She's got a quick logo finger Patrick have you been following the pre-show episodic intros? No, I haven't well your things been happening spoiler.  I Am very excited and you should have a little bit worried Don't be worried. No, ten back. Does it involve does it involve like a mystery and like dancing an action? Yes Oh Then you ready? Yes. I hear it. Here you go I do Informant like Tim Rowe know where to find the tech news thieves, but to watch out for the vicious ringleader Give Tim a helping hand support the Daily Tech news show at bit.ly slash help DTNS What will happen at the thug side out? Find out on the next ace detective This is the Daily Tech news for Tuesday October 7th 2014 I'm Tom Merritt joining me today Patrick Beja host of Loran de Vutek and DTNS contributor Happy evening where you are.  Oh, I didn't think you would remember. Thank you so much Remember your evening. Yes And I was following the pre-show intros I listened to every short. Just didn't realize that's what you were talking about when you Before you actually launched it if you guys have been enjoying this this mini series in the in the little pre-show bumps Thank Tim back and sub guns. They do a great job with these We got we got a couple more before the the mystery wraps itself up. Meanwhile, let's get into the headlines. Let's The 2014 Nobel Prize for physics was announced Tuesday going to Isamo Akasaki Professor at major University and Nagoya University Hiroshi Amano professor at Nagoya University and Shuji Nakamura Professor at the University of California in Santa Barbara for their work on blue LEDs I'm using some right now an Efficient way to grow usable sizes of gallium nitride crystals paved the way for blue LEDs and thus White LEDs by either combining blue with green and red LEDs or by using the blue LEDs to excite phosphorus Which they could do particularly well CNET reports Akasaki and Amano work together on the technology at Nagoya University While Nakamura worked at Nichiha chemical Corporation it took more than a decade of work to produce practical blue LEDs designs in the 1990s But they've increased efficiency lowered power consumption and the cost have been coming down over the years So this is not something new I was very confused by that news It's not like they actually invented something last year that has made LEDs substantially better No, in fact green and red LEDs had been around since the 60s and nobody could figure out how to make blue LEDs work They started work on this mid 80s took them into the 90s to get it to really be practical But what's cool is it's I mean no disrespect to the Higgs boson, which is fantastic science, right? But the Higgs boson is going to have more diffuse effect on our lives over long periods of time This is an example of really Nobel Prize winning physics that impacted us right away It allowed us to you know change the way we liked things. It gave us Better energy efficient street lamps. It gave us better color on on our LED screens It gave us LED screens is what I'm trying to say So it's the kind of thing where people can go. Wow, that's that's practical Not that every Nobel Prize needs to be practical, but it is cool to be like, yeah, this this impacted us right away It's it's pretty impressive to watch the The chart CNET put together with the light bulb That does 16 lumens per watt and the LEDs that do 300. So it's actually a very much more efficient way of using Electricity to to create light. Yeah, and the prices continue to come down Becomes more affordable to buy the bulbs in your house and really with power prices the way they are It probably pays for itself anyway because they are fairly long-lasting too So yeah, I got cool excellent. Yay for LEDs. Congratulations Nobel Prize winners for physics TechCrunch reports Facebook has officially launched its audience network Which allows any advertiser to buy ads and any third-party app to host them While Facebook uses its data to target the ads to the right people This increases the number of ads Facebook can sell and puts them in direct competition with Google's AdMob Yahoo's Flurry and Twitter's Mopub. It's also reasoned for many To investigate how to turn off ad tracking in iOS and Android Yeah, and this is different than Atlas Although it's a it's a similar system. This is the one that they had announced at the F8 conference recently Yeah The Verge reports Twitter filed a lawsuit against the United States government in the US District Court of Northern, California alleging a violation of First Amendment rights by preventing Twitter from disclosing the quantity of national security letters and FISA orders that it receives currently Twitter and and other companies are only allowed to report a range That is between 0 and 999 which Twitter says is not only too broad But it doesn't allow them to say if it hasn't gotten any letters because zero is included in the range Twitter has been in the past few years. Well since it was created a strong stronger we could say protector of its users privacy and it's pretty interesting to see finally someone actually Contesting this law because it seems like not being able to disclose to disclose this kind of Requests doesn't really serve any well, maybe I'm not seeing the right the right way here But it seems to not serve any other purpose than to prevent people from being outraged somehow or you know to understanding the the the breadth of These types of requests. I don't understand exactly why it would be bad for us to be able to know, you know We got 563 Requests to Twitter What's the I believe the worry is that the more information you give to the bad guys The easier it is for them to determine what's happening and if Twitter were to come back and say we didn't get any security letters We didn't get any FISA orders then suddenly the bad guys using Twitter can go aha They haven't caught us they're not on to us because they didn't get any they didn't send any any letters Or if they sent one or two or actually maybe even more telling would be a number like five and they're like There's five of us they they're on to us because we're the five right it gives Information and you can you can we can have an argument all day long about how much information It's really gleanable, but zero to 999 gives less information. I think Twitter's response here is Yeah, but the first amendment says that you can't have overly broad protections that restrict speech This is an overly broad protection It's also I understand you're the argument and it does make sense the the argument you just made I just think it makes sense in a theoretical way I'm not exactly sure you know if you know that there are 15 letters Maybe if there are none you're gonna think alright I'm probably safe, but if there are 15 or maybe you can make it a smaller range You know if there are 15 compared to 20 I don't know that in the entire world That's gonna mean people are gonna catch on to what the NSA is doing but well And that's why Twitter says it's overly broad because they're like, you know Is this really gonna end up maybe maybe not if it's maybe maybe not that that pretty much defines it as broad and And in that case it should not be It would be a violation of First Amendment protections on free speech, right? CNET reports AT&T has warned 1600 customers in Vermont of a data breach AT&T claims an employee violated the company's privacy policy in August Obtaining customer data like social security numbers and drivers license numbers The employee in question is Surprisingly no longer employed by AT&T and law enforcement was contacted and customers are advised to place a fraud alert on their accounts I'm guessing they contacted the customers affected directly Yeah, they put a letter up on the on the government of Vermont's website as well as sending it to the affected customers Venture Beat reports Nvidia is launching its Maxwell based mobile GPUs for laptops the Nvidia GeForce GTX 980m and 970m Maxwell chips deliver twice the performance per watt of power consumed compared to the previous generation of chips Or at least they can the chips can render 4k in the background Even if you only have a 1080p screen that can help improve the 1080p picture They have multi-frame aliasing voxel global illumination for better lighting effects and twice the energy efficiency of the previous generation Chips are available in many laptops from many manufacturers starting today So before we get some well actually ease in the email I believe it would be multi-frame anti aliasing. No, yes, I wrote it wrong and then I said it wrong You're right anti aliasing not aliasing. They're not adding. They could be fun. You know the aliasing is pretty bad Let's make it worse But those chips are really interesting. I mean they're they're pretty cool on the desktop versions the 980 and 970 are pretty cool already on in desktops But in laptops basically what Nvidia is saying is that laptops laptops are going to be able to rival desktop performance in the graphics department and since games have not been as Demanding, you know the demand growth. I should say the power hunger hasn't been growing as fast as it was in the past Ten years, I would say it could be that we have Desktops or laptops rather that are very performant in get in the games departments. That's something that's really interesting to me So yeah, it is this is this is cool stuff. I think they said they're like it's about 75% But what you get out of a desktop, which it's not bad. Sure now, of course, you know, these chips are not going to be as Power efficient as the integrated chips that Intel is putting in their CPUs, but still it's it's a good option. Yeah, they're much better In gadget reports Samsung It's operating profit for q3 will be down 3.6 to four billion Dollars, which would be the fourth straight quarter of declines Analysts believe Samsung is feeling a squeeze on his phones at the high end by new iPhones and at the low end by Xiaomi and Lenovo It's a tough business to be in the handset market. Yeah, it's a good thing They've got a chip maker and finances and washing machines and whatever it else it is And memory right that's yeah, but I was thinking of that with the chips, but yeah the memory chips all that stuff Yeah Josh Ong of the next web writes about a company called high five run by two former Google employees trying to fix the dreaded conference call First the hardware a 799 dollar device that includes a wide-angle 1080p video camera microphone array and HDMI and internet connections all in a very Lovingly made package that sits on top of a TV or mounts to a wall If you're running late to a meeting you can start the call on your smart device and then send it to the high-five device when you arrive It also supports wireless screen sharing can allow up to ten people or ten rooms on a call And it's free for any company that buys at least one device a pro plan is coming Which will be about ten dollars per active user per month. It'll give you a bunch of added features, too But now if they can just work on the pain of scheduling conference calls that would complete the package I don't know why everyone is so concerned with conference calls. I mean cuz I awful Everyone sitting in a conference call has a complaint about the system like the meeting is bad enough Right when you got the person droning on and or saying the same thing over and over and not listening to what are you suggestions? But there's always tech involved that's going wrong, too So if somebody can crack this and make it easy which from not just Josh Ang's piece But several others that I read high-five seems to have built something that really does just work at least in the demos So we'll see if it can handle a real world, but that's very exciting for people Time now for some news from you. These are submitted to our subreddit daily tech news show dot reddit calm Get out there and vote if you got nothing else to do take a couple minutes and just look through the stuff You know, it's best to get it in before the show get your voting in But that doesn't mean you can't do it right after the show for the next day's show Daily tech news show dot reddit calm is there 24 hours for you to vote submit, etc. Captain Kipper is very sorry That's that's the magic of it. It's always before the show. That's right I said that and then I realized actually there's never a time that isn't technically before a show Well, at some point there might be but we don't want to talk about that. That right. Yeah, that means I'm dead Kipper flagged us to a Buzzfeed story about a DEA special agent who appropriated the identity of a woman named Sandra Arquiette and created a fake Facebook page in her name in order to communicate with suspected criminals Arquette was arrested in 2010 DEA agents alleged she was part of a drug ring, but a judge sentenced her to probation However, one agent used photos from Arquiette's seized cell phone including images of her underage son to populate a fake account When Arquiette found this out because people are like hey What's this weird there's an old picture of you on a car on your Facebook page She's like I don't have a Facebook page so Arquiette sued the agent for violating her privacy and placing her in danger the Justice Department claims via a filing that the Agent had the right to do this privacy advocates are to say the least concerned saying no I don't think you do have the right to do that Yeah, how did they think they had the right to do that? Well, I think it's hard to follow the logic here But I think what they're saying is She is on probation She has to do what we say we own the pictures because we seize the cell phone. They're not art and they're now her property And it's a sting operation. So we get to do sting operations You can go around and pretend to be other people in real life. Why not pretend to be her on Facebook? I don't know that you can't pretend to be I mean they couldn't pretend to be her and Answer the phone and say hey, this is Sandra. How's it going? I that's a weird I guess it's a weird 21st century Issue that's rising up with these kinds of technologies, which is very interesting to think about yeah And debate and the law will adapt slowly, but it will I am this it is it is an interesting So I'm interested to see how the court rules on this for sure I think it's about like basically if you have the right to impersonate Someone and you've been given that right through courts, then it's probably okay It doesn't seem like they've gone through that process though I would think you would have to get Consent and what the I what the Justice Department is saying is we have her consent Through through the consent to be searched and I think what she's saying is that's not no consent to search My house is not the same as impersonate me on Facebook Habitual Condolce points us to a verge right up of a BuzzFeed investigation Which used an Android app called I beacon detector to find 13 beacon Bluetooth transmitter inside New York City phone booths turns out there were about 500 of them total beacons can send out Can send alerts and can be used to collect anonymized data like location time of data app usage and more when Coordinated with an app New York didn't seek public approval before letting outdoor ad company Titan install them After BuzzFeed published their report the CD asked Titan to take the beacons down Titan maintains the beacons were only being used for research and maintenance purposes Right beacon beacon is one of those weird things because it really can't do much without you playing along But because it can do a lot if you do play along and a lot of people may not realize that they're given it the approval, right? It's it freaks people out and to think like 500 of these were hidden in phone booths around New York City I get why they didn't want to go for public approval. I get that.  I think you're I think you're Prevented from these things, you know, they can't like hack into your phone or anything So so it doesn't it doesn't track people in the same way that Wi-Fi sniffer not sniffers But Wi-Fi networks might track MAC addresses or if you have who have to the Bluetooth low energy turned on and and have given it Approval to broadcast and communicate then. Yeah, I can't but you have to give it that so Yeah, but I'm cookies on cookies off situation. Yeah. Yeah, I guess so a little bit Well if beacons don't worry you and you're not scared of the DEA impersonating you on Facebook. How about this Black and whitefield submitted an article from the digital reader comm a hacker recently noticed that Adobe's e-publishing software Seems to be sending a large amount of data to Adobe servers apparently Adobe's digital editions for is gathering data on which ebooks that have been opened within the app Which pages were read and in what order the app also scanned the computer gathering the metadata from all of the ebooks Sitting on the hard disk and uploading that data to Adobe servers bonus all of the data is being sent to Adobe servers in clear text I You know, I think I must be either a Horrible person or somewhat dysfunctional because if I'm being honest even the beacon thing doesn't really it Annoyed me. I don't think it rises to the level of actually bothering me at it. It certainly doesn't Outrage me am I is there something wrong with me Tom? No, I I get what you're saying, especially with the beacon thing I'm like, well, it's it's probably not doing that horrible of a stuff if it's collecting data on you Yes, we should keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn't do horrible stuff But if you're really worried about it, you can turn it off. That's how I feel about beacon on the other hand This really gets me angry and I don't know what the difference is You know, it's like because the solution is don't use Adobe digital reader But this idea that well, you're trying to protect the publishers from me the law-abiding Citizen copying your book when plenty of people are ripping off your DRM and copying it and not getting spied upon This is just another one of those long parade of examples of people who do the right thing getting punished and I think it's probably more Bad policy than it is nefariousness like especially that being sent in clear text. That's just yeah That's that's what actually bothers me the most about this is like, all right I can see that it's anonymized data that you're gathering for statistics or whatever It's not actually trying to spy on me specifically. So I could be okay with it, but Sending in clear text like we should be past that we should know that this is even for these this kind of data Just encrypt it and that will be accepted. It's a wagging of the finger Yeah, if you encrypted it it would get it just a wagging of the finger and then you know, don't do that again No, no Adobe and don't add it or or it don't you're good Don't use Adobe digital editions for because it's lies on you Well, if we know if we know it spies we can make that choice. I guess here. We didn't know yet So yeah, and that my friends is a look at the headlines For our main discussion today Patrick and I want to talk a little bit about the story about Google changing how they're in the news box works If you've done Google searches over the years You've noticed that there is sometimes a small subsection near the top that says news for at least it used to used to say news For and it would pull some headlines from news sources with a link to the Google news section It was essentially saying here's some of the stuff that would show up in Google news under those same keywords That's relevant and timely I've always found that to be fairly useful They've changed it now to be in the news and Danny Sullivan over at search engine land Happened to notice that reddit was showing up in there and he have first thought well Did they add reddit to Google news as an official news source? That would be very interesting So he got in touch with Google and know a Google told search engine land is we will be pulling from all over the web Which means that we will present as diverse a range of voices as possible for the news for section But that doesn't mean that those articles will show up in the Google news product Though that will still be separate that will still be vetted news sources over there so That's just weird because first of all you're like saying this is news But it's not the same news as the news we're calling news in the other part. We call news and Also, it's opening themselves up to things like there was a TSA posting on reddit that uses the F word and that showed up in the news For TSA F you TSA it's um, you know my conspiratorial mind Immediately goes to the issues that Google has been having for its Google news section With the press in Europe especially I mean in France in Belgium and in other European countries Some prominent press organizations have been trying to get Google to basically pay for the Extracts that they would take Yes, I know it's funny. Please don't stop linking to us, but pay us for it Right is basically the idea because Google said sure. We'll just pull you out of Google news. That's fine I don't know and we need a traffic, but we also want you to pass for it, which is and and you know Surprisingly and quite frankly upsettingly They've had to reach deals with some of these organizations to give them money over, you know It was a good chunk of change over a few years to make it okay for them to be Featured in that section that actually brings them traffic that Google is then paying them for the ads on the You know on the on the pages that they're being displayed because of that traffic that's being bought by Google Anyway, they've been having issues with all of these news organizations and press Specifically and when I saw that piece that that piece of news on search engine and I thought my immediate thought was Okay, are they? sneakingly trying to diversify their news Offering initially only on the in the news portion But maybe you know down the line on the Google news portion by having different sources Maybe blogs, maybe reddit, maybe, you know Twitter or maybe even public Facebook pages at some point Since we know they're not pushing Google plus as hard as they have been before Possibly in an attempt to Be less reliant and dependent on the actual newspapers for the news in general on their websites Is that is there any validity to this long-run strategy? It's yeah It struck me the same way and I doubt that that's the main Motivation simply because they would have put it over in Google news as well. I think It feels more like from the get-go. Well, I feel it feels more to me like this is two different teams And one is the Google news team which used to just say okay The search team is embedding part of our results over there.  What if we change it to In the news because it's social news and news is social now And it sounds like a department trying to change an element that another department used to control and that other department's like No, we're not we're not doing this. We're not putting these people in our Google news product yet I Get I think it might be also I mean, I understand why the Google news which is like actual vetted news as you were saying wouldn't want to integrate these Elements, but I also think it might be sort of a trial to see how it works in these in this section first and possibly integrate that later Because really when you think about the news In general today, I don't think you can't really constrain it to just the Press I guess Blogs could potentially I'm not saying all blogs are news obviously but blogs could In Google news, I mean yes, of course, but I mean, okay, maybe reddit is a better example Reddit isn't necessarily a News outlet, but it could be something that you know contributes to the news There are there have been the front page of the internet, right? That's whatever that's what it's often called And I think you're right. It is news just not Journal the news, right? Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah, so I guess the question becomes Are they trying to integrate? Non-journalism news in their news products at some point Mm-hmm And I don't mean that to be a pejorative when I say I'm because reddit is full of journalism trust me But I'm just saying reddit is not a journalism in the sense of you have an editor assigning stories to reporters It's not that kind of system And and and all of the other things even the blogs that are over on Google news are you may be right I mean if you if I were Google news, and I wanted to test this this might be how I tested it So it's it's hard to tell from the outside, but it is it is interesting Let's take a look at the calendar Microsoft's gonna hold a cloud event on October 20th But it will not be in the air. It'll be on land in San Francisco Sacha Nadella and Microsoft's EVP of clouds got Guthrie will talk about the company's plans for cloud computing application services including Azure So that'll be happening October 20th right around the rumored time of an Apple announcement That'll be interesting. Well, I think the Apple announcement is on the 16th now No, or is it the 21st or is it when Apple actually announces something is happening perhaps? Yeah. Yeah, maybe Just a side note very relevant News journalistic news driven comment being EVP of cloud is a super awesome time Yeah, I don't know if that's his official title, but I kind of hope it is yeah Sorry guy. No, that's okay. HTC's double exposure event happens tomorrow October 8th in New York City So we'll we'll find out a little more about what HTC has in store. That's the one where they they want to present a GoPro type thing apparently with the teasers what that's what the theory is yeah, and it seems to be borne out by a few leaks In that case. So yeah, Scott Guthrie is executive vice president of the cloud and enterprise group according to Microsoft I'm disappointed now. Yeah You know what Microsoft cloud and enterprise group. Yeah, we still haven't completely decided on my official DTNS title I think we should discuss EVP of cloud EVP of cloud done. Yeah, I'll run it by Jenny for final approval October 8th through the 11th is the Grace Hopper celebration of women in computing in Phoenix, Arizona, too So check that out as well our pick of the day comes from Sashin Bahal who says proper pronouncement is 2nd Bahal so I just said it wrong and I probably mispronounced your pronunciation. Anyway, he's in Toronto First off, I wanted to say I'm addicted to the Daily Tech news show. It is now one of my favorites Thank you very much. My pick of the day is the app called site. It is an awesome app It works almost like pocket or Instapaper, but all you have to do is take a screenshot of the article you're reading and Boom you can read it later on the developer just recently updated the app So it takes advantage of iOS 8's extensions So you can still save stuff to read it later and offline that I mentioned that it's a free app because it is the only Downside is that it is available for iOS only, but you can view your saved stuff on their web interface That's an interesting take on this this read it later stuff My problem with the read it later stuff is that I never go read it later I have a lovely long list at pocket that I've never gone and read Yeah, I used to read a little bit more of it before I don't know in the past year. I guess I've Not done it as much as I should the thing about the screenshots though For really long articles you have to take like 15 screenshots to get the whole article Is that am I understanding it right in the way it works? Well, if I'm getting this right you're it doesn't matter what app you're reading You you just take a screenshot and then site Analyzes the screenshot finds the article. It's based on and saves it. Oh And then the articles are optimized for mobile reading and available when you're offline because that goes and catches them in the background Okay, why not just use a URL then? Because if you're in an app like Feedly for instance Getting the URL might be a few clicks away or in some apps You may not be able to get the URL at all because of the way it handles the browser this way it doesn't matter You don't have to think about it.  Interesting. Yeah, kind of a cool thing Send your pics to us, please We want to hear your pics send them to feedback at daily tech news show calm and you can find my pics at daily tech news show Com slash pics Let's finish up with a message of the day from Franz who says I may be a bit late on the subject But I wanted to bring up one last point regarding the windows 10 Continuum model which I think you may have missed in last week's episodes having the same operating system on the phone as on the desktop Opens up the possibility to plug your phone into a docking station and have it literally be your PC in your pocket All you would need would be a dock screen keyboard and mouse Basically windows phone 10 could provide what Ubuntu Edge promised and failed to deliver Also, windows would be a better vehicle to have this working since the potential user base would be greater than with Ubuntu Granted it would not be the most powerful machine far from it But the implementation could be simple at least in theory and I can imagine a few use cases where I wouldn't need much computing power Anyway to be productive. What is your take on this idea? Patrick I think we sort of touched on it a little bit in the episode we did right after The windows 10 announcement with mollywood, but yeah, we didn't go much into it I think you're you're completely right, France. It could be one of the holy grails of computing since Mobile the mobile market exploded a few years ago a lot of people have been thinking about trying to get this and as computers Mobile computers, you know phones power explodes They can now pretty much handle a lot of what we're doing with our desktops Not everything and I don't think we're ever ever going to reach a point where we can Absolutely do everything we're doing on the desktop with the power of a mobile, but it could be Provide some interesting solutions to some of the cases and the issues we have however One thing I will say is that the real issue we're trying to solve with these Computers in our pockets plugged into docks and used as desktops is really only the files Being transferred from one to the other and the cloud seems to be solving that issue in another way already So I'm not sure exactly how much we're gonna need this in a couple three five years when the you know Connection speeds are gonna be available fast enough everywhere that you know the cloud is gonna be pervasive so Yeah, and as high storage gets cheaper and cheaper it's starting to catch up with our needs For storage it gets closer and closer all the time as well So even if you didn't have the cloud you could still just have one device that is your storage your local storage as well I don't think the operating system is the gating fact here here so much Android art you can already do this with Android. There's Android phones out out there that do it The aces pad phone is kind of an attempt for this I I have definitely seen Microsoft pushing this as the big advantage to the unified operating system to me It's more about the processing power of that device if I you know and and like you say if we get enough ubiquitous Internet connectivity and cloud storage That takes some of the pressure off, but can it drive the big 4k monitor that that I have can I play a video game on it? You know, what are the things that I can that I need a desktop for that a smaller device with its internals can't do I feel like that's the bigger problem not the operating system. Yeah, it is but we're not far from that already and CPUs desktop and laptop CPUs are gaining power a lot less quickly a lot slower than mobile Now it's all about it's all about the graphic processor at this point not the CP. Yeah, right Yeah, that that will be yeah, and we just had the story about the Nvidia bringing the higher-power graphics to the laptops So we are making progress down that road as well Well, thanks Franz good thought provoking email appreciated feedback at daily tech news show comm. Thank you Patrick Beja Folks go check out Loranda Vutek if you speak French, you're gonna love it if you don't speak French you can learn it I think I'm gonna change my tagline if you speak French, you're gonna love it Don't speak French you're gonna learn it that will work. Absolutely. Yes if you enjoy the French language and enjoy tech news Serve to you in a summarized manner every two weeks Then Loranda Vutek is made for you and you can go check it out at French spin comm You can also check me out or at least my Twitter feed and thoughts on Twitter comm slash not Patrick and Patrick's got more Irons fires pots cooking All kinds of things going on. Yes, there are there are things boiling and cooking in my backyard Yes, keep it on that Twitter feed for the eventual explosion of creativity Thank you. Thank you to our patrons the folks who make the show possible Thousands of you out there find it in your hearts to give us something either by patreon patreon.com slash a's detect or through paypal or Bitcoin or doge coin Daily tech news show com slash donate if you want to look at that value for value model And that that's I totally ripped that off from from Adam Curry and John Dvorak's no agenda show But I think it's so well said which is if you find some value in the show and you can you're capable of Giving a little value back. We really appreciate it daily tech news show com slash donate Don't forget you can have a voice in what stories we cover at our subreddit It's daily tech news show dot reddit calm You can email us feedback at daily tech news show calm call us 51259 daily 51259 32459 and listen to the show live at mobile dot out the gate radio calm visit our website Daily tech news show calm. We'll be back tomorrow with Justin Robert young and an announcement About Justin Robert young Talk to you then Know why I feel the need to cheer. I think it goes back to me earlier in this shows Evolution being glad that another show was actually successfully done Oh my god, we did it. So what's jury's announcement? Oh, he Darn it He's donating his beard to science says on the mono Actually, you may have guessed it, but you'll have to fine tune in tomorrow to find out for sure Um Robert is saying justing Robert young never heard of it of him. I think he's never beard of him On it works when you write it and Robert says never trust a guy with Robert in his name. I Know I don't I know I do 100 well actually that's not true. I completely trust most people with Robert's in their names It's just Justin Robert young. I don't trust specifically Well, most serial killers have three names, but not all three-name people are serial killers. Let's just you know Get past that prejudice right now Not saying that Justin Robert young is or is not a serial killer. I have no idea Is Justin Robert or Robert young a serial killer find out tomorrow Plus episode four of I don't have a proper name for it do we Title why is Jenny being so quiet?  I think your mic's possessed Because it's we should have had a Halloween October Daily Tech news show Oh, is it Halloween now? No, it's well, you know It's sci-fi does the 30 days of Halloween in October. Well, it's not too late. Yeah. Oh I'm hearing things. All right. How about now? Yeah, now we hear you bizarre Would you like some titles before my computer totally loses power and goes bye? Yes? That would be good Okay, so the top vote getter from Todd Whitehead is turning LED into gold, which is another great when you read it Because it says lead. Yeah. Oh, I see. I didn't get it at first It's the Nobel Prize Philosopher's Stone Then you've got a CS803 with Google quote news. Have you read it? Yeah, which is very good very good there And of course Paul Ganon. Oh what I really like this one Nobel LED with the L serving both The end of Nobel LED got it. No bad lead Nice really great You guys have a preference. Oh wait. I'm not done. Oh, sorry down there and vote number three is fake book I feel like that's from somewhere else somewhere else. I also do like CS803's blue light special Yeah For the blue light special and also no bells blue man group, which is just I Love it. There are a lot of good titles today Yay titles my my use them all All right, I gotta pick one now which one is it is it turning lead into golden? I think it's yeah, it's pretty good Or Google news. Have you read it? I mean that's a little long. I Don't know. I like so many of these today Good there's good ones today. Lots of good ones. There's always good ones, but Google rolls out local news and weather app for iOS That's a weird combination local news. Yes Uses and weather app for your ass your comprehensive and personalized view of headline stories and local news and weather Is it weather on the 8th? Sounds like like morning radio in the US. I guess so that's I guess where they Traffic and weather on the 8th. It's Google K Google Kg o o g le We know it's too many letters of the FCC f you FCC. We're not a broadcast station We include reddit did our good news with F words Reddit literally is the F you FCC Yeah, we put the F CC yeah, we will take our party elsewhere. Thank you a Nobel Prize out of the blue Good one Curtis P out of the blue and into the black. Well, no, that doesn't make any sense That's the actual lyrics of the song I guess they're into the I was thinking maybe they were in the red because they hadn't won the prize money yet And now they're in the black No Wait me did everyone leave? I'm literally watching my computer. It's now I find a cricket sound effect. I gotta go charge it. Hold on Everybody come with me. Yay. Let's follow Jenny through her house I'm so I'm trying to avoid showing you what the place where I normally broadcast looks like is It's one of those things where it's not gonna it's not as bad as you think it is. Yeah, it's bad Or maybe it is Epic diapers, okay power power has been achieved So did you see that guy who sent the the video of just me? I can't remember exactly what I said, but the way I said it Sounded like hey Siri, and he was in his car And he was listening to the show and it actually like triggered Siri to stop the podcast and do a search I thought it's not the car which was more of a concern. That would have been that would have been much more Yeah, I would have been very concerned serious like that integrated into cars yet but imagine I mean That's what five years off Yeah, I don't think it'll ever like control the car though. I don't think you'll be able to accidentally say hey Cortana stop the car. What I don't know Let's have this conversation in six years Yeah, exactly. You know what I want to go far from I want to go back to buzz out loud six years ago and find an episode where One of us probably me just as likely says let's have this conversation in six years I would I would love to follow up because I've had tons of these kinds of conversations and you're right It's like, well, you know what's gonna happen and then what actually happens is that you have I don't know It's like there's not even cars in six years that something else is invented and totally takes over Well, we're not even here in six years. We're already off to interstellar space right exactly the singularity happens See ya, really Well, I'm just saying it could maybe not likely but I'm all for it. I'm team singularity.  Team singularity. Can you get like singularity gear like hats and jerseys, right? I Would love that Go singularity What would be the opposite of team singularity? What's the team Aniston of team singularity team logic and science? No, I did not Be a troll a bit of hater. I don't know I'm sorry. I don't mean that. There's just lots of logic in the singular Yeah, we'll be the opposite of singularity not singularity like singularity Team plurality. Oh man I Print up those t-shirts Yeah, somebody get Yes, exactly, that's what I was going for right there get Michael on the phone stat What else is going on Patrick, how are things? Busy good turns out that you know Having a preparing for becoming a professional podcaster that lives off the world's generosity and hard work and Putting together multiple podcasts Plus having a real daytime job is pretty exhausting. I Can attest to that. Yeah, also playing destiny takes a little bit And then try to fit in destiny on top of it. It's Destiny people problems Yeah, I'm having the same problem with Skyrim Which is my husband and I literally swear each day is a day We will not be playing Skyrim and then by the end of the day It's been like such a day that we're like just an hour It's just an hour. We're just gonna play for an hour and then you know Have you recently discovered Skyrim or have you been playing it every day for three years? someone gave it to us because we love fallout and It was weird just backlog we're about three years behind honestly Because we don't play games a lot, but when we do play them thoroughly And we like a very particular subset of games. They don't always play games They're the most interesting gamers in the world. We are not I will say that we are not because Matt sits on the couch He goes go there go there. You should go there and I operate.  Yeah, it's amazing and it seems to never end, but it definitely like It just ends up being like wow everybody wants something from me What something from you like no more people that's not gonna work people It's um, I think I played about I don't know 80 hours of it something like that And it was weird because I didn't I didn't I never played any of the Elder Scrolls before that And I was like, yeah, I'll try Skyrim it looks pretty cool And there's that like live action trailer where he goes You know The music and the thing I guess I want to be that guy and then I started and I was like, oh my god This is the best thing ever for hours and hours on end. I think I spent an entire Christmas And it was great actually yeah, we are we are deep in But in and if you if there's I learned something yesterday Actually, I discovered it two days ago, and then I repeated the experiment. I found a way to make your whole day better in the real world It's amazing. You want to hear it? Does it involve playing Skyrim all day?  So you go to an Ikea and you take one of their flat, you know, you put all the heavy stuff on it carts Mm-hmm, and you go to one of those long aisles where there aren't too many people and You just use it like a skateboard and you just push off and there's some weird combination of like Skating sailing and you know surfing it's literally like the best feeling ever it's it makes you instantly happy and Apparently the people at Ikea don't seem to care and don't make you stop Okay, yeah, it's an instant mood boost if you're at Ikea and you're feeling down Which often happens at Ikea sounds like a 70s love song Yeah down at Ikea feeling down What I usually do is Scoot around the ground I I go for the meatballs and that makes me feel better That's that's the pre shop Yeah, I did this is the post shop All right, so you do yeah, it's funny. I do the pre shop meatballs as well. Yeah, did you know that you can get You can get or it's been a long time since I tried this, but you could substitute side dishes So if you want the macaroni and cheese you can actually get the macaroni and cheese instead of the potatoes with the meatball special Shining down on me Good old lead belly China ever love and light on me Yeah, those are great So is the creature behind you a dog or a really weird cat It's a Pomeranian which is essentially a really weird cat Seven pounds tiny dog wait not good light His name is Jax. He was named after Mortal Kombat No, I you know, I can't take credit with someone else's dog before was my dog.  I'm a nerd. Okay, uh Just a very particular subset of nerd. Yeah, he's cute dog. He does all right All right, I think it might be time for me to go back to very serious Destiny destiny playing. Yeah. Yes. Yes, that's what I was gonna say. We understand and I'm out of the post So that's perfect timing. Thank you everyone for watching and we will see you tomorrow We'll be at your window. Just look but I was standing on your lawn We'll bring in the meatball special. That's right. We'll be both special


Hey, it's a it's 7 30 now so if you're Interested in the seat come on and take a seat there's plenty there. No actually there's not plenty up These ones say they're reserved, so but I come on down there are some seats on the front sides of the tables or there's chairs up in the the balcony section Okay, let me see if I can lean into the microphone a little better and there we go. All right We'll go a little stay All right, is that better? All right, so thank you everyone for coming. I would like to open the informational meeting for the town of Essex this date March 4th, which is a command right March 4th 2024, thank you all for coming First item on the agenda is whether the question of whether there are any Agenda additions or changes are there any additions or changes from staff? None any Changes or additions from board members? None. Okay, hearing none. I will pass the baton here to esteem John Sonic Thank you everybody and welcome to town meeting We're going to start this evening with a presentation of the colors by Boy Scout troops 635 and the National Anthem presented by Sophia Lou They've got the evidence found on the online I Can absolutely do that And the reserve was for staff so anybody who isn't sitting absolutely feel free to come in and sit up here if you like All right, very well as I was saying welcome to the town meeting here in Essex The informational session for 2024. We are going to First open the meeting with the presentation of the colors by Boy Scout troop number 635 and the singing of the National Anthem By Sophia Lou a soloist with the Essex High School Chamber Choir It's last gleaming Whose broad stripes and bright stars Through the perilous fight For the ramparts we were so gallantly streaming Bombs bursting back was still there Oh Say does that star-spangled Thank you very much We would also like to start this meeting thanking Girl Scout troop number 61 845 for greeting everybody and Making us all a little chunkier at least opportunistically so Let's see here and the students from the Essex High School student government for serving soup to start off our evening And for all the Essex Middle School staff for their assistance in setting up for this evening and for taking it all down later on this town this town informational hearing is being live streamed by town meeting TV and So thank you all for coming here and being a part of that It is also being streamed on zoom So if you are here on zoom when it comes to Part of the meeting where you're if you'd like to ask a question at the bottom of your window under Reactions if you click on that you'll see a little hand icon click there And what we'll try to do is rotate between one person on zoom and then one person here in the house And hopefully we'll get through everybody in that way Okay Let's see. All right. So now if we could do some introductions first. Let's go through the select board members We have chair Andy Watts vice chair Tracy Delphia clerk Kendall Chamberlain Ethan Lawrence and Don Hill flurry For town staff we have the town manager Greg Duggan deputy town manager Marguerite Lad Finance director Dan Roy and We have a number of department heads with us here this evening in the audience Also in the audience joining us is Representing Chinden North district senator Irene Renner and now we have Don Hill flurry member of the select board to read the invocation of civility We are gathered together in civil assembly We gather as a community in the oldest sense of the word We gather to come together and try to make decisions about what is right and about what is wrong Let us advocate for our position, but not at the expense of others Let us remember that there is an immense gap between saying I am right saying I believe I'm right and That our neighbors with whom we might disagree are good people with hopes and dreams as true and high as ours Let us always remember that in the end caring for each other in this community As far greater than any difference of opinion that we might have Thank you all for being One thing that maybe not everybody remembers is that this is a different style of town meeting than we've had in the past in The past we would actually have motions on the floor We'd be using Robert's rules of order so that we would decide things such as the budget or any other articles that required In-person voting last year we voted as a group to Make that not how we're doing it. Everything is now Australian ballot. So that is tomorrow Please come vote here at EMS So this is just an informational meeting so you can ask questions about what is on the ballot So what we will do it like I said no no motions are necessary We'll just go through each of the items on the agenda and first We'll have a presentation from someone on the select board and then we'll open it up to questions All right, are there any questions about that? All right, well then we are going to open this up with Andy Watts doing a presentation on the budget That's not what I'm seeing Still seeing the title page One of the fun parts about doing this for the first time in a new place All right, so I think what I'll do is I'll start working from this and then and hopefully Greg can catch it Well, actually the people online can't see that So maybe I'll wait I Still have the title page up strange There we go. I'm sorry. What was that? Okay, okay. All right, I look like I'm seeing the same thing you are. Yep. All right. Here we are. Okay, so Before the budget we started working on the budget in November Staff came and asked the select board for what we asked the select board what our goals were for the the coming budget year Because of the large increase we had last year. We really wanted to not have a double-digit Increase again this year's and we in fact said no greater than five percent The municipal tax increase and so that's what we've asked for we also wanted to Maintain and improve our pedestrian and trail network With for a better connectivity through the town We wanted to increase community outreach and engagement We were interested in finding ways to increase revenue streams including making sure that we use as many grants as we can Practically apply for We also wanted to have additional tension attention placed on our capital needs and budget With the separation we did lose a significant portion of our Tax base and so we need to put some significant focus on that in coming years How to recover from that and then we also wanted to look ahead to how we're going to develop the 32 acres of land that we purchased for a new municipal center The next slide So from a highlight standpoint, we are not cutting anything. We're keeping all of the same services that we've been providing The challenges to the budget Health premiums are increasing 13 to 14 percent Inflation as you all know is is rising the cost we're increasing the cost of everything supply chains have been difficult to deal with because of recovery from from COVID problems and and other things that are going on in the world On the for the police department, we are not Defunding the police department. We're but we are not fully funding it. The police department does have authorization to hire Their complete staff, but the but we're budgeting at 90 percent. So if And this would be a great thing if they were able to do it We were with the fully staff They would have to come to us and ask for the additional 10 percent, which we would very likely give them But it's only budgeted 90 percent to avoid Having excess fund balance at the end of the year and also to to bring the budget down Dispatch on the other hand is funded at 100 percent that has in the past also been budgeted at 90 percent, but we are fully staffed and this dispatch right now So we want to we're keeping it that way and making sure we're we've fully funded that so that I actually added a some cost this year That we didn't have last year From a savings and efficiency standpoint as exjunction does pay for I think it's 48 percent of the Police budget plus another 3 percent or 3 and a half percent of overhead cost for the police department So part of our we get a significant piece of revenue from them and also One of the things we did this year to keep cost cost down or increases down this year as we we level funded the Capital fund which we will have to address in future years Next slide okay, the Budget changes also include some some staffing changes the sx free library is is increasing their Number of paid hours by 50 or under 15 hours of adding 15 hours to their weekly budget for salaries This allows them to have they have a policy that they have to have two people on duty at all times And if someone was sick there were times in the past that we've had to close the library because we didn't have enough staff to open it This will relieve some of that Also help with with Programming options that we want to put in place and that the library wants to put in place Library budget also includes funding for an assistant library director. This is a promotional opportunity for for existing staff the We also have added a part-time Administrative assistant one of the things that the select board keeps telling Greg is that he needs to delegate more Well, we we're gonna put somebody in there that he can delegate to so that he can focus on Some of the bigger picture big bigger projects and you know Now things like figuring out how to work the computer during town meeting can be done by an admin instead of by the town manager We're also adding a Part-time trails coordinator to help with that connectivity thing we mentioned earlier and I actually wanted to thank publicly Kelsey Carpenter who who really brought this up to me during one of our coffee chats that this is an important thing and Largely because of her comments around that. I've been pretty much I've been trying to push on this and so pretty happy that it's in there We also shuffled around where where some of our employees get get paid from Parks and Rec and also our the water department water sewer department They have enterprise funds were fees that they collect pay for the programs so we've moved some Pieces of people's times either in and out of those enterprise funds to to balance what the work they're doing So that's paid from an inappropriate source and also it it changes the the overall budget number Up and down by by some some amount We also with the ending of the agreement on the senior center with the city of s. Exjunction We no longer staff the the senior center there That's fully run by the the city of s. Exjunction, so we don't need that position anymore. That's been removed from the budget We've also gone from three senior van drivers down to two Partly because we no longer serve the the s. Exjunction residents, so they're no longer residents of the town And we have we have some better So anyway, we've worked for down to two drivers instead of three in the finance department separation actually wasn't a very easy thing to do in the finance department because a lot of the Effort there are a lot of the work there was was very intertwined And so we did have some extra funds and the current year's budget our last year's budget to pay for some Part-time staffing and a consultant to help us with that separation that's all completed now And so we don't need don't need those those funds anymore. So those have come out the fire department budget we've We are increasing the pay rates for premium firefighters by by a dollar an hour to better match rates that we're seeing at other places and we've also Added an incentive to have volunteer coverage on the weekends by having $40 per evening and weekend Shifts for four volunteers per shift to keep to get better fire support and also to encourage more volunteers Utilities clerk in finance had 10% of the salaries and benefits moved into the general fund from the water sewer fund That's one of those transfers I was talking about going from an enterprise fund back in the general fund there In public works again, we we shuffled a few people around police department the We didn't shuffle the people around their jobs are the same Which is where the the money that pays for them comes from different different places Police department budget includes the elimination of a seasonal records clerk and and the records clerk dispatcher will continue will Become solely a records clerk. So we've we've consolidated some some Functions there and and eliminated the position the Stormwater interns will be paid for the general fund instead of out of storm water and then 10% of the GAS Coordinators position is moved into assessing because about 10% of their work is done to support the assessing department so just to make sure it's it's Funded from the right place and in and in this case because the city of Essex Junction is still paying us for assessing services The city of Essex Junction is paying for a portion of our GAS service now Next slide so One of the things that we're doing is we're using $398,100 of fund balance fund balance is money that's left over from prior years It's under spent money from a prior budget The select board has a policy that we have 15% of Unassigned fund balance for emergency purposes as came in handy like during storms like it when a road gets washed out We can we can repair the road Without having to borrow money. So we have that you know, we have those funds already in our pocket to do that So that's what that 15% is for And then anything beyond that The select board annually assigns where that where those funds should go and we have in past years and Largely because we knew separation was going to be a big issue for us last year we designated a Chunk of money to offset this year's tax increase That's where that's what's happening here is there's $325,000 left over from from that we designated last year We're also be designating it this year to to offset the 2025 tax increase There's a $40,000 in there for an economic development report $25,000 for a first responder study so that we can better understand what our first response needs are and then there's 8100 for a couple of IT expenses we list those out. These are one-time expenses that that Aren't continuing expenses in the budget that's this year only so we're spending money that we had left over from prior years to do it Rather than adding to this year's budget Adding those funds to this year's budget next So in summary the challenge the changes Personnel costs including benefits are going up just under half a million Insurance is going down About a hundred thousand. That's we had a we had a good year. We didn't have as many or any I don't know what the numbers are was a safer year with regard to workman's compensation So our insurance rates went down went down the sand salt gravel fuel and gasoline that's inflation hitting us there and My computer is asking me if I want to leave the meeting. I do not okay. I will try to ignore that Okay the professional services I mentioned already mentioned the first responder study and the Economic development reports We have an additional vehicle purchase we're making this year and that was one of those supply chain issues where a car wasn't available in the in in the In the right year, so we're having to to buy it in a in a later year technology subscriptions and licenses keep going up Our summer construction services are increasing that's mostly paving and then the net of all the other increases hundred and forty thousand so there's overall a increase of seven hundred five thousand two hundred and sixty nine dollars Figure out how to there we go. Okay So in summary the total Proposed budget is sixteen point one million The change I just mentioned from the previous slide was seven hundred and five thousand Increase that's a four point five eight percent Budgetary increase we estimate that we will need to collect five point zero three percent more tax revenue than we have in the past or more But with with a projection of a conservative point seven five percent increase in the grand list We're estimating that the the tax rate change that that you will see is four point two four percent Which is below the five percent we had asked for okay, so if We typically use a two hundred and eighty thousand dollar home as an example for what the dollar amount will be That's the two hundred eighty thousand of your assessed value not to your market value I know everybody's market value is probably much more than there is probably more than their their assessed value but the Expected increase for the typical home two hundred eighty thousand would be eighty dollars and thirty six cents a year you can take this These numbers and to use your own Assessed value and scale it to find out what an approximation of what your Dollar amount change will be The assumptions that are here. They're used here is a again a point seven five percent Grand list growth the use of three hundred ninety eight thousand one hundred and fund balance again That's money left over from prior years This tax rate that's shown the the estimated tax rate for twenty twenty five is point seven zero five three That does not include the three cent capital tax that was voted last year It was voted to increase from two two cents to three cents last year And also includes the local agreement rate, which is point zero zero two cents that includes Tax breaks that are given to the veterans the you know, I think a break on the first forty thousand of their assessed value and then it also includes the Tax agreements that we have with with businesses, which we'll we'll talk a little bit about Later on one of the other valid items Okay, is that a great oh Okay, and then it is pie chart. This is where your your dollars will go general government Which is the select board management economic development and finance is is Look at it right. I think that's the biggest the biggest piece and then Public works and police are also pretty large culture and recreation. That's the library and parks and rec and then Fire is the next after that and then there's smaller pieces. And so this is this again is the pie chart showing where where Text dollars go. I think that's the end of the budget perfect timing Sure So tell me you might need to let me back into the meeting or somebody Not picky. All right. Are there any questions from the floor? There are no questions from the floor. All right. If somebody else in the zoom meeting could see if there are any raised hands There are no raised hands online really people no questions about the budget. All right Apparently Andy just does a bang-up job. Mr. Lawrence. Yes, sir. Oh She's saying that she does not hear us well, so we need to Irony of ironies. Mr. Lawrence not a question. I just want to say thank you for your service I think you've done a great job of Putting together this budget holding the cost down in a difficult time. So thank you. All right, if there are still no zoom questions We will move into a presentation once again by mr. Watts Shall on the question of article 2 shall the town of Essex adopt the proposed 2024 town plan All right, so so Once the town establishes a town plan Statute says you really need to update it every eight years and so we're at eight years And that's why there's there's an update here update being done here. So the question is Article 2 on the ballot is shall a town adopt the proposed 2024 town plan And next slide So the town plan is a visionary guiding document It's really what it's what is used to define what the zoning requirements are and zoning and development regulations are So it it really does say in there what your neighbors can build on their property Kind of thing and so we did spend a lot of time over the past many months collecting public input on this and so That's that's that's what it is. That's what that's how we've gotten here this the importance of the plan as it provides a Clear picture of the future makes great places will make aesthetics a great place Establishes a transparent and predictable public policy meaning you can look in the town plan and see Where regulations came from and you can understand that it was voted on by the town and that's what the town agreed to and that's why the regulations are the way they are and Then it does also promote wise investment and help manage future costs Because we have a town plan we be we can use it we can point to it for grant during grant applications and and those Things that need to happen to make a town grow and move forward And So in our case the town of Essex does require an Australian ballot to to approve the town plan not I don't I guess not every municipality does it that way and So are there and oh yeah one thing I wanted to make sure that the door there were Three public hearings previously on this topic One by the planning commission and two by the select board, so it's been discussed in many meetings and Over the past several months, so Just say are there any questions The contents of the town plan were reviewed during the public hearings that were held And I do believe that they're available online the proposed changes and all that yeah So if you'd like to see before you vote tomorrow, you can go online and they're available there All right, if there is nothing else then we shall go to article three, which is an advisory opinion Which means that Someone circulated a petition and got enough signatures to put a question on the ballot for tomorrow It's asking for a particular Step to be taken it is an advisory opinion only so it sort of it'll give the select board the sense of the town And then they can choose to to act on it as they will Article three reads as follows Shall the voters require the town annual report to list the location of commercial properties that received a municipal tax Stabilization benefit within the report fiscal year the amount of that benefit and property owners And did you have something that you want to do for this All right, sure on the tax stabilization thing I mentioned earlier that's that's that 002 cents of Local agreement tax is is where that these these funds would fall we currently have two one is with blodgett and one is with Glavale Orgolavel at Glavale Glavale, right and I guess the the question here is right should we put them in the If any of the well, I guess every year put somewhere in the The annual report just a listing of who has those and what what the what the amounts are that they're The benefit that they're getting from the agreement Again as John said this is an advisory Or yeah advisory vote and the select board just want to make it clear that the select board added that word advisory just to make it Make it clear to the public that it's not a mandatory thing We're not saying we're not going to do it We're just saying just want to make it totally transparent that it's it's a future select board or this select board could choose not to Do what the question asks we are required by because of the number of signatures that we received We are required to put the ballot at the question on the ballot, but there's nothing that actually requires The town to to do what the question asks just I'm just making that clear I'm not saying that we're gonna not gonna do it just want to make it clear that it we're told transparency Is there anybody present who'd like to talk about? About this at all maybe the rationale behind it what they think the benefit of that would be Yes, ma'am. I Think it'd be best for the people who are on the zoom meeting Thank you Can everyone hear me I was one of the petitioners For this and I just wanted for you please introduce yourself. My name is Lorraine Zaloum. I live on center road I've lived I grew up in Essex Junction left now in back But one of the reasons I wanted to do this was to add transparency and increase engagement Also out of concern too for some of the businesses that we're giving Tax stabilizations for to make sure that they're bringing good jobs and we're paying attention to that as well I believe gravel had to give some money back I might be incorrect about that because they didn't meet the requirements of the stabilization. I Hope if anyone has any questions to them around they can ask So so one thing I think I neglected to say is that the information that's being asked for in this question Is already public knowledge you can ask for this information anybody can can ask it's it's and we would gladly share the information, you know if there's a there's a public records request Process that you could certainly initiate and and the information would be shared just to make sure that this isn't Something we've been trying to keep secret and that's we're suddenly being asked for it It's it's always been public information to anybody who who wants it could could ask for it at any time and we would share it and It is true that that We do follow up on that these the tax agreements that we have with businesses and you're right. Glovelle had to did have to Return some of the money because they did they didn't Generate as many jobs as they said they were going to All right. I don't see anything right now on zoom. Are there no further questions or comments? Then we will move on to a conversation about article 4 Shall the voters require the town annual report to list the names position titles salaries and benefits of all town employees Within the annual report fiscal year. This again is an advisory opinion And and again, this is this is completely public information anybody who who wants this information can ask for it again We're not it's not something we've been hiding. It's it's always been public information No one has asked for it in a number of years But again, it's it's a it's a similar situation where it's an advisory vote and Make sure that we're transparent about that Any any comments or questions about in what might be the most exciting bit of the night We have someone online who would like to participate Sharon Zuckowski I am unmuting you. I hope I don't know We can Go ahead Yes, ma'am decades and as it Being easy to get this information. I know that other people have asked for it even select board members and it really hasn't been received to them in a way that's readable or Possible to even understand so I think that may be the reason that The petition was put forth So thank you So Mizukowsky, I'll try to all right this and if I miss anything Please feel free to say it and I'll say it again to the ground who's here She said that in her opinion It has been difficult to get the information in a way that she thinks is easily readable and And searchable and so because that has been a difficulty She thought this would be a good way to make sure that it is less so in the future Is that a fair representation? Yes. Thank you very much. Okay. Very good It's true There are other municipalities that do that do publish this every year and in their and their annual report and The select board hasn't actually hasn't had a discussion about whether we want to do this or not So I can't say whether the select board would or wouldn't choose to do so in the future with regard to the The I think the request that Sharon is referring to I'm aware, but I'm not going to spill the beans as to who this individual is that a Request was made in the past and and the response they got they were unhappy with I will I will guarantee you today that if you asked for that question that that information today You would get it in a very clear Format with exactly the information You're looking for and so I can't I can't atone right, you know, I can't account for what past select boards or administrations have done But I think today it would not be a problem if you were to ask for this sort of information Come on up Lorraine LeBrain's a loom again center road again. I'm one of the petitioners for this as well and I wanted to do this because as a female and having Been slighted in my salary in the past I've worked in male dominant fields for most of my life and have just made some discoveries that were very Unpleasant that were based on my gender. So we'd like this to also help protect our staff And we also many many municipalities Publish online we checked the state also Publishes all the state workers online have been doing so for years if there's concerns about room on The town report certainly we could have a link that could be online as well if it's about saving printing money I have no problems with that, but I really want it for transparency and to understand How competitive we are as well?  I think we were probably underpaying and I think that's important for us to be able to check that out as Citizens and in terms of requesting the information. I think it's Easier and less work for our staff if they don't have people having to request information as well So it's to reduce staff time too. I hope people support this and I hope the select board will consider it. Thank you Is there anybody else who would like to speak? I think we're good Sharon your hand is still raised is did you have something new? Oh, no problem. No problem at all This is the life I lead All right in that case we will move on to article five Which is the election of a moderator? And a one year a one there's one vacancy for three years on the select board So both of those are I don't think we really talk about this. We just mentioned that it's happening No politicking during town meeting All right, next we are at the public to be heard. Is there anybody who feels like they would like to be heard about something? Come on down please make sure that you say your name into the mic and Speak so that everybody can hear you please Francis Raymond I'd like to know if we're considering a 1% sales tax in Essex Everybody around us has it First started I was totally against it, but now that everybody has it. We're just missing the boat as far as I'm concerned so Taxes are going up. The school is looking to 18 to 22 percent I just wondering if the select board has brought it to and then where they're going to go because it would be a vote Thank you So we haven't had an official discussion on that, but I do believe that it will be on the table We will be bringing it up, especially since we bought 32 acres of land It will need to figure out how to put buildings on it at some point So I think it and also in order to address our capital needs. I mentioned earlier that with the As extension leaving the town we lost 41% of our tax base So we lost 41% of our our capital tax revenue. That was largely why we asked for a 1 cent increase in the capital tax last year I know we all know that reassessment is is happening as well And so everybody's it's likely that many property values will change Probably not in the downward direction and so that will affect how much capital revenue we get and so I think once when we're in a once we're in a position where we we Have a view of where we're going with the new property and where and possibly where Assessment puts us from a revenue standpoint I think it will be on the table again. We haven't we haven't Had a discussion about it. So there's no official position on that yet. Is there anybody else who would like to speak? Come on down Good evening Bob Lueing here. Thank you for coming guys and Supporting us the trails that you were referring to are those ones off of Sand Hill Road the trail enhancement thing about our We're looking at the entire at the entire town So that we're gonna we're hiring a trails coordinator who will yes look at the in the you know all of our trails Also, we're where there are opportunities to connect to other towns So it's gonna be a completely comprehensive Yeah, so I'm here to encourage that because that brings a lot of traffic from all over the country To our little town to drive bikes and do their Athletic stuff. I have several neighbors with the fat tire bikes and I hiked the trails a lot and lately with the development that's happening there. They've cut my access off To get to some of these trails So I applaud whoever's putting that together to continue with that because that is an excellent way to promote good health and stuff for our towns and Then although short thing about the 1% having being a retired business person We got to be really careful. We don't push employee hers out of town Though in Williston's created their 1% thing or increase If I have this right IBM had to ship their whole shipping department from the Williston section the Essex To avoid that tax so they could you know, it was just another nail in the coffin We're pushing IBM out for example So I agree we need to spread that out with all industries to be fair. We also have to be careful that we don't Handcuff our employers from bringing more people and along with the trails So that you know that all goes hand-in-hand and I appreciate you balancing out our budget With us going on. Thank you All right, come on up Do you say your name? Into the mic so everyone can hear yeah, I'm Bruce post one Cindy Lane Andy you mentioned the upcoming reappraisal houses What is your schedule for considering a policy about that because as you know closing prices have been rather dynamic in the last four years my Income retirement income hasn't been quite as dynamic. So I mean it you know, we could tax all that increased value and get a Nice windfall, but it's going to come out of my pocket So I'm just wondering about the philosophy you're going to adopt or whether it's you haven't even thought about it yet So when a reassessment takes place we it doesn't affect the budget So we currently have a 16.1 million dollar budget that we have proposed and it's it's being supported by a 10 and a half million dollar or so or is it 15 I forget the grand list if that grand list then becomes 28 million You just you still divide by 16.1 million and so the you know the the Anticipation or the way that it's it's revenue neutral Your you know your your assessed value would will go up, but the tax rate will go down Except for the capital tax, which is three cents So the capital tax the amount you pay on capital tax will scale directly with the change in your assessment That's that's that's one of the reasons why we didn't What we want to know how? Reappraisal is going to affect us because we don't know how much additional Capital tax will gain simply from reassessment because that that's going to be a straight line Increase for everybody one was the last time we did a reappraisal or reassessment 2007 And at that time we adopted the revenue neutral power So I hear you saying that's your intent here, and that's fine with me Thank you, but we'll stay tuned Is there anybody else? Don't see anyone online. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, please come on up Paula Duke Regarding the 1% tax, I don't know if people know but if you are buying Something large that's being delivered to your house You can tell them that you live in a town that does not Have that tax and they will remove it from your bill Thank You Paula Just to piggyback on that it is also true if you use the last four digits of your zip code So your zip nine a lot of times because of the way that they generate tax and they calculate the tax revenue They won't add it in the first place, but thank you that that's a great point So I gotta tell you a story my wife and I got takeout from Sukho Thai the other night and They contracted with a third party to do their online ordering and Their online ordering added the one cent tax And so I went when I when I picked up my food I complained about and they said Well, that's a third party. We can't they they they took the money. We don't have it We can't refund it to you, but I'll get it from the state eventually But there are still businesses out there that don't understand or especially if they're online If you find them, please let town staff know and or the state Because I was surprised that this far along. I'm still finding that the people still do turn over That that extra extra penny and it's it's a it's an odd thing that it becomes important if we enact our own to make sure that that penny is going To the right municipality and so it's it's really actually been fortuitous that we didn't go and lock stuff with the junction Because there could have been plenty You know Lowe's firm for weeks insisted that they were an S extension and we finally convinced them that they were not and so So anyway, if you find places that are still charging that The state will go after them and get it get it corrected and there is an ugly Process to get that money back and in my case it was like 36 cents But it would cost me a whatever a potion stamp cost now because it's a paper form that you have to file to get it So cost me more than it was worth to get the money back Yes, sir, feel free to just queue up behind there so that you don't have to to wait on me My name is Shubi Norton And a couple comments of Andy reminding me of something and I've mentioned this is zoning or the select board before that Now we have the town of Essex. It's it's important to know when people come into the town of Essex So there is signage that needs to be done at the entrances to the town several places on like on the River Road To a etc There are people that live within the town don't really know where the boundaries are like the folks that shop At Lowe's okay, so anyway, so that's that's why another thing is someone could someone give us an update on the status of the Charter We all know about the fickle Legislature and whatever That what are the implications if the Charter is not approved and or if there are changes that might be made So last year there were five questions on the ballot. They they were all approved by the town They went to the legislature One of the changes was a a reorganization of the Charter and that turned out to take a long time to sort out to document For the legislature so that they could could review it so it didn't make it on to Into a voting situation last year. So it was taken up this year We did there was testimony provided to the house gov ops the house Passed it unanimously I believe Hmm. Oh just for sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Yes. Thank you for reminding me that one of the changes was to to give the select board the authority to establish a Just cause eviction ordinance that was left out of the What was approved by the the house Largely because the house would prefer to have state-wide language rather than doing it municipality by municipality And in fact ours we simplified so much that all we did was include the authority to establish a Just cause ordinance we didn't include Any of the language we figured we'd have to figure that out later or the legislature would tell us what it had to be so anyway Is the four of the four of the questions with the exception of the just cause evictions question were approved by the The house unanimous unanimously Testimony has been given to the Senate gov ops Tracy Delphia and Greg Duggan have both testified. I was in Florida. So I didn't I was traveling that day and so It's Oh Go ahead Greg or Tracy do you want to comment where you where it is? One thing I learned is that I don't think I'll ever testify in front of the legislature on zoom again Testimony went well The Senate gov ops was very appreciative of the thought in time That not only the select board, but the charter change committee put into Identifying and developing the language. We did so we voted on five separate Particles last year for the exact reason so we we could show the level of support or not For each of those questions each of those charter change I got the sense that Senate gov ops was overall supportive Of all of our charter changes. However, they did want to dive a little bit more into just cause eviction You don't know how much detail to go in but if if what the house passes and what the Senate passes First from each other they need to go into a committee of conference, which means you need to come together hash out their differences and Come to an agreement between the two house and Senate on what that language would be And the last I knew and it gov ops was still trying to decide what they were going to put forward to vote potentially out of committee to the full Senate I testified about And so my testimony was I answered questions about how those I've posed out of the Hard to review I'd propose for Questions I was told Odds there wasn't a lot of indication in one way or the other I had I worked with the questions I voted Hi, Ken Signorello I want to stress how important it is for folks to take a look at the town plan if they can tonight before they vote on it tomorrow, it is a Rather important document is going to set the stage for eight years possibly a more important vote than your budget Which affects one year? If you were to read it, you would notice I just heard Mr. Norton talk about Signage necessities that is one of the action items that the Commission that I serve on the Economic Development Commission put into the action into the Town plan as an action item So that's the kind of thing you'll see in there if you jump to each section and read through some of the action items These are relatively short long-term and medium-term goals that our various committees and commissions have set and put into the town plan They could have a huge impact on the town in the long term So please take a look at that town plan. It's a long document. I know that Focused on a section that you're interested in is my suggestion and then you'll be able to vote a little bit more informed about it, I think Very quickly on the local option tax. I want folks to remember we have seven neighbors three of our seven neighbors Have a local option tax What's attractive about assets is that we don't and The reality is Municipalities such as Williston that get a tremendous amount of people buying things there from outside of their municipality They end up paying the bulk of that local option tax. That will not be the case for Essex Pat not having a local option tax. I think is an attractive thing for businesses and for people as well So let's keep that in mind as we consider a local option tax Every municipality is different and how that local option tax and who pays it and how much of that family's income goes into that Local option tax varies based on the municipality and its makeup and the people that are buying things there Thank you Well, I'm Mary post and I want to speak to everyone here including the public about something that's very important to me I'm interested in Indian Brook You know our Indian Brook Park and the fact that Dogs are allowed to run free and This really bothers me because I remember I think was a couple years ago people went to the select board to talk about How what they thought about Indian Brook and there were several of them that said That they were afraid to go there. They couldn't go there Because they had one man was a brittle diabetic There are elderly that if they get knocked over they're afraid they're gonna You know break a hip and they don't dare go to the park because there are exuberant dogs That will come and maybe jump on you or if they go running by you because they're chasing each other they can knock you over and Then plus there are Dogs like we always I love dogs. We've always had dogs But we've had some dogs that if they are on a leash But other dogs aren't and the other dogs come up to them Then there can be a fight because they're they get stressed being on a leash while the others aren't you know There's all these problems. So the way I see it is right now We have a whole group of people in Essex that are not gonna be able to use the park the dogs get to use the park off leash and The other people that are healthy and not afraid of dogs They get to use the park But anybody that has a health problem or is afraid of dogs or has little tiny dogs that have been pounced on I don't think anybody's been attacked, but you know, they're afraid to go to the park So right now you've got one third of well not a whole third, but you've got some of the population that can't use this park if dogs had to be on a leash in the park Everyone in Essex can use the park just by having those dogs be leashed So I really would like everyone to get involved in this if you're interested and We've got to do something to have I guess it would be the rec department pay attention I believe that it's a decision of the rec department and I really would like it to be a decision of the community and I would like to see you know They're doing a lot of work on trails now trying to make people get outside and enjoy this community and We still have a group probably the most important group that needs to get out because a lot of them are elderly They're alone and if they can go out walking with people I used to work for a service for a while where I would do that take people out for walks but that would be a place that couldn't go and So I just think it would be really nice as a community if we cared for every single person in this community Including our dogs and we all can enjoy the park. Thank you Thank you ma'am Betsy done and live on Cindy Lane The other thing to segue right on to Mary's conversation is that when dogs are off leash You don't know that they're pooping that poop doesn't get picked up and that phosphorus goes into our legs and We've had for the first time in the last couple of years where we're seeing algae blooms in Indian book This is a problem and I think that no one minds holding their dog It can be a nice length leash, but I think that it's important And I wish that when they made these new rules for the park that they had asked us all about it. Thank you Bob Luang again, I wasn't planning on doing this twice tonight, but You know, we all loves dogs and it really isn't a dog problem is the dog owner problem and When they defecate all over the property and that bacteria goes down and then the kids can't swim in that That's really what concerns me most so I I completely agree with all the other comments I've been there a lot of you know, I get the season passed every year and we enjoy it And I put my boat in and and I've been run over by the dogs and this and that and it's rather rude I think when dog owners bring their dogs and don't control them But it isn't that it's not the dog's fault and I want to make that really clear because I love dogs And so I it's it isn't I'd like to put it. It's really a dog owner problem versus a dog problem. Thank you Thank you Yes, ma'am Good evening Irene Renner To follow up on h518, which is the bill with the charter changes. I believe I had the good fortune of being in Senate government operations on Friday afternoon I was there for another reason but they took up the bill that we've all been waiting for with the charter changes in it They did pass it out with a very minor amendment. It doesn't change the context or the content really at all It was just about a funky date thing about something ending on Starting on June 1st and ending on July 3rd June 30th. Anyway, they took out five words. We won't know the difference It is on the notice calendar for Tuesday March 12th meaning we will vote on second reading on Wednesday the 13th and with Good luck. We will vote on the third reading and pass it out of the Senate on Thursday, so It is happening. Thank you All right, thank you for that excellent timely update Is there anybody else who is present here who would like to make a comment? I'm just double-checking online and it does not appear that we have any raised hands there And so I would say that I have it on very good authority that Mr. Watts would be happy to entertain a motion to adjourn Yes, it sure does. Thank you Don. Is there a second? Second Second. All right. Thank you. Adjourn is a non-debatable Motion all those on the select board in favor of adjourning, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, say nay. All right, we're adjourned. Come back tomorrow to vote. Thanks so much


We all face difficult circumstances, unfavorable situations outside our control, but we can always turn to God. Don't be afraid. Turn your focus from your problem to God's power. Only believe nothing is impossible with God. He makes a way where there seems to be no way. So let's pray for your miracle now. Father, in the name of Jesus, we come to you, Lord, knowing that you are able to do above and beyond what we could ask or think. And so we ask that your power would move on our behalf. Help us, Lord, and help us also to focus on you in the mighty name of Jesus we pray. We thank you for the miracle. I want you to say it because you believe it, say amen.


He was a Project Pat fan before he was a Project Pat fan. Oh my God, yeah. That's how the international player worker came out.  Yeah, he was a Project Pat fan. That was a Project Pat beat. Yeah, we on boss talk one on one. Because he could have been there within that four years of him sitting down.  Yeah. I mean, come on, bro. That was a lot of money he missed. Yeah. You know about the movie deal? What movie deal? Ice Tea and Son of a Script. He told me about it, but I don't know the logistics on it, you know. Ice Tea wanted him on Law and Order. Sent him to script, worked for a couple million dollars.  So I'll try and tell you.  I'm sitting there looking at this motherfuckin' script like, let me do that motherfuckin' action. I never wanted to take, he told me he was gonna go to school and take acting classes. So, yeah, David Banner told him to do that. So he could present himself correct? Yeah. Yeah, he wasn't gonna, I mean, that was a art to him. That's a art. I'm not gonna disrespect their craft by getting out there and saying I can rap. I mean, I can act. Yeah, he wasn't gonna do that in half an hour. Yeah. I think he would eventually slow down on popping up everywhere. He was just trying to get to where he was trying to get and help all his people out at the same time. Man, do people understand how many people he was trying to help at the same damn time? Yes. I was trying to ask you about this, the Three Six Mafia and his link with them and Juicy Jadney.  I wasn't there. You see what I'm saying? I just, the way they had the influence was, they had the same kind of feel though. Yeah, they did. And we thought about the same time. Correct. Yeah, and then Juicy J, Juicy J, Pimp, Me, and maybe, oh no, maybe a couple other producers out there, but we used to sample certain things. And they sampled the same things, you know what I'm saying? So that's why his music, it was a perfect match. It seemed a bun, you could tell it was a bun. Yeah. I just think about the phases of Pimp C, you know what I mean? I think he met them sometime in, for sure why he was living in Atlanta. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. I never met them till the funeral.  You never met them till the funeral? He wasn't tied in with Project Pat? Yeah. Okay. Not like that, but he was a Project Pat fan before he, oh my God, yeah. That's how the international player worker came out.  Yeah, already. Yeah, he was a Project Pat fan. That was a Project Pat beat. Yeah, yeah. First. Yeah.


My name is Keith Boccaro and I'm a fellow at the Brooklyn Klein Center. The big part of my work focuses on like how legal norms form in a digitizing society and so that sounds sort of high pine the sky type. So the narrow question that I'm working on here is how can communities kind of take control and make decisions about the data that they're creating and the data that's being created about them. So the research question that I'm working on within that is how can we use existing vehicles like trusts as a way to first give communities power to be able to make these decisions and be able to sort of protect it against uses that they don't want. But then the other side of that is once you've given communities that power, how do you help them understand sort of what the surface area of those decisions are and how to understand what the ramifications of some other decisions might be. I kind of think of it as two sides of a coin. So on the one side of the coin it's how can we use law to deal with new technology to deal with the fact that it increasingly more of our lives are digital or online. And then the other side of that is how can you use technology to understand how complicated systems work like law or like anything else.  So for somebody who is just facing a legal issue for the first time or just finding out that somebody is doing a census in their neighborhood. The expectation that we should have is not that they should become a lawyer, they should go to law school, they should learn about how databases work. But it should be what can we use and what interfaces, what explanations, what structures can we use to help people understand enough of the system to be able to make an informed decision about how it should work.