meeting at Town of Essex select board meeting Monday, July 12th, 2021 to order. First order of business. Are there any agenda additions or changes? The only thing that Evan just realized is that we have forgot to do the Pledge of Allegiance again, as was our practice before returning back when we were remote. That's the only change. So, okay, so Whoever's DA says that sounds happy. Yeah, so so so there's I guess that that's figures they used to and I don't know whether it was removed when we're remote. Yeah, we have not put it back on and I wasn't sure whether that was an equity question. But that might be a citizen. I don't know. Pretty sure it's part of the U.S. government and we put it on there pretty easily. Anything that's the only thing from the staff? Yes. Okay, any changes from board members? Mr. Chairman, I need to pull the minutes of June 21st to correct one of the lines. Okay, so we will move the minutes that are item 6A to before the 5G executive session. The microphone is for the television, it's not for the room, so I will try to speak louder. Yeah. Yeah, my apologies there. I got spoiled by having a microphone right next to my face son's bedroom for these meetings. So I'll try to project. Thank you. Thank you for pointing that out. Any other agenda changes from board members? Okay, so we have two changes. One is to add the Pledge of Allegiance back into the agenda and for future agendas, please. And also to move the minutes into the business section of the meeting motion to make those approve the agenda for those changes. Move to approve the agenda with those changes. Thank you, Gracie. Is there a second? I'll second. Thank you, Pat. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, and now I'd like to invite you to stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yep, we seem to be having some trouble with people and teams who can't hear. If we could just take a moment to see if that can get figured out. And for people at home on teams, if you could just type into the chat, if you can hear us or can't hear us, just let us know one way or the other. Well, I guess if you can't hear us, that's not going to help. So do you want me to continue talking randomly? Yeah, we can just talk randomly to see if anybody wants to say anything. I can type into the chat. So I had a hearing. I just got back from a vacation. I was in Washington state actually at the same time as Betsy Dunn. She was in one national park. I was in a different one. They can hear us. They can hear us now. Okay. All right. I didn't get to that much though. I didn't involve bologna sandwiches because all the restaurants were closed because it was so hot. Well, if we get done before 10, you can. Yeah. Okay. Back to the back. Okay. So we've modified the agenda. Next item on the agenda is public to be heard. This is a time for the public to address the board on any topic that's not on the agenda. During public to be heard, please only expect to speak once. So if you have multiple items you want to touch on, please include them in your your initial conversation. Please keep your comments civil. This is a time that is intended for comments made to the board. So please don't criticize each other. You can avoid it or please don't. What else do I need to say here? They're going to need to come up to the mic. Right. You need to come up to the microphone so people at home can hear you if you'd like to speak. We will in the future have a microphone stand because it's going to be a little, I think at this point you'd have to sit in the chair in order to be close enough to the microphone for your voice to be picked up. So is there anyone who would like to speak during public to be heard? I see two hands online and I see multiple hands in the room. So I'm trying to figure out whether, yeah, almost everybody wants to speak. Okay. So what I will do is go ahead and start with the folks that are online and then move to those in the room. So Andy's campaign, I see your hand. We hear what sounds like a set up chipmunk type sound. That's, that's better. Yeah, a lot better. Okay. So yeah, last month we were talking about, I got the impression that last month that the board seems to have problems getting like input from the community. Is that kind of a, is that kind of the, is that, is that a good, is that a good assumption? Can you still hear me? Yeah, I can hear you, but I'm not sure I understand your question. Well, I was, I was, at the end of the meeting, you had one of the committee people up here and they seem to be having trouble getting input from the community. And I was just curious if that's, if that's a, if that's a good, is that a good, is that a, is that a, does the, does the board and committees have trouble getting input from the, from the community? Is that a, is that usually, is that kind of a good estimation of what's going on? Does the board have trouble getting input from the community, come from the community? Generally, generally people are not bashful of reaching out to me. I get plenty of emails and phone calls from folks. People do come to meetings and speak. I don't know. I'm not sure what the source of your comments concern. Okay. Okay. Well, from my perspective, I'd like to talk about that for a minute. You know, one of the things that I find, I find these meetings very rage inducing. I do not like coming to these meetings. They are not fun to attend.  So, and you guys are really not that accommodating to that. If you speak at a turn, you get shut down.  It's not fun. And it's not an open thing.  You know what I mean?  They're not going to come back. So, yeah. Another thing that I've heard people do is, you know, the board does roll their eyes and they're not fully attentive. They're not fully attentive to the person talking. I've heard that. And that's annoying to people, including me. There's, you know, another person told me that, that I should format the way I talk. And I should use bullet points. And so I got to ask you a question. Do you work for me or do you work for me or do I work for you? So you're asking me a question. I've been, the board is elected by the voters. Okay. So you work for me. Is that correct? You work for the voters? Well, not directly. This is a volunteer position, but it's my responsibility to represent the interests of the town and the people that live in it. Okay. Okay. Another thing I've noticed is that you have a bunch of committees, like a tree committee, a sewer committee, and there's no committee for public relations or community outreach or anything like that. Has the board ever thought of creating one? A number of years ago, there was a full day workshop about public engagement. It's been discussed in the past. I don't, you know, we don't currently have a... So why do you have a tree committee? So the trees in the town are more important than public relations. Is that... I don't think the town has a tree committee. The village, I believe, does, but I don't think the town has one. Just a clarification there. Okay. Is there a sewer committee? So we have an open space committee that also deals with trees. Yeah. Our conservation, we have a conservation committee that certainly has some importance to the trees in town. Okay. Okay. So are you saying that the trees are more important than getting input from the town, from people in town, or is that just kind of... So I'm not saying that at all, Andy. We have these select board meetings required to have at least one a month. We try to be open. I've been trying to allow people to speak. This type of back and forth conversation we're having right now, I'm probably going to get a lot of flack for her from some people, because that's not the intent of this part of the meeting. I think I'm going to do my best, Andy. Okay. That's fine. That's good. Another question is, you know, if you want to get better, you know, I find that these meetings would be a lot more beneficial and easier to go to if you provided food. You know, one of the things, when I lived in San Diego, one of the best groups that I went to was a dot net group, and we had food every time, and it was my one day of the week to get food, to get pizza.  It was a lot of fun. You know, and I think that would take a lot of the frustrations that people get and that I get when I come to these meetings. Okay. Thank you for that suggestion. One last thing. Another question is, is like, you don't seem to ask about, like, pastel, you don't seem to let, you don't seem to like pester, like, pass the left board members or state reps or past state reps. I mean, there's a lot of intelligence. There's a lot of people who've been around town and they have a lot of experience in you.     You know, no one, most people, you know, they're busy, these meetings are very boring. They're very mundane. Who wants to talk about sewage and trees and things like that cares?    That's all I have. Okay. Thanks, Andy. Okay. Ethan Lawrence. You near me? Yes, we can. Oh, perfect. See you too. Yeah, it's been a while. I've been a little bit busy catching up on the fire in the spring. Spring, it's really summer, right? No, I'm just curious to know if there's any progress. I know I see the traffic counter back up again after another neighbor made a complaint. But I'm just curious to know a little background on what's going on on Osgoode Hill Road. I don't know if I've been having anything on that. Yeah, we've had a little technical difficulty with it. It's back up. We try to get at least two to three weeks of data. So we should have a answer from the police department on their speed study in a couple of weeks. And part of it was due to when the storm water improvements were put in for the swales along Osgoode Hill Road that delayed the count a little bit too. Because the police are looking for the count based on traffic and all traffic flow and not having the construction going on. All right. All right. Has anybody made their way up here to see that project per se on Osgoode Hill? The construction project. It'd be a good ride for somebody that, let's say, a perfectionist or anybody that can draw a straight line on a coloring book. But they've dug into the road pretty good in certain spots. And the one area that got washed out in October, there was no repair made to whatsoever other than the initial emergency repair. And I was under the impression that the money that we received was to make those repairs. So I don't know. I've been out of the loop. I don't know if there was a meeting on the money allocation as far as the FEMA money. We'll look into it. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. And I'll get ahold of the police chief too. But if you talk to them before I do, I don't know if they sit on the corner at Handley Lane. They'll catch people down at the bottom of the road. Isn't the best spot to find somebody when they can see a half a mile away. So thank you. All right. Thanks, Ethan. Okay. Lorraine. Hi. Thank you, Andy. Quick question. The city protect link is broken on our website, on the town website for police information. I was wondering if someone could get back to us on that. What's going on with it? I don't know if anyone knew that. The crime data link. We were using city protect. And it looks like it's been broken since April. Can someone look into that and see why it's broken and get fixed or let us know what we're going to do about it? Sure. Thanks. It might be able to provide some clarification. Lorraine, it might be because I think April was the turnover for when the police started using their new system. So I don't know that anyone thought to update the website with the new system that they're using. But I think that I'm meeting with Ron. I think actually Lorraine, you might be at that meeting the next time. With that, I think the new data, I think one of the issues with that if that gets uploaded, it's not as searchable and easy. So I don't know if they're going to be working on that and making it a way that it's easy for citizens to be able to use it. Because I think one of the issues when we scan things in is we're not scanning things in or necessarily connecting a feed that's searchable in a way that's really usable because the feed that I got was not really searchable. It's all just one long list and it's not in a searchable format. So if there's a way to ask about that too would be great. Yeah, absolutely. Great. Thanks so much. All right. Thanks Lorraine. Now we'll move to comments from the room. Almost everybody had their hand up so I will start in the front here. I'll state yeah, if you when you come into the microphone, please state your name. Good evening, Peter Elman. I'll make this pretty short on my end. I was asked to come here tonight. If I wouldn't have been asked and I'd known I had the opportunity I would have come on my own. I've been working in Essex and with Essex for 29 years. I've worked with a lot of different people in the town administrators and employees and I'm here really just to speak in support of your interim planning director and I urge you to seriously consider taking that word interim away. I think you have an amazingly intelligent and dedicated person and it's been a pleasure so far to work with her and I would hate to lose Oisa to this town to somebody else and speak for what she's not planning to do but it's been a pleasure and I urge you to support omitting that word interim. Thank you. Thank you Peter. Hey Patty. Thank you Peter for coming. It appears to me Oisa Makuku is well versed politically in the desires of both communities and is well respected. We would hear an Essex Center like her to be promoted to director of community development right now not two years from now not after whatever you all decide but right now. If she's not promoted then she should be considered a candidate to fill a town manager seat should an arrangement to replace an existing manager ever occur because we don't know what's going to happen. And the other issue I want to bring up is it appears to me that the language being proposed for the plan of town of Essex to consider since the last couple of meetings I watched a trustees meeting and I watched the select board meetings and on my tablet and I couldn't speak because my microphone didn't work last time. It's to me it's I believe is simply a disguised plan of merger which Essex Center residents voted down twice. So I don't quite understand what you're trying to do here. You don't have to explain an answer. I'd rather take my time to read things that have bothered me. I like to research that's my background research in ophthalmology in Boston and in Vermont. I researched the Vermont leagues of city and town rules of procedure for municipal bodies regarding public participation f public participation number six where they speak to order and decorum shall be observed by all persons at the meeting any meeting neither members of the body you guys manager select board nor the member members of the public us shall delay or interrupt the proceedings or the piece of the meeting or interrupt or disturb any member while speaking members of the body and members of the public are prohibited from making personal impertinent threatening or profane remarks while including the eye rolling I think our first speaker was speaking about when a member of the public is speaking especially the Essex town residents which I observe my background in ophthalmology is observed document document document document the only other thing I want to say share is that I love research so this is I'm learning a lot about government transparencies an essential element of open and democratic government in Vermont the primary means of providing transparency are the state's open meeting law one vsa 310 to 314 and the public records law one vsa 315 to 320 we all know about this but these laws it's nice to review implement the command of chapter one article six of the Vermont Constitution that officers of government are trustees and servants of the people and are at all times in a legal way accountable to them you were all voted by us and you were accountable to us so we would expect transparency from this moment forward every municipal board council commission and committee legally defined as public bodies so any committee whether it's a running committee what are the memorial hall committee whatever committee of a municipality is required to comply with the open meeting law I look forward to our guest Jim condos to review open meeting law training because we could all use a review and I thank you very much for letting me speak not interrupting me and not cutting me off thank you very much thanks Betty and you reminded me of something that I did want to say during my introduction to public to be heard that the select board does have a policy that only the chair can interrupt us to recognize speaker and so well thank you and I want to add one more thing that you do not to be deserved to be interrupted by anyone else on your body which I also observed at the last elect board meeting if you go back and look you don't deserve that you're a good chair thank you I was I intended to remind everyone in the room in the meeting of the fact that interruptions are not allowed I mean did you want to go next it's going through the through the rows here thanks to Patty and those who've already spoken to courtesy given to people speaking from them from the public at the last meeting I responded to some insinuations from remote members of the public that merger opponents had spread misinformation at that time I alluded to the falsehoods that had actually come from staff and elected officials during the run-up to the merger votes as I promised Evan who interjected that staff did nothing of the sort I would put it in writing and I have but I don't intend to have this buried in a reading file so I'd like to quickly run through the top 10 myths that we heard from staff and elected officials in the run-up to merger some of them come out of this booklet which everyone received in the mail others were on the website and have since vanished which is very disconcerting to me because there's still a greater sx 2020 website there but so many of these controversial statements have vanished including a very controversial graph that I will never forget Andy Watts saying in the summer of 2019 should be put in the trash because there was so much incorrect information on it there is no no trace of that left and I've asked Evan a few weeks ago a few weeks ago to send it to me he has yet to do so at any rate here are the top 10 myths that I narrowed down there are many more first of all we were told that if merger passed the town would gain budget for ballot that's totally incorrect of course because way back in 2020 of November we voted on a separate petition on a ballot all of us and approved putting the town budget on an Australian ballot the second myth that we heard from staff and elected officials the town outside the village would only pay 26 dollars more per year if we merged wrong the 20 the town outside the village would actually pay 26 dollars more per year per year which is very different than just per year it compounds but staff and elected officials not all elected officials but some of them would tell us that 333 dollars would be the total tax the town outside the village would see as a hike over those 12 years that would be the cumulative the accumulated dark bars on this chart what they neglected to tell us was that these light blue bars are the cumulative cost to the tov and that over 12 years cost 2374 dollars myth number four the merger tax increase for the town outside the village would stop after 12 years completely false we would continue to pay those of us living outside the village that extra tax it would just stop compounding and it would be renamed the town tax in year 14 and i show that on this graph for anyone who'd like to see it up close and personal myth number five the legislature would reconcile the two different merger charters into one that's not their job and in fact title 24 of vermont statutes annotated section 1482 says that each municipal body must approve the same charter myth number six merger would save money by eliminating duplicate services we don't have any duplicate services in this town we have some similarly named services like we have two parks departments that manage different parks we have two libraries that have different collections we have public works departments that plow different streets they're similarly named but they do different things there would be no savings by eliminating the duplicate services that don't exist next we have number seven both separation and merger after tax would change 20 but separation would mean an all at once change in taxation unlike merger which was to be spread out for 12 years what we've just learned is that the separation time frame is three to five years and therefore we certainly could spread out any change in taxation over three to five years it wouldn't happen all at once necessarily we also heard myth number eight that there were taxes paid by both the town and the village depicted by these pie charts and these pie charts were equally sized that's incorrect of course because when you show a pie chart with a nine hundred dollar difference in one part of town they should be different sizes so the sizes of those graphs and they could still be corrected because that graph still exists on greater greater sx2020.org those graph sizes should be changed to be correctly denoting what the taxes are myth number nine the town outside the village receives 100 back in services what it pays nope sorry the town outside the village actually pays 59% of the town's tax revenue and of that revenue 1.2 million goes to the village highway department 15k goes to brown l 12k goes to ejrp and guess what out of that 59% that the town outside the village pays to the police they only had 49% of the police calls last year so it's not true that all of the money coming from the tov stays in the tov and pays for things that the tov only gets myth number 10 the town and village are separate municipalities no as i said repeatedly maybe a hundred times i don't know the town and village are nested in municipalities and yet we continue to see and hear people say they're separate gosh if they were separate why on earth would we be having a separation movement now in the village and i guess most concerning to me of all is that i just went to the brand new website speaking of people helping publicize things there's a new website that not all of you may be aware of called one village one voice it's about separation and they've already got their first myth posted it says with separation there would be one tax bill for those who are not aware they already have one tax bill so i would encourage staff elected officials the public and anyone else who creates websites or puts out flyers or just speaks to these issues in this town it's very important to speak the truth and not to be making stuff up on the fly and also when you're corrected by someone who knows better please take that seriously thank you and these are the copies for the board and the management thank you iran thank you who's next yep come on up yeah thanks um mary post and uh mr chairman thank you for letting me speak and members of the select board um i'm here to address what i believe is a big problem for our town when mass shootings started happening they would be covered on television on every network all day long today we take mass shootings for granted some of them we never hear about but i find their coverage while scrolling through facebook it's become normal to live with mass shootings our last merger attempt was to me the meanest nastiest and ugliest i have ever experienced people were called liars some indeed did lie and were caught at it but some went above and beyond the norm of our town and pulled dirty tricks that we've come to expect in our national elections it's very sad our meetings have become nasty and out of control i am very concerned for the treatment of members of our town who participate in the governmental process and then are defamed or have crude things said about them ironically just before we are all asked to make a pledge of civility doesn't anything have any meaning anymore mr chairman i would ask you to ask our town manager to be respectful of citizens i am angry that he is allowed to interrupt citizens and roll his eyes while they speak he is being extremely unprofessional and this behavior should not be tolerated and it's hurtful i am concerned that norms aren't followed during meetings by select board members themselves nor members of the trustees i am appalled by the way you've been treated mr chairman by one of your own board members and a former president of the trustees you asked them not to speak as their own comments were not germane but you were essentially shouted down and disregarded you were disrespected not only has there been no consequence in my mind for all of these hurtful and demeaning events but there's been no mention of them from the select board or town staff nothing's been said to address the elephant in the room or in the town when things are ignored they don't go away they fester and fester and create more ugliness and hate i'm afraid if we don't address these issues things will only become worse if that's possible we have become so polarized in so many ways and i don't know about you folks but i know that when i've had a big argument or something's ugly gone on in my own house with my spouse or somebody and we don't talk about it it just gets more and more toxic it turns into a poison i mean even the way i make dinner reflects what's going on the dog doesn't like it and i think that this can happen to all of us i have to say just editorialize here that i don't feel good about the things that i've said and done and i've just had enough of it and i just i think we do have good people here and i just am really sad that this is what we've come to i said in a previous meeting that attention to this situation will not go away that was not meant to target one member of the select board nor threaten him rather it's to keep attention on these things so that we can address them and have them stop and not become normal i honestly believe that all of us are better than this thank you thank you mary um that's he do you want to speak to me okay hey thank you um gabriel did i miss margaret margaret did i miss you no okay gabriel hey everybody um so i'm gabriel smith and um i am with our village our voices i'm on our steering team and uh and it was referred to earlier our website is our village our voices dot org i encourage everyone to go check it out um and uh it is indeed on our website just to clarify that we would post separation in the village receive one municipal bell one bill currently i do get one physical piece of paper but i'm billed by two municipalities so post separation i would be billed by one um and this one to clarify that was the intent of that communication on our website so uh i just want to thank you all for what you do and um that's all i have to say thank you thank you gabriel anybody else in that row bruce run up bruce post thank you my name is bruce post with record uh and i live at one cindy lane i chair of the state library board we never get people to talk the public to be heard so this is interesting for me and i'm not here to talk about merger or separation i want to talk about executive session and and it's my experience with executive sessions in the past i notice you'll be going in tonight the trustees have gone in about various issues uh there are times when the board in the past used executive session to hide from public discussion and why that's potentially harmful it happened with the local option tax which we voted down in 2009 the public didn't find out that there had been any discussions about local option tax in the select board because they were all held from what i could find in executive sessions perhaps it was because there was going to be a memorandum of understanding with the trustees about how they would split it but we found out about executive session after the board adopted uh i mean we found out about the local option tax after the board adopted the proposal in december of 2008 by that time it was too late to change it public hearings were held where people would talk about it but one thing one piece of information that came in late doomed that tax and could have affected ibm considerably we were told during those discussions about the local option tax that only tax lunches in the ibm cafeteria two weeks before town meeting when the local option tax was going to be elected uh voted on from the floor at town meeting uh there was a letter in the consent calendar and i noticed it said from ibm i was not on the board at the time i asked the clerk for the letter it turned out ibm said the board was misinformed that it would affect their warehouse operations their office operations and more than just the lunches in the cafeteria i understand it could have been in the high six figures from what i've heard from inside information if the board the previous year had had public discussions about the possibility of a local option tax that might have been discovered during that public inquiry sometimes the public has good things to say and information that the board might not have assumptions that you make that could be wrong there was one particular example and it was a dramatic example and some of you may have been there uh the night of that town meeting is supposed to start at 7 30 it was a snowy cold night the line was out the door because somehow somebody leaked the letter to the press um the line was out to door the meeting was supposed to start at 7 30 it started at 8 15 and with each minute that went by patch sidels face sank farther and farther and farther down and the local option tax was defeated it didn't have to be that way and so i understand there are legitimate times to go into executive sessions to talk to attorneys and this but don't overuse it and certainly don't make final decisions theta complies that you present to the public later without asking the public first what do they think about it so that's not too late to make adjustments so that's it was just a cautionary tale from my experience in the past i'm not accusing the board of hiding behind executive sessions at all but there is a perfect example of where excluding the public was to the detriment of the town and the public thanks hey thank you bruce and my wife is talking the truth about how our discussions about merger affected our supper the other night so so can can signerillo good evening can signerillo um i think my comments will be refreshingly brief and minor i hope um i was doing a bit of research uh recently uh about the town's history thought i'd go to town website which i did i did history in the search field and i got this blank page there's history but there's nothing there went to the village website same thing but there's history there so i noticed that there's a definitely a discrepancy between the website maintenance which i think needs to be addressed the important it's the front face of the town and i think that um it needs to be kept up to date i heard the other comment earlier about the police website also so it's kind of related uh second issue and last issue for me um i think three people now have asked that staff salaries be posted in the annual report and um i wonder just how many people have to ask before it'll appear on an agenda at least so that it'll be discussed and on a decision made one way one way or the other i mean um i suppose a petition would be in order i could do that um but if i have to go through that much trouble um it's a lot of work and i think that it's reasonable just to ask this look forward to consider it thank you okay thanks ken Barbara did you want to speak Barbara Higgins bidding your name for you sorry Barbara Higgins seven Cindy Lane i have been concerned from for some time with uh the time that's afforded citizens to wait in on proposals before the select board specifically before a vote is taken and specifically with regard to proposals that establish policy or have significant impact i realize there's some actions that are rather mundane and routine i'm not talking about passing a liquor license or what have you i'm specifically concerned that when a proposal comes before the board either from staff or from a select board member um it's warned with the minimum required by law the packet usually gets posted at the end of the day on friday that means that the citizen has over the weekend to research it to develop a position to gather information that citizen can't contact anybody in the offices because the offices are closed that citizen can come to a meeting and perhaps time being available may have an opportunity to speak but that opportunity is limited in time logically because you don't have all night further even if you write a letter as i did not long ago and i sent it to the to the members of select board some of you may have read it some not i asked that it be read into the record i received a response that perhaps i could have somebody else read it into the record the purpose of a clerk is to read those letters into the record there was no excuse for that not to happen further that letter of course didn't get in the packet had someone not read it until the following meeting therefore i think it is time for the select board to develop a practice by which significant actions some of which are on tonight's agenda but have been on agendas in the past and will be on the agendas going into the future that they develop what i referring to is two readings that it comes before the board once there's a discussion there's an opportunity with a more than a weekend for citizens to offer either written or other testimony before it comes to a vote at the next either meeting or some agreed upon second consideration period i thank you for your time and i hope you will take that into consideration both for establishing a policy going forward and as you continue to debate tonight on some very significant thank you barbara hey anyone else who hasn't spoken speak don't see anybody any hands up online either i'm not set idle long enough that it died okay uh so we will move on to the next uh item of business uh discussion and potential action on community development fees that we saw hi we some a cuckoo community development department um you have seen or you've read the memo and seen the spreadsheet in the packet do you have any questions or would you like me to i guess give a brief overview please yeah yeah so the questions are um what our goals in reviewing and changing fees we believe that fees need to be raised they haven't been raised in quite some time and they're um they're currently not covering staff time to review projects and um and that's the biggest issue um we are also considering cost per square foot versus cost for a thousand dollars of estimated construction cost and other than that just a couple of um considerations or clarifications um we would like um should we consider repair and maintenance free from permit fees and are there any other um any other waivers are there any um waivers for desired features that uh we as community development can enter into discussions with the planning commission about such as um energy efficiency affordable housing um with the inclusion of any of these components does it make sense or or might it make sense or be a reflection of the town's values to allow some sort of waiver for those um for those qualities enhanced qualities in our um in our zoning regulations and in our fee structure okay thank you any comments or questions from floor members don can you talk to any construction people about your proposal or any people involved in building an asset about your proposal about raising the fees no okay and is anywhere in any of the paperwork a description of affordable housing and what it is well that we could develop those so yes there are federal guidelines for what constitutes affordable housing it's usually housing for which an individual or family pays no more than 30% of their income on an annual basis so if you grant them this this waiver because they have a desired desired feature of being affordable housing who fault is that your job to follow up to make sure that's happening or can the contractor come in to yep this is affordable housing and they don't have to prove it to you usually they enter into an agreement with the local non-profit like Champlain Housing Trust okay and they do the compliance monitoring over time and but again like the discussion would happen with the planning commission we can change the parameters um however we see that they might fit the needs of Essex residents and that would be that would mean finding out demographic data um really sort of digging in and finding out what constitutes affordability in Essex I mean it might be different in Essex than it is in other communities right but it's the exploration I guess that we're just asking about and whether you would entertain those sorts of favors thanks okay any other program professionals or thank you just have an additional comment um as far as uh how we saw in our team put some of the fees together uh credit to her and her staff they took a look at all of Chittenden County um took a look at what the fees are in other towns nearby to make sure that the proposal before you is competitive that it's not um really out of the ordinary in terms of the area and a lot of areas I think we're behind um our neighboring communities and this is a way to catch up and and get back to what the market is charging elsewhere okay thanks Greg any other it's just a comment I'm very interested in having a conversation around incentivizing the type of development that we want uh what we want to see and that's in line with our community goals thanks Tracey thanks for that um one question I guess for me is the the recommendation is that we we adopt the the fees as proposed um there's no mention of timeline um and I asked this question through email and I guess the comment was it it's probably appropriate to have some sort of lead time so that folks who are applying know that there's going to be a change coming so is there a in your thought is there a recommended time frame for implementation um you know is it September 1st December 1st January 1st is there a any thoughts because we should probably if we're going to do that I think we should probably include it in the uh if we approve it as is written I think it makes me effective immediately probably um I'd like to put a specific there specific date in there if we have thoughts on what that should be October 1st seems like a reasonable date um by which we could get the word out to different developers and to residents about the change in fees do you think that would prompt people to try to apply before they go up it could it could yeah but larger projects oh I'm sorry and I guess I would assume that if they get their their applications in before October 1st that we would honor the the the current fees as they are they wouldn't if they didn't complete their permit or whatever I don't know how the process works um yep if the application were deemed complete before October 1st then we would honor the existing fees prior to October 1st and larger um the one thing that I do have to say though is that it it might fast track some projects for residents but larger developers or larger developments I mean there are so many layers of work that needs to that need to go into them that it likely likely no one would be able to okay so it's not going to be a huge workload sudden huge workload on your staff if there's a fee change coming that would incent people to what their their applications I guess they could try but again if it were an incomplete application then we just have to send it back or pause it but to get the information that we need to adequately review it I guess that situation occurs regardless of what date you choose although we did not look at our at our historic pattern of project reviews to see when the lulls might be but that might have been a smart approach um I had another thought but now I've lost it oh uh just I guess just to be clear the projected revenues that are in the FY 22 budget were based on current fees so if we change the fees then the there's a possibility that revenues could be well there it's always a possibility that will be different than your budgeted right um but there's a potentially a possibility of it being higher than projected yeah I mean the big difference between this year and last year would be that last year we had um a lot of people who were at home and noticed a number of things that they needed to have done in their house and so I think we got more residential permits in last year and we got fewer larger projects than last year because there was so much uncertainty and nobody knew when construction could start again anyway and so I think that I think that balance is going to shift in the um in the next in in this current fiscal year that will get fewer residential projects and more larger projects okay any other comments from board members how do folks feel about the actual first date any public comments uh I see Ethan Lawrence stand up Ethan I just had a question for we so I was wondering if in the the policy that was written up there is there anything as far as agriculture there's an agricultural zoning district but short of planned unit developments or there isn't I haven't seen an application come in for any of the agricultural areas that would be a large commercial operation or anything or about the smaller guys what about this smaller agriculture uh you know like say I'm actually in the process I have to find out what to do but like I want to put a barn yard in my yard um and I'll just you know obviously there's set fees and everything but I noticed that there was you know the fees are going to go up then there's going to be stipulations for certain things to promote certain things so I wasn't sure if agriculture was in mind in that if that makes sense are you in an agricultural district uh I'm actually in the conservational district just outside of agriculture um I don't know the rules behind that I'm sure you do well so much of it depends on exactly where you are and what the um what your lot size is what your circumstances are I mean if you're farming there there are certain right to farming right to farm concessions that the state makes for farmers and again without knowing the specifics about your situation I really couldn't okay anything to you but if you come down to the office we're before October 1st we're plenty perfect you you inspired me like here we go thank you very much I appreciate it thanks Ethan let's see if I've got any other hands up let's see any other hands uh no comments from the room um the board member likes to make a motion which includes the October 1st implementation date I make the motion that it says select board trustees adopt revised fees is laid out in exhibit a to be become effective on October 1st 2021 do I have a second second that thank you Vince um I think this is written this way because the same memo is going to both boards so I think we should strike the trustees from our motion but this I accept that sounds okay with that Vince you're okay with that so okay um any further discussion hey all those in favor please say aye aye opposed okay motion passes five zero thank you Oviso great thank you sorry we deferred you prior I actually tried to come forward you better read the documents if you don't know what you're passing you shouldn't pass it Mr. Chair if you don't mind yeah I want to thank Oviso and her team this has been a project on my to-do list to update the fees so that people are paying an appropriate amount for the services that they are getting so that the other taxpayers are not subsidizing that activity it was work well done well presented and I want to thank her and her staff for that work and your time and attention it may not be perfect and we can always adjust it but hopefully a little bit more than once every 20 years we review our fees and etc that nature but thank you thank you great and I'll pass along the kudos thank you very much thank you thank you so that's that's not an agenda item we can't act on that and the the select board has no jurisdiction over management of staff other than the town manager okay moving on to the next agenda item consider approval of added costs to complete the upgrade of the intersection traffic signals at sxway and the cirque highway erin I believe hello oh great in person this is great we have our first person cwd meeting here coming up so it's gonna be good um issue before you tonight is whether or not the select board will authorize the completion of the intersection traffic signal upgrade at sxway and the cirque highway a few years back we did initiate a contract with east coast signals to do some work on this intersection to upgrade it the signals there that were in place or well over 30 years old dated um multiple issues loop detectors uh failing um it seemed like just about every windstorm we found uh the traffic signal heads in the ditch line or underneath the overpass and um we had east coast go out take a look um attachment one is the initial proposal they gave us over 19 and 20 we did perform some of this work um as you know things got kind of wonky there in 2020 uh scheduling conflicts uh parts materials uh we only were able to perform some of the work um we did upgrade the radar controls uh our sensors for the for the signals to actuate the signals um so it kind of uh sat dead for the rest of that year um what we did was had them go back out there kind of do a tally of what is needed and what was supposed to be put in during the original contract um and you'll find that as attachment to uh the sum of 94 thousand 750 dollars um then it's also uh thought it important that we also add an additional upgrade to provide some preemption for this intersection for first responders and emergency vehicles um that's not in this memo but that's on the order of 21 000 as well so the total we're looking at is around 17 or 117 000 150 and I believe we kind of circled around the not to exceed maximum of 120 000 for the project um in addition to the uh original uh proposal they provided they've also added some uh pedestrian upgrades uh crossings in that vicinity um definitely have seen more foot traffic in and around uh the Essex um and uh we wanted to uh make sure that all the pedestrians at least going in through those two intersections are safe and have you know the proper threshold and everything and that's that's cycled in with the lights um I know there was a couple questions uh Greg forwarded onto us um regarding costs um the town does have developer funds that we do charge we have a traffic impact fee for various locations throughout the town um the town center has their specific traffic impact fee um currently we have about 161 000 in that account um it is a capital account um and we're requesting to tap uh not to exceed a maximum of 120 000 um out of those developer impact fees to complete this project um for the town uh we have a recommendation there for you folks and I can't answer any questions or if you want further details on the actual project and or uh the funding okay thanks Aaron any questions or comments from board members looks like you're uh getting off easy here damn I know I gotta ask what is a red vehicle that red vehicle um lighter but I wanted the drawing it says red vehicle point me in that direction I can't find it now you wait it was like a red vehicle detection or something and it was like it says red vehicle detection to be added what is that okay so so there is some additional sensors in there that will provide a kind of a better understanding of the controller at both those intersections of the actual vehicles that are there um and kind of optimize each of those intersections a little better okay so it's an additional it's there are two additional sensors that are going on there okay I just thank you which has reminded me of a question the the left turn on to if you're heading toward uh Lang farm the left turn on to uh 289 there used to be a uh a red arrow and then a green arrow telling you when you could go and that I guess in the first stage of this changed to just a green light is that and there's a sign there that says yield the oncoming traffic now so yeah there's going to be an additional sign but it's also kind of going to mimic what we've seen all throughout the the state system you see that delayed yellow flashing yellow yep um that will be implemented yeah so I've had had it when it went that first change I had many people tell me that they when they saw the light turn green they immediately turned left in front of oncoming traffic because they were used to a green arrow there and when it suddenly became just a green light um they thought it meant the same thing and so there was um it took people I think a bit to get used to that so I'm glad to see we're putting in the delayed blinking yellow to and I think the yellow offers a that contrast so you don't yeah because green is jump you know we are creatures of habit and it doesn't matter if you see the green arrow or green and you're going to go if it's yeah yeah yeah okay all right any other any uh comments questions from the public on this topic paddy you might have to come up to the microphone so people that um we have a sand hill road on 117 and sand hill without yellow blinking it is so busy you know 117 to sand hill like it seems like all of civilization that everybody goes to williston they or they at the interstate they don't go anyway that yellow blinking light is definitely a godsend because you can't turn left no it helps hey thanks paddy I um I do see one hand online andy champagne yeah can you hear me yes we can um I was just curious um since you're over your $120,000 budget can you do it in piecemeal like can you do like the 120 this year and then the rest of it next year that work I don't think they're over the budget um some of the money had was spent previously so this is asking for the the funds to complete the project there right Aaron correct yeah so we we are using a developer impact fees that we have collected over the years um and I am aware of that I think the they have a lifespan in which I think it's believed it's six years and then the developer if they're not used within those six years to improve any of the transportation infrastructure within that said corridor they can request that those funds be given back to them so I would rather use these funds to upgrade our infrastructure now um and use those impact funds rather than taking money out of the tax base okay all right thanks for the question andy anybody else okay bring it back to the board any uh any further comments like to make a motion uh I move that the select board approved the added cost to complete the upgrade of the intersection traffic signals uh in an amount not to exceed $120,000 second thank you tracy thank you don any further discussion seeing none uh all those uh favor please say I I opposed okay motion passes five zero thank you Aaron thank you you want to stick around for a couple minutes for the memorial hall just in case there questions okay moving on to business item five c consider approving dissolution of memorial hall committee ebb and greg you're okay awesome um so this is something that's actually been on staff's radar work list for at least a couple of years now um Darby mayville had been working on this before she left and it's one of those things that um just kind of fell off radar as other things became more important uh as linda monz who's our new administrative assistant as she took over and she handles a lot of the boards and committees and um uh setting up fracking the volunteers scheduling meetings stuff like that uh she realized that the memorial hall committee was not meeting so she asked about it i gave her some of the history in terms of um how we had uh darby and i had started working on um bringing the possibility of dissolving the memorial hall committee to the select board when darby and i started working on that um a couple years ago the memorial hall committee hadn't been meeting um wasn't really accomplishing or serving its mission um partially probably because there was no staff support for the committee at the time and the committee barely had a quorum if it did at times um reached out to some uh members of the committee a couple years ago who agreed that there should be some sort of oversight of memorial hall um but also that there wasn't a whole ton of work being done um committee wasn't meeting so fast forward to two years now and it's been um more than three years since the since the memorial hall committee has last met linda included the mission of the committee in her memo um those things just aren't being being done i don't let's see um the committee does not have a quorum right now i'm sure you'll hear from some people tonight once this came out i did hear from five people who are interested in serving on the committee um still staff doesn't really have the ability to staff a committee at this point um yeah we're confident with between public works and our buildings manager tom yandale and parks and rec department being able to oversee the facility they put on a new roof in the past few years done some other upgrades um i do acknowledge and recognize the timing of this uh with some talk about the the esics players and their role within memorial hall um believe it or not it is coincidental that you're seeing this now uh that's an issue where our parks direct departments were trying to find some additional child care space um which is needed we have child care shortage in town and memorial hall was considered so there are some conversations with the players about what that might look like um but as far as uh what's before you tonight um just explaining why the committee hasn't met and why we're looking to staff is looking to make it more official um that it would be no longer a committee but obviously open to discussion and i'm sure you'll hear some feedback tonight and happy to try to answer any questions at the board and the public have thanks craig anything dad evan are you uh no he covered it okay um before we start uh my child's mom is on the board for the esics community players starting as of last week so just want to make sure people are aware of the potential conflict of interest as we're discussing this i feel i can be neutral and objective not need to refuse myself under discussion but i do want to make sure that people are aware thanks bud any comments your questions i guess my question is in the last paragraph public works and staff are confident that memorial hall activities can be discussed between public works parks and recreation and the esics community players um are there any stakeholders that would not be covered under those three it gets rented out occasionally from people looking to hold a party or a birthday party or small events um i don't think there's anyone who does that consistently a formal group to reach out to it's my understanding it's more of a every now and then the the rec department gets a request and they book it if it's available currently the seniors uh from the senior center which hasn't reopened has been using some of the space the stakeholders are also the recreation department so there are camp some days camp is in there you know if it's raining or something they will use that facility and it's greg mentioned it is rented occasionally uh through there the parking is very limited on that parcel and one of the stakeholders the one of the largest stakeholders is the esics players and when we approached them we were actually just looking to see what their use was and would it be able to be used both for child care which is a pressing need in the community and or their uses and we even looked at where else they could go and could we help them go there and when it turned out that it wasn't going to work we backed off from the you know the discussion so again the building itself is managed by the recreation department it is maintained by the public works department and uh over the last couple years we fixed the front stairs which go into the building we have not replaced the roof but repaired the roof we are constantly having hvac problems in that building because it's old and it's not um it's old it's an old style and then when you add the heat of lamps this system has a hard time but the players make it work um and then um we have looked at other things like we have a kitchen update to do we've done a little bit of it and the bathrooms are old but overall we know what the building is we know what the property is and needs so we are not believing we need a committee to to work on that um maybe sometime in the future if someone wants to discuss what the rec department has in store for it or other future uses yes but not the building and its structure i know like the boy scouts have often used it for eagles you know ceremonies and it's through the rec department and um i think often when if it's rented by a non-profit the the fee is refunded afterwards if there's no damage so i'm not trying to advertise that but i know i know that uh if there's no damage that we have define damage the boy scouts have done you know essentially get for use of it because of the non-profit status of the organization so given all these other people involved in memorial hall what was the purpose of the memorial hall committee best i can tell you is what's in the mission that's included in the in the memo was before my time but to plan to facilitate the use of memorial hall explore grant availability and execute fundraising efforts including the governing and accountability of such funds um suggesting uses and scheduling of memorial hall working with private firms to improve the heating seek plans for structural modifications to improve the building for public use plan additions and improvements assist in the integration of social activities and annually provide recommendations to the select board on usage fees for memorial hall and i cannot remember that last one happening since i've been here so if that was their directive how did this all end up back at public works and back in the sx rec if that that was the directive for the committee sorry could you say that again so this was the directive this is what you expected the memorial committee to do how did this part of this most of this end up back at parks and rec and public work uh i'll look to erin if he wants to add anything to what i'm going to say but i i think it's kind of just the nature of thing how things happens um committee probably wasn't meeting that regularly they'd have to work through parks and rec and public works to accomplish a lot of those things on the mission anyways um i'm guessing there's probably some synergy between the three of them that the committee and those two departments and as a committee wasn't meeting as frequently as maybe it once had it probably just landed more onto the municipal staff um i don't know if erin knows any more about you'd have to come up i think some of the initial history of the committee um had to do a lot with i mean there was a time when that building was not used at all no upgrades when the bats took over yes i i helped clear out some of the bats in the belfry therefore i remember well i think what happened was the committee was set up um to help initiate those initial changes modifications upgrades and rehab of that building um to kind of make it a community effort um and over time as evan and greg were both saying a lot of the maintenance uh of the building has taken place by is taken place by public works and parks and rec runs all the programs out of the building but yeah it was one of those buildings we did have in the center like the library at one time was bacon um i'm sure you remember that as well so i do okay um my concern this may not even prove true is that we seem to expect public works and sx parks and rec to continue adding to their pile of stuff to do whereas if you could keep a committee active and taking care of this stuff it would take responsibility and pressure off these other two groups because you keep telling us everybody's overworked guys and now you're telling us well let's get rid of this committee and we'll just give this responsibility to parks and rec and public works that's my concern is what i'm hearing here under understood um valid concern and thank you for looking up for staff i would say that it's already been with public works and parks and rec they already have this responsibility and they have for at least several years now um to meet with the committee to take those recommendations to support a committee as they go out for grants to schedule meetings to staff meetings that's what's going to be the additional staff work in the additional staff time our staff is already going after the grants they're already budgeting for repairs to one more hall parks and rec is already doing the scheduling um it wouldn't increase their workload to get rid of the committee at this point but you do understand why i'm i do yes absolutely thank you thanks right and in addition over the years last year we added um tom yandau who started out as our building maintenance manager um and one of the things that we tasked him with was to go through our building so while at one point the committee probably was our eyes and ears on the ground and in that building we now have more staff that's not me and greg uh and margaret and others that are in our buildings that are meeting with contractors that are getting prices and then we also have um other departments looking at grants that do that application work in fact it's very important that we track our grants um because some of them have very stringent requirements and we do get inspected um and get audited from those grants so it's very important that when we do get a grant we're involved in the grant writing and the funding and the inspection work so but thank you for thinking of staff too we are not looking to take on more we're just looking to do it um efficiently um and this building is we'd like to see its use go up um we would like to see its quality of the structure and your experience inside that building go up we do have older buildings we um as you guys all you all may know we've just spent a lot of money on the sx free library um to keep it from flooding we have spent a lot of money in mold remediation at the fire department we have been working slowly at this building to make it weather uh proof and um trip hazard wise but deal with the the stairs and the experience inside so that's what we've been working on and all of those were done without a committee when I first read this I I was a little confused whether the actual issue was the committee itself or that the charge wasn't really a committee charge it was a mesh of a committee and a staff charge um so I immediately thought that it may make more sense to instead of dissolving the committee to update the charge to reflect what they should actually be focusing on and from the memo off the top that would include facilitate the use community advertisement suggest uses and scheduling community input on who how when so on and so forth and assist in the integration of social activities I think that that those are items that are more geared toward a community committee rather than including you know working with private firms I see that more as a staff level involvement so I just kind of wanted to throw that out there and as I was speaking my question on stakeholders earlier it may make sense to include community development in those stakeholders as well as parks and rec public works and the community players thanks Gracie any other comments yeah go ahead Vince do any other like buildings have committees like any other singular building I mean like there's gonna be libraries so when so when the when the police station was built there was a committee that worked on that when this building was renovated there was a committee that worked on that they were further termed and they were they you know they they re sought they dealt with what they're working on and then to know that there's any there's no other it's the tree farm management group but I'd say that's more of a standalone entity than a support committee okay I suspect there are folks from the public who are wishing to speak so I will go ahead and start Betsy Dunn and yeah you'll need to come to the microphone state your name hi my name is Betsy Dunn I live on one Cindy two Cindy Lane somewhere there and I am concerned I actually have gone to the website several times when I retired thinking I'd have a slot of time which I eventually didn't but I wanted to volunteer for and I've never seen an opening or a statement that the Memorial Hall has a committee that had openings on it and if you were considering making it into child care and then could the players also use it you would have to change the physicality because the kids would need more than just one bathroom for boys and girls which is what they have now currently just those one stalls for those rooms and you because little kids like to go more than one person at a time and if you change the character of the room because you have different age groups that you're doing when the community players are doing their plays they have their scenery up and that would interfere with the kids as well and so it would not be compatible I think and to lose the Essex community players to this community would be I don't think it's the best idea I think it's something we need to have for this area and my husband and I were both in theater before we came to this area he was the manager at the flame when he first came here a lighting designer he has worked for the Essex community players and we would have opened up and been on the member for the community players board as well but I think that having the parks and rec and I'm assuming that's Essex parks and rec that is in control of that building and not the junctions Essex recreation and I think we need to think about for instance when we have Jim condos come and talk to us you could have him speak there and you could have that whole use of all that wonderful seating for people to come and hear what he has to say our Essex reps for the state legislature come and they have conversations with all this they could use that as that space and I think there's multiple kinds of things that you could use that space for and bring in some interesting speakers that people in the town would be interested to hear or if when we do this whole thing with the forums would be also a place that you can invite people in and come it would be a usable space and people would start using it more because they go so I would encourage you to leave the Essex rec that leave that memorial hall as it is and help have people beyond the committee to look at see what can we bring into this facility that would make our town richer not poorer by losing the Essex theater thank you thank you uh patty patty davis yes patty davis and i just want to say you look you guys all know i live off sandhill road i keep talking about it we have so many young families um that have moved here and um some of my really close friends on on my circle i just had a neighborhood party on saturday night and had like eight families in my circle and most of these people have lived here 35 years so i know about the boy scouts i i know that the boy scouts use that area because um ellen turnbull knows you and she said yeah my son was in the boy scouts you know anyway small world but the um what i'm saying is just what betsey is saying that now that we have all these young families i think that um and most of these families talked a lot about the ymca for childcare for sx town residents and they miss it so i know that's not a topic of discussion but i think we should keep memorial hall for the public for plays everything betsey just said for the boy scouts for the girl scouts and for speakers like jim condos that's a great idea and then this way if you think financially if you make a list two sides daycare versus public you know what public wants you're gonna have to revamp that whole building to make it a daycare and because sx town is growing so much it's not going to be suitable you'd be better off looking into the ymca that's my opinion have them you know to do the daycare thing renting out rooms in a school somewhere for kids and keeping the public because it's growing so much sx town we have 11,600 of us lots of kids thanks thanks buddy so to make something clear we that this is the decision been made is that they are not sorry sorry um he's asking the same question he's yeah the decision if your question is has the decision made it's been to move on to look at other facilities right so the daycare is not there's no more no longer a consideration to put daycare into that building so just to just to be to be clear because I know it's come up a couple times just wanted to clarify to clarify that and and along with the the I think the the plan when it when there was a consideration to put the daycare in there it came with funding to upgrade the building that would have come from ejrp so because they would be the ones that would be be potentially I mean that was that was my understanding of the discussion there so it's gone so that the anyway the the the request that's come up a couple of times during comment here to put child care in that building is is no longer under consideration Mary Mary post one Cindy Lane I hope I say this in the right way because I'm not trying to be to criticize but to me this is this whole issue kind of reflects what we've been talking about tonight and what a lot of us experience have experienced in the last few years or we feel like we have where this all of a sudden came up we've had no this is our first notice that we even heard well this would have been the first notice that we had known that there was maybe going to be a change at Memorial Town Hall we just happened to learn about it earlier by a few days because some of us know people that are part of the Essex players who were from what I've heard were pretty much shocked and dismayed by all of this so then this starts this whole tempest and then it makes a lot me if you anyway feel like why are why don't we even know about this I had a time and like I think like Barbara said you know bring it up so that we all have a chance to hear about it and feel like it's not just being suddenly you know shoved on us and then give us time till the next meeting to reflect on it talk to neighbors get things going and then we can have this talk and then you hear what the community wants to hear I remember in the last meeting you know Greg claiming that staff just couldn't understand this is germane couldn't understand why why the merger went down and I think that a big part of the reason is is nobody is really listening to the public or inviting their comments and you know this public to be heard isn't a real discourse either but anyway this is another example I don't want to lose my train of thought here of where we feel like we're not being heard or we're not being asked our opinion you know it's just that this shows up and then all of a sudden it's maybe going to be a vote on it has anybody asked our opinion you know and given us some time to think about it that's all thank you yeah thanks Mary um yes please hi I'm Karen hammer Williamson I live at 12 heather bush road in Essex and I'm here today just on my own behalf though I am a current member of the board of directors of Essex community players an 18 year member and I served twice I was appointed twice to the memorial hall committee and I'm also a lifetime member and former executive producer of Georgetown University mask and bobble dramatic society I've been an advisor on the strategic directions for arts space and multipurpose space for st johnsbury academy that advice led to the development of the morse center for the arts which was a multi-million dollar project that the funds were raised more quickly than for any project in the history of st johnsbury academy I also served on the board of directors for the ywca of vermont during the years when it developed and operated child care programming in multipurpose spaces and churches throughout vermont most of which are really old buildings that have a lot of the issues that you've been describing about memorial hall and perhaps also notably I was the head of residential alternative development for the vermont department of aging and independent living during the ship the balance years and I was charged to develop um projects and funding sources to create senior housing assisted living the homes for the terminally ill the sash program was an initial project of mine before I grew it to the point that the state couldn't support it and it went to the federal square um and I oversaw a portfolio directly of more than five million dollars and influenced tens of millions of other dollars um from my perspective on a practical measure I left the committee in 2018 after the committee didn't have a regular meeting time at that time it was understood that monthly meetings might be desirable but that quarterly was all that was required um but they were having trouble scheduling that it was seen as a shared committee and staff issue at the time from my perspective and one that could be remedied I'm not sure that monthly meetings are always needed depending on how you deal with the charge but I think it would be a tremendous mistake at this point to do away with the committee um I have provided assistance to the town in all the areas on that charge helping identify funding sources which included in the last renovation funding for arts programming to be included in the mission of the hall I've provided guidance both to the players and to the town on how different operational issues could be handled to better integrate multiple populations one thing that hasn't been discussed is that um the players has developed technical capacity in the hall in terms of lighting instrumentation in the ceiling and other wiring and it in an agreement kind of tacit agreement with the town um there can be nominal charges if the equipment is to be extensively used by another user but we provide free technical assistance and the use of many of our boards and other equipment to groups so when something becomes infeasible for the players it's not just infeasible for the players but it becomes difficult for smaller groups that look to the technical um resources and the expertise of the Essex community players while we're amateur many of us have professional or university experience and so we have a lot to share in terms of knowledge of arts grants um and most of us participate in multiple arts programs um in the state I've written grants also to um the federal government um as well as the state in in conjunction with arts programs and libraries so I did apply to serve on the memorial hall committee at the time I had to leave I was also dealing with a job change I'm a social worker and in geriatrics and disability I now work for the ALS association who are needing all the services to people with ALS in the state of Vermont so I travel statewide but I'm home-based now and um I have uh five aging parents over the age of 87 so life is really interesting but being home-based I'm I would be glad to serve if there's a way that the memorial hall committee can be of more service the last thing I would say is that developing even community theater projects is a multi-year process so advanced planning and notice of change is really helpful um we have the capacity now to support community productions in a way that is accessible to people with disabilities that is safe in terms of process I greatly respect the different capacities of the town to deal with the building but how the building lives and breathes in this type of programming is a whole another issue and I believe that the Essex players representatives and the theater community representatives on the committee have brought a lot of expertise and how to deal with that when I started with the players I was stage managing productions and we did all of our rehearsing in the hall we moved all almost all of that activity out of the hall to accommodate other groups that's a difficult thing to do um so we were we were um in there many days and providing a lot more funding to the hall um so I just would encourage that you consider retaining the committee but figure out how to make it more doable for staff to support um and to take advantage of all the expertise that's available thank you uh bruce post up to the microphone please yeah I didn't hear a word she said and I just want to ask us what are these round things there are they speakers so yeah they are this the system we used that we had if you remember back after the building first reopened we had some wireless microphones that that serve to to connect to both the television and to the room and we no longer have that those wireless microphones did not work uh reliably no and so unfortunately yes right we are the reason I'm asking is because the home audience which we now can talk about is at an advantage they can actually hear people speaking it's very difficult especially when you're a geezer like me to hear these things and and with speakers here you must have the technical capability of connecting these mics up to a PA system so folks can hear and as a public body you know I was thinking is this a violation of the ADA with the discussion we're having is about the I can't hear with the discussion we're having is about the memorial I know committee meeting this is just thank you for your comment I do have I've had something to say about Memorial Hall but it's important I would love to have heard what she said I couldn't hear a word and and I think you'd have to take this seriously it's it's we can have good discussions here like about Memorial I'll get that much in and but you have to think seriously about the quality of the PA system here because the people who attend are at a disadvantage thank you thank you but let me say this I bet you didn't imagine that so many people would want to talk about Memorial Hall tonight but there's an old there was a well English poet named Edward Thomas a friend of Robert Frost and very good friends he wrote a poem once called first known when lost and when a number of us heard about the threat to the continuation of Essex community players at Memorial Hall that poem came to my mind and we wouldn't do we didn't want to let Memorial Hall go without being involved in a discussion about it so there you go thanks thanks Bruce and signerilla and uh if you could speak loudly well here's a suggestion yeah whoa whoa whoa so I'm sorry there maybe that will help a little bit Mr. Chair that was set up for the production value oh I'm sorry yeah I'm sorry about that my voice is going this way so we need to we need to we may need to reconsider the configuration the room and we have already talked about the fact that we're going to have a mic stand for folks to stand at you know perhaps we could have it oriented such that the speaker is facing kitty chord yeah um everyone in the room right and chancing the audience yeah um so when I heard about the um potential eviction of the Essex community players the first thing I did was go to the website as always and it wasn't up to date at the time but I just checked and now it is up to date I'm glad to see that the um the website's been updated looks great um I said it before and I'll say it again we need a nominating committee the reason why folks weren't applying for vacant spots is because they weren't aware of it nominating committee just the three or so people would help a lot I think in this case I'm advertising the vacant spots identifying potential people and suggesting that they apply I applied um I visited Memorial Hall and I saw what was happening and um the lovely building it's being used as this for the senior center at this point looks great I play contract bridge so I might even join in a little bit one of the activities that's there and one of the things I noticed and I haven't never heard talked about is how there's a natural outdoor theater behind it it would be set up it's set up perfectly slopes down to what would be a stage area I happen to have seen a um a presentation by Brett and puppets recently at a very similar location it'd be easily done I think and that's one of the things that I'd love to see a committee move on I think that's what a committee does it looks outside of the normal day-to-day operations and really would help a lot with possible new uses of that facility so there were two reasons put out why the committee should be dissolved one lack of interest I think that's a moot point at this stage there seems to be plenty of interest now that folks are aware of it and that uh staff couldn't support the committee but I would ask that what extra work would there be for staff going to maybe a once a month hour meeting is about what I imagine compared to what's currently being done so I'd suggest that the two reasons put forth for disbanding the committee um don't hold water thank you thanks again any other comments in the room Irene thank you Irene Renner Thrush Lane speak loudly please Irene Renner Thrush Lane um I think one of the missing stakeholders uh when we talked about the list earlier would be the taxpayers I think the taxpayers have invested a ton of money whether it's heating, lighting I'm so I think having a committee of regular folks along with people like Essex players to look into current and different uses of the building would be very privileged I heard earlier someone say that parking is limited um yes if you don't go there very often it might look like parking is limited but those of us who go to plays there or usher there know that they tap the logging business across the street use that parking lot the free library parking lot is used for productions the Essex elementary school parking lot is used so I think it's deceptive there's actually a lot of parking in the center of Essex that's very walkable to that location um I really like Tracy's suggestion of just changing the charge rather than dissolving the committee so who knows to Tracy coming up with that um I've noticed that some committees at town hall get a lot of staff support I've been to Essex community development meetings for years now and um I often see four staff members I mean we're talking about the we're talking about Memorial Hall is this one it's related to the committee yes I was told that staff don't have time to staff a meeting they accordingly meeting of the Memorial Hall committee I would ask that maybe one of those four staff members that goes to the economic development commission meetings twice a month take an hour at other schedule and come over to Memorial Hall and chat with those of us who are really interested in promoting that building and keeping it going you know I just think that that's a real um challenge to tell taxpayers we don't have enough staff time when there are regularly four staff people that tune into that kind of meeting and again twice a month um so I think that's all from here um thanks so much for having this extended discussion I think it's very important for taxpayers as I said to have a check and balance on staff activities I am so thrilled that we have Tom Yando looking into it and Public Works Dennis has always had his finger on the pulse along with Aaron as to what's going on in Memorial Hall and how to make it better and to make it less of a money pit than it already is and recreation of course has always booked the calendar there um so yeah staff has always had an integral part of keeping it going but I think having a check and balance from residence would also be really helpful thanks thank you Irene uh anyone else in the room can't see everybody okay uh there is there are a couple hands up uh Andy Champagne your hand is up but it's still up from the last time you have comments on this topic I do okay go ahead so 19 million dollar budget and people can't hear in the room that's not acceptable um the discussion is about Memorial Hall committee Andy I we yeah don't interrupt people let them talk too you know this is kind of when we go back to like trying to get the top you need to stay on topic though oh okay so that's coming next you're off topic okay if you just listen if you listen turn your ears on listen what I'm about to say you might hear something get some input get some input Andy can you point please yeah I can um you pissed everybody off doing this by the way okay you you can't I mean this is the talk of Essex poly talk okay the what we heard was one day the one day the the players got a message that they can't use that space anymore and they were kicked out because of because they needed for childcare that's what they heard now I also can't believe that somebody came along and put children in a rundown building are you out of your mind who who's making decisions around there the next thing is we just got done fighting a war in Afghanistan for 20 years and you have a building called Memorial Hall and it's run down what are you doing these people have died for our country and it's Memorial Hall you gotta be kidding me the other thing is the kids from the high school could also use that building too I'm sure they'd like to put uh play together some kids out of the drama departments in the schools I bet they would like to use it anyway I'm done thanks handy okay Lorraine hi Lorraine's alone um just a quick question can you give me some context on the Essex players and how it relates to Memorial Hall were they asked to leave I just would like to know more about the story and did they have any guarantees or are there contracts or what's the nature of the relationship with the building have you want to cover that well I don't know what their arrangement is with the town I don't believe I don't I've not seen a contract there's no formal agreement right they have been in that space for I want to say 40 close 70 okay I know of only 40 but in some form or fashion okay so I was at 40 someone said 70 and we landed at 55 um we were approached by ejrp and the school district about 22 families shortage for for child care we were looking at places that we own versus renting other places which drives up the cost of the child care abilities all of our other spaces are full and the school district has its other issues with giving up more space for their operations so we were we entered into a discussion with the players I said that before when we started talking about how the space was used how many weeks they have to use for their rehearsals the setup and once the set is in place nothing goes on in that space nothing so it's literally three or four weeks for that production not much happens inside the building when we realized they couldn't find another suitable space the time was crunched we both said okay it's not going to work and it got dropped the reason why there was no public meetings is staff was doing due diligence on the issue there was nothing to bring forward other than we were exploring options that's the answer so Lorraine the the sx players were not asked to leave the building there was a question about use of the building whether there was any way to have shared use or whether if if there was any any way for them to if they could move to another location with help from the town so it was the exploratory it sounds like yeah yeah no if it would have worked we would have had a serious conversation about how it would work if it could work and what was a highest what is the highest and best use for our community at a given time it never got to that point and I want to thank Marcus Serta who is in those discussions and for being we worked very well over one or two discussions and then it dropped we have these types of things occasionally and other facilities like our ball fields like our tennis courts like our pools right so so then the other question then is given I'm sorry I can't remember her name who spoke from the the board of community players the the eloquent speaker earlier were were people who served on the committee contacted before this discussion like in part as part of this discussion where did the staff reach out to them before bringing it to the table as an agenda item does she Marcus Serta the chair of the board which which board are you asking about so I mean the committee the committee Morrill Hall committee doesn't have enough members to meet it doesn't have enough member to have a quorum so there was no but but that woman who spoke said she was served on the committee she had served on the committee she's not currently in the committee she's served on it in the past yeah it's not like 2018 it sounds like no I believe there there are I think I think Irene is one of the members on the board um I think there are seven three out of seven seats are filled at this point so I guess my question just is were any of the members of committee contacted that tonight's in terms of the staff recommending this staff didn't recommend anything they were just investigating it there was no as far as the committee did not did not know specifically informed no did they meet no I don't know this topic am I wrong I mean the question of it it sounds like it's a staff recommendation the way it's written on the agenda so that's why I was curious about what was was the committee contacted in terms of thinking about this that's all I'm asking so so the raid when I first introduced this and I mentioned how this is something that's been on our radar for at least two a couple couple of years now we had reached out to current committee members um about two years ago and we first started looking into this it did not did not reach out again um at this current time as I don't believe there are any active members um since the committee hasn't met in three years so I'm not sure if there's anyone to reach out to but when we first started this a couple years ago uh Darby Mayville and I need to reach out to um members at that time and I only asked that Greg because of um you know we just got through COVID so it's a weird time and I'm just thinking in the future it might be helpful to reach out to committee members that did serve on it because you know there's a lot of stuff that's happened it's been a weird year thanks Larian all right let's bring it back to the board I had another question um Andy you already had a chat you already spoke so did the staff have any email documents or anything about this that we can actually check no then they are lying Andy you already spoke if you want to make a records request please go through the records request appropriate records request channels I'm just a I'm just a regular guy I don't know anything about anything I just showed up at the meeting dude I don't know what you're talking about so I'm just I'm just a concerned citizen the people have um questions about records I am the contact person for records and you can reach out to me and you can figure out what the request is I would say that we should look at the record before we make it this soon okay so we're bringing this back to the board most of what I've heard tonight is a conflation of the Essex community players and their future versus the Memorial Hall committee which are two very distinct things I can say that before I was even ran for a school board I submitted the request because it was advertised back in 2015 2016 about being on the Memorial Hall committee and even six years ago the response I got was we don't meet anymore it's been six years since that committee has really done anything tangible I would say I think a lot of people are here because they heard that the Essex community players are being kicked out and I again my child's mother you know and I have been deeply involved in theater in this community in South Burlington as part of the Flynn as well with different productions um that's not what's going on here what is going on here is that we have a committee that has not met in any legitimate manner for six years now if there's real legitimate interest then I wonder where it's been I mean right now nothing that I hear the reforming of the committee would do would take a lot of staff time talking about one hour a week that's not what a staff liaison to our committees do they have to spend an extensive amount of time if there's going to be so that committee wants to pursue grants if that committee wants to go after different theater groups come in you know it's going to take a lot of coordination and that adds to that time that just simply as our staff has said doesn't exist I don't see that the Memorial Hall committee itself needs to be basically what we would be doing is by saying that we want to keep this committee we would need to revive it I mean I just want to make sure that we're making that distinction are there going to be seven members of the community who are going to step up hold those meetings and then are we willing to say we are going to offer our staff's time much more than just one hour to go to those meetings because I saw Greg nodding his head I don't want to single you out Greg but it's much more extensive than that and the current members of the committee who are on there I haven't heard from them about wanting to do more with the committee until tonight so where has the interest been I respect and understand that there's been some furor about the SS community players possibly being moved out that was an exploratory thing as staff has mentioned it's not the same thing as dissolving a committee which is well within the purview of the select board has not done anything for over six years and I wanted to be on that committee but I was just told point blank we don't do anything we don't meet so I find it difficult to consider us saying keep the committee when I don't really know that we're going to have the continued community involvement the interest and then we would be forcing staff to put that time their time into supporting it in that much of a manner thanks Pat any other board member comments I do have a question for Greg did you say you'd hit five phone calls for volunteers emails but yes so uh one of the things that Tracy you mentioned and some others mentioned it was the possibility of having this committee do programming in that space rather than focus on the building itself um programming would typically need to come with a budget um and so I'm I don't we you know we don't have anything currently in plan to do you know for programming in a building would have to come from somewhere else but the the other thing is um I have to disclose the like Pat my wife is the library trustee the library does programming as well and they they budget for it or the or the library players and the library um friends of library I guess or whatever they're called they're the nonprofit that's that's that's associated with them um funds that um and so I think I think if we were to reboot the committee we would it would be more appropriate to reboot it as part of our budgeting process with a budget to support programming in that space if that's if that's the direction we want to go um I don't know I don't know if others have any thoughts about that or any comments on anything related I guess just a comment in the only thing in front of me was the proposal um so at first glance it looked to me more like role confusion rather than you know everything I've heard here tonight um and Pat I want to thank you that that history is helpful yeah I've I've been on the select board seven years and I've asked a number of times why we have a memorial hall committee because it hasn't been apparently been active in the seven years that I've been just concurrent with what's fascinating I mean you may know more than I do I'm not even sure what the term limits are in those committee members but we certainly haven't reappointed any in you know years and years so I'm not even sure if there's anyone technically still on the memorial hall right if they've not been reappointed when their terms are up I don't know I don't know what the folks think we want to make a decision tonight we want to think about it we want to get more input we want to consider budgeting for it and when I'm open to the programming aspect of the committee I think it's like you said it should be part of our budgeting process you know we can't hear oh sorry I'm in favor of the programming aspect of the committee but I think it it's probably as Andy said is a good um like a discussion to have during the budgeting process rather than like during uh during just a regular meeting and if you dissolve that you can't bring it back during the budget right we could we could we could form a new committee whenever we want yeah we could or or just leave it in place in dormant until that until the time that has a budget attached to it if that's the direction we want to go because we're gonna have a lot of budget pressures on us for other reasons in the coming years as well so it's gonna right get a sit into our our the enormity of our priority list not just the potentially emotional aspect of this particular committee any thoughts could we could we leave it dormant and then when budgeting season comes around have the discussion about whether we're going to whether we're going to truly fund it as a like a real committee and change the scope of the committee as Tracy mentioned like get the scope a little tighter around it I would imagine there's no cost to leaving an empty committee on the books no there's no cost to that there's I mean as mentioned a couple times there are uh several people who are interested in joining the committee um I don't know if you want to interview them now or not now now but in the near future and in terms of um charging them with putting together a new mission statement um I do still have concerns about staff time it's not just one hour a month it's the prep work that goes into putting out packets it's the staff support to get those packets posted on our website um to research grants to go after and basically do the work um and tasks that are assigned uh from a committee which can take hours a month um depends on month to month sometimes but it's not a small task by any means um but yeah I just wanted to point out that there is some interest and you may have people who might want to reconsider the mission and propose that before budget season we are we are right before but right in order to have something to talk about it during budget season you'd have to have a proposal to talk about right well we're also we're also talking later in the on the agenda about adding potentially more joint meetings with the trustees so we're we're filing meetings on meetings uh here so um I think my preference would be to leave it as is for now um and I'd really like to have a larger overarching discussion about our committee structure and how people are appointed how people are you know how outreach is done in order to gain interest and experience from our own committee on those uh from our own community on those committees excuse me um so I think that would be my my preference I like that idea Tracy right with the uh the upcoming implementation of stipends for committee members I think we need to have that just we should have that discussion as part of that as well anyway so so is this is it um I'm I'm feeling there may be a consensus to leave the the committee dormant for now till we have conversation about how we want to do with committees in general and then potentially and I the the the risk though is then it's July now we're going to talk about budgets in November you know having you know if we if we get to the place where we want to rejuvenate this committee with a budget I don't know that there's time to do it this year so we're leaving it dormant for yet another year unless we budget in anticipation of coming up with a program I mean in frankness it's been dormant for six years so it's gonna hold off for one more year yeah it's not gonna hurt anything any concerns from staff about just not doing anything with it it's dormant now it's if it's staying dormant and you what I'm hearing is having a conversation about committees in general but if we come back to just this one if we could talk about give us a little bit of time to talk about a focus yeah um not so much not so much the building or the grounds themselves but the use of the building and and some of the expertise that we have in the community then that time could be well spent so we we can look at that and then I would also be looking for uh the town's recreation department um to be part of that discussion um for those who don't know the town's recreation department is about four full-time people one being the director and a program director so uh when we talk about time it wasn't necessarily going to be myself or Greg on this committee it was going to be the recreation department who also does uh all the rec a lot of the recreation that is not being done by the village whether it's team sports or the pools or etc so but yes I think if it's going to be dormant we could bring it back for a discussion in the future and a budget for focusing it okay everybody okay with that so with that we'll move on to the next agenda item discussion and potential action on public forums and town of Essex planning in response to village of Essex Junctions independence initiative go ahead Greg you're you want to start this okay you go ahead I gotta step one second make sure you get behind me um so yes your last meeting you discussed uh holding some public forums um later on this summer facilitated by Jen Nour if we've worked within the past around the issue of what should the future of Essex look like for the town of Essex um merger has failed maybe there's some lessons learned there um learning about goals behind the village uh independent separation effort but that basically has the town select board um hearing from your entire community and all of your residents of Essex about what what should the town of Essex do going forward I'm getting some of these from the audience that they can't hear you sorry I'll try to speak up um so is the idea is to have some forums about what the the future of the town of Essex should hold what it should look like um how how the town of Essex as a corporate municipal entity should handle the village of Essex Junctions potential separation independence effort um in speaking to Jen Nour Jen really felt like there needs to be something for people to react to a plan to look at a plan to provide feedback on um she convinced staff of of the same um rather than having just an open ended what do people want they wanted to give something that people could react to and respond to uh so in the memo that's part of your packets it lays out options of what uh the select board can do how it can frame some of these discussions going forward um looking at the the future in three phases an interim phase a transition phase and a long term phase uh the interim phase basically being now um there's a separation uh effort um in taking place in the village uh we don't know what the future brings as far as governance we don't know what the legislature will do if if the village vote passes to separate and create an independent city of Essex Junction um if it does pass if the legislature does pass uh the independent city there there would be a transition phase of um the date of that approval versus and and then the date of when the independent city takes effect and it's created and it becomes its own thing um and then the long term phase is after that in terms of what happens well into the future I wouldn't focus too much on that at this point but building the forums largely around um this interim phase and into the transition phase um with the idea of providing structure uh for the town uh in the village to see what it can do going forward how to protect the town of Essex as a corporate entity but also not interfere with the village's um independent separate separation effort um so I'll get into the options a little bit uh the idea behind them being to accomplish what the town select board has been trying to do for the past several years and and we'll be on that too um in terms of providing good governance high quality service looking at tax equity for all of your residents and there's a few different ways that to look into those things um in this interim phase and and this is again these are options this is not a prescribed this is what you must do and you have to do but it's it's serious to consider and things to consider and things to present to your residents and public so you can get feedback and formulate a more specific plan and provide more stability to yourselves to your staff to your residents in terms of what the future might bring what it might hold um as far as tax equity uh scenarios you can look at our our staff we have staff that are paid for by both entities the town in the village some of them are town staff some of them are village staff the cost is split between the town and the village um putting some of those costs into the town budget would take a step towards tax equity where everybody's paying once for uh staff who provide services to the entire community but also sets up the budget for the town where if the village um does separate and you lose 42 percent of your tax base off your grand list uh it's a little bit more more that money is in the town budget people know what they're paying for um you can have a bigger discussion about where where you may need to save some costs or cut some money or spend some more money to keep providing those high quality services that people have expected um public safety is another issue um police are already paid for by the entire uh community um sx rescue is paid for it's a it's a contribution from the town of sx budget which is paid for by everybody in the community um fire is the one that is not uh the village has its own fire department the town has its fire department um and they provide mutual aid to each other but everybody in town pays for the town fire department which focuses primarily on the town outside the village only the village pays into the the fire budget um village fire budget excuse me so you could handle that similar to potentially how you handle um highway uh transfers within the village where the village has a highway budget it's paid for through the entire town budget and the town reimburses the village the cost of that that way everybody in town pays equally for um pays for highway services that's another option for the fire um republic safety and capital budget is another option that the town collects about five hundred and thirty six thousand dollars a year through its two cent capital tax um i'd say the majority of that money is spent in the town outside the village so you could have discussions about should some of that money be transferred back into the village as the village of sx junction corporate municipality or should it be shared and take a look at capital planning and put some more village based projects into the capital plan there's different ways to do that um different costs associated with all of those things shared services as well um both boards have have met now and and discussed uh what services what departments they would like to share short term long term um into the future and to not share so having discussions about what the two boards think makes sense based on input from your residents in terms of what do what doesn't make sense to share going forward uh if the village um separates and becomes the independent city of sx junction um what the boards haven't really discussed yet is how to share the cost and oversight of those departments so um you can also discuss with the trustees and the short term interim phase and and hear from your residents in terms of how should cost sharing take place uh using the police as an example um it's not just a x million dollars for the police and split it however you want to split it you also only need to factor in the it support to get the police gets the hr support the manager support all these other costs that are associated with departments um whether it's police or others but starting to have those conversations with the the board of trustees um about what that might look like and base it around some input from your residents in terms of um what departments might make sense to share based on how your residents feel um revenue is another one that that you can start talking about now in this interim phase and proposing some options to residents um again preparing the town for the possibility that it might lose 42 of its property tax base um how are we going to keep paying for the services that you get it's not as simple as the population being cut in half so the budget gets cut in half using rough numbers um our budget is based on the mileage miles of roads paved and unpaved it's based on the network IT infrastructure that's in place um on and on and on it's not just the people it's also the systems the places the the land um that gets factored into budgets so to continue to pay for all that um options are to or to not one option is to reduce um reduce your your budget and cut some services um and have discussions about what that might look like if you want to keep um the services that you're used to it's you could increase property taxes you could pursue a local options tax to raise more money you can raise fees like we talked about earlier tonight with calm dev starting to think about those options and what makes sense for the residents in the public what are palatable for them um to what extent uh that's the the rundown of the interim phase the next few months leading up to november and potentially past november waiting for a legislative decision um assuming the village voters vote for an independent city in separation from the town of esx if that happens the transition phase is like i said it's after the legislature approves the independent city of esx junction but before that takes effect that's when you can start to hammer out um the staffing the service levels what's the budget going to look like for the town of esx that is smaller than it once was um and in terms of taking steps to to prepare for that whether that's a hiring freeze whether it's starting to prepare use of fund balance um unassigned fund balance to ease any tax shift or tax burden increase of taxes local options tax is still an option at that point if not implemented yet and finalizing any contracts uh i remember annum's of understanding with the the new independent city council um to see what services shared services might look like um so that's the that's the gist of it uh building the forums around those options around that plan around that future to start to hear from residents what of those makes sense what do they like what are they not like um again there might be some lessons learned about why merge it didn't pass but um the tracy's point at their last meeting looking towards the future what does what does the future of the town of esx look like from staff's perspective these are the options you need to consider and the things that need to hear from your residents about so happy to hear and take any input now gen's recommendation which i i think is a great one is to meet with the trustees about this probably next week if things go well and you're willing to do that um time wise and get their input again not this isn't meant to stop stop separation it's not meant to uh disrupt it but getting some input from the trustees to see is there anything in here that causes a disruption that that gets in the way that impedes separation that's not the goal that's not the intent and then based on any of that feedback from the trustees scheduling some public forums in august to hear from your residents all right thanks craig any board questions comments so this is your proposal for the public meeting is that what you're saying it's a framework for discussion so it would be done like in a breakout group type forum we'll be working out the logistics with gen in terms of what to expect how to expect um she wanted to get some feedback from tonight and so did staff in terms of what what we can build it around based on your input um part of it's going to depend on how many people we get kind of thinking two maybe three forums um different times uh different places um throughout town and trying to reach different people so my concerns i just want to make sure we don't limit people people's participation if they've got other ideas we need to have to allow that time to hear those different ideas and if it's too structured we're going to shut down free flow conversations that makes sense yeah i think if you don't mind mr go ahead that's that's the entire balance we have no idea how many people will show up on any given night uh and so the process is to give them some structure um and hear and participate but we really need what is what are your priorities it from one perspective if if the select board's position is we're not fighting the separation process per se but you are looking at it if it's successful what does the town look like what do you want it to look like and what are we going to do about the monetary change from the public perspective in order to guide you you're not saying that you not necessarily that you agree with the village that you think it's going to be successful in the legislature any of that stuff but the listening the going out there who shows up how you follow up on it that's what we're talking about okay and my only other recommendations we if you depending on how many we do nights are great but i think a weekend one would be good too i will throw this out you may do your three or whatever you do and then you decide that maybe one more or another way or you decide um again it may either be before november it could be after november but listening to the public in different formats in different places it's what's important right go ahead tracy um you know i was trying to wrap my brain around this i'm not sure why i had a problem doing that um but and i don't want to micromanage gen in any way that's that's not my my intent but i see this in two phases one is you know the timeline i think is helpful for folks to to wrap their heads around you know when things would happen what which pieces are in play at that time but also moving into a second phase where you're talking about these are the options that exist um and getting feedback on those individual options and also having in other category as don said to collect ideas new ideas things we may not have thought about up until now and just again sit and listen and i also would not be in favor of letting this languish i think we run the risk of i call it analysis paralysis if we have a discussion about having a discussion only to have the discussion um i would be fine with approving this now so that we can get that approval and get that scheduling going thanks tracy any comments okay so what are you looking for from us tonight uh i guess the biggest question would be direction of do you want us to put this on the joint agenda on next monday the 19th to present it to the trustees and see if there's any anything in here that we haven't considered that impedes um their own work or do you want to just move ahead to tracy's point and start scheduling the forums you've already given us they go ahead to work with um jan at the last meeting so we're we're good there it's just a question of what do you want to take an interim step or just schedule the forums i think given the time constraint we should go ahead and schedule the forums and get started does something else make them up that we're not even aware of yet i mean the the trustees are doing their own separate investigation and they're going to share with us what they need so maybe if we hear from the public what we need so that we have a you know ongoing two-way conversation with them just for the sake of just i'll go either way it's it's one more it's one more week um is the gesture for the trustees that you're you're willing to take their input on it um they are doing their own project and and it's a question of how much do you want to make this yours and how much do you want to get some additional input i could say i'm i'm buying either way that's just for the sake of discussion yeah before we go further should we listen to public comment so i was asking the board whether they thought we should ask for public comment at this point or have further discussion among ourselves i'd like to hear from the public yeah i think that's since it seems we've heard from everybody let's do that okay um start in the room this time again betsy ah smaller chair at the microphone first well first betsy done um number one the trustees were very carefully worded to us and said they don't want to have any meetings with us anymore so why are we doing that i don't understand it and why what's impeding them that we're doing to them we're just carrying on with our regular every day to day basis and they are crafting their own city and i don't feel that we have to give them any money or take on the responsibility for their staff at this point they're separating let them separate if that's what they want i'm before it and us taking on the tax burden why we have a budget that's set until 23 and we've already said that this is this is where we are and um yes i do think that we do have to look at what does separation mean for the town i do agree with that and i think that the town needs to come out and talk about what is our vision of who we are and um and without the junction as part of us you know and that's okay but i think we need to have people who are going to be on this board because we're going to need if it passes through we're going to need to have our own charter alterations and changes because we need to then look at where are we picking our people from who are going to be sitting on this board and i i personally and no offense to pat but i don't want a person from the village sitting on our board when we are deciding our future i think that that's wrong because he is a village person and we need to have a full contingent of people who are in the town outside of the village who are making those decisions that's my perspective and i i um totally understand that he is here and we can't ask him to resign as much as i might want to and um i think that we have to look at what's the best for the town and if it doesn't pass then we have to look at the potential for making our town more responsive by having a commission finance to look at districts so that we can have a better governance of this community that's where i think we have to go and i think we should look at that soon thank you thanks for that somebody else in the room barbara barbara higgins seven Cindy Lane what concerns me about this proposal is that while the village of Essex junction voters have had an advisory vote there hasn't been a single vote of the town of Essex advisory or otherwise whether separation is where this community wants to go it may be that the entire community even people outside the village of Essex junction are interested in separation i know there are some it perplexes me that we have spent we meaning our representatives have spent so many months sitting back and being driven by another board that board does a very good job representing their constituency i truly do not believe that this board has given the same kind of effort to representing the rest of us who would become the town of Essex while we remain the town of Essex including the village of Essex junction you clearly have a responsibility to provide service to all citizens but when you are talking about a future town of Essex that does not include the residents of the village of Essex junction to include them in a decision about what the governance will be for those people seems absurd to me i understand that all of us must contribute to providing a view of what a transition period should a separation occur might look like it certainly is not the purview of the village of Essex junction resident one separation is voted on and approved by the select board to determine the outcome of the rest of us i have been a select board member i understand my duty your duty is to make the town of Essex whether it is now that includes the village or in the future without the village a strong viable entity i understand the staff's need to look to the future but it seems to me we're jumping ahead of ourselves there hasn't been a vote by the village of Essex junction i think there's plenty i know you feel like there's not enough time but i think there's really plenty of time once there's a vote to decide whether or not you need to do some of these these things if you want to ask people if you want to inform people about what this community might look like separated that's fine and dandy but asking us about something we don't know if it's going to happen or maybe a year or more because we don't even know when the legislature might take it up even if it's voted for i think you're wasting a lot of people's time and creating a lot of anxiety that's unnecessary and should be better directed at continuing to serve the people we have now and let a board should separation go forward we would have to have a new board and those people should be talking with the residents of whoever that new community is about what they want their community to be unless you're going to have a vote on separation and everybody votes on separation then there's a different story here and a different viewed to how we could move forward i thank you for your time thanks Barbara Irene remember to speak loudly Irene Renner brush Lane thank you to Barbara Higgins for coming tonight um former select board chair and she's done her time around this table for sure and knows what she's talking about um i'm incredibly dismayed by the negative language i hear around this when i go to the trustee they're positive they're psyched about separation they're looking to do separation the best they can why are we not doing that why are we not talking about the benefits of separation for the new town of Essex why are we talking about cost the tov reduction it's just this heavy load and it's exhausting to hear you talk about this staff especially i believe you remember that your village residents but not that you remember that your residents of the town because i hear talking about we have to implement a lot oh my gosh we have to increase taxes we would have to increase fees all this doom and gloom language it's really disheartening i want to get excited about separation as the town and i want you to talk about things not tax equity because we just voted no on merger twice and i think you might remember because it was just in march and april that we did that we do not need to see a plan for tax equity in this conversation with the public they have weighed in thank you and they told us what they think what you didn't put in here was interesting isn't it the district representation that people said over and over again in merger surveys in the three plus three vote somehow equal representation didn't get into this plan it still hasn't been implemented in this room we still don't have five people from outside the village represented during any of these conversations it's mind-blowing to me how many times the public says to you we need district representation we don't need the village's version of tax equity and yet it shows up in this four-page document why add meanings with the trustees i agree with the comments that i just heard from certain select board members the trustees don't belong meeting with you about this they're doing their thing you should do our thing what's the greater good for the town of essex i want to hear some positive language and i want to hear some new ideas we have a village highway tax that just ended on june 30th of this year that highway tax could be incrementally increased to pay for the town fire department the town rec department the town planning department and the town library and that's all you need to do to make the taxes equitable that's all you need to do you don't need to be shuffling money by the millions from our taxpayers to the village who would have oversight on how it's spent that's unacceptable our town tax dollars belong in the town arena you're talking about the proposed i am thank you bruce go ahead remember to speak loudly i will i want to bruce post one cindy lane i went to norwich university i was in the core cadets they used to say i used to count cadence for the core because i had a loud voice um but i'll hopefully people can hear me um i mean this is a very strange situation we're in um i mean i went on the website for our village our voice uh i think that's what our village our voices and and it's creative it's it's putting forward their their plan there's a book that was written about people who stayed in chelsea once we had the great migration that went out west it was called those who were left behind and that's who i'm gonna be if if there is separation there are gonna be 11 000 people who have been left behind and i don't want to wait until that may happen to begin to have those discussions among us who live outside the village i know we say well i'm a member of the town two in the village but i can't i can't separate my fact myself from the fact that there's a a significant body of opinion that says we wanted this we want to leave the town of essix and there is an opinion on the board of trustees that only village members can make that decision for an entire town they're gonna say we're going to separate and i don't have a voice and saying no or yes so if that's going to be the case i think we should at least part of this she'd be directed towards engaging people who live outside the village to talk about the implications of this and to talk about how we might like to go forward and i do agree with iran on the on the on the senate you said a couple weeks ago we don't know wh