that some more of you before we present to the board. Okay, thank you. Any board member changes? None from trustees? Nothing here. All right, so we need motions to amend the agenda to remove item, business item 5G. I make the motion that we amend tonight's agenda, removing item, business item 5G. Second. Thank you, Don. Thank you, Tracy. Any further discussion from the select board? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes 5-0. Trustees, entertain a similar motion. We'll move that we approve the agenda as amended. Second. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Raj. Any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Thank you. Fascinatingly. Okay, thank you. Moving on to public to be heard, and I just realized that I did not bring my note pad that has my notes in it that I looked, they were referenced when I talk about this. So public to be heard is a period of the agenda where members of the public can address the boards in this case, because it's a joint meeting, on topics that are not on the agenda. If you'd like to speak during public to be heard, either raise your hand in the team's application or raise your hand in the room. If you're on the telephone, we will make allowance for you to speak at the appropriate time as well. If you'd like to speak during public to be heard, please be brief, please be civil, please refrain from using inappropriate language. Please do not attack municipal staff or members, other members of the public. Do they miss anything? If you are attending, if you are participating online, please keep your microphone muted and your camera off unless you've recognized speaker to avoid distractions. All comments are directed to the chair. Yes, thank you. Comments should be directed to either myself or to Andy Watts as the chair of the select board or to Andrew Brown as the village president. I think that's those are the local admonitions. Admonitions on things. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to use the builder. Got it. I'm pretty sure it's been resolved now. Okay. All right. One thing I do want to say is I kind of got an emergent situation going on with my mom. So I'm going to leave my cell phone on. And if something erupts, I may leave the meeting abruptly. If that happened, well, yeah. I'm going to leave my cell phone on. And if something erupts I may leave the meeting abruptly. Yeah, I'll be with it when it comes. If it comes. Okay, moving on public to be heard, I see one hand up, Harlan Smith. Good evening and thank you. I was able to attend a meeting with our state delegates this past Saturday and I brought this to their attention. And I just wanted to bring it to this board's attention and I want to give a shout out to our town clerk who did everything she absolutely could to get things out as quickly as she could. And I am in no way blaming anybody here for the story that I'm about to tell you. I have two sons that are in the military. One of them deploys on a rotation about every six months. The other one is deployed at the moment and was deployed during our last vote. And I can buy a house anywhere as in the world and sign documents via DocuSign. And he did everything he could to get his vote in and it never made it in time and it wasn't counted. What he needed to do and he's actually blessed to be an officer and he's on a well-established base still required to print a ballot and then try to find two different sized envelopes and a printer where he can print a ballot out. Two different sized envelopes and to try to mail them back within 30 days because I believe that the final draft has to be done within 30 days and it needs to be worn 30 days before the vote and his vote was not counted in this last. This last not election, the last vote that we had and two other soldiers that are with him were also not able to be counted. They sent their votes in is my understanding but they didn't make it back in time. So I'm not so sure how much you guys can do other than maybe when you're talking to your state delegates to also encourage that there is gut to be an electronic way. I can't imagine like I said, my son's an officer and he's on a well-established base. Anybody that's deployed in a forward operating base they still have their cell phones. They're able to get to social media. They're staying in contact. Those are involved with their communities and want to vote but we're still snail mailing the ballots back. There's gotta be a way that we can get them so that their votes count. As you know, our elections and our votes one or two votes makes a difference. It's very close. So anything you guys can do to help push this forward so that our military are not left behind when they're out serving our country and they're trying to vote. Thank you. I thank you, Harlan. It's a very, very important issue. Thank you for bringing it forward. Any other comments, public to be heard? Any hands up online and there's no comment. There's no one on the phone. Okay. As a point of good news, I just got a text that my mother's gonna be okay tonight. So I should be here for the whole meeting. Thank you for your indulgence. I'm gonna keep my phone on. Okay. Move on to business item five, a discussion and potential action on tentative agreements about shared services between town of Essex and independent city of Essex Junction. Andrew, where do we wanna start? Thank you, Andy. My hope for tonight is we can go down through the list, both in terms of in the memo, how we have them in the bulleted list. In addition to that, after that, we could get to the high level agreements or the high level bullets that are in a memo from Brad. My request as we go through them is when we go past an agreement, if we are done with it, if we could have a motion to approve that individual agreement, so that way we can then take it off of our table and have that then be a part of that overall package. Okay. Is the select bird okay with approving these as we go through them? Or do we want to set up prove them all at once? I guess we can't do that. I think the ones that we have no more updates. I'd be happy to get them off the table, right? They're all tentative by definition anyway. Okay. So should we start with the MOU? So I see one change, the change on the top of page two, where the shared financial services has been changed to a clerk slash treasurer's agreement. Do we need to talk about the rationale for that or is everyone understanding of it? I'd like to hear why they changed it. There's a difference here. Yeah, there's a drastic difference. The large part being the shared financial services is later on in, I believe this isn't one of Brad's, one of Brad's bulletin points. And the biggest reason is that our current staffing has changed. And so then that model that was in the previous MOU did not make much sense. And we're going down the path as it currently stands for our current needs regardless of that separation or regardless of that agreement. And the clerk treasurer's one was never anything that was, or was one that was not mentioned. And so we needed to add that in, especially just to make sure that everybody was on the same page with that one. Tracy, go ahead. I guess I have a question. If we're talking about, what did Sarah say? Four years to untangle finance. I'm curious as to why we wouldn't at least include that as a secondary agreement that we would work on eventually and come to terms about. Would not be opposed to that. Okay, so the suggestion is that we have the financial services agreement. Right, it is discussed later in a memo later in the packet, but it's not listed in this MOU. Yeah, so you're suggesting we add it? Yes. Yeah, I agree. It's banging. You see that tree farm has been eliminated. Is that because we've got a separate thread going on that? Yes, and regardless of what happens with separation, that needs to be resolved. Right. And then the other changes that recreation was expanded, I assume that's the intent to expand it to any recreation program access. Correct. Right, town to city, reciprocal. It was what that implies to me, is that the intent? That is the intent. Based what I read in the memo, that sounds what the intent is. Okay, and that's the extent of the changes in this document. Andy, now that I'm getting back into teams, I'm seeing both Raj and Brad have their hands up. Oh, my apologies. I'm looking at the documents. Thank you for bringing that up. So, yeah, go ahead, Raj. It looks like Brad's hand was up first. Sorry. Go ahead, Raj. That's all right. I just want to come back to, I think, Andrew, you explained replacing the financial services. Really, what it comes down to is the change in financial services. There's a need to create an agreement right now. If there was no charter passed, if the charter goes through this session or not, there needs to be some sort of written agreement about financial services. So it really wasn't and isn't necessarily relevant to whatever happens with this charter or independence. I think there's just a new path forward for finance that doesn't need to mention anything about independence. So you're saying that the finance separation has nothing to do with, has more to do with the elimination of shared management than separation? Yeah, and I think the boards would benefit from creating that relationship and agreement. And I don't think it's going to change. I think either way, while you all can discuss but what you've talked about in the past is working towards separating finance. And previously there was shared finance that was going to work towards separation and now it's separated finance working towards separate finance. That's a good clarification. Thank you for that Brad, especially as we've talked about before similar to village management regardless of separation. We're looking to have separate finance and separate management as it is regardless of what is happening. But thank you for that. So just going back to that earlier comment about having shared financial services into the tech, the second tier that's why that was left out. And I'm gonna say that I'm glad Brad went first because he did that better. So thanks, Brad. So how does it look for people about that? Given that it's not a, at this point because of where we are with shared management and shared. It's separating, the separation is not being driven by the village separation. Is that what we're kind of saying? Right. I understand that, Rachael. I'm just waiting to ask my questions, so go ahead. Okay. I mean, I understand what they're saying. Yeah. That has nothing to do with my questions. That makes sense to you. He's nodding. All right, all right. So Don, you got a question? I do. Why do they want the clerk? They're going to become a city. They need a city clerk and a city treasurer. And we're a town. We have a town clerk and a town treasurer. I don't think it should be under this agreement. So it's an interesting point. We could, I mean, because we haven't appointed both of our, both our, and I assume the cities, I haven't read their charter in detail, have both have appointed clerk and treasurer. We could appoint the same person. I'm just saying, I don't think it's a good idea. Hey, I don't know. I think the question about, you know, it's going to take a while to separate finances. It may be challenging. Well, I don't know. Yeah, because we've got different finance departments. Yeah, I don't know.  One of the things we just talked about today with the clerk, treasurer, and Brad Luck and Wendy is again, the same thing. Unbundling stuff sounds good, but in reality, it's more difficult than you think. And they're bundled together because of the financial transactions that the clerks do that the finance department records. And so they would like to make sure that IT and all the things that would need to be at the new Village Hall City Hall are in place and ready to go and that the staffings are appropriate before just some date comes up. Not knowing when the state may or may not do anything. We feel that's the right approach. Yes, each would have, there's a clerk and a treasurer in our particular case, it's the same person. And the treasurer should not be the finance director. That would be inappropriate on the to do and to from. So this is the way we think it really should be. And if at the time it can be done sooner, one party comes to the other and says, we think we could do it sooner. As long as it's not in the middle of a fiscal year, you should have that discussion. Anything you do should start at the beginning of a fiscal year so that you don't have to deal with. And you also, one of the things we also talked about today is it's confusing enough for our citizens now with a village inside of a town and the people who are not from Vermont who don't really recognize certain types of forms of government. Whatever happens in the future, think of the citizens and the businesses and the time it takes to get the word out and publications, et cetera. So that's why you see what you have tonight. Greg, do you have anything to add? You were at that meeting. Yeah, we are. Everything Evan said, and we have an opening in the clerk's office right now or we're trying to figure out the best way to staff that. We have an idea in place. But at this point, we think it's best to have a clerk's office that's serving the entire community until there's two separate municipalities at which point we're trying to get the staffing in place to be able to oversee that transition and go through that transition. Yeah, and so because we're right now, or not right now, well, yeah, we are. We're closing on the FY23 budget and the hope of the trustees that they become a city July 1 of 2022, but then the budget that's in place is the FY23 budget, which includes continuation of the shared clerk and treasurer for that so-called transition year. And I guess the question is what happens at the end of that transition year? And if I could add, one of the things that we wanna try to make sure is we are not sending people to a different building. Let's just say they come for two or three things and we can do two of them here and you gotta go one there or vice versa. We'd like to try to, when we do it, the city will be able to do all of its own functions and we could do all of our own functions, not push people back and forth, the least amount possible. And do you have a date for that? Is it effective when their separation is approved? We would like to do it at the beginning of a fiscal year and have time to plan that out. Now that's not complete, just to know, it's not gonna be complete because all the city's records prior to becoming a city are gonna remain here. All new records will get done and they will have all the new records. Unless sometime in the future, the city comes and gets their records, which is gonna be very hard because they were put in the same books. So, Andy, if I can jump in here, some of what's being asked is within Brad's memo at the end of page one and going into the beginning of page two. And essentially, it's in two parts. The first part being a codification of where we currently are and the fact that the town appointed clerk is a village employee and to continue that methodology in that current state until and if the city charter passes a legislature and then we would maintain that current relationship for that one year transition period. And then after that point in time, the town and the city would need to have its own respective clerks. Right, so it's a fairly simple agreement. It's essentially somewhat of a rehash of what's in your charter with regard to town services continue through that transition year since the approved budgets support that. This doesn't say that at the end of that transition year, some other agreement could be made. But anyway, that's the... This is just the forest level, right? Yeah, the MOU is just the fact that we will have an agreement, not the details of it, yeah. Well, and then Brad's memo is just the forest level is the intent. All right, Andy, if I can jump in, it's Raj. Yes, so I think the hope would be that we'd agree that this section in Brad's memo is where we wanna end up and then ask staff and our attorneys to create an agreement so that we're not spending the time doing that, but that we all agree. This is the forest level principle ideas that they're gonna proceed on under and then we can move on to other things. So I think that's the idea. And it doesn't, yeah, so that's it. So, Don, are you okay with having the MOU reference?  Okay, anybody else have any comments, questions or concerns about the MOU? Only that it appears that we have accepted the most recent changes. So do we want to tie it with a bow? It is that season. So, sorry, you're- Well, what we discussed in the beginning is if there's anything with that word- That's where I was gonna go to next, yes. Is the select board ready to make a motion and have a vote to, or do we need to, it probably would be appropriate to have a vote to approve it. Seemed some nodding of heads. Are you okay with going to an approval of this tentative agreement? For the MOU. For the MOU. Or do we, oh boy, do we wanna wait until we get through the other ones in case we come up with another agreement that we need to put in? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That gets into a loop that never ends, right? I'm just looking at my notes here to see if I've got any other- I think it's fine if you wanna wait to do the MOU until after we've gone through the others and we just- Because there's a line in here this is joint administrative services. Okay, says we'll be discontinued. Okay, all right, that's just a statement. I think we approve it and if we have to, we've met it. Okay, we're done with it. Do you have a concern with that? Nope. All right, you wanna make a motion? I will make a motion that the select board approve the tentative agreement. For the memorandum of understanding. Okay, thank you, Sue. So a second. I'll second it. Thank you, Tracy. And I do have a question. Yeah, the discussion comes next, yep. Should that include accepting the changes that are in tonight's packet, specifically? Yeah, probably. I would offer that as a friendly amendment. You did that, Sue? Yeah, I accept the friendly amendment. Okay, you're okay with it too, of course, which is all right. Okay, any further discussion? Go back to the meeting so I can see that. Okay, all those in favor, please say. Should we go to public comment? Oh. I mean, since we actually have a formal motion. Right, we've got a public comment before getting the motion. We can make it, if nobody okay with making an exception to ask for public comment right now, just. I am, but Raj is shaking his head. No. It's not Raj's vote. It's a default state, sorry. So Patrick. I would suggest perhaps that it might be faster if we wait until the end of this entire business item instead of just putting a bow on the MOU, just get through what we get through and then take public comment on them all afterwards. It would be just a preference, but I'm happy to do either way. But that defeats the purpose of public comment. Public comment is to encourage us to change something. So we either wait for the vote on them all at the end or we do want to do a piecemeal and open to comment. I would see it. Well, can we just ask, I mean. Is there any public comment? Anybody have any public, any comment on the MOU? I don't see any hands in the room, no hands online. So. No harm, no follow. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes five, zero. We've got one off the table. Trustees, I would entertain a similar motion. So moved. Second. Thank you, Raj. Thank you, Dan. All those in favor, any further discussion? All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Thank you, pass unanimously. Thank you, select board. We have one done. Yeah, yeah. I kind of forgot you guys had to approve them too. It's been such a slog. It's been a fun process. Delinquent tax agreement. Is that what's next? Yes. All right. It's some of these are hard to read because of the nesting of the changes, but I think the net effect is that the town will hold delinquencies for any taxes it collects and the city will start holding delinquencies once they start collecting taxes. Is that the intent? Yes, that is the intent. And we've removed the discussion of actually who's gonna collect taxes from this document. You mean the taxes other than delinquent taxes? Other, right, right. Cause we had, this had been, had had two purposes at one point. And I think we've convinced it back to the original delinquency question. So my only question, and this is intended to be a friendly question, so please take it as such, is the BCA. I know the village BCA is comprised of the trustees plus the town justices of the peace who live in the village. And I've, Susan sent us the reference to that. That's very clear. But my question is, and this is also related to the, it comes up in the reappraisal one as well, the formation of the city's BCA. And I'm only asking the question cause I think it's, I don't know if it's something that needs to be looked at for both of us because your, your charter says that the trustees become city councilors. And so if the charters approved, you become city councilors, but it doesn't reference what happens to justices of the peace. I don't think they're, they're state, I think they're state officers anyway. They're not town officers necessarily, that, cause we don't, we don't, well anyway, it doesn't matter. At some point you had to figure out how you're gonna, whether you're, whether the town justices of the peace that live in the village need to be anointed somehow as city justices of the peace or whether it doesn't matter, I don't know. My real concern is that if we lose those eight justices, we only have six left on our side. And we need to do, you know, and maybe this is just our problem to resolve. I just wanna bring up that there'll be a period of time where we may have a very small VCA to run a November election and do any tax abatement during that period unless we do whatever it takes to appoint more. And the reason I'm, and it's a, it's a scratch your head kind of question cause I know, although Vince Franco moved out of Essex, he's still technically a justice to the peace for Essex. You wouldn't get an appointment, Andy, because everyone is up for reelection November, 2022. Right, right, right. So they would, the governor would not appoint anymore to fill whatever seats that vacated because they went to the village. What you would probably have to do is postpone tax abatement until your new board is installed. Okay, all right. So sorry for spending the time bringing this up. It seems there's a understood answer Don clarified that for me. But sorry, all right, I'll move on. Anything, anybody have any other questions about delinquent tax collection? All right, are you ready to approve it as amended here? Do we ask for public input now? All right, thank you for reminding me of that. Any public comment on a delinquent tax collection agreement, almost repeated my mistake. I don't see any hands up, any hands up in the room. Nope, I don't see any public comment. And I can make a motion. Go ahead. I make a motion that the select board approve the delinquent tax agreement as currently amended. Thank you, Sue. Have a second. Second, okay. I'll show you, Patrick. All right, thanks, Patrick. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, there's another one. Trustees. I move the trustees approve the delinquent tax agreement as amended. Second. Thank you, Raj. Thank you, Dan, again. Trustees, any further comment on that? Yeah, one comment. Brian Sheldon raises his hand. I don't know if I'll garden this issue, but do you want to take that comment or what it's worth? Let's go ahead and make that motion and then let's finish out the motion and we'll go back to it since the select board has already voted anyway. If there's anything that would need to change, we'll have to do it anyway. So any other comment, trustees? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody oppose? Passing in, asleep. Thank you very much. So to that point, Brian, I see your hand is back down. I assume we can move on. Yeah, my question's now moved since I didn't get my hand up in time for the down vote. So thank you. All right, moving on to IT agreement. The change here, I think came from the select board just changing the data acquisition, making it a little bit broader to stemming from technology migration efforts so that it's a little bit broader. And then some little bit of clarifying language was added to the contract extension clause. The statement about amending or modifying was just moved up above the notification section. In reviewing this, I had just one very small clarification. In section three, it states, in the process of migration, the city shall not violate any state or federal regulations concerning protected data. I'm curious whether that should read the city and or its contractor shall not violate, just so it's umbrella language rather than the city doing the violation. I think Bill Ellis is on, right? Yes. Bill, did you hear the concern? I did and it's up to the trustees, I would imagine at this point, how they feel about that. I would say that if we want to sign off on our consultant not violating any state or federal laws, I'm fine with that. I would hope none of our contractors of any type are violating state or federal law for that matter. Raj, do you feel differently? I don't feel differently, but I thought in the 22nd we discussed the fact that this would be sort of something that was covered in our contract with our consultant. So I was a little surprised when this came back up at your last meeting because I thought we had agreement that this was something we weren't gonna worry too much about because that language and that protection would exist in our contracts with any consultants. So I don't have a problem with it generally, I'm just surprised to see this again being an issue. Do you wanna put it in or do we wanna, are we okay with language as it is? Bill, does it, if the city has their contracts with their contractor and it has those terms, is that covered here if we just referenced the city? I believe so, but I haven't seen the language that the trustees are proposing to have with their consultant. It's fair. And I think Raj to your point, the last time we talked about this, my suggestion was to have actual language that says the city shall in their contract with their IT contractor, but absent that language. I just wanna make sure that the city and the contract relationship is referenced in some manner. I get it. Part of me thinks that the city operates under the premise as does the town that they're not gonna violate any state or federal law as a matter of their daily business. So, we can move forward with this. It's how we work. Nobody, none of us, neither organization operates and with any intention or to violate any state or federal law. So I'm just, it's fine. We're not going to and we're certainly not gonna hire a contractor and deal with a contractor that would. What's this like? Pleasure on this. Do you want to include the additional language or go with what it's there? I think based on what Bill has said, I think since it doesn't exist yet or that other language in that other contract doesn't exist yet, that it does make sense to include some reference. And I appreciate what you're saying, Raj, but there are, this is adding, this activity adds an extra layer of complexity and no one's going to be intending to do anything, but there are unintended consequences sometimes. But I think we just wanna make sure that that's called out. I just have one request if we're gonna make an additional edit to this document. If in the motion, if the new sentence or if the entire sentence could be restated in the desired language so that way we are all clear on what we're voting on and what sentences we're talking about. Don or Pat, any comments on whether to change the language or leave it as is? I always get it in writing. I'm honest, I have no particular preference. So I will go with the will to select word for it. Okay, so any other comments about the document? I can take a quick look. I think I'm okay. So, Tracy, do you wanna make the motion with your suggested change? Before I go forward with a motion, do we just wanna ask for a public comment? Oh, yes. Thank you for reminding me yet again.  I see Harlan Smith's hand. I'm just curious on the comment about the change that you're about to make. Wouldn't any contractor basically be an employee of the city and we are looking to basically hold somebody responsible? So at this point, all liability would fall onto the city to make sure that to get at what you're getting at. So it doesn't just have in the city in place, cover that. They're the bottom line. They're the stop all in this process. So legally a contractor, it would be like if they had their own IT department and their IT department was making the change. Would we also include the city and their IT department? No, it's different. You want me to cover that? No, they're a contractor. They are to have their own insurance and their own liability insurance, et cetera. They're not employees of the village. They're not considered employees of the village or the town. So again, we have our liability. We have our carrier passive. They will have their insurance. They're just saying in this agreement that if somebody's contractor messes up, they're responsible. The contractor's responsible. And the contractor's responsible for all the laws of the state of Vermont and the federal law on data. Okay, it seemed a little simpler to me, but I guess not. Yep, yep. Call it out directly. And then in any contract that we enter into or you enter into the village enters into should state that clearly. I think that could be added pretty simply. All right, thanks, Harlan. Any other public comment? I don't see any hands in the room. Hands online. Take a crack at the motion. Sure, so I will move that the select board approve the information technology agreement as presented in the packet with the change to the sentence. In the process of the migration, the city shall not violate any state or federal regulations concerning protected data. Update that too. In the process of migration, the city and or its contractor shall not violate any state or federal regulations concerning protected data. Okay, thank you, Tracy. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Don. Any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes 5-0. Trustees, I'd entertain a similar motion replacing the word select board with trustees. I would make that similar motion replacing the word select board with trustees. Well, second is motion. Thank you, Roger. Thank you, Dan. Any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Pass unanimously. Thank you all again. Okay, next up is police services agreement. I think we have been head closed for quite a while. I see any marks on that. Any concerns on that, any comments on that? Patrick, you okay? I'd like to make the motion that we- So we need to go to public comment first. Oh, I thought we had the motion in the public. Sorry, go ahead. I wrote it in big letters at the top of my- What's the charge for? Sorry. All right, any public comment on the police agreement? Seeing any hands in the room? I don't see any hands on line and there's nobody on the phone. All right. Make the motion that we accept the police services agreement as presented in the packet. Thank you, Don. Do I have a second? Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any motion passes 5-0. Trustees, back at it again. I'll move that we approve the police agreement as presented. Second. Dan, thank you, Raj. Any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed to say no. Pass unanimously. Thank you. Okay, next up is reappraisal and assessor services agreement. Changes in here is for a payment standpoint, it's based on a percentage of parcels located in the town and the city. Section clarifying how the appeal process works goes to the appeals go to the assessor and the assessor works to address it. And then this is where the appeal to the city board, the board of civil authority comes. And this is where, again, when I raised the question about the town, board of civil authority only having six members at that point. Or whether town elected justice to the peace that live in the new city would still be town justices. But I guess we can, that's not, that's a question for the state not for us. I guess my comment would be, when is the reassessment going to be? Because I believe it has, time wise it will not be completed before the next cycle of the peace. Yeah, true. I think you would still be fine.  I thought 10,000 was still 15, maybe not. I didn't really, I don't think it was that high, but maybe, I don't know that. I'm just saying, as far as having two boards, it will still be workable because I don't believe the reappraisal will be done. Yeah, unless approval doesn't happen in the first year, that's where we, maybe a problem for the future. The one concern that I have with this is section nine and section 10 seem to be contradictory, where section 10 says this agreement shall terminate upon a conclusion of the reappraisal and associated appeals. But in section nine, it says that the agreement ends at the end of the subsequent fiscal year. So there's a conflict there. And I'm not sure what the intent is. I think our preference, I believe, is that it needs to be coincident with the fiscal year so that budgeting can be done appropriately. Yeah, and I don't think there's another conflict and I wanted to ask what the intent of it was in blue, where in item nine, where it says, until the end of the fiscal year in which the upcoming reappraisal is completed and then it has dash, when the change of real estate values are sent to property owners. Is the intent to say that that is the definition of when it is completed, or is that, I didn't quite understand what the intent of that addition was. Sue, I believe you are correct, but I did not put that change in. Brad, I'm not sure if that was something that you had entered or Claudine had entered, but I do believe that the intent is a defined completion. Yeah, so correct. The intention is to, they're kind of our two pieces. There's the termination of the shared assessor services, which will happen after the change in real estate values is sent to property owners. And that then, you'll no longer share assessing services at the conclusion of that fiscal year. The agreement, however, may still be in place because there could still be appeals due to the reappraisal. So the agreement itself, which covers the reappraisal, means that people could still appeal after you're no longer sharing assessor services. So there are two kind of different points where things change. One is when the change in real estate values occurs. At that point, you're no longer sharing assessor services unless a new agreement is written. And two, this entire agreement stays in effect until all appeals have been completed. Sorry, does that make sense? I just wonder if there's a way to make it more clear. Okay, that explanation helps me understand this a lot better. But yeah, it is right. If you look at it from that perspective, that one talks about the shared assessor services, and the other talks about the agreement also includes payment of hours and benefits associated with the time for appeals. Okay. So while it may not be the easiest to read, my question is, is it worth, is it good enough? And can we consider this done? That's my question. I also had a question in number nine. It states right after that part, if the appeal is completed after either the town or city budget for the subsequent fiscal year has been, that should be either the town or city's budget for the subsequent fiscal year has been approved by their respective board. Should that be respective board or should it be their respective voters? The intent was board that if you all approve your budget in January and the change of real estate values, it then goes, it gets mailed to all property owners in February prior to your voters voting. You've really already passed the budget that's gonna be submitted to voters. So the intention was whenever it left the board level. Yeah, right. So what happens in the point of period of time between when we warned the vote and the vote occurs? Yeah, that's a good point. So I think to fix things, I think simply number nine just needs to address assessing assessor services. So instead of saying this agreement shall remain in place through the end of the subsequent fiscal year. I think the agreement to share assessor services shall remain in place through the end of the subsequent fiscal year. Is that satisfied? Concerns? I think I'm okay with that. So you go. I guess reading the rest of it. Yeah, I'm not understanding what language would change based on what's there and what's crossed out. I think he was just updating the text in the darker orange. Right, the next to last line of the darker orange as comma this agreement shall remain and Brad modified that to be this agreement for the assessor services or something to that next. But 10 has a, I mean the end of nine has a, does this agreement shall terminate upon the conclusion of the reappraisal on any associated appeal? And that's this overall agreement. Okay, but what I'm saying is, is that's not what he's. Well, there's two components to this. One is the work that the assessor needs to do to get the reassessments delivered to property owners. And during that phase, the intent is that the city would pay a portion of the assessor's office costs or expenses or budget, I guess is the right way to say that. Beyond the point when everyone has been given their new beat me up, once everyone has been given their reassessed value, depending on where that occurs the period of time that the city is supporting the assessor's office continues until the end of the appropriate fiscal year, depending on at what point of the year those values are delivered. Beyond that point during in the appeal portion if it extends beyond the end of that fiscal year they're only paying hours. They're not paying a percentage of the budget. And so section nine is referring to the period of time when the shared budgeting for the assessor's office ends and section 10 is talking about when the paying hours for support of the assessor's office for the appeals ends. That make sense? I try to. I said that right, didn't I Brad? Yeah, and so as I look closer I think the suggestion would be that instead of saying this agreement shall remain in place, just replace this agreement with shared assessor's services. So that sentence would at the latter part read and the municipalities have not budgeted to each have their own assessing department shared assessor's services shall remain in place through the end of the subsequent fiscal year. The only confusion with that is that the name of this agreement is reappraisal and assessor's services agreement. So if number 10 is for the overall agreement kind of like an iterative thing here. I understand that. Yeah, there's two phases to this, yeah. Yeah. And there's two number 10s. The other suggestion I would make for clarity is rather than what's in blue being a dash after completed I would insert that completed comma as defined as when the change of real estate values are sent to property owners to clarify that that's what that's representing. I agree with that. I thought the language was pretty wonky when I first read it. It accomplishes the same thing. It's just clear. Yep, yep, it's clear. All right, any other select four comments? I got a little hung up in the current fiscal year subsequent fiscal year and trying to crack that but I don't know that there's any way to. In my mind I was like, well, can we actually identify like for example but I think that we can't because it's illegal document. There's many, many possibilities there. Yeah. Any other board member comments? Select board member comments? Public comments? You see any hands in the room? Don't see any hands online? Okay, so does anybody have both of those changes in firmly grasping their firm grasp to? I can take a stab at it. Thanks. So I make the motion that the slept board approve the reappraisal and assessor services agreement with the amendments as represented in the document and the additional amendments to include in section nine upcoming reappraisal is completed comma as defined when the change of real estate values are sent to property owners and also in section nine to replace this agreement with shared assessor services. Check and see if it's unambiguous where that, I think that's the only occurrence of this agreement. Section. Checking the same thing. I will second that motion. Hey, thank you, Sue. Thank you, Tracy. Can interrupt real quick. I'm sorry, what? Andrew. This is Andrew. Yeah, go ahead. Real quick, someone had also mentioned the numbering and how there's two number 10s. Yep. All right, so should we amend the motion to renumber the remaining sections after the new section 10? Yes, we can amend the motion. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you, Andrew. Any further discussion from the select board? Hey, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, motion passes five, zero. Trustees, any similar motion? For the trustees. Second. Thank you, Raj. Thank you, Dan. Any further discussion on that motion? My only comment is I appreciate the select board taking the hard pass at, or taking the hard task of actually crafting the motions. So thank you. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. Great, great. Pass unanimously. Okay, thanks, Andrew. Okay, moving on to write a first refusal. Looks like the length of time to execute changed from six months to two, to one, to two. It's at two at this point. We did have a discussion about this the other day. And I think we landed there as well because of the need to, potential need to bond. Any other comments? I just had a clarification. In number six, is that two years in addition to the 60 day period that's listed in number four? So there's a 60 day response and then there's a two year execution. So I think they are an additive. Is the way I read that. Is that the intent? Anybody else have any thoughts on that? I would agree with you, Andy. Yep. Hey, any other discussion? Select board. Any public comment? Don't see any hands in the room. Don't see any hands online. I make the motion that we accept the write a first refusal agreement as presented in this evening's document. Thank you, Don. Second. Thank you, Sue. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. We're from passes five, zero. Trustees, contain a similar motion. Make a similar motion for the trustees. Second. Thank you, Rogers. Thank you, Dan. Any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody oppose? Ask unanimously. Thank you again. Okay, next in the packet is the memo. No, wait a minute. No, it's not. What is next in the packet? Next in the packet is stormwater, is that right? It's a stormwater agreement. So my understanding of this is the intent would be to complete the existing projects that are currently planned to be funded with the town capital and then beyond those projects, there would be separate planning of each municipality, though potentially cooperation. Any comments on this? I don't have a question. How does this impact the agreement we have with the Williston? Agreement we have with what? How does it impact the agreement we have with Williston? This is stormwater? It's not has nothing to do with the wastewater. That's not part of the tribe's plan. Thank you. Yeah, this is rainwater, yeah. Anything that flows into the lake eventually. Okay. Other than the effluent from our waste room, obviously it's covered somewhere else. Tracy? My preference would be that we actually include in this document, so it's a complete standalone document, a complete list of currently approved ongoing stormwater projects. So we have the scope right in this document. Not here. They're not, are they? They're in the memorandum, but you're talking about in the agreement. Correct. That makes sense. Except it's a little awkward because it says a handful of small scale projects, which are not explicitly defined there. That's true. It's just the large scale that are called out. I guess the other piece of this agreement, right, is that there's a, does this new agreement, this new agreement does not become a new MOU, right? This just says that we're going to end our current MOU and then sign another one. Is that what it says? I would say that we terminate the existing MOU. All right. This would be that formality. It's an MLA, it's a memorandum of agreement. Sorry. But beyond the terminating of, in number one, where it says to terminate the stormwater MOU, other than that is basically, we'll continue to work together when mutually beneficial. Okay. So there's no, there's no intent to form a new MOU. It's just an intent to cooperate, potentially cooperate. I don't know how do others feel about more explicitly listing the projects. Our capital plan is an approved plan that does list them. My only concern is similar to what was said before about those small projects. Is does it unnecessarily and or unfairly bind either municipality in terms of those projects? Right. If they're explicitly listed, does that bind us to actually do them? Whereas if they're more ambiguous, we can do some more hand-waving and make them go away if we want to. I see Ross just have his hand up. Ash, go ahead, sorry. Yeah, just one thought I had when I heard that question was that, we'll know the date that we agreed to this and we'll know all of the conversation and dates for all of the other projects. So if there is ever a question about what is covered, we can go back to the record and go back to the approved capital plan and the process and see where those projects are, but this does give flexibility to decide whether proceeding with those is warranted or not the smaller ones. I think that's just a comment, I guess. Sue. To make it easier though to reference, couldn't we have a addendum listing the current list of proposed projects? That way you don't have to connect the dots. The dots are already connected. And it becomes a stagnant list. That's the thing that I'm reluctant to have the same information in two places that you need to maintain. That's another risk of having an explicit list that references another plan. It was already in another plan. Kind of leaning toward the, if it's documented elsewhere, don't force ourselves to do things twice, if we don't have to.  I couldn't understand that, but if anyone is looking at this document, they might may not have the capacity to go and look at these records and go and look at those records. It would make sense for transparency sake to have everything here in this document, even as an addendum. And it also brings up my other point, which we should have the ability to amend this agreement as it goes along. So if anything does come up, if anything needs to be changed, we have that scalability there. So I don't know if that makes it more tenable to list the projects, or at least list as of this date, this is what has been approved. This is Roger again, only because I'm speaking out only because of the vagaries of teams and fans and stuff. So sorry. Looking at the memo delivered by the, basically our wastewater and stormwater folks, that precedes this in the packet from October 5th. And it lists the two remaining large scale projects. And then number two is a handful of smaller scale projects that various grants have been received with the match allocated. So I suppose those could be listed and still pending as number three is a funding mechanism that can include fees, capital tax. So there does seem to be some flexibility that is warranted based on how a lot of these small, it appears to be that there needs to be some flexibility in terms of how all of those funding streams play out. I don't know if that complicates things or not, but based on, I don't know that we would have trouble asking our staff to compile a list that was fixed and finite since this is what they provided us with. I think if they knew specifically what those small scale projects were gonna be, I'm not disagreeing with you Tracy and Sue, I'm just wondering how we do it without tying hands. If that is what you wish and it moves this ball forward, staff will put together that list or I'll put it together and I'll make it. No, they'll put together the list, they have a list. So if I can just jump in here as well. So number one in this agreement at the very end of it, that the stormwater, we would terminate the stormwater MOU effective at the conclusion of the transition period as defined in the City of Essex Junction Charter. So the conclusion of the transition period is one year following legislative approval. So we're talking 2023 at this point in time at the absolute soonest. We don't know what projects may still be available. We don't know what funding sources we're going to have next year and or 2023 in the most expedient of cases. If we find ourselves in a place where the legislature delays us for a year, we're now in the 2024 and we have these, listing of projects that may or may not be accurate. I go back to my original statement of I really think we're going to be binding ourselves in a way that would not be advantageous. And I think it's going a little bit further away from what the intent of this agreement is, which is frankly to terminate the original MOU and to just say we'll work together when makes sense for both communities. Dan, I see your hands up. One comment, just speaking from my experience on the regional planning commission, the whole thing with stormwater runoff and the TMDL for phosphorus going to Lake Champlain, that is a dynamic issue. The board of commissioners for regional planning has addressed this issue for 10, 11 years since I've been on the board there. And it's what the federal government EPA's requesting the states to do is constantly changing. So that I'm just saying it's going to be, to think we're going to be locked into one thing on certain projects, like you're saying Andrew and Raj and everyone there, it's not going to be that easy to know. It can change in that short of period of time who knows what's going to happen from the government. So I'm, I caution against locking yourself into anything. Well, part of the reason I think for being more explicit on what the projects are is they're being funded by town capital regardless of where they are physically. So I think that's where the town may be concerned about scope creep that you're mentioning Dan. If requirements change, then, and we have projects listed explicitly in here and you haven't, and the separation hasn't occurred yet then we would need to definitely have a discussion as to how that's going to proceed. I think that's the part of the concern. Yeah, in a clarifying question, how I read this, the second to last whereas approved projects not yet completed. I read that as approved projects as of the date we sign this agreement. Approved projects that are already in the pipeline. So if EPA standards change, if philosophers wrote whatever changes, if it's not currently right now an approved project, it doesn't make a difference. I don't think funding sources truly makes a difference because whatever is gonna come back on us it's gonna come from town capital. So I don't think it matters whether grants come through or don't come through if other revenue streams open up it's still coming from the same place. So I guess my back to my clarifying question is the intent that approved projects as of right now that are already approved. Is that what this is referring to? I do believe yes. That's the way I would understand it. Yeah, you're convincing me that we wanna have a list so that there's not a lot that things don't. And I think the list has a reference to as of the date of the agreement. Honor pad, any additional comments? Any public comment? I don't see any hands in the room. You Brad's hand. Sorry, just a quick question, Andy. Would it be sufficient to say as outlined in the memo in the October 5th memo from staff? Or do you need more sufficient, a more sufficient breakdown than what's provided in that memo? I think the fact that the memo says a handful of smaller scale projects is very ambiguous. And I think that ambiguity of what's requested here is clarification of that, at least of that ambiguity. Again, we don't have scope creep. Great, thanks. All right, so I get a sense that there's a consensus of the board or at least of a majority of the board to ask for that clarification before we approve this one. Agreed. Patrick, what are you doing? I had my chance. I listened. Honestly, I'm fine with getting a list. I'm fine with voting to approve tonight if the majority of the board wanted to go forward. But it sounds like we want a list and I'm more than content with that. Yep, okay, all right. Good question. Are you looking to approve after the list or approve the agreement as it is with the expectation that staff will provide a list of projects? We always want to see things before we approve them. So, but is the language in the contract or the agreement good? And are we only then looking for an addendum which would add the list of projects? Only looking to try to move agreement on these agreements along. So you're suggesting that we approve with the caveat that we're going to add an addendum to it? Yes, with the listing of projects. I'm not crazy about that. Yeah, Bill, can we get bills? To me, that seems like... That seems reasonable to me, but it's what the board feels like they want to do. Interesting, thank you. Whatever it's worth, we do those kinds of things all the time on the trustees. Your own public works director is going to do that list. We want to have a complete one that we're going to approve. I'd rather see what the little projects are. So we... Yep, I think Raj, I see your hand. I see both your hands now. Okay, sorry, Andrew. I think we're going to wait for the list. But does it make sense for us to, outside of the fact that we haven't seen the list and we want to see the list, is there anything else in this agreement? Anything else that we're concerned about? Yeah, exactly. But any other questions or comments? We've not really touched this document much at all, or at all, I should say. Andy, I lied, I do have a question. Okay. So you're going to see the list. Is that going to change anything? I'm just looking for clarification for me. Or we just want to make sure it's in here. It's rereading three or four times the memo from staff from October 5th and so I'm just wondering what the intention there is to get. It's just to make sure it's codified in the agreement. Is that it? We just want to make it codified and we want to understand it. We want to be able to ask questions about it. Patrick. Sorry to open up the camera. I guess maybe I'm not following them. And what questions is it that we need to ask about? I wasn't aware there are any outstanding questions on a list from the public service that we had not already given approval of, or if you're saying that you want to know, then I would like the answer to the question. I mean, as far as I'm aware, it's just a series of lists of projects that already exists that our own staff is going to give to us. So I guess I'm failing to see, especially with Bill's approval to go ahead, why we would need anything else except that. I can't predict what question I might ask. Seeing a list of projects you've already approved. Point me to that list and I'll go look at them. Well, I think that's what they're saying. That's what's going to be coming to us. And if Bill's okay with it. I just, again, I'm just, perhaps it's because it's December 13th and we're at the end of a very, very long, grueling year of this, but frankly, if we don't need to draw this out any longer, then we have to. Just because a long time doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. Sorry. Yeah, it's the first time. And it's the first time we've discussed this agreement. Tracy. So these, just to clarify, all of these currently approved projects would already be coming from town capital, correct? So I mean, I'm fine. I just wanted a list. That's it. I don't want to elongate this process, but as long as there is a list in the addendum and potentially as Sue mentioned that second to last whereas the attached approved projects not yet completed, I think that covers it. And if we have Bill's blessing on that, that's good for me. So I guess question has come to mind is just because we have an approved capital project is we have funding for it, right? So that's a question that I definitely would ask is do we have funding for all of these projects? Do we have, and what does it look like? What's the timeframe? Because we have no idea how long this agreement's gonna run. If we, you know, if we have an arbitrary number of small projects included in there that may or may not have been funded in our current five year capital plan, I just want to see that before I agree to it. And the wording in number two in the memorandum is handful of smaller scale projects that various grants have been received with the match allocated from town stormwater capital fund for permit requirement projects. So does that mean that every one of those projects is funded and planned and ready to go? And we have a calendar associated or a schedule associated with it? I could tell you that the town public works department in conjunction with the village, we go after grants once we get the grant. We get approval from the town select board to use capital funds as the match. That's how we tend to do stormwater projects. Does say though that the Latter-day Saint project may need additional funds. There isn't additional grant money. Yeah, that's in the town though, so it's not as much of a potential concern for future tax figures, I guess. Oh, I guess, where are we going with this? I think Patrick and Tracy are now okay with having the addendum reference, the addendum later. So we're done, any thoughts? I'm gonna go to public comment first, please. All right, any public comment on the stormwater agreement? I don't see any hands in the room. I see Raj's hand up though. Oh, Raj's hand went down. Deb McAdoo. All right, this is Deb McAdoo and I'm really trying hard to keep my patience, but I'm losing it. I really, I was hesitant to vote for separation because I have people in the town who are family and friends who I love very much and I don't wanna cause any harm to them through this process. And I think if the select board continues to drag their heels, things aren't gonna get done and people are gonna get caught short. So I ask you to please do what's best for the people you're representing. And if you can't trust your staff, we got a problem. Thanks, Deb. Any other public comment? Annie Cooper. Hi, thanks, Andy. I just wanna, I wanna echo what Deb is saying. I think everyone, y'all have been so kind and thoughtful on his time consuming, I agree, but let's go, we're all still in this together. I'm still a resident of the town. And let's go, let's trust one another and go. We're doing a great job. Thank you. Thank you, Annie. Any other public comment? So our next meeting is one week from tonight. How long did it take to put that list together? I sent out an email about 10 minutes ago to the Public Works Director. I'll ask him no more. How are we gonna go? Well, and... I don't think it's gonna change anything.  So I mean, this, and this is, like you said, the first time we've actually seen this agreement and discussed it. So if we wait a week for a list and talk about it next week, I really don't see that we're harming anyone by doing that. One clarification. You all do not have a joint meeting scheduled into 2022. Right, we don't have any joint meetings. It's just the last joint meeting scheduled. That's, I was gonna say earlier in the agenda. Andy, if I may chime in real quick. And thank you for the... Tracy, I think you said that this is a tier two or a second tier agreement. Thank you for that recollection or that reminder. At our last meeting, one of the things that we talked about is four of these tier twos trying to stay at the forest level, getting into the project specific and the funding mechanism. I think we're at a leaf level. Well, in the concept in drafting, anything is starting at the forest level to identify goals in your vision and then going down to the tree level, putting words on paper and that would be Claudine and Bill staff coming up with some actual words that would lead to the leaf level that we would look at and thumbs up, thumbs down. So I mean, the intent was a starting point. Let's identify what our joint goals are for these agreements before we get too far into the weeds or the leaves as it were. And that these are tentative agreements. So again, we're looking to agree to tentative agreements. Yep. Ross, you got to hand it for a bit. Yeah, so I just clarifying, I'm looking again, I'm looking back at the staff memo. First of all, in this agreement, it lays out a number four, future stormwater projects should be funded by each municipality respectively once transition is concluded. So at the earliest, that's the end of FY23. Looking at the memo, it looks like a majority of the liability here is on the town anyway, since LDS is in the town, second bullet, some call this extormwater reference retrofits, two locations in the town, one location in the village. I say that I'm assuming each location has a roughly equal expense. And irregardless, which isn't really a word, I guess, this is gonna, as someone mentioned earlier, this is gonna come out of the town capital budget. So I guess are we looking for a cutoff date because the cutoff dates are sort of in the agreement. So seeing a list or basing this on the results of getting a list, I'm still trying to figure out what that does. For clarity around accepting the agreement, as opposed to adding it as an addendum. So there's clarity for anyone looking at this in the future. Because as I said earlier, that information, this is an incredibly well documented and drawn out process, I imagine, all of these projects. There's way too many documents created around each one. So I completely understand where everyone's coming from, but I'm just trying to get to the result in terms of an addendum added later to make sure it's clear versus revisiting this whole thing for discussion and consideration, because it doesn't seem to me that the liability and result really changes. If we become a city at the end of the transition period, we're not going to be paying into that fund. We will have left a lot of money in that fund behind. But so I guess my overall question is, is anything going to change based on the results of that list? And adding it as an addendum, is that really an issue, especially if the advice has been, no, it's not. But again, I get where you're coming from. I hear your hesitation and I respect it. I'm just asking the question. I can't predict if anything's going to change without knowing what's on there and how I would react to it. With the smaller project they're talking about, I've already been in the approved capital budget that we've already passed. I don't know. I'm sorry, I asked that again. Wouldn't the smaller projects, we know that the latter-day saints, now that was also in the cap, but the smaller ones would also have been included in our current capital plan budget. Is that correct? So we're not adding- I would pose that most of them, probably some of them are probably still in the planning phase or trying to get a grant phase, but yeah, most of them, and again, they're small, so we don't- Right. But if it was going to impact the capital plan, they would have to come back to us, is that correct? Well- This number two, it says, various grants have been received. That doesn't mean for every project though. Right, that's just, yeah. I'm okay with that one. And the current capital plan is the capital plan that was approved a year ago, almost a year ago, that assumed we were merging or that assumed a likelihood that we were going to merge and we were going to see a new capital plan next month. Right, but I'm okay with it right now. I don't want to commit money without knowing when I'm committing money. If they're already, what I'm saying is we're not committing any money in because they're already listed in what was already approved. But that doesn't mean they're all funded. We have capital projects out there all the time that year after year do not fund. Okay. And so I just want to make sure that we will fund all of these projects and they will get completed in a timeframe that I'm comfortable with. But I'm just one vote. Two. Do we need, I mean, if we were to get that list and review it at our meeting next week, which is not a joint meeting, but with that in hand, be able to make a motion and approve this. We could approve it next week, sure. Absolutely, the trustees could approve it tonight as is if they want, but yeah. I'd like to move along because we have a lot more stuff on the agenda, sorry. All right, what's next there? So was the majority of the select board of the mind to not do this tonight? I thought I heard some differences of opinion. I wasn't sure if that landed. So let's, that's the consensus. I'd like to see the list. I think Patrick made it clear that he's okay with the go tonight. Tracy. I could go one way or another, but I, like I said, I don't think waiting one week on a second tier agreement is going to do harm to either board. It's a week. I would echo what Tracy said. I could go either way, but one week to give a piece of mind. I don't know that that's. That works for me too. Okay. So at this point, I make the motion that we table this decision until the following select board meeting. Do we need to do that or just put it on the agenda? Well, it needs to be table. It's on our agenda. You need to have some kind of action. You don't have to take action on every. Okay. Whatever. Since we're not scheduled to meet again at all, are there any comments on the actual agreement itself? Because if the select board makes any at your meeting next week that we don't agree with, we then find ourselves in precarious places. I think for me it's just saying so Andy can see the list. What do you mean? Yeah, I don't see any other concerns with the language in the, unless, did we look to see if there's a, oh, there's no reason to modify this because this is really just, this is a final thing. There's no modification of it, right? And it doesn't really terminate. Yeah, and that was actually, I mean, I always think it's kind of best practice to put in the ability to amend just in case something comes up. And I did have a question down. I wasn't going to ask it, but since you mentioned it, I will. Is the intent that this automatically terminates on the completion of the currently approved stormwater projects or does it just continue to sit out there in perpetuity? The intention is to terminate the MOU that's currently in place from that first point after the now, therefore, that's the big point of this all. Well, that's a smaller point than the fact that the town is committed to future capital expenditures by this as well. But is that even in this MOU anywhere that I'm missing? Future, I'm in section four. No, where is it? Number two. Current and future stormwater, blah, blah, blah. Where is it? Number three. It is until these projects are completed. So, number three, right, two. Yep, so that's why I want to see the list and the schedule for each of them so that I know when that is. Approximately. Understand that things can change. Thank you, Roshna. Yep, so maybe that's one amendment is until those projects see amendment Z, addendum A or whatever, right? That this is referencing the list that's going to be attached as an addendum, not just some vague those projects. So this, now I'm confused here, because this also says that if currently approved but uncompleted stormwater projects require additional funding, it will be cost shared based on percentage of grand list. So it sounds like those projects do not have solely a town capital commitment. Because we haven't discussed this before, can't we just table it for further discussion? Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I think the intent is that the projects have been considered and funded on a town-wide basis right now through the town capital and that if there's additional funding that's needed, that the village is still, the future city is still going to be responsible for contributing into those funds because that was part of the commitment that had been made in the past. Through this agreement, they would agree to share the cost on the percentage of the grand list. So that's for more expensive costs than were expected or whatever other changes might come up. Okay, so that maybe changes things a little bit for me because this is not solely a town capital commitment because it also obligates the city to contribute to that list, that handful list of small projects that's not yet defined. Does that change anybody's position? Do we want to defer this for a week anyway and see that list? Can I ask another clarifying question? Yep. Last sentence in number three, if there are any residual funds after the projects are completed, the funds should be distributed to each municipality on a percentage of the grand list basis. So any residual funds after the projects is that approved ongoing projects? And the funds is that if a single project comes in under budget, is that the difference between what was budgeted and what the project actually costs, that individual project? I think the intent was that there's, I'll just make up a number of million dollars worth of promoter projects that are currently approved and on the books and planned for. If it comes back and completion of those projects costs $900,000, that $100,000 is allocated on the grand list. If it costs $1.1 million, that extra $100,000 is required to be paid by the town and the city. For the currently approved ongoing projects that would be on the list. Right. Okay. Thank you. And it's the grand list at the point in time that there is the overage. I believe so. Which could be different after the reappraisal. Yeah. If they, at the same time. Then this is different every year. Is different every year? Yes, I know that. Yeah, yeah. We wanna stay where we are, move on to the next topic or do we wanna continue on this one? C. Bill Ellis has a stand up. Go ahead, Bill. I just wanna say Greg summarized it perfectly from my perspective. So I guess I'll say again that the fact that it's not solely a town funded small project list. I'm a little more comfortable. So why don't we go ahead and prove this and with the understanding that we will have a list added as out here. And well, I guess that the, there's no provision in here for updating it. Oh, right, right, correct. So there's a catch 22 there. Right, so that's another amendment is to. Add that. Yeah, adding an addendum is a change to it. There's no provision in the agreement to make a change. Bill's hand is back up. You want us to keep hashing this out or you wanna move on? I just wanna say, I would just add that you could approve the agreement subject to the select boards review and approval of addendum A or whatever it's going to be called. All right. And with the addition of the clause for the ability to modify the agreement if needed. Well, the one modification that we're, well, yeah, I guess that's true. Do we want to explicitly also add in a modification clause because it doesn't have one. Not necessarily for this addendum because I think the language that Bill proposed that said that we would add the addendum then becomes, gives us the ability to do that. But if we want to amend it at other some other point in the future, I suppose we could just do it whether it's in the agreement, whether it's in the agreement or not. Do we not want to, Gracie? I make a motion. Yes. I move that the select board approve the stormwater agreement as presented with the following change. Add in number five, which states this agreement may be amended or modified by mutual written agreement of the parties and renumbering the following items and subject to receipt and approval of the currently approved project list. Okay. Thank you, Tracy. Do I have a second? Thank you, Don. Any further discussion? Bill, is that language CMO cave? That sounds fine to me. All right. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes five zero. I'll review the list when we see it. Thank you, select board. Trustees, I would entertain a similar motion for the trustees. So moved. I'll give that one a day on this time. Second. All right, thank you for the second. Any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed by say nay. Pass unanimously. Thank you all. Have you got a comment? Yeah, just one quick thing. We've had our fire chiefs here and our police chief to get to the next item. If we're going to keep going on, can we somehow get to them and then come back to agreements? They're not sitting here all night. Andrew's the one that usually wants these to go first. I don't know, up to you. I'm making a request. I don't see any of their agreements though. The rest is just a letter. Why don't we go ahead and go to that item and then after that one, we can come back to the items that are within Brad's memo. I'm okay with that. Okay, do we need to amend the agenda? I make motion and we amend the agenda too. Postpone the review of Brad's letter and move on to the presentation of the public safety radio system. Thank you, Don. Second? Second. Thank you, Sue. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. It's like we're in Pat's room. Justice? So moved. Come on. Thanks, Rosh. Thanks, Dan. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody oppose? Great. Thank you. Thank you, Evan, for bringing it up. Yes, please. Bring your chair right up here. Come on up, gentlemen. My apologies. No worries. No, no. Good evening, select board, good evening, trustees and staff. Judge Paul from the fire department, along with Chief Ron Hogue from the police department. And I would like to introduce to you my assistant chief, Tom Richard, and also communications radio guru specialist from the police department out here. In addition to their service to the fire and police departments, they each bring with their unique skills from outside that renders them very, very qualified to talk about what they're going to present to you tonight. And it has also saved us money from having to go out and hire engineers and others to look at our infrastructure and build out what we're going to talk about. As you recall from my budget hearing, I had made a request to add to my budget a large sum of money for the radio infrastructure, which we've subsequently found other funds through fund balance to cover that initial cost. But it has brought to light the total radio infrastructure that we have that we share with emergency services in the town and the village. So when we talk tonight about fire department, we're talking about all the fire departments with the exception of certain pieces that the Essex town might buy like pagers and individual radios as will the village by theirs. But how we use this system, the fire trucks all share it. The police department shares it. So that further do, I'm going to pass it on to my colleagues to continue talking about what we're here for. Right, so I don't really have too much to talk about. I know you guys have a big schedule, but this is just basically to give you folks an idea of the infrastructure that the town and village currently have as part of public safety. Radio communications are an invaluable asset in public safety as we have recently found out down there in Tornados where they suffered some problems with their radio communications and are still struggling to try to get those back together. So I'm going to pass it over to these guys because they're the real experts on the system and they're just going to go through and explain some of the things that we have. Sure, sure. Well, let's start with the first item, which is the microwave component that Charlie mentioned. And let's talk about why we have that particular component. That component is part of a much larger system. The reason for that component was that the federal government back in the early 2000s made some changes to the FCC regulations. And essentially the reason for that change was as they were running out of licenses that they could issue out to public safety organizations and the public agenda. So the police department, the fire department partnered and tried to figure out what this impact would be on our radio communications. And we actually narrow banded some equipment and we went around town and in buildings in certain areas of towns where we were concerned about reception. And this was tested based on portables and I'll get to that in just a minute. And what we found is in this new environment, this new engineering environment is that these radios no longer worked or marginally worked. We could not connect to our main repeater equipment that's located centrally in the town. And what that means is that keying up that radio by that officer or that firefighter going through that front door into that life, hazardous situation is gonna get any response from anybody because that communication is not gonna go anywhere. So essentially in a nutshell, we had to come up with a way of fixing that. And one of the ways we did that we did that through some grant funding. And we put in what we call a receiver and microwave system. And what that system is is basically receivers and microwave dishes that are deployed throughout the community and they vote based on the reception of equipment, reception from portable radios. Once that system was set up, we found that after we narrow banded which basically narrow banding was nothing more than taking this a very large bandwidth and cutting it in half. And so by cutting that bandwidth in half, think about your internet connection at home. Your speed just dropped considerably. In this particular case, our transmission, our emission from our radios was being impacted by topology. And in this new narrow band environment, it could not overcome that topology. So putting this equipment in place was expensive but a much lesser cost option than some of the other products that were out there. Other products that were out there to solve this problem were millions of dollars and required a lot of public infrastructure and towers and those kinds of things. So this particular system allowed us to put something in place at a reasonable cost as with all grant funding. There's a contribution share that the local community has to contribute and that seed money essentially for the community to put the system in place to allow us to do our jobs and keep our people safe. But it's also on the community then to continue to fund that moving forward. So when that equipment starts to age out, we have funding for it. Moving to the much larger system is a series of repeaters, dispatch center and other similar type of equipment like that. That again is used by the police officer. The firefighter going through that front door. They use that portable. That's what's tied to their body to communicate back to the dispatch center. And that's for everything. That's for additional resources. That could be a Mayday if they go down. Those kinds of environments. So really is a life safety tool. There are many components. I believe there was a list provided with some approximation of costs and what I believe that we need to do moving forward is take that network-based costs and have a capital fund moving forward that addresses that over time. So it continues to hit critical life, expand on equipment. It continues to help expand our network because we still have areas of our community, buildings that we go in. I can name a couple. We have a coffee maker not too far from us. Inside that building, our portable radios will not reach out. So we have to do other mitigating factors to keep our people safe when they're inside those buildings doing things. Revision is another building. Inside that building, our portable radio communication does not penetrate outside of that building. So there's again, mitigating factors that we put in place when we get on scene to handle that. In the future going forward, we need to come up with additional network components to help enhance our network. And this capital plan that's in place that includes all this information is a centralized source that we all would benefit from moving forward. So without getting into a lot of details about the technology of how the system is set up, in fact, some of that information we really can't talk about in this setting, we'd have to go to an executive session for the safety and security of that equipment. That list that you provided is really kind of summarizes what the value of that equipment is today. Some of that equipment has been replaced over time. We just replaced our repeater last year, for example, at a cost of about $30,000 out of our department level budget. I believe these guys did as well. So some of this equipment that's listed on here is being replaced, but it's a much larger environment that we need to start looking at and planning for moving down the road. Alex? I think you said it well. I think the reason why we're really here is to highlight not only the size of the system. So when we come to you and ask for, say, one-fourteenth of what that actual cost is, it's to realize that the system is much larger than maybe just that one-year purchase. General Life's Band is roughly 10 years for decent radio equipment. We are blessed with the fact that this community has had the ability to spend money on good equipment, stuff that has lasted us, and in many cases has lasted us longer than what has been prescribed. And we have, generally speaking, not had any major failures that I'm aware of due to good maintenance. We have good users. We have users that we've assigned to devices to them, so we've found over the years, if you assign a device to somebody, they might keep care of it a little bit more than maybe if it was a shared-use device. The highlight of us being here tonight really is that two-fold. We asked for some of that funding, but at the same time to realize, and I don't think we've ever done a presentation for the select board to show what that actually looks like. There's a lot of behind-the-scenes equipment. And every single time I go to the chief says, hey, what do we need next year? What can we forecast? What can we put in our fiscal planning? It comes with a lot of question marks because prices continue to rise, labor costs rise. And I don't feel like I always have a full picture, I think, every day of what that may be. And if you ask a question, what does something cost today? I could not tell you what it's gonna cost six months from now, or even if I could get the parts for it six months from now, especially in the environment we're in now. So I think the microwave system that we're talking about really is critical links between a bunch of locations throughout our community. And I think it's the best spend that we can do now to replace some aging infrastructure that would really benefit us. And I think it's probably the most fiscally responsible thing to do now, or as soon as we can anyways, as soon as we have the opportunity. Just a question for you guys. How would you guys categorize the quality of the system that we have right now? The system in its totality, again, alluding to his comments about the level of equipment that we have and what we've purchased the best. We've never taken bottom bid, so to speak. Our equipment is very well engineered. It's Motorola equipment. And there's a reason why we stay with that level of equipment. It's the engineering behind it. It's the specifications that are maintained. It's the progression of one model to the other. So you don't just age out of a piece of equipment. There is a migration path for equipment. A lot of it's becoming IP based, meaning computer based. So it's much like laptops. It's all data now. So there's migration paths and sometimes you don't have to change the hardware. It's just software upgrades. So their environment is very dynamic. It's very rich as compared to other platforms that are out there. And again, moving to another platform would create a whole another scope of work in terms of forklift conversion. And that's not something that we would want to even tackle. The other thing to highlight too is the newer model equipment within a manufacturer is often backwards compatible, which allows us to say, hey, we have funding now. Let's do it, even though it may not necessarily need to be done right away, but we know what's coming. We can do that and still use a lot of our equipment together.  I can actually do that in stages, which is super useful, especially in a municipal environment where we obviously don't have all that money. And the advantage of, again, getting into that newer technology, it is modular based. Other questions? Questions? Thank you. So I see a current equipment inventory.  So you're not replacing 30 portables at one time.  Yeah, we do. Yeah, we, at least the police farm didn't, we brought in the fire department as well. I built a roughly three to five, maybe six year plan of what equipment currently needs to be replaced and how we're gonna do that. In the police department's case, we've actually each year put in capital funds to replace that equipment slowly over time. So you might have seen the last few years you've seen some things replaced. We've made some really good headway in replacing things because we can do it on a schedule. Of course, that doesn't stop something from failing.  But in the event that something does fail, obviously that'll set us back a little bit but we are doing our due diligence. The thing that does hurt us and it's the conversation the chief and I have often is municipalities do go for grant funding often. So for instance, the police department spent roughly 25 to 30 portables when they got this last round of them it was all grant funded. So what does that cause for an issue for us? And we have 30 portables replaced all at the same time. And it's very hard for me to come to you and say, hey, I wanna replace three portables next year after I just got 30 of them. And you'd say, why are they only, they're a year old while you're replacing them? Well, I need to replace three a year to get to that point. So having that kind of ideas, it's good planning but it's also kind of difficult to pass the straight face to us in a lot of instances. And just so you're aware, I mean, I know you probably have it in your documentation somewhere there but our portables in the police department side because they're encrypted are between $3,000 and $5,000 each. They're by far the most expensive piece of equipment that we issue a police officer. So could you talk just a second about what we have for an ELC? Sure. And what that is. Yep, so our emergency operations center and we kind of use that word very wide basically allows us the ability to not only dispatch outside of the dispatch center itself whether it be somewhere in the building whether it's the conference room that we have there at the building but we also this past year, thanks to COVID funding we're able to expand that out and allow us to actually go IP based or internet based. So we can take our radio system and page outside of the police department actually pretty much anywhere we have an internet connection. So the running joke is I could take one of the devices and go to Massachusetts and talk to the chief on the radio in pretty much real time and he have no idea where I am because you think I'm in town and do a radio check with him. And in actually be able to maintain communications which is huge for us because as police services fire services, public safety services the worst thing that we possibly can do is put all of our eggs in one basket. We all know that. I think past events in the past 25, 30 years if not longer proven that and it does kind of sit in the top of our heads when a storm comes through what's gonna happen when a natural disaster that's larger than maybe a small storm that we can deal with or even a horrific event of maybe say the police department becomes inoperable for some reason whatever that may be, what's our next step. So it does allow us to plan for more equipment which sometimes may sit on a shelf for that time that we might need it but with the COVID funding I was able to expand that out so that we do have the ability for all of our department heads to communicate outside of the department in pretty much anywhere we can essentially issue those devices to each of their homes and they could communicate and run operations from their house if they needed to assuming they had internet and power of course, right? So it's definitely a huge step forward where we were kind of limited in the past. Andrew, go ahead and see Andrew's hand. Yeah, go ahead Andrew. Thank you and thank you all for being here tonight appreciate your patience. A couple of questions. The first one is does this radio system also impact public works or is that a completely separate system? Public works has the ability to run across the same equivalent that we do from a fire department standpoint because they're running and not to get technical but they're running in the VHF world. Fire departments run in the VHF world so they can run across the same base stations they can run, use the same towers they can use the same repeaters as long as they're configured to do so. So it's a configuration issue so they have the ability to use that same base. Thank you and so then my and they're currently not using the same locations that we are or they're using a single site. So it's not nearly as robust but they could be co-located with us absolutely. And just as one of the reasons for that is because they're a mobile based environment what a mobile base is just that it's a vehicle mounted piece of equipment that they use for communication typically transmitted a much higher wattage out point versus a portable radio. Clearly PD, Fire, EMS has to run on a portable based network because we can't take the vehicle into the buildings with us. Not yet. Not yet. Oh, shouldn't. So then my other question is how have S-Exjunction Public Works and the S-Exjunction Fire Department been involved in this process so far? So the S-Exjunction Fire Department many years ago we were in partnership with everything that we did. Of course, the network was very, very small consisted of maybe two or three pieces of equipment. In the mid-2000s for tax equity it was agreed that the town would take ownership of all the equipment and we have since have replacement schedules and have actually built out the entire network to what it is today on town funds out of the town operating budget. They're involved because they have a backup repeater where we can dispatch our fire calls from their station. They have another antenna site there so if we lost our primary antenna site for dispatching we could dispatch out of the junction station. Thank you for that and I completely understand that this comes out of the town's budget and as such is within the town's authority. And frankly, when this was first presented as an agenda item, I questioned why we were gonna talk about it tonight at a joint meeting. But so my question though is if it's going to be impacting the Village Fire Department and their use of the radio system have there been conversations with them to let them know this is coming and to seek their input? Or is it a here's what you're getting? No, conversations are always open between the two fire departments. We've operated like that for years. I don't see us operating any different in the future regardless of the political atmosphere. This is what we do. We depend on them, they depend on us. When it comes to the radio environment, it's the same way. We agree how we're operating. We share frequencies, et cetera. So I mean, we do have an agreement of how we operate and they are involved in the process. And the changes that we're making and talking about here, by the way, the microwave system, this is network-based. This is not individual radio-based. This is not an impact to them or us only. This is just allowing them and us to operate on a network level. So I'm on Route 128, I can talk to them while they're at down on Pearl Street at a call. And that's what the infrastructure's for. To allow that interoperability in that shared communication. Charlie? Yeah, Andrew, this system that we're using today essentially was designed by Mike Drew from Essex Junction Fire and Mike Lizzat from Williston Fires of Time prior to me joining, which has been between I was on the village and here over 25 years ago. So it's been in place for a while and we've added more components to it. But the general concept is is all of our fire departments share one dispatch channel and then all of our tactical fire ground channels were shared. So that system's not changing and the equipment is just upgrading over time every 10 years or so so that it stays current and stays modern. And to do that, it makes sense for us to buy it as opposed to having the village buy a piece and having us buy a piece because at that point the village funds are paying more than what we were paying for having the fire department pay for it out of the town's budget. If I told you now it's making sense to combine with the police department we're trying to get better pricing on like multiple buys or radios and things. Yep, I totally understand that. That makes sense. I just want to make sure that the village's fire department has been a part of the conversation and understands what's coming up and that they're okay with it. Yep. Which I think I'm hearing that has all happened. Yes. Great. Those are my questions. Thank you. All right, thanks Andrew. Dan, Karen, Dan, you're muted. You're muted, Dan. So my question is, I understand the reasoning for this kind of along the lines of what Andrew was bringing up working with the S-Extremely Fire Department as well funding for this going forward in the future. Right now for the police department where we had just a discussion about this we're going to have an MOU or an agreement for shared services through the police department. So funding would be through our agreement and our payment to the town for police services. It'd be built into the cost. As far as fire departments, as far as what we're going to be doing going forward looking at the city in the future would be we're funding the residents of the village will be funding the fire department within the village not funding for services or equipment for the town fire department that would fall upon the town itself outside the village. Sorry, is there a question? I don't know. Well, I'm just saying where are you going to get the funds? You're talking about the funding. So the funding going forward and you're going to use it so radios that you're going to utilize. So I assume then the village fire department would come to us the select board or the city council or the trustees what have you and say they're going to this we're going to need to upgrade our radios. I mean, like we're talking about you get grants, Charlie and Juan and those grants aren't going to be all along. You never know when you're going to have to go to the municipality for funds to replace equipment. I'm saying we're not, we'll be part paying for police services built into their services costs will be radios not going to be paying for the fire department in Essex town wants a new fire truck wants new radios. I don't perceive village residents or city residents paying for those radios in the town. They'll pay for them in the village fire department. Right. Right. Correct. Here is the clarifying point. Even right now the pagers and portable radios that the village uses they pay for out of their operating or maybe their capital out of their budget. The radios and pagers I issue to our members we pay for out of our budget. This infrastructure where we're still going to need we're still going to use the Essex town fire department regardless. Right. Not my intention is that'll be that's not a decision for me to make of how we continue to fund that. That's a decision for the board and the manager to figure out but we're still going to need it. We're we have no plans of understood the other thing. I'm just saying that right now we're paying for the fire departments radios in the town and the village. Village residents are paying for the services for both right now that going forward will change. So I'm just clarifying that. Right. I mean just just for clarifying for everyone who doesn't know the police department runs a dispatch center that benefits every agency that we dispatch for. So what we're concerned about is maintaining the infrastructure to keep those lines going and those those lines that we're talking about benefit the police department both fire departments and rescue at this point. So when we're talking about replacing infrastructure that's what we're talking about is something that's going to benefit everyone. And this is when you get down to the portable and mobile radio level in individual trucks and on an individual firefighter that's at the point where you're talking about individual towns and village having to pay for their their equipment. And Dan, yes, your point is is spot on of why we haven't asked the village to contribute more funds from their operating budget to this large infrastructure because your portion of taxes that you paid in the town are already paying for that. So if it comes out of my budget, taxpayers are only paying once for it. All right. And how does all this impact Essex rescue? So the infrastructure that we're talking about does benefit them as well because the microwave system is a way of linking their radios as well so their radios work better as well. They also have their own pieces of equipment that they are responsible for buying. They've been doing that as part of the replacement schedule that Alex came up with a couple of years ago and before that they didn't really have a replacement schedule for their equipment. They knew they had some equipment but they didn't know what it was or where it was. We went to them and said, listen, you have equipment that's 10 or 15, 20 years old needs to be done. So they've been on their process where they pay for their own equipment to be done 100%. The only thing that we're providing them is the expertise of someone who knows how to specify what that equipment is but not the installation or anything like that. We also, their radio frequency is in the same range as ours. So again, if they had a failure like today or tonight they can switch over to our repeater system and use it and the dispatch can send their radio tones out on ours and the radios are programmed to receive it and vice versa. We went down, we could go over to their channel and share it as well. Thank you. Yeah, so the distinction here is the end user devices versus the network is really the two ways you gotta think about it. It benefits everybody and then each of the individual departments whether they're a municipal department or not are paying for their own end user devices and always have been always, well at least what I can see unless there's a massive grant that we all get it together on but we always pay for our own end user devices. Always have been. All right, so there, yeah. So potentially the question we would need to wrestle with is where does the network capital funding come from? Right, right. I understand that the individual pieces that use by individuals are, it's clearly defined where they come from but the network may be the future discussion point. Correct, that's correct. All right. And we'll review the capital plan the first meeting in January. Is that the... Next week, you're gonna see an overview of it. We were talking with these gentlemen and Dennis Lutz and Courtney Bush here earlier today about including this information in the capital plan. It probably coming from undesignated fund balance and so be more of a decision and input next week but wanted to give everybody, trustees and select for a chance to hear the reasoning for tonight and understand how the infrastructure works and benefits the entire community in both municipalities and just have a chance to ask questions and understand. So that addresses the $100,000 that was requested previously but there's also a longer term question of funding in the future for the whole network. Yes, that is correct.  Right, and how do we come up with that capital plan to be able to put that on a replacement schedule like we were talking about so we can work that out over a period of time. And so I guess the, you know, where does, right, where does that, do we need to ask the city to contribute to that or not? Or how do we deal with, you know, is it... Is it through dispatch and it's part of the dispatch? Or is it part of the police budget? Right, that's, I don't know where we're headed with that. Yeah, but yeah. I mean, if it's part of the police budget then it's part of the, it'll be included in the agreement that we've recently approved. Correct, I think it's a bigger conversation and you're outing me tonight, but yeah, kind of. And granted, I mean, there are always federal, well, I shouldn't say always. There's always a chance. There's always a chance that federal money comes back for just for communications. That's how a lot of this came to be, you know, 10 or 15 years ago. We haven't seen that since. Luck, you know, with COVID funding that came out, we were able to use some of that to replace equipment that we needed to replace. So, but that wasn't specifically a communications grant. So there's always that chance. That was also very limited too, right? So I couldn't use COVID funding on something that we're going to normally have to replace on our own. That had to be something that was related to the response to COVID. Right, and honestly, we don't want to depend on that source. That's what other towns have done. And it's, and I believe that's why we have a better quality system than what other towns do. Yeah, continued dependence on that. I'll also put you again behind the eight ball because again, it's meant to seed money. So if you don't have a plan moving forward for that money that you receive, you're always going to be in this snowball effect. And I would add, I think that the thing for tonight is you know there's a need. You know there is going to be a plan. You know it benefits village, community, community, city, town, rescue, and the people we dispatch for and our neighbors when they're on it. The next after that is how does it get funded and what is everybody's contribution to the funding? Cause we can't just keep doing things for other agencies. We have to have a little bigger picture of how we dispatch, how we communicate, how we fund it, and how we keep it going knowing there's roughly a 10 year life cycle. And when I say roughly, sometimes our friends at Motorola decide, we're not doing that anymore or our friends in the parts industry don't support that anymore. I've been through all of that too. Or the government says we're going to change your frequency ish, you know. And then you're like whoa, whoa, whoa. Hopefully not. So that's why we also had these people here tonight and to take a holistic view of the services and the firepower that we bring to it. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for taking your time. Who says you can't have fun with radios? Everybody. We'll back. All right. So Andrew, are we going back to the... Page 44. Agreements. And then back. Yes, we are. Thank you for your indulgence. Yep. Yeah. Thanks for suggesting that. Okay. So next there's a memo from Brad. Right. Referencing the framework for some additional agreements. Brad, do you want to walk through this or how do you want to proceed? Yeah, I'm happy to. And if you want me to real quick, I know everybody's had the opportunity to read it. There's basically a discussion about five new agreements. The first two are really just about establishing and codifying how things currently operate for finance and how things currently operate for clerk treasurer. And I think both of those agreements should be discussed regardless of whatever happens with the city charter. They're just relevant to what's happening today. The next one talks about a court treasurer's office if the city charter passes. And then there's a discussion about shared boards, commissions, committees. And then the last one has to do with Wreck Indian Rook Senior Center and Senior Busts. I don't know if you want any more detail than that. Again, the intent though here is to kind of talk about the high level, bullet pointed things that both boards agree on and then staff and legal counsel can go back and put those into actual agreements. One thing that I noticed right off is in the finance agreement. It says based on percentage of grand list, should that be by for capitals? We have all of our other agreements. We have some by grand list. And if we also keep in mind, the town has a significantly larger general fund not to mention the police department and some other functions that the village does not have. I think the way, I'm sorry, just the way the previous discussions have gone was that when it came to the police contract, the kind of logic seemed like the more people you had, the more police services you may need. And so that's why that went for capita. When it came to the reappraisal agreement, it was based on percentage of parcels because the more parcels you have, the more time you take from the assessor's office. So I think continuing to follow that logical path, the more finance that you need to deal with, the more as a percentage of those expenses you would take on. But I guess I don't understand how finance cost could be associated with your grand list size. All right. I followed your logic, Brad. I didn't follow how the grand list is the answer to that. Sure, there are certainly other ways to slice that. You could look at budgets, the budget for the village versus the budget for the town, the city versus the town would be another strategy. I think grand list probably is a good indicator of additional responsibilities for finance that more things would be happening within the town finance department versus the city, but there are certainly other measures that you could use. Go ahead, Roch. Roch, you go first. Yeah, I was just gonna build on that and say, for instance, I think Brad said this, there's the police department, which is I think the largest single source of personnel and one of the larger segments of the town budget that would add a level of work and complexity that the village finance department wouldn't be dealing with. And the second thing I'd say is the breakdown here on grand list was recommended by the outgoing finance director. When these talks initially began, but one good example, as I said, is the added complexity of the police budget. And since those costs are already broken down in terms of how we're adding as a city to the expenses of the finance department vis-a-vis the police department, this would seem to make sense doing it on a grand list basis. It would seem like we might be paying additional if we did it by population and then also in the $5 million police budget have more finance broken down there in terms of a French cost or whatever we call that, I can't remember what we called those. So, but you're only looking at a fraction of the cost. You're looking at like software licensing or we're not talking about the entire cost, right? This is just, these are things, right? These are things, right? That says each municipality has their own portion. The non-personnel related expenses. If there are non-personnel related expenses, right? Maybe I need some clarification. What time period is this referring to? The time period listed at the bottom. Agreement expires June 30th, 2025, but can be extended if needed. Agreement can expire sooner if both finance directors agree that they can operate independently and can draft a transition timeline with the managers, which is signed off on by the boards. Last two bullets. So what's the starting point then? Now, effective as soon as you both come to an agreement and sign it. So this is not a separation discussion, is it? Or is it? Is it related? It's not related at all. And Andy, the rationale for that is we're both gonna have our own separate finance directors who are going to need to be working hand in hand and the staff working hand in hand to help undo the consolidations that have happened. So this is to make sure that from the village side, frankly, we have access. But this is for non-personnel related expenses. I'm still losing why this is associated with Grand List. So I think in the grand scheme of the types of costs that we're talking about, I'm assuming these are fairly minimal. So if it's 42% or 48%, I would venture to guess we're talking a couple bucks.  But in the grand scheme of our budgets, I don't think we're talking about a lot of money. If you prefer a different metrics, such as the percentage of general fund budgets or overall budgets, you can throw something out there, this is just to kind of get that process started. Sue. It would seem like it would make sense that it would align with the number of staff that are working for each of the, right? Cause you're talking about like supplies and training and licensing for software. And isn't that going to be a user base? The number of staff. I think, go ahead. Without checking with Courtney or Sarah and Brad, maybe you know, but when I look at this, I think CuestaCov is a fee. Not sure if it's based on the budget or the size of the municipality. Professional service fees. Talk about training, that's by staff. Copy or rental and usage. Maybe that's the number of staff. Printing and mailing tax bills. If that's going to be per capita, each one of these things is probably a little bit different. So I think kind of like you did with the police budget of choosing, you know, three and a half percent or whatever the number was admin, as opposed to very specific number. In this case, the cleatest thing is to probably just pick a, what's the allocation? What's the breakdown? Unless something substantive changes that it's wildly out of line, you stick with that for the three or four years this is in place. Can I just jump in and point everybody to the bullet? One, two, three, four. The finance department's work is a cross-functional team helping to accomplish the finance needs of both municipalities as assigned by the finance directors. It seems to read to me that they're working towards generally speaking the same goals and we'll work together as needed and be flexible. So just wanted to point that out. As for the grand list and the subscriptions and the licensing and all of that stuff, you know, the more work, the more load on systems that's kind of where the logic is. But again, whatever seems right. Tracy. Yeah, I was just gonna kind of take a step back and pose the question. What we're being asked is, are we okay in theory that each municipality will employ their respective finance departments? Are we okay with sharing of indirect costs other than those employment costs? Are we okay that both departments operate out of 81 Main that they work together to help accomplish similar goals? As Raj just pointed out, you know, sort of looking at these bullets from a, is this where we want to move toward so that staff and attorneys can get some actual details down on paper for us to review? Yeah, I'm okay with all of that question about the percentage of the basis of the indirect cost. Yeah, and I just, so I like the way that you approach that, I agree and I think once again, this is the forest. But one of the things that I kind of question on and maybe I'm getting into the leaves for both the finance and clerk where there is gonna be city staff in the 81 Main, is there also some allocation for, you know, the facilities usage and why you're shaking your head? I'm saying no, because we're trying to stay away from that. Our two teams will be working next to each other, they're gonna be sharing employees as needed like if one is on vacation or not, trying to stay away from rent. And I suggest for other reasons, we have people who are gonna be over in a village building doing a senior center. We don't wanna have to be sending money back and forth, et cetera, et cetera. We are providing services to our citizens, sometimes doing it together, sometimes doing it separately. I would suggest we stay away from charging rent to each other. That's fair. Is there any need for accommodation for insurance or does a town insurance cover village employee, or city employees? Do you mean like if our employees are working in their building or they're covered? Yeah. The village has insurance the same as we do with a passive. So I would imagine there is coverage. I would have to double check, but our employees are covered when they're doing their responsibilities. Okay. Any other concerns from I guess board members on either side? Do we want to have a discussion about the funding or do we think Andrew suggested we either pick one or let it ride or we could consider it because I guess these things need to be written into documents and then we can finalize it later. All right. All right, let's move on then. Okay, any other concerns with any comments or questions? Excuse me. Do we need to talk about how the shared boards and committees are going to work? We haven't got the clerk treasurer yet. Anything on clerk treasurer? Sorry. I guess I'm confused as to why we're going to be paying the city $50,000 a year. Or is that just something because we currently do it. Currently the town pays the village $50,000 because Susan McNamara Hill is a village employee. Okay. So you're going to ask us to train your new city clerk and your new treasurer. Is that your, and still pay the $50,000? So that $50,000 is part of our budget and we'll cover the covers of the year. It covers us through FY23 and that stops. Unless there's some agreement to continue it. But I don't think that's the intent. Part of that is Susan's a village employee, but she's also serving the town. Right now it's a consolidated clerk's department to assist in clerks. The positions for them are funded through the town. Susan's funded through the village, the $50,000. Something a town started doing two or three years ago in recognition that it's right now one unified clerk's office serving both communities. That's the intention for the next year or so, a year and a half through the transition period. Keeping the status quo, another way to potentially consider is to take the whole entire cost of the clerk's office and give it up on about an 80, 20 percentage. That's a number that Sarah had come up with. So a few years ago where kind of everybody in the community pays the same amount based on where they are. That's the really simplified version. We haven't run the numbers ballpark. It's probably gonna come out to about what it is now. But it's basically just a recognition of status quo for another year or so, year and a half. So Don, you still have a concern or a question about that? No. Any other comments about clerk treasurer? Shared boards and committees, boards, commissions and committees. The committee for equity and the Essex, or equity for Essex and Essex best are not board appointed committees or commissions at this point, but I think we may wanna have a discussion about whether we wanna have a shared. We wanna have shared, do that and share that in the future or do we want to use- Any comments? Essex best just barely reported out to itself, but I guess we could call a final product or a draft final product and they are preparing to make those presentations to both of us, to both boards with some recommendations. And they're discussing how to best make those reports. It's gonna be lengthy. It may be over multiple meetings. They're still trying to work it out. They're also in discussion about what the makeup of those, of that committee will be. So I guess I would ask on their behalf that we sort of hold, we maybe can agree that we wanna work on this together, have that discussion, but hold on how we wanna have the makeup because they definitely have some input and they wanna have that as a discussion and engage the board on that and have a back and forth. So I didn't know if the boards were okay with just, not just, but with saying yes, we wanna continue this work together. It makes sense, but we can wait on the nitty gritty of how people are, and if they are appointed, all of that. That has his hand up as well. Whose hand is up? I don't have my glasses on. That's okay. For the sake of time and convenience, I would say I would agree 100% with Raj that their recommendations are coming very soon and that we absolutely should continue working together on this. Any other board member thoughts? I don't know enough about it, but I mean, is there any, are any other communities doing something similar and we should be working with other communities? I mean, once the city has a separate municipality, it's the same as if we're coordinating with anybody else. A large portion of part of what I don't know if Chief Hogue is still in the audience, but a large part, perhaps the largest part of what the committees looked at was public safety as a whole. It started out kind of looking at please, Patrick can talk to this much more completely than I can. He was on that portion, but it is so Essex and public, Essex Public Safety specific right now that I think if we're going to be working together in that area and it looks like we are, it makes sense to, and that isn't to say, so that we can't expand it. I think looking to other communities, if they want to join us on this work, certainly wouldn't be anybody that would say no, I don't think, but I think it began when the community was looking to come together. So separate might be a little bit awkward. Since I know the hand thing is wonky, just to follow up with Raj, I do think it already is bigger than just one Essex conversation, certainly policing and safety around policing is probably the largest part that we wanted to tackle first. And that will obviously be with both communities going forward, giving, we're agreed to share a police department, but conversations for public safety has already involved multiple agencies, Agile, Howard Center, into organizations that are more than just Essex based, no other municipalities strictly yet, but the organizations that they're looking for are definitely part of a much broader community safety conversation. While I recognize we split as municipalities, I think that the police agency is going to bind us for significant time coming in this, and I don't see any reason to try to split it apart, not when it's doing good work. Hey, Andy, this is Marguerite, can I jump in? I saw your hand up, go ahead. I wasn't sure. Yeah, I think that this is definitely, I agree with Raj and Patrick in that there's a lot more information forthcoming to kind of get into the details of this. I would say it is something to put on the radars though, for sure, for how to move forward together on this, because currently there is a municipality sort of portion of this that will be really integral and moving forward the recommendations that come forward from the community. And currently that board is also coming up with a strategic plan and is in a session right now with Tabitha and Sue, the Creative Discourse. We have about four more, two more meetings with them. Anyway, there's also another group called VU. So there's like three or four just alone in Essex that we're all just trying to right now figure out how to work with each other kind of strategically and take on different arms. And that's part of what will come to you all in January or February, hopefully from the task force from the community, from those committee members. And then the other part of this is that we are monitor or at least as in a part of CE, which is sort of the municipality arm of this all is monitoring like I do work with Heinsberg and what they're working on. I have been in touch with Richmond. We are, I work with VLCT on that. So yeah, I think there will be more regional opportunities down the line, but it will be important that we have enough clarity from the two municipalities sort of what that staff looks like. And I don't think we can quite do that yet just because the city or 2B city is still sort of figuring out what that's going to look like for them. And we don't quite know yet from the task force, but that's all. Sorry to make it longer. And thanks, Marguerite. Any other thoughts? And I think it very much makes sense to continue working together with their, you know, the we will at some point need to talk about the logistics of stipends and how we do appointments and so forth that we go to an appointed board, but maybe we don't need to have that. I don't know, maybe all we need to define is the things we need to define, right? How we deal with stipends, how we appoint people and not get into the majority of what they actually do necessarily in these committees. The Joint Housing Commission, I know they've invited us to come to a meeting. I think they're asking us to tell them how this is going to look in a separate situation. I don't know how to answer that question. I know Andy, if I can jump in, this is one I kind of struggle with in the sense of in a separate community scenario, we're definitely going to have different zoning laws, different planning commissions, different development review boards. Should we decide to then have a housing trust fund of some type, that is then another conversation of how do we fund that? How do we allocate the funds? If one community wants them allocated in a way different than another, these are some of the dynamics that I think we can certainly work through, but whether we want to work through those, I'm not sure whether that's worth the effort. And so I'm honestly curious from the conversation with the Housing Commission to ask them that directly of how do they see this as a beneficial commission to have jointly? You're right, just hearing. Yeah, I don't have to keep talking if anybody else wants to talk, but so Andrew, I hadn't thought about it that way. I was thinking it started off looking at the entire community, that's sort of, it's still very new, right? They've already had some turnover, it's still very new. I think they want to talk to us about some other issues too, some direction. And just in terms of, it was kind of hard to find a group that was willing to step forward and put the time into a topic this complex. And I wonder if we keep it to the, you guys just lose this. No, we just haven't moved enough in the last two, okay.  I just wonder if there's enough, if the community separated to have enough people to step forward and do two housing commissions is basically it. I think we can work through it. And we don't have to decide tonight, I suppose. I don't know that the communities are that different that they couldn't have a joint housing commission. But I'm, you know, it would be best, as you said, to hear from them first. Tracy? Yeah, and again, I would like to ask the question of them. I doubt that their recommendation as far as incentivizing affordable housing, for example, would change from municipality to municipality. It's how we implement that in our zoning that would be different. So I would like to ask that question of them. But I think doing that actual legwork and research is needed by both communities. So why, why bifurcate that? At least at this point. Yep, okay. Any other? All right, joint stormwater. I think we passed the agreement earlier that that will end. Economic Development and Energy Committee have both been trying to serve both communities. I know the economic development is kind of on a hiatus right now. The town is planning to, is hoping to hire someone, some staff to support that. I think the intent is to have the staff come on board, come up to speed and then potentially revitalize an economic development commission for the town. And I don't know if it should continue as a joint thing or not. I don't know what the trustees think. For me, it would be similar to the housing commission. I can see the benefit of both. I would be curious how they would see that working. I think the logistics of having one combined economic development commission, I think we can make work certainly not opposed to doing it. All right, how about energy? I think similar to things, right? All these issues are all the same, right? For each municipality. Although I guess we have more rural. And of those work from a funding perspective going forward though. Well, currently, most of these committees don't have budgets. I guess economic development does get a small amount. Well, an energy committee comes forward with requests for projects. Generally, the town has had energy improvement capital funds set aside. And then they draw from that, usually. But yeah, I guess we'd have to, you know, I don't know if you have a joint pool of money or whether you do it by individually, by community. I can see it. You know, I'm not gonna judge which way is better. So that would have to be worked out. Right. All right, what else we got? Like cemetery commissions generally, a municipality is required to take over maintenance of cemeteries once they get full. But cemetery commissions also deal with cemeteries that are still open, right? Ours does. Do we currently have, does the village have a cemetery commission? The village has an independent cemetery commission. I think it's the Essex Junction Cemetery Commission and the