there would be some zoning rules that we could put into place. If we felt that 500 or 1,000 feet might not be enough, but the zoning and a cannabis control board are completely different things. Sitting here doing the liquor control, we can say yay or nay, but it doesn't seem like that's the case with how the state is trying to set up the regulations for cannabis. So I just wanted to make sure I was clear on that. And Robin, yeah, thank you. Because your interpretation of it seemed to match with mine and I'm certainly happy to, or I'm open to listening to other people, but I just didn't really see that there was any point at all. I really had a point at all. Yes, I saw Greg's hand, then I'll we so, and then Tracy Greg, did you want to? Yeah, we're we're still trying to digest this hat and figure out the pros and cons and how it works. One of our department had meetings the other day. We were talking about how a local control board for cannabis could act kind of like a like a licensing board, whereas if you have a problem establishment for any reason, the town has a little bit more authority to shut it down or to issue a warning. So that's still early. It was just kicked around as an idea. We haven't explored it much more, but that's just one more possibility of why you might want to have one. Okay. Thanks, Greg. Are we so? Hi, I just wanted to underscore what Robin mentioned about the appropriate venue being the planning commission for zoning regulations. I think that the planning commission, we brought it up with our planning commission in the town last week at their meeting. And so they're sort of prepared to start thinking about it. There are a lot of different layers to zoning. And I think that they, I mean, if they're, if they're not designated the cannabis control board as as Melanie suggested, they could be doubling cannabis control board doubling as a DRB or planning commission. They should be integral to the conversation because they are the group that looks specifically at zoning and understands it kind of in all of its complexities. All right, thank you. Are we so Tracy, you had a... I was gonna say exactly what Greg said and just underscoring that zoning is really the way that you're going to control appropriate siting. Yep, okay. Okay. Any other questions? Go ahead, Greg. Got a question. Melanie, I don't know if you know the answer to this. Does the buffer zone, does that only apply to retail or does that also apply to processing, warehousing, any of those issues? And a second part of that is we have some properties that are owned by schools but don't necessarily have a school on them. So do you know if it would apply to any school property or is it just two schools? Off the top of my head, I would assume that it's just retail because that's the aspect of 164 that the municipality has the authority to have a say in the regulation. So that's just a educated guess. And again, the rulemaking is not final. So the details of what that looks like are unknown. What I saw about the rulemaking was about schools. And so I think it's too soon to tell on whether you can add other properties to it. But again, that could either happen through zoning or the Cannabis Control Commission. However, the municipality chooses to do the regulation. Thank you. And I mean, I'll just add to that that at this point, local municipalities can add additional zoning on top of that, right? So they could give a 500 foot buffer just for schools and you could say a thousand foot for any youth serving organization. So like libraries or the teen center, things like that. Thanks, that's my question. I thought I had heard somewhere, either something about licensed childcare or youth centers. Did the state address that yet? They have not. At this point, they've only said schools specifically, but the, if you are to look at like the model policies that public health has put out, they'll say childcare centers and parks with playgrounds, things like that. All right, I got it. I have a couple of questions here. This is the first I've seen that the expectation for the final rules is March 1st. March 1st is also our next election day. So it's difficult to explain to folks how things would work if we wanna vote on March 1st, whether to opt in or not, if the rules aren't final. The challenge there is if we get a petition that asks us to vote before the rules are final. I guess you probably don't have an answer to that, but I think it's a, I think puts us into a tight spot if that happened. So I guess that's more of a comment than a question. I think that's the same challenge that all towns are having, that's like being kind of rushed in this process, but they're important decisions, so. On one of the slides, there was a mention of tax revenue. There's only tax revenue if there's a local options tax. Is that correct? That's correct. Yeah. Go ahead, Tracy. I had emailed the Essex house reps a while back from my understanding to leverage tax revenue from a local option tax, we would have to institute a full sales local option tax. Has there been any discussion around breaking out the local option tax similar to rooms and meals and alcohol sales specifically for cannabis retail? I don't have an answer to that, Mariah, do you? If not, we can get back to you and answer to that. We can try and figure that out. Great, thank you. Hey, Oviso, I see your hand up. Is it still up or is that a residual? Did you have more to say, Oviso? I thought I'd taken it down, sorry. It may be my problem. Mike, Mike, I think yours does that to me. Robin, I see your hand as well. Robin, did you have more comment? I do, just a couple of things. I mean, I agree with Melanie. It's a shifting landscape. It's not said yet. And again, going back to the attorney for the State Cannabis Control Board, who would not have this way to say he can't give us advice. He can just give us his interpretation at the time that we spoke. I think I remember 26 municipalities have really opted in, but once they get the license from the state, if we have a local Cannabis Control Board from what I hear, it's a rubber stamp. We've no control over that once we opt in. The only control we have is again, as I said before, it's through zoning. We've got overlay districts or the buffer zones, things like that. We've talked about parks. The one that Melanie just showed for the central village is good. It didn't include Park Street School. So if you put that in, it would take out most of Pearl Street, Park Street, Main Street. The only area that wouldn't really touch is Maple Street going away from the village center, which has, once you pass Billy Springs and Shassing, has no buildings that have retail of any type in them at all. So it's residential with a few offices. But I don't see how we could penalize some of these local Cannabis Control Board when we have no rules for it or no leeway from the state to do that. It's like we'd be making up our own rules. That's it for me for the moment. I'll take the handoff. Thanks, Rob. Okay, any other comments or questions? Okay, there's a couple of hands up from the public. Ready to go to public comment. Okay, Mary Post, is your hand up, Mary? Yeah, my hand is not up, Andy. Thank you. Computer playing tricks on me again. I do see Meredith Mann. Hi there. My name is Meredith and I'm the owner of Magic Man Cannabis Confections in Essex. And I did just wanna introduce myself and to just let everybody know that we are a really proactive business who really cares about this community. And our education is our passion and we're excited to be a part of this conversation here. I also just wanted to say that we do, we have put a survey out on the Essex community Facebook page. We got 87% in favor, which I'm happy to share those results with you. We were really happy about that. And we do also have a petition. The town of Essex has been wonderful to us and we're really happy to be a part of this. We do have 650 out of 840 signatures. We did respectfully offer to hand those in on January 2nd, so that it could be a conversation on town meeting day. And so we didn't cause taxpayers money before that. So it is something I wanted you to know that we do have in the works that we have gotten a ton of support from our community with. And I appreciate everything Mariah said and want to work on child safety. We very specifically yesterday, for example, didn't participate in the Halloween activities because we don't want to be perceived as marketing to kids nor our brand. And we want to be the educators and leaders in being responsible with that. So I did just wanna mention that we do have the petition and as much as I agree on some of those things, it is just another regulation like, Department of Liquor Control controls half the block that we're on. So it's just about having responsible people and responsible business owners and community members and having the prevention and the education which we are always happy to be a part of. So that's really it. I just wanted to introduce myself and I'm happy to be here in the part of the conversation. Thank you, Meredith. Yeah, thank you. It reminds me of another question I'd like to ask and I don't know if you can answer this one either. If the town, we have two municipalities here, the town opts in, what does that do with regard to the village? Do we know that? It's my understanding. We do know that. Yeah, Robin did some research on this. I'll let Robin answer the question. Okay, that'd be great. The way it's written at the moment, each individual municipality can have a vote to opt in. So the time in the village can do it individually if the time has a yes vote and the village has a no vote, then it'll be opt in in the time and there will be no retail in the village and vice versa. But the village is entirely inside the town. So if the town votes on town meeting day, but the village doesn't, what happens then? The village hasn't opt in. The way it's written, each municipality has to opt in. So you're suggesting that the village could opt out at a later date, but it's already been opted in by being a part of the time. No, each municipality has to have a vote to opt in. If the village doesn't vote to opt in and the town votes to opt in, it can only occur outside the village municipality in the rest of the town. That's what I can tell. So but how does that vote take place? So who gets to vote, right? Who gets to vote on that decision? I mean, if residents of the village are residents of the town, they're allowed to vote. Yes, and then the village can also have a vote and only the residents of the village can vote. So are we certain that if the town votes, then it only applies to the town outside the village? That's what I can tell. They said it was different that for liquor control, it was written that towns and cities could have a liquor control board, but in Act 164, it's written that each municipality has the option to opt in, just says municipality, silent and anything else, to quote David. But could change next week. Yeah, that's where it stands. Still not, yeah, okay. I still think there needs to be some clarity about who. A lot of things. As all that works. Sure, not alone. Yeah. Because I know the trustees have already said that there are no rush to go and have a vote, but if we get this petition that forces us to have a vote, we really need to understand what territory it will apply to, what that vote takes place. My understanding is it's put it another way, the town outside the village. It would apply to. But yeah, I... You don't have to have that vote too. Yeah, I'm not convinced. And the rules aren't done until election day. Okay, oh boy. All right, any other, I don't see any other hands up. Any other questions, Pat? Not a question, but a comment. I appreciate Meredith you letting us know about that petition, I think in my head at least, that changes the equation significantly. If that petition already has over 600 signatures on it, I think that, and I mean, clearly I don't know the will of every single voter in Essex, but 87%. I mean, my guess is that knowing the municipalities that probably, I think that the vote would come back in the affirmative to allow it. I would very strongly want us to consider looking at a local options tax and trying to potentially implement that before March so that we're not caught with an inability to tax for something that may get put into place by a citizen petition. I frankly, I know that the town has looked at it before in the past, a number of years ago. And I think it was honestly a ball drop then that a local options tax was not implemented. Now we have practically every other municipality that surrounds us with one and also without. And if this petition gets put into place, voted on and comes back as a yes, and we have no local options tax, then we will have cannabis allowed for sale in our municipality, but as a municipality, we would receive no benefits for it from a financial perspective, at least. Can I just add? So if the town puts it on the ballot in March and say you opt in, the retail establishments won't be given licenses until, like they can't start operating until October. So I just want to let you know about that timeline. So the retail establishment wouldn't be able to start operating until after March. It's not immediate. Understood, but if we are voting in March, I think our citizens are going to want to know whether or not there's a local options tax to know if they're gonna get a benefit out of these sales or not. Yeah, agreed. Our timeline is there for the retail sales. I feel that question that needs to be addressed before ideally a vote to allow the sales or not. Sue, go ahead. Yeah, so I think Tracy's question is key to that as well. Can it be separated out, right? Like the hospitality and liquor tax. I think that is a key part of that discussion. And then I also, I mean, I think we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves because I think the 87% or whatever survey that's, I mean, there hasn't been any one, the rules are still being made. There hasn't been any information shared with the public. So the public that is responding to that is basing it on what, right? So I think we really need to go through, there was some steps that were kind of outlined here. And I really think we need to follow those suggestions to get the right information out to the community so that we're not just basing it on some sort of a gut instinct. Yeah, I think the right. I think a petition would force us to make some decisions about how we want to react to it and how much educational material we want to provide. And also with regard to the revenue piece of it, $100 a license for a processing fee is not much. So yeah, and right question then is the time, is a November vote on local option tax or is that close enough or not? I don't know, yeah, I don't know. We'd have to have those discussions on top of all the other work we're trying to do in the next couple of months. Any other, okay. So is anything needed from the board tonight? This is an informational discussion. We're just trying to think are there any next steps we should ask for? I have the question written down about the option tax and how it can be used in the municipality. Was it Tracy or Tammy who asked the question? Sorry, I missed that person's name. It is Tracy. Tracy, hi Tracy, sorry. I have two versions of the question. Would you mind just repeating it so that I have clarification on what exactly the question is so I can get back to you? Sure, my understanding currently is that for a town to collect local option tax from cannabis sales, there would have to be a local option tax on all sales tax in that municipality. The question is whether cannabis can be separated out into its own option or category of local option tax similar to rooms and meals and alcohol sales. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Evan, go ahead. I think if I'm hearing you, Mr. Chairman, the question is what do you want staff to do? Do you want us to research certain things? Do you want us to hold these surveys? Do you want us to of the public to public outreach? And would you be looking for it to be on the March ballot? So staff would be looking for your direction. You may not be able to answer that tonight. Maybe give that some thought. Time is ticking, but maybe by your next meeting, you can have a discussion and give us direction on what you would be wanting for in an education for a March ballot. Because I believe you're gonna need to have it in January to be on the March ballot. My expert over there is nodding early January. So it's my understanding that there's already work in progress. There's already a website being developed by the planning organization. Or what's the status of that? What's the intent of it? Robin, are you still on? Can you speak to that? Was that a question for me? Robin. Oh, Robin. Okay. I thought Darren was working on that, Greg. Yeah, Darren has put in a website together that's going to be accessible for both the town and the village pages. It's a combination of what you see in the memo you have and information from the state website. And it's pretty close, I believe. And then we're gonna give it to IT and they're gonna post it. Okay, thanks, Robin. I guess I'd be interested in any kind of survey that we might be able to do. I was actually a little surprised. There's not more public comment tonight, given that we've had this the first time we've had it on the agenda. There have been a number of people who have made inquiries into where we are with it in the past.  I guess it's a different question if we get a petition that forces our hand versus making a decision whether to go to a vote. Those are two different ways to handle it. Go ahead, Greg. Yeah, I think it's still figuring out through the survey, through feedback on the website, what are people interested in, what do they want to know so that if there's a vote, whether it's a select board decision or a petition so that people can make it informed. What information do people need in order to make a decision? Yeah, the other thing, I'm sorry to say, and I realize here the petition can only ask you to put something on the ballot. It's not about the regulations. It's not about the concerns. You still would have work to do as to what do you want to see about cannabis either in the community or not. And even if they're a wonderful business and we appreciate that they're here, but they're not selling cannabis right now and nobody is, do you want to start that? And so those are the conversations. You need to hear from your residents. And if so, if the people were of a mind to want it or allow it, what restrictions might they want as part of that? You're not gonna know that unless you talk to them or they talk to you or both. Sue, go ahead. Yeah, I'm curious if there are guidance on like suggested survey questions. Cause as we're talking about it, it's making me think more and more. Cause initially I was just like, you know, is this something you support? Do you want it on the ballot? But I think what is really more important is what are your concerns? What questions do you have? What information do we need to share? Because I was actually starting to think, like, do you spend time up front on the information and then survey because that'll inform the survey response or do you survey and then, you know, it's a chicken and egg kind of thing. So I'm just curious if either of the two women that's on tonight, is there any guidance on how and what to survey for? So I can certainly talk with other municipalities around the state to see if other municipalities have conducted a survey. My hunch is that I think there might be a few that we can learn from. And also, I don't want to speak for Mariah, but I'm sure she has resources in the prevention community as well. So we can work together and get back to you with that information to help move the community. Yeah, there are, similar to the one I work with in Burlington, there are prevention coalitions across the state and they've done a lot of surveying of their communities and knowing that this issue is gonna come up. So there's some examples. I don't know about best practices, but there's examples that you could pull from that are already out there. That would be great. And my kind of experience in doing this work in this field for a while is that people are very confused about this issue. And that even folks who advocated for legalization didn't really understand what that meant in terms of like, oh, that means commercial products, not just that it's legal for people to possess cannabis. So there's just a lot of confusion and the more that we can kind of help people understand what it is they're voting about the better. Agreed. Thank you. Just because I'm not sure, but we do have a cannabis study committee already formed. Would it make, are they involved in this process so far? And if so, would it make sense to task that committee with working with Mariah, with Melanie, and potentially bringing in some stakeholders from the community around mental health, substance abuse, things of that sort. Businesses involve members of the planning commission in order to bring to us potential survey items, what we should be on the lookout for, what we do want, what we probably don't want at a future meeting. Is that part of the mission of that group? Or is that intent for that to find out what the... Yeah, that's kind of underway. The mission includes myself, Robin, Oviso, Darren Shibler, the town planner, Don's on it from the trustee, or from the select board, Amber from the trustees, there's a planning commissioner on there. Robin was able to get Melanie and Mariah to come out tonight, so. It's in the works, yeah, kind of early in the process, but all those things have been stuff that we've talked about. Great. I see a hand up in the public. Sharon, go ahead. Sharon Zuckowski. Hi, yes. I'm a little concerned about the local options tax brought into this conversation. And the explanation that the surrounding towns all have it, the surrounding towns that have it have huge hospitality businesses and restaurant businesses, which we don't have as much of. And the local options tax is gonna tax, it's gonna put a huge burden on small businesses. And furthermore, the town voted resoundingly against the tax the last time it was brought up and just seems to keep getting brought into every conversation. And this is a tax based on the fact that you might get money from a business that might not even come in. I just hope that we're not gonna bring this tax up again. It's a huge burden to people. And that's all. Thank you. Thank you, Sharon. Any other? Take care. Any other comments? Okay, so it sounds like they're, and I really like the idea of doing some kind of survey to figure out what people's thoughts are. If the cannabis committee can pursue that or keep us, absolutely keep us involved as we need to or if you need us to get more involved, please ask. The other piece is right, the question about whether to try to move forward with local option tax in parallel or recognizing that we all know that we got a lot of stuff going on right now. Tracy, wasn't that the purpose of Tracy's question to find out if it could be separated out? So that was right. That's the other, there's a couple of questions and there's also the question of, do you want local options tax anyway in general? But then there's right, the question of whether it can have its own category of and whether the, and I don't know whether the cannabis rule committee that's putting together the cannabis rules has jurisdiction about establishing a new type of tax, whether it can only be just bumped in because it's, that's what's available. I don't know. That's the question these folks up here so go ask. One, I would say that the committee does not have jurisdiction over a tax too. The tax is only one, establishing a local options tax. In some respects can be tied to cannabis, only in so far as if you opt in, that's about the only benefit of the community other than the cost. If you hear this, you're gonna get $100 for a license. That's it. You might have five of them in the entire community and you're going to have other issues that are addressed or that may form because of cannabis sales in our community, like police calls, fire calls, ambulance calls, whatnot. The state is not going to share any of the revenue of cannabis with municipalities. They took all the revenue. You can see on that chart that they had up there before. They're taking all the revenue. They're providing none to municipalities in any way, shape, or form. So that's that side. There are many other reasons to discuss a local options tax that are not cannabis related they are budget related. They are capital related. So I would suggest that maybe not focusing on local options tax just because of marijuana or cannabis. I would have a separate discussion of the desire to put it on a ballot and what you would use it for separately of cannabis. All right, thanks Evan. Hey, so that's it for this topic. Anything else for us? Thanks to Melanie and Mariah. Yeah, thank you Melanie and Mariah. It's very, very helpful. And thank you. Hopefully we'll be in communication. Wow. All right. Have a good night. Yep, good night. Okay, next we have presentation on West Central Vermont comprehensive economic development strategy and I believe we have Regina Mahoney to talk about. Hi everybody. Thanks so much for having me. Hopefully this agenda item will be less challenging than your previous agenda item. Okay, so I'm gonna share my screen so that folks at home can see what I'm about to present. And this is gonna be pretty quick. I've got about eight slides. So I'm just gonna run through this pretty quickly. So Regina Mahoney, planning program manager at Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. We are working on a comprehensive economic development strategy. In Chittenden County, this is probably gonna be about our fourth comprehensive economic development strategy. We do it about every five years. And in Chittenden County, it lives in the EECOS plan, the regional plan that houses both the regional plan and the Metropolitan Transportation Plan and this plan. But we're doing this a little bit differently this time around. So first, just to let you know what a SEDS is, basically it's a plan that is necessary to have in place in order to get economic development administration funds into the region. And these bullets down here, the five bullets at the bottom explain what goes into a comprehensive economic development strategy. Essentially it's just a very strategic action oriented plan, identify the issues, the opportunities in the region from an economic development perspective and identify what as a region we're gonna do about it. The change this time around and who we're working with is not just Chittenden County. We're also putting this plan together with Addison, Rutland and Central Vermont, which is a few different counties. All collectively that's about 90 municipalities. And really we're doing this because these other regions don't have a SEDS right now. There is benefit both from the state perspective to have a SEDS throughout, for all the regions in the state to have a SEDS and it's helpful from the economic development administration side of things as well. The folks working on this are the Regional Planning Commissions for each of those regions, the Regional Development Corporations. So that's GBIC in our region, as well as the Agency of Commerce and Community Development. That's really helpful because they're really doing a lot of data and analysis of what our COVID impacts have been, still are, maybe might be going into the future. So that's been a great partnership there. So we're in this first bullet right now. We're getting out and talking with as many folks and people as we can to gain some input on issues that are out there, opportunities that you think we should consider and if you have any specific project ideas as well. We are also really doing a lot of lifting of other existing reports and studies that are out there because there are a lot really to get some specific ideas about sector-specific work. The Vermont Women on Commissions are doing some excellent studies as an example, lots of different work that's out there already. The ultimate goal is to have a draft plan in the spring that we will get back out to folks with and then a final SEDS in the end of 2022. In terms of adoption at the end of calendar year 2022. And for Chittenden County, just so folks know, we are also just about to start an E-Ghost plan update. And so this effort will be wrapped into that in Chittenden County. So it will still sort of live under that same branding. We've had a survey out for a while. The Regional Development Corporations have been doing a great job of getting this information out really to try to understand workforce needs, infrastructure and what we should be thinking about in terms of measurable goals. I do want to say that GBIC has also talked to Greg Morgan for the Essex Rotary. So we've had that conversation as well. And tonight I'm just here to get some input if you've got time. I know you've got a lot of other things on your agenda still. So I can take some feedback now if you want to provide it to me or folks can email me or whatever you think is the best way. And I will stop sharing so I can see everybody. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Any comments or questions from board members or staff? Pat, go ahead. Virginia, can you give me an idea? I did look at this slideshow and I guess I'm not really completely clear about beyond the ability to get money what this is going to cover. Like priority projects. Could you give me an example of what a priority project might be that's going to encompass that full region that would interest, for example, us here in Essex. Versus someone, a business opening in Rotland. Like clearly we'll all be part of this CDS, but I guess I'm trying to understand how these 90 municipalities that are really scattered over a vast area like what sort of plans are going to be put into place that are going to be helpful for all of them, a majority of them, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, great question. So I think we're thinking about this project list kind of in two separate buckets. And I think infrastructure is a big item that we've had on the SEDS list over the years and I think we will continue to have those. And so those might be municipal level infrastructure projects, whether it's a wastewater project or a water project. The framework is really, is it necessary or needed in order for you to retain jobs in the region or grow jobs in the region? That's sort of like the threshold, pretty big threshold. And then also programmatic type projects. So I could envision, I don't know what this looks like yet, but I could envision some kind of workforce training program that really aims to get, we know as the state that there are youth that we lose after high school, they're not going to college, they're not going to second, they're not going to a tech program and they're not going to work. So there could be some programmatic work around working with all of the high schools and figuring out how to capture and work with that population to get them into the workforce or secondary education of some kind. Those are the two ideas I could think off at the top of my head, but you're right that we will have, I think what it will likely look like at the end of the day is a forward-facing document that has some strategies that are relevant to all of the four regions, but at the end we will have specific appendices or whatever we may call them per region. All right, awesome. If that makes sense. Yeah. Any other questions or comments? Okay, I do see one hand up in the public. Go ahead for the public comment. Mary Post, does your hand up or am I going to come here again? This time it's up. Thank you. I'm just, I'm very interested in this. I have to say, I don't know too much about all of this, so I'm happy to learn it. I was wondering like about our own Economic Development Committee, from what little bit I've seen of it, it's been a little too multuous lately. I believe we had one chair that had to quit or needed to, whatever. And then we have a new chair and now I heard that they are not going to be meeting until next year. So how strong is our own Economic Development Committee right now when it comes to working with your group Regina? I just don't really understand all of this. Thank you. And that's a question actually for the select board too. I just, you know, Regina doesn't know. Yeah, I don't know, sorry. Yeah, the Economic Development Commission, there's been some struggles there. I don't believe there currently are enough members to meet anyway, they don't have a quorum. And they have chosen to suspend their activities until after the first of the year. There is a, we did approve in our budgeting last year for to hire an individual with a focus on Economic Development. And I believe the intent is to onboard that person, give them opportunity to, you know, develop some, I guess some, you know, their feet underneath them and then have discussions about whether and how to reconstitute an Economic Development Commission. So we are aware of the, what's going on there and there are actions to move forward to address. Thank you for the question, Mary. Sharon Zuckowski.  Her hand's not up. Then I'll go to Lorraine. I'm laughing, Andy, because this Lorraine's a loom because locally or recently on our teams, we've been having the same problem that it doesn't, the hand won't go down until you say something. Again, before you put your hand, if you put your hand down and you say something on your mic, it'll take it down for you. I don't know why you still see a hand afterwards, but it's not just you, it's a cross team. So I just want to give you the heads up on the hands up. So a couple of things, I work in the trades and that has been a significant issue for many of our clients is getting people in the trades. So I'm hoping that there's some kind of focus on that. And the other component that I'm hoping Vermont really works hard to do is on targeting diversification. You know, certainly in my industry, we have seen study after study that shows that our profit margins increased by 25% with diversification. That means women and non-whites. And so I'm wondering if you could speak to how we can target diversifying and also out of state diversification targets. Yeah, so great question. We are trying to do, I don't actually have this on the slide, but we are working on figuring out how to have a specific BIPOC focus group and to help us figure out how to do that. We don't have the answers right now, but we're certainly aware that that's a huge opportunity going forward for us. The Chittenden County over the last 10 years, it's population growth is 87% non-white folks. So it's the future and it's really fantastic, but we have to figure out how to support that diversification. So great question. Thank you. We are hoping to figure that out and get some good input into the process. Thank you. I appreciate that. And Andy, does my talking make that hand go down? I still, oh yeah, it is gone. Yep. Oh, there you go. You're welcome. Now I see Sharon's hand back up. So I don't know if that's real or not. Sharon, did you have a comment or am I computer playing tricks on me? Okay. It's like walking my hand goes down. It's gone now. Yeah. Interesting. We are two. A feature, a new feature. Okay. So Regina, what's the best thing we can do for you? I mean, is it, you just, if we have ideas that we want to bring forward to email them to you or? Yeah, that would be great. And also we will draft a plan and we will bring it around too. So if it's easier to just sort of react as opposed to just to give me stuff at the start, that works great too. So we're really, we've got all spring to draft the plan. So we're not in any major, major rush. Okay. Sue, did you? Just real quick. Can you give an example of an asset that would fall into this? Sure. Asset quality of life here in Vermont. Folks really love to be in Vermont for the recreation, for the relatively healthy environment, relatively safe from climate change perspective and comparison to other places, all of those sort of things like that. I would also say global boundaries is an asset, particularly in the sense of their value added and exporting that they do. So the plan ends up being very broad in terms of what we consider to be our community and what draws people and why people want to be here in Vermont and why it's good to have business in Vermont. So fairly broad, but hopefully those are some good examples for you. Yeah, that helps. I mean, the word asset has lots of different solutions. So I didn't know what you were representing that. That's helpful. Yeah. The ounce. So I'm seeing Mary post stand up again. Is it up? Yes, it is. Yes. Okay, go ahead, Mary. I just have another question. I understand that there are two applicants and I don't know if that's true. I want to know if that, if somebody can tell me if that's true, two applicants to be on our economic committee. And then I was wondering too, and then I guess that they don't want to hold any kind of, what's that called? You know, apply for the job until next year. But the other question I have is, is this kind of go, I hope this doesn't go the way of the Memorial Hall Committee where it's going to become more of a staff thing than people from the public, you know, if you're hiring somebody, I'm just kind of confused about all of that. Thank you. All right, thanks, Mary. Yeah, there will be discussion about where things go with that. Thank you for your comments. All right. Thanks, Regina. That's it, thank you, Regina. Thank you so much for taking the time. Have a good night. Yep, yep, good night. Thank you for joining us, Sarah. Okay, so next business item, 6E, considering appointing select board members to subcommittee to work on shared service agreements with an independent city of Essex Junction. Back when we first started talking about agreements, this is a request from the trustees. They're, I guess, looking to try to see if there's a way to accelerate work on them. We first started these discussions. I know that the board consensus was that we all should be at the table. I don't know if your opinion of that has changed with regard to these would be, the proposal would be to have separate additional meetings to move forward with this. Staff's request is that those be during the day so that they don't have yet more night meetings to attend. So I don't know any thoughts from board members whether this is something we want to consider or should we continue to go through them as we have as we make edits, review them with all of us at the table. Anything else I should have said there? I'll jump in. Sue, go ahead. Yeah, so I mean, I wasn't part of the conversations earlier on, so I mean, I think I would have aligned with what you're saying. I think to me, and I appreciate the request that I know that they're coming from with the request and the efficiencies of less people being at the table. But I think this is a type of topic that diversity of voice and diversity of thought and experience is really valuable. And two, I think we've also been pretty clear that this is not something that we, I don't think it's in the best interest of our community as a whole to rush this. I think it really needs to be done in a way that there is enough time and thought put into it so that we're setting ourselves up for success versus, you know, right off the bat failure. So that's my thought. All right, thanks, Sue. Any other thoughts? Go ahead, Tracy. I'll jump in. I would appreciate the flexibility to be able to address and prioritize the normal course of business items. However, I did have a question about in the memo it said more expediently. However, the village vote is tomorrow. So I'm curious as to the timeline on the tentative agreements other than what's identified in the MOU and if there is a timeline, what is that timeline? I also have questions around the level of effort or dedication of time that would be considered or involved. In a subcommittee, I do have concerns meeting during the day was something new. I do have concerns around the ability of public input, especially during the middle of the day. It may completely not be an option for many of us if it's meeting during the day. And I did just want to ask if it's my understanding that if the board formally forms a subcommittee, that those subcommittees are subject to open meeting. Still open subject to open meeting law, yes. Okay. Yep. And those were my immediate thoughts. Pat. I tend to agree with Tracy. I think that having been sitting here and doing this, I don't think that it's a process that's been rushed at all. I think that we've been working on this for over six months of dedicated, solid meetings, sometimes multiple meetings a week, if anything, the process has been significantly slowed down and decelerated. And I am honestly no longer of the opinion that 10 of us sitting around the table is advantageous. I think that it has simply, in many cases, left people repeating the same thing over and over again. People will, you know, they feel like they need to jump in or they want to jump in. And I've heard the exact, George Tyler will say something and then Dan will say basically exact same thing just with slightly different wording. You know, if I wasn't, or rather if I hadn't been sitting here this whole time into those, you know, as we've experienced 11, 11, 30 PM meetings consistently now. And really it's because of this, you know, the sheer amount of time that it's been taking has prevented us from doing other select board work. And I would foresee that going forward as long as we remain 10 people working on this. I agreed with all of us and the rest of the board when Vince was here that it was good that we should all bring our diversity of use to it. But I just, I no longer see that as a positive. I think that it's become a hindrance to getting this resolved and is also preventing us from addressing some major concerns that our public wants to see. Don, any thoughts? My concern is that as a group of five, we discussed what's presented to us. And if we take that and break that up into a subcommittee, we're not going to now say to people to be on the subcommittee, we're not going to get input from the other three. They want the subcommittee to be able to make the decisions. And I don't think, I think it needs to be all of the select board making the decisions, not just the subcommittee. I do agree, it's been a very slow process, but I think we're almost there for what they need. I think at this point, having a subcommittee on what we have left to do isn't appropriate at this time. Maybe with that second tier we discussed, yeah, then sit down and use the subcommittee for that second tier. But for what we have now, we're almost there given what we, you know, this latest presentation. I would rather wait and do, finish what we've done now as a team and then maybe look at a subcommittee for the rest of it. And we're going into budgeting. The staff is already stressed. I can't see adding extra meetings to the staff that we have. Right, right, right. Tracy, you mentioned the timeline. Are you talking about a timeline that explains how each of the MOUs actually interact with the calendar? It was a surprise to me last week to realize, or in our last joint meeting to realize that the village intent was to have the IT migration happen during the timeframe that they're still paying taxes to the town. That really surprised me. And that's the piece that I'm wondering if a smaller group should go figure out is how logistically it ends up working. Which agreements come into play at what point and at what point, you know, we haven't talked about clerk or treasurer services at all. When does that transition over? We have no idea. The village wants to become a city on July 1st, 2022. It's like, okay, then on July 2nd, 2022, who issues dog licenses? To whom? That hasn't been talked about and we don't. And there's the expectation that within a handful or maybe a little more than a handful of weeks from July 1st, we have a billing process that bills differently than we bill today. And I think those, some of the actual boots on the ground and maybe it's not our thing to figure out. But I think it, you know, from the standpoint of, I mean, we're working at these documents as individual documents, I don't think anybody's piecing them together is how they're actually gonna work. That's a concern I have and I'm wondering if it makes sense that we don't all need to be in the room to figure that out so that we then can, and then that I think will help us prioritize which ones we need to work on first. I don't know, just a suggestion. And Tia, the question you asked is along Don's thoughts of, you know, we've done all of this work. We've had all of these conversations and the primary tier are close. They are there. So should this be more focused on that second tier? And if so, is there a timeline in mind for when that work absolutely needs to be done other than what's in the MOU? And at this point, once we get through budget season, I mean, is there any harm in just continuing to chug away at those as we have with the ones that are so close, which are, I dare to say, a lot more, could potentially be more contentious than some of the ones that are on the second tier. I mean, I don't know. I don't think that they would be, but they may be, and we won't know that until we start discussing them. Okay, John. I guess my other concern was is we really can't do anything until so the vote passes, but they can't do anything until the legislature says it's okay. So technically, we can't move any IT stuff into a non-existent entity at this point. Right, right, right. I just, so, right. But the way I'm reading the MOU, the way I finally understood it after we were discussing it at the last meeting was that they expect whether that first year starts January 1st, 2022 or January, July, sorry, January 1st, J-Month, July 1st, 2022 or July 1st, 2023, they're still paying town taxes and it's their town taxes that are paying for the IT work transition, that's what they're asking for. And we haven't, you know, we, right? And so it wasn't clear to me that that's, until it was, I looked at it more carefully, I guess, or something, or we asked the question about when's the payment's gonna kick in and they said, well, it's not gonna kick in until the second year and overtime. And oh, by the way, we expected to be done by then. And so it's additional work on top of running the town and the village, although it will be, they want it to be a city at that point. But it's just understanding all of that and does it really fit? Do we need to adjust our budgets to account for it? I don't know, Pat. I'm curious, because this may end up making it, my answer to my question may end up making this whole thing a move point. Are enough of us, our first subcommittee available during the day to meet regularly? I know I can't meet during the day, during the week. I'm assuming that Tracy probably would have similar issues with your job. And so, I mean, if we may simply just not have a number of bodies available. Right, Sue, go ahead. You hit on a good point. And once again, I wasn't here from the start of this, but we're really focusing on the details in these agreements. But it's that bigger picture and how that those details fit together for that bigger picture that, I don't know, you can tell me I'm wrong, but I don't feel like we, that that big picture is understood yet, right? So, and this is probably a totally crazy idea, but it's almost like you need to like go through like a, you know, like a trial or pilot and see where, what you're missing, right? To, you know, what in the day to day is happening and how is it happening? And to flush out those things that we're not, you know, we're not thinking about, because we're thinking about these details for these very specific agreements, right? Yeah, yeah, there is a big risk that we haven't, we won't have thought of something at the, by the time it needs to be done, right, right? But the, I guess for Pat's question, are you available during the day? I am not available from the day, no. It would fall on Don and I. You're talking, Monday through Friday. I just interviewed for a new job today, so. Yeah. So much for us being retired, huh? I can say retirement's going that well. Well, it's a very attractive gig, I won't say anymore. From the standpoint of it's, yeah, I won't go anymore. Yeah, that's, Don, I think you bring up a great point about staff time, I think, especially during the evenings, that's when they would really, you know. And, you know, if during the day ends up being the option because it can be unfolded into the work day, but that only leaves you and Andy as possibilities that doesn't really seem fair. You know, and if that's the answer to the question, then that's the answer to the question, right? And all the other stuff doesn't really matter if we don't have the people to make it work. Correct. Evan, so let me make a suggestion. Heard your entire discussion. Then when you get to the second tier, don't do all of them at once. Pick a priority. Right. Hit it, finish it. Agree that it's finished, don't touch it again. Take number two, hit it, discuss it, finish it, put it on the side, don't touch it again, and then go at it, okay? Just once, pick one, hit it, focus on it, and be done with it, and maybe even beforehand, talk about it. Before you write it out, talk about it. What is it? What do you want out of it? What does A want? What does B want? What's the timing? Who's paying? That would be great. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a big- They would move it along a lot quicker. I'm not sure why you didn't understand that your staff was telling you about IT. You can't just move IT. Right. You have to do it while we're working. We can give, the town could give the village all the equipment that's currently in the village. It's not the equipment. It's the connections. It's the software. It's the data that's residing somewhere else. Those things have to get worked out. We do have a meeting scheduled to talk a little bit about that, but you have to build it while you're flying, because we don't have a construction division, or a deconstruction division. There's a lot of questions that will need to be asked and answered when the time comes. I think if you're willing to give the village an answer, at least you can, if the answer is no subcommittees, but yes to a format for the second tier, I think that would be helpful. And maybe figure out if you can have pre-meetings about the structure. Yeah, okay. Thanks, Evan. Having run many of these meetings and these reviews, it is often challenging to even figure out what's been changed since the last time and what we've already talked about and what we have. And I think, I think if we write it, and maybe that's maybe I need to prepare more for those discussions, but I think that's friends into repeating stuff and yeah. Well, I think part of it was we didn't know what they wanted when we first started, but we waited for their response and they gave it all to us at the same time. We tried to tackle it all at the same time instead of like Evan said, doing one at a time. Right, and we did initially response, yes, we'll respond with a framework before your vote without all the details, but they're pushing, pushing, pushing for details. And we've been accommodating as much as we can and unfortunately taking a lot of time to do it. So yeah, I agree that if we, I mean, there's only four on the agenda tonight, right? We only included four, but the agreement's, we don't have nine or we don't have 20-some documents that we had one week, right? So I think if we put more focus on getting, on having a focus, we might help the move, the forward move movement. And then, yeah, on the second tier ones, I think maybe a different approach, having some upfront discussion rather than just reacting to a document and then having the reaction be reacted to and yeah, yeah. Okay, so with the board's indulgence, I will respond to Andrew with what we've talked about and we'll see where we go from there. All right, thank you for the discussion. I will also bring him, bring up the question about how the different pieces fit together that I think we need to, I've asked Andrew a couple of times about clerk services separately outside of the meetings. You know, how is that? What's their vision of that transitioning? And I haven't seen anything yet, but they're busy, we're busy. All right, anything else on that? Okay, move on to business items, six F, consider revisions to personal guidelines to add Juneteenth as recognized holiday. Is that for the assistance? Nope, is he gonna, okay, so I'll take this one. So the federal government made Juneteenth the federal holiday. We have been working on equity, diversity and inclusion and we have held our first Juneteenth celebration. It is a question to the select board whether to add Juneteenth as a town recognized holiday. You have a memo in your packet. If Juneteenth is the, I believe it's June 19th. Therefore, there is a possibility that, oh, let's see, twice over a seven-year period it will be on a weekend. And so our personnel policies take care of that. If it's on Saturday, it's usually done on a Friday. It's observed on a Friday, if it's Sunday, it's observed on Monday. It is in the summer, so it doesn't really affect snow plowing season or hunting season directly, which we're currently in, where most of our staff is from time to time, this time of year. And then the major impact is, if there is one, is in the police department. And if they are not off on that day, they have provisions for when they get to take it off or they get paid for the holiday, not taken. So we're here to answer any questions about the action item. I think it's a great idea. Any other comments, questions, Sue? Just, do we know how have any other communities in Vermont done this? We have not surveyed that. We could find out. I'm not sure, I guess my question would be relevance. Well, I think it was also kind of portrayed as it might be a value add for the municipality, right? I certainly get to tell you it would be very much appreciated by our, the BIPOC members of our community. And from a PEI standpoint, working with ASICS-Bast, the sort of recognition is one of those things that was relatively, I think, easy for us to do, at least according to the memo, not the simplest, but is relatively easy. It's already recognized as a federal holiday. I think that would be something to really show our community how much we value the diversity we have in ASICS. Any other comments, concerns? So, Pat, I should have turned this agenda item over to you. I think this is quick enough that you can manage a handle if you want. You want to call for the motion? Is there other commendation or? Go ahead. Well, I will happily ask for it. Yeah, I will happily request a motion. I recommend that you select for dot Juneteenth as a town recognized holiday and authorize the unified manager to update the town personnel guidelines to add Juneteenth as a recognized, I don't know if I like that name, as a recognized holiday and to execute a memorandum of understanding with the AFSCME and with the Essex Police Employees Association to add Juneteenth as they paid holiday to their respective bargaining agreements. Hey, thank you, Don. Thank you, Tracy. Oh, sorry. Oh, it's okay. Thank you, Don. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you, Andy, for providing the roadmap. All those in favor? Bye. Bye. Opposed? Okay, eyes have it. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Evan. Thank you, Pat. Thank you. Yeah, to staff. Staff, yeah. So this is, I think, an excellent move. Okay, item 6G, discussion and potential action on tentative agreements about shared services between town of Essex and independent city of Essex Junction. The village trustees have made it clear that their intent to hire a manager regardless of whether separation passes or not. There's also the trustees and we have already put stuff out on front porch forum, saying that the shared management, oh no, I'm on the wrong topic, aren't I? Mm-hmm. This is the tentative agreement as well. Sorry. This is the... The four documents. The back to the documents, I'm sorry. The four, there's four of them. The four of them. So do we want to review those publicly right now or do we want to have a discussion and executive session with Bill? Is Bill available? Bill is available. Did we have a lot of change? I can't remember if we had a lot of change. So, okay, let me... Good. I just had a quick... So I couldn't tell when it was redlined or updated. Who was redlining or updating it? Bill made the latest updates that are in here. Basically what he did is he went through and everything that was redlined and marked up from the last agreements. Bill captured the conversation as best he could, accepted the changes, or rejected them, and covered redlines or what Bill added since the discussion last week. Okay, then I'm... So in looking at the first one, I guess, whereas pink is what Bill did, I have pink, purple, and green, right? So I'm confused as to what now. So the purple... Pink is what Bill added. The purple is what we all agreed on. And what's green? The green is if you cut something and then paste it somewhere else, it shows up as green in this case. Okay. So then what's the purple, Greg? I thought the purple was Bill and the pink was Greg's comments. Like GD1 is associated with... I'm assuming that's you, Greg, GD. I think that those are relatively small notations. Purple is Bill. Over here. Oh, I'm sorry, okay. So basically then the only changes to what we agreed on last time is what Greg added. Is that... So the change is that there was a suggestion to move stormwater and righto first refusal to second tier. Okay. But I think that's the change. And then there's also a request from the trustees to remove the phrase as a condition precedent receding, which I think we need to have, that needs to be a discussion with Bill. Just understand what that, the implications of removing that or leaving it in. The, I know Claudine was pretty adamant that they would not sign with that phrase in there. But I don't know if there was alternate language or other. And working in good faith was added in. And I don't see that. After the word parties. Oh yeah, it is underlined, right? Right, right, I see it there. So is in the lobby, there he is. Okay, to hear here. Hey Bill. Hello. So we're just, we're looking at the MOU. There was a request from, or there was a, yeah, a request from the trustees on the, in the section that precedes the list of secondary agreements or second tier agreements. It says as a conditioned precedent and Claudine was very adamant to want to remove that. And then there was also the suggestion of adding the phrase working in good faith. I guess we're wondering if there's a recommendation from you about how to word this section. Well, I put in that working in good faith as that was what my takeaway was from the joint meeting last week. The meaning of as a conditioned precedent is that, first night we spoke about this, I said we wanted to have a deal on everything and not have these one offs. And that was the reason why I included as a conditioned precedent. Yeah. So we would have all agreements put together before we're obligated to sign the police agreement, for instance. Okay, so what we would lose, we took that out is the ability to say we're not going to sign anything unless everything is agreed to. Do we want to do that? Or do we want to leave that in? And it's, I don't know that we're ever actually going to sign this document. By splitting into tiers, we've changed that anyway. No, I think we've just changed priority on them. And there was, I think, a small hope on somebody's part that we would finish all these before tomorrow morning, right? It's not happening, but so the tiering is almost a little, almost a little irrelevant, but if we leave that phrasing as a conditioned precedent preceding, and yeah, Bill's right, we did talk and say, you know, we don't want to sign a police agreement and then have some kind of catastrophic thing that totally is at a disadvantage to us and then have no way to reopen the police agreement as a way to trade for something else kind of thing. I think that's the intent is to allow the ability to tweak everything until everything's, you know, we're happy with everything. Tracy. I guess my question is, is that must reach agreement, but it doesn't give a timeframe by which that needs to happen. And if, if, so if there's no timeline by which that needs to happen, could this just be an ongoing conversation that takes six, seven, eight, nine years forward or the MOU remember, we put termination dates in it. So it doesn't hit, but when the agreements are put into place, but since we've done second tier, does the first tier, putting those in place, does that automatically, terminate the MOU or do all of them have to be in place before it terminates? The way this is written, it says they all need to be in place. All of them, even second tier. That was my impression. That's the way. Okay. That's the right. Okay. And that's, that's the, you know, the, the, the risk of saying, well, okay, it's, it's only the primary ones that need to be closed is that we find something dramatic in one of the other ones. That we hadn't anticipated. And then we're, we don't have the option. Right. Revisiting. So for my recollection, I mean, I'm okay with this as it is. I would prefer as well. That's an addition precedent in, but I think Bill's point. And then the trustee's concern is mitigated, hopefully by that working good faith. They were concerned that we, as a, we're going to take one specific item and basically derail the whole thing because, you know, we don't like X, Y, Z and working in good faith to me at least. And I think since Bill put it in there agrees as well that, that allows both terms to be in there and covers what the trustees are worried might happen. Which is, you know, us deciding that the tree farm is just so complex that it's going to scuttle everything else. You know, I think as adjusted if the trustees are willing to accept this, I'm happy with the phrasing as is. Yeah. And I did go and look, I just wanted to make sure that that termination applied to all of section one and in a does it is in there. Patrick, to your point, we have a resolution that we signed off on saying we would be eventually working in good faith. We're going to work collaboratively. So I don't see, I don't have an issue with working in good faith, especially if Bill doesn't. But isn't the discussion about the as a condition. Precedent. And whether that needs to remain in here. I'm just wondering if there's any other way to. Capture that risk of an unknown. That. You know. Could. Could skew other things, right? And it's. And it, and it could be an unknown. That skews things in either. Direction and. How do we, how do. How do we manage for that risk? I'm not really sure. Yeah. I don't know. I think. Yeah. You know, once, once you make an agreement. Unless you put in that, well, all the, all the agreements. Look at all the agreements to see if each of them has a. Condition for. Modifying it. I think it does say in there that. Each of them probably has a phrase in there that says that. The agreement can be modified with by mutual agreement of the two parties, but. It requires mutual agreement. It doesn't. It doesn't allow. Well. Doesn't. Yeah. You can't really. Make a major change to it unilaterally. So I think, I think making a condition and preceding. At this point is the way to, is the way to go and we will work in good faith. As we've. You know, in our amicable. Resolution there to do so. You know, I will, I will say, and I have. You know. You know. You know. You know. Resolution there to do so. You know, I will, I will say, and I have said many times that I. I do not want to stand in the way of this. But I also don't want to. Put ourselves at a disadvantage either. All right. So I think, I think we'll go ahead and leave that as it is. I did see that the termination clause move. I don't know if it got removed, moved from two to five or whether it was in two places and just got crossed out in one, but the. Yes, it got moved. It was moved. Consolidated under five. So then I, then I think then. Other than if we want to have a discussion about priorities, but I think then that, that other discussion we had may. That we do need to prioritize which, which additional agreements to work on and then work on them in a, a systematic way in a controlled way. So I don't think we need it. Do we, do we want to have a discussion about how these are in here? I think we're, I think, I don't think we do that again. Well, the, the, the, there was a request to move right at first refusal and stormwater down to the second tier. It just maybe changes when we work on them. Well, right at first refusal was done anyway. I didn't think there was a problem. I think that one's probably okay anyway. Right. I don't know why we couldn't do that in the top tier. Yeah. In stormwater, we have not even talked about it all. We've seen two versions of it. We've never even talked about it. Right. So I don't think there's any value in talking about whether one or, you know, any of these need to be pulled up to the first year. So. We move along and say this one's done. Well, if it makes them think these changes, but Andy, if, if the right at first refusal is ready, why not move it to the first year? Yeah. Oh, why not? Why not move it to the first year? Right. It's already done. I mean, that's one less thing we need to look at again. Later on. And it was, you know, that. I think we, I think we can leave it where it is. And then, and then we should make a list and say, somebody should have a list and say, these ones are done. Right. And not only revisit them. I have some new, new information comes to light that requires it. I mean, I liked it. The it changed. I mean, everything. I did have a question on six. In the MOU. Amber had asked to add. The language that's present in the individual agreements, you know, at a duly warned meeting as far as notice goes. And I, I guess, Bill, if I should ask this question later, this is a discussion for later. Was just wondering why that wasn't included there. And also the MOU has noticed. The MOU has been delivered to. The bodies. Where in the agreement, it's. The town slash city. I wasn't sure what the rationale was for the difference between the MOU and the agreement. The MOU is going to be signed by. Before the city exists as my. And so there won't be a city manager necessarily. That's what I took away from, I believe that was Ambers. Was one of her points. That's what I understood. Okay. I guess the question is why, why isn't it just, you know. What's your preference for the town of ethics. Manager village of Essex junction manager as opposed to the bodies. Just for consistency. Not a huge deal. It's going to get to us one way or the other. Whatever's your preference. Neither entity has a mailbox. At the entity. It's usually it comes to the manager. Well, actually it bounces around until they decide who should actually get it. Usually. or any of your individuals ends up in the manager's mailbox. So it really is a non-issue one way or the other. And usually somebody from staff opens up the letter to make sure it's not time sensitive or is time sensitive. All right, I got one right here. And I opened it. I just didn't know if I was missing something. It's a snail now reminder that I haven't done something that they asked me to do it with email. All right, any changes you wanna make that, or should I go to Tracy? Okay, all right. All right, so I think with the adding in the, in good faith and the other changes, I think we're probably good with this document. So maybe we can set it aside for now. All right. In the packet, the next one is the delinquent tax agreement is that where we would like to go next? So the- I think there was only one change there. The city shall honor. Okay, this one though, there was a big discussion about the question of the city collecting taxes for, this is that awkward year when they wanna, when their intent is to be declared a city, but they've already voted on a town and a village budget. They're operating still with their village budget with the town essentially continuing to provide them town services through that year. They're proposing and actually their charter is written to say that they will collect taxes for the town in that first year, which requires a change in our billing and so forth. So I guess the questions are, are we okay with the village collecting the city collecting taxes for the town? And if so, should we specify some sort of terms around that? They asked us to go rewrite this thing the way we would like it. Can I ask Bill a procedural question if you even know, but currently are the town and or the city will set their tax rate to send out the tax bills, correct? And then the body approves the tax rate. Is that right, Bill? I'm not sure. Well, all right, just take it. I'm not, I can't hear you very well. The town select board approves the tax rate. The tax rate gets into the tax bills that are sent out by the clerk's office treasurer. In that first year, if I understand it, the clerk is still the clerk of the town and of the village. And the finance department is still shared. What, what are we fighting over? I understood it to be the delinquencies. And I also understood that at least Andy and probably maybe others weren't comfortable with the village collecting and keeping town funds for however long before they turn them over to the town. So I tried to, I tried to draw this up such that the town is going to continue status quo until the beginning of the next fiscal year after the charter is in the new city charters in place. And at that point, the city will then send out its own tax bills and collect its own taxes. And the town likewise, with that fiscal year where there are no village voters that are, that have voted on the town budget. It's just, it's just the town of Essex outside of the city that will, that the town will be billing and collecting. And if I understand the mechanisms, any debt owing is still the towns to collect because it was done under the town tax format. We made the village, the then village whole and the school district whole. So that is an asset of the town. And then there was a question early, early on, does the town still have an authority to go after those taxes in another municipality? Has anybody checked into that? That's going to be taken up at the legislature, I would imagine, Evan. Okay. And if they say that you can, we're going to allow the town to continue to collect the delinquent taxes, then there's no problem. If it's not lawful, the language says that the city will purchase those delinquencies from the town and pursue them on their own. Thanks, Bill. Yeah, there's two questions here. And maybe I'm just getting too tied up in semantics of who's collecting the taxes. And as George pointed out, yeah, the money's going to come eventually. And that's why I'm, I want to ask the board, is there, do we have a concern with the way that the trustees envision this, that they're going to collect taxes for the town on that first year? If we're okay with it, then we can just drop that concern or maybe put in some language that says, you know, when that payment will come and whether it will be to make us whole or whether it, you know, as we have done for them in the past or whether, you know, if there's any delinquencies, will they hold the delinquencies or would they get passed on to us? I don't have, yeah, there's two questions. There's the first year and then there's also the accumulated delinquent taxes from the past. As far as I know, and this is the way it works now is if a person is delinquent, they appeal to the assessor first of all. The assessor doesn't give them what they want, then they bring it to a BCA. Technically, the new city won't have an assessor and they will not have a BCA when they're first formed. So it would still come to the town. That would be, yes, no, I mean, that's the way it works and if they don't have it, they can't do it. Well, isn't there, isn't there BCA, they're the town. They haven't held an election at that point. The town JPs, well, that's right.  So there will have never been any justice to the piece. Yeah, so this is more complicated than.  Right, right, right. So then they go to either assessor or finance director to set up a payment plan too, they have that option. At that point, we're still, our finance person is still doing that. Correct. I'm familiar with the term debt owing. Right. You have a debt owing the municipality. The question for the attorney is can you, for the legislature, can you transfer that debt owing from one entity to another and what's the mechanism? The first year, it would just be easier before they formed anything to continue what we're doing and account for it, maybe put it in language that if they'll remit the town's taxes in the same way that the town remits the former villages taxes. Which I believe is statutory. I'm trying not to complicate it. I'm comfortable with the language that's in here. I think where we're running across a stumbling block and maybe it's just me, but I feel like we're looking for answers that we don't have yet because those answers are going to have to come from the legislature. The specifics around the delinquency, whether or not the city is allowed to collect their own taxes in that first year or not, I don't think that we will have those answers. I think that, and I understand the squeamishness, Andy, in trying to, saying we're okay with this language when we don't know necessarily that the legislature is going to take it up, but I mean, we won't, I guess. So if, what I see here, this all looks good to me and we know we're just going to have to know that the legislature may be, you may decide something different, but at least as far as what we can answer right now, I feel comfortable with this language. Anything else I feel we just get into an argument about something we just, you know, is currently unknowable. We wander out into the weeds again, yeah. Yeah, right. And it's good for looking at the detail stuff, but if we know that we're simply not going to get an answer until the legislature weighs in, I don't really understand the reason for us going back to the trustees and trying to argue language about what may or may not be in there when ultimately it's going to be them who decides what happens that first year and whether or not we can pursue delinquencies in another municipality. Okay, so that sounds like there's two pieces here of things that we need that we're viewing as being open until the legislature gives us a direction. One being can we collect delinquencies from another municipality or does the city need to buy them out? And the other is in that first year, who collects the taxes? Yeah, that's how I see it. And I don't see us getting a resolution until the legislature weighs in. Yep, okay, okay. And are we good with the line that Bill added in? Mm-hmm. That's the city shall honor in the terms of any payment plans for any delinquent account purchased. I'm okay with that. Whether they're delinquent or not. It's to a little bit of an extent that it's not up to us to tell them how they collect their delinquent taxes. I mean, we've negotiated agreements with residents in the village and I think in good faith it would be in their best interest to continue to honor those, but they don't have to. Honestly, didn't Andrew say he didn't have a problem with that?  So I'm okay with it. Precy? So totally agree with what you said about what we don't know. Yeah. Not worry about until the direction. Last time I had brought up the concept in number one, the city shall purchase those delinquent accounts from the town and may pursue its own collection effort. There's no date there. Is it consistent with the fiscal year in which we currently are? Does it still need to abide by the first sentence prior to the end of the fiscal year following the effective date of the city charter? Is that when the city shall purchase those delinquent accounts? I'm just not sure. And with that last sentence, that's great if there's a payment plan, they would need to abide by those dates, but what about the delinquent accounts that don't currently have payment plans? All right, Bill, that's a question for you. So the second to the last sentence in section one, do we need to have a timeframe specified as to when the city needs to do, make this purchase the delinquent accounts? Or is this again, something that we need to avoid the legislation to weigh in on? Can we ask for a- The intent there was at or around the first day of the first fiscal year that occurs after the charter has been approved. Yeah. And that's the first phrase there at the beginning of section one, and prior to the effective date and then subsequent to the effective date. So you're- The fiscal year that begins after the charter's been adopted. Yeah, okay. So your thought is that if we added to that sentence, it's redundant because it's already stated at the beginning of that section when this is gonna happen? No, not at all. I'm not suggesting that, but that's, we can add that language. That's no problem. Okay, all right, all right. Thanks, Tracy. Any other comments on this one? Next one is IT. This is the one where I was surprised or I didn't, it wasn't clear to me or I wasn't thinking that it meant that they wanted this to all happen. Actually, in that transition year before they start collecting their own taxes. So they're essentially, the intent here sounds like that the city would be paying for it through their town taxes that they're, that's their vision of how this would work, which means no additional payment on top of what it would cost from the IT for the village. Had a concern. And we don't have, oh yeah, the other things that we needed, we needed a contract list. We asked if we could see their proposals from their vendors so that we could understand us get a sizing for how much time it would take and consider whether or not it's something that could fit in with normal operations or whether it used to be a over time activity or a future additional resource question or those kinds of things. So I think this one we just need to ask for more information from- We have a staff meeting scheduled for Friday, to try to start getting at some of these answers. So we just don't have any, we don't have any answers yet. Yep, yep, I understand. Not a problem. Any board members have any other comments on this? I had a, I had one question and one comment regarding the plan. The third, whereas states that the town agrees to work with the city's IT consultants to plan and facilitate this migration. So I'm wondering if that means that the IT director would be included in developing the plan with the IT consultant and does that resolve the concern around the town's IT director for approval in number two? Cause I mean, one can deduce that if the IT director is involved in the planning, that any concerns he or she may have at the time would be addressed during that process. Right, so if I look down at number two, the for approval has been struck through. But then the acceptance of the plan by the town's IT director. Yeah, there was, so was this where there was a discussion about, where was it? Cause we had asked that the IT director approve the plan and there was a discussion about it could be rejected for any trivial reason and there was a question about whether there should be something in here about is it reasonable, something? Crossing wires with another document. From what I gathered, the language that struck that it should not be, the feedback from the trustees was that the IT director should not need to approve but yet the next sentence seems to say the same thing, the acceptance of the plan. So I'm not sure where we landed on that but in the rationale is I just wanna make sure that just bec