Recording in progress. Out there, we don't have to recreate the wheel. And we have 20 months from when we got the approval of the town by a vast majority to do this back in 23, March of 23, until the 1, 2025. That's 20 months to do this work. It doesn't seem like in a short period of time to me for what we need to do. So I'm thinking that we should get ourselves on the move for this. And I think that what's happening is there's poor leadership from the Planning Commission. They don't do much planning. And there are many times when they don't have a lot to do in their committee works, so they leave and go home early when they could be working on these things. But the head of that committee does not do... That's not appropriate, I think, to criticize... I'm not naming anybody. Thank you. And I think that... And I will say that our chair, when we were doing the merger and anything came up about global industries, you recused yourself as would be appropriate. But you weren't even the chair doing that. You have a close relationship with this chair, this other committee. And when he is doing something irresponsible, there doesn't seem to be any pushback to him. And that's concerning to me as a resident when I see that I come to meetings. I come to many meetings. And I really think that I don't see leadership in that form. And that's what I'd like to say. Thank you. Anyone else like to speak during public to be heard? Patty Davis, come on up. Happy New Year to you all too. And I'm happy to be here. I'm much better in person than online. So I'll just read it some quick. I just have an issue with... Well, I have an issue with what was sent to our neighbors. And I'm not going to say any names. It could be staff, it could be manager, it could be you guys, I don't know. That sent a letter out to all my neighbors that basically stated on 113023. And then again, the same statement happened to be the same line. I'll read it to you in a January 2nd, 2024 letter that you're going to be discussing E on the consent item. And so I know I can't talk about it, but I'm going to read the sentence that I have an issue with. And I'll tell you why. This lower portion of Sandhill Road has historically been the preferred truck route into the industrial zone district off Allen Martin Drive. And you will see why I respectfully disagree with that and would prefer it be stricken from the record. And I've already sent letters out to all my neighbors to correct this. But anyway, I'm going to tell you why to make it simple. So I have been researching permit.  And I'm still waiting for a call from the Vermont Agency of Transportation on this, but don't quote me, but this is what I've written. Both primary and secondary arterials. The role is they are not to penetrate identifiable residential existing neighborhoods. Our neighborhood is the largest neighborhood in the town of Essex in the suburban core. But getting back to number one, the lower portion of Sandhill, the reason I want it stricken, I've done the research. Researching permit 4C0329-20. In this permit and in the subsequent settlement with the town of Essex, the developer was supposed to build an extension of Thomas Drive through the property and out to River Road. 75% of truck traffic associated with gravel pit and other truck uses was supposed to be diverted to River Road through the Thomas Road extension. There was a map and a traffic impact study dated July 12, 2016, some submitted with the application. I have a copy that I will give you with map and I will give that to you. The extension showed up in the site plans and was an important part of the truck traffic considerations since 75% of the trucks were supposed to be routed out that way. So fast forward, this is the issue, fast forward to 4C0329-21D. All of a sudden there is a traffic study nearly identical, dated June 6, 2016. So one month prior and this time the overall development map included that has an X. I put a big yellow X and I will give you this copy over the access to and from 117 River Road. So from the Thompson Drive to River Road you will see the X. That X and June 6, 2016 traffic study continued to be resubmitted for several subsequent permit amendments. And I am just getting started, it is a learning curve, 42 to be exact so far and I am looking at all of them. So I only want to deal with these two tonight. In closing I want to just say that in the literature a major street is commonly referred to it as arterial and the term seemed to be used synonymously in this document. Moot and one other tidbit, Sandhill Road, way back when I started looking in 1978, was an urban collector and then since changed to a secondary arterial and it is a budding neighborhoods and going through neighborhoods which is against a rule, we will talk about that rule after. The movement is the primary function with a secondary function being land access. Where is the access management, my question, which is an essential component to preservation of capacity on arterial road, on all our roads in Essex, how can we build, how can we have 30 corporations and industries and then in the last 10 years 15 of those just developed without having a management plan in place for where the trucks are going to go? How can we do that? That's my question, you don't have to answer. In closing in Essex the differentiation between major primary and major secondary roads follows the designation of state versus town highways. The intent was never to have trucks penetrating our Forestdale, our two residential subdivision neighborhoods, impacting over 139 homes, not 39 homes. Now that may have been a typo, so I read somewhere that it is 39 homes, that is so not true, it's affecting 139 at least. The intent was originally to have the trucks instead access industrial land via Route 117 to get to Thompson Drive extension to access these industries and from the Thompson down to 117. And all the studies, you will see I highlighted, every single study had studied the maps when they actually did the studies historically even way back. They were only looking at Thompson Drive out to Allen Martin, out to Route 15 and back. Never ever was there a discussion about Lower Sand Hill being historic, a historic truck route, that is a fact. If you have any more questions I would be glad to have you contact me and I'm also going to enclose when the Serben Hill Road was a collector. I also have a map from 2018 when I used to run at Saxon that fell off a tree and I happened to have that showed, instead of the road being there, they're calling it the border. And that's where the road was and you'll see in these two maps, but I'm not going to give that one to you, it's the only copy I have, but I can always zero opposite. So anyway, I don't want this to be a discussion, I just want to give you bedtime reading, my facts. It took a lot of time, some attorney background, all sorts of, I had a team help me. Thank you. Thanks Patty. Patty, if you have concerns with decisions that the Planning Commission has made, it should go to the Environmental Court, not to the Select Board. This is a management issue from the town. Our road is a town by way and I've already talked to Paul, I can't figure the guys name on the top of the head. He's the head of the AOT engineer and he's talking to his supervisor, getting back to me, to be sure. But it is a town highway, it is an urban arterial, used to be a collector, it's an arterial that you guys made it to and it's your choice because it's a town highway. It always has kind of still is. Yep. It's not a state, but 50. No, I know it's not a state. It's up to you. It's your call and I'm telling you why we don't like it and we want please starting in March, no more trucks on our road. That's when everything expires. I asked for all the public records. I went through all those public records with a fine tooth comb and the bottom line is a lot of them doesn't matter what road they're on because their blanket permits expire March 31st and I'm asking you nicely, please discontinue that access on lower Sand Hill for our quality of life. We have a right to health, safety and general welfare. We have that right. Thank you. Thanks Patty. Anyone else? Thanks for letting me speak. Yep. Okay. I see two other hands up online. Lorraine's alone. Thank you chair. I'm happy to be here. A couple of things. I was actually going to address that. But I already heard that chair. Maybe this is not about it yet. You know, you need to go into the thank you mission. To me, what's not appropriate when you think it's to not make personal attack. If we're making criticism or critique of something that we view as not working here. It's fully appropriate. That is our right. So I struggle with you say that. It was not a personal attack that he mentioned. It was a criticism of the leadership in terms of, you know, what's not working, what's working. And I think that's very important. But we keep those open dialogue between constituents and not shut down that dialogue. So I just, I hope that that's considered in remarks, especially from coming from a chair, the position of power. And then secondly, in terms of Patty speaking, I didn't know she was presenting that today. I'm happy to hear that. I struggle as well with the exclusion and the noise pollution right in front of our houses. Which is enacting many of us here who don't have voices because they're renters. And it is also appropriate for Patty to approach you because it's the oversight for the planning commission. We have gone to the planning commission on our phone for a number of years. So it is appropriate to come to Select Board because you're the one. So anyway, none of that. So can I just clarify something there? I'm sorry, Patty. I didn't intend to imply that you shouldn't bring that discussion to us. I was just pointing out that if you want to object to any of the decisions that the planning commission has made, the appropriate path is through the environmental court. I did go to the Act 250 hearing and we held them on for almost four months. Yeah. And chose not to go to environmental court because I was busy and could get a group together at that time. But that was the plan. And the thing is, it's the trucks. It's not so much that I, the companies. I would like to see management. So where are you going to put these trucks? Yeah. That's the issue. Okay.  I was just telling you that if you had other, if you had, you know, Thank you for, thank you for that. No, I thank you. Just the fact that you let me speak. I'm very happy. Thank you. Lorraine, thank you for, for highlighting that concern. I think you have more. I very appreciate that. Andy. It's important that we have a lot of, it's going to be at the end of the time. And also, I, I, I watched the, I watched the meeting. I appreciate you guys. When they are here and, I struggled with your objection to the state on the, on the change through the RV. And I struggled with that because I, I'm not seeing objections from the other several members. And I have not heard the objections from the residents in terms of our voting, the overwhelming support for the change. And that the date was running there because we're concerned that if we did not put the date in there, it would be continually put off. But it has been. And it also seems watching them up that it was a sale through. There was no issue. I'm not sure if you actually mentioned. So. You know, I appreciate your concern. If planning commission or perhaps you. Reach out or have reached out to ask extension to see how it went. Have we taken five minutes to do that? Make a phone call. Because it is going to happen. And if there's as, as the chair presented last time for the, for the planning commission, he, he mentioned hiring consultant. I would hope that perhaps we just pick up the phone and call some other municipalities. As long as it is changed, including our neighbor. Right after we separated. And within it looked like it happened immediately after the charter. So that's a. I'm surprised that you. You expressed concern. And the other thing I had written to Greg. To offer my services to work on a charter committee. I attended almost all the church committee. I said that the memorandum. Was approved by you guys. So we weren't adding any more charter members. They do offer my volunteer services. Even I was there. And I had expressed their concerns over a lack of forum. Because there's so few people serving. And I think you were three didn't return. So I would like to throw that out there as well as an offer to the other commissioners. For the additional. If they want to add a member or. That's something that you guys are interested in. And then one other thing. To highlight. I want to thank Tammy. And Greg too for the, the amazing. Town news notifications here, fabulous. They're getting better and better every time. They're very efficient. The weeks. The links are amazing. So. Just want to give kudos and a shout out to that. And in that work, I've run across a couple of people who are in really dire strait. A gentleman who was worried about losing his home is a senior. He's going blind. And he wasn't even aware that he's been paying taxes for over 20 years for senior bus that can accommodate his needs. So I'm wondering if maybe we're short-sighted in how we're getting that information out there to seniors and being more and more isolated as age. And if we can figure out a way to work on that. To respond to comments that both Betsy and you made about the my testimony in front of the legislature or the gov ops committee. I did raise that concern about the timing and I was asked immediately after that in that same session whether or not they should do something to adjust the date. And I said no, because many, many people would be extremely upset if you did. And I got the strong impression from them that they didn't intend to touch that date. So I was, I raised the concern because it was raised by the chair of the planning commission. And I didn't want to leave that unsaid. But again, I did. Again, I emphasize that many, many people would be upset as is evidenced tonight by those discussing this. That the date is a priority. And I believe they understood that. But thank you for your comments. Thank you for bringing that up. Mary Post, I see your hand up. Yeah, thank you. Well, I had something all written out. But listening to this discussion, there's no point in beating a dead horse as they say. And I didn't want it to seem like it was against anybody. But I too just wanted to say that I was disappointed when I, you know, heard what you said about the timing. And it just seemed to me that it's, I know you're saying you're doing it, you know, for the chair of the committee, but I also feel like it was just like one more chance for you to try to stall things. And that was disappointing to me. And especially when you chose to talk about the date because you might not have time to fill it with people that want to be on the committee. And, you know, I, the last time we were trying to fill committees when we became this new town of Essex, there were a lot of people I think that, you know, stood up and joined committees. It's the first time for years that I've seen this. And I myself had had offered to be on that, that police and community advisory committee. But I got my application in too late. They already had enough people to choose from. And I just also want to remind you that a lot of people offered myself and others that I know offered to be on the Memorial Hall committee. And all I've heard back is that you've received my application and then never heard anything else. So I think people are willing to be on committees.  Thank you so much. I will confess that I had strong trepidation about saying the words that I said, but since I've said them, I can't take them back. And also when they said, would it help to change the date? I had a brief hesitation there and I said, no. So that's where we are. Thank you, Andy. I'd like to name the same people. All right. Patty, you've spoken twice. Patty, if you want to speak, you need to come up to the microphone. Is this on a different topic? Patty, if you want to speak, you need, if you're going to criticize a member of the committee, then please. Thank you. All right. Anyone else wanting to speak or throw darts? Mr. Chairman, at this time seeing there's no hands and raised anywhere here. I make the motion that we open the public hearing on the Essex town plan 2024. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Ethan. Any further discussion about opening the public hearing? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All those saying aye. Motion passes 5-0. We'll get the public hearing open. Hello again. Happy New Year. You too. So just to recap, this is the second public hearing that you all are having on the town plan. Previously, the planning commission had one followed, which followed over a year of public engagement and planning on the town plan. The next stop after here, if you all choose to pass on the town plan, it would be passed on to voters to vote at town meeting. And so with that in mind tonight isn't after the public hearing, you close the public hearing. It's not your time to necessarily approve the town plan, but it's to approve it to pass on to the voters to approve. So in the end it's up to the voters. The Slack board did receive one comment from the public that I'm aware of that I have worked through some changes to it that we can talk about if you want to talk to the public first and you know, feel free to go ahead and do that. And then one other thing too, the packet was too large, so it didn't include the graphically designed version. It's still draft. There are some things that need to be fixed, but that's the general format of it. And what needs to be fixed is really just like a couple typo-y kind of things or format things, not the content. Thank you, Catherine. Is there anyone who would like to make comment or ask questions about the 2024 Essex town plan? I see Leah, come on up and introduce yourself. Yes, please. Hi, I'm Leah Pastel. I live up in the northern part of the town on Essex Highlands, which is off of Weed Road. And I wanted to provide some feedback to look into the plan. So the first thing I noticed because of where I live is that it claims that I'm in an agricultural residential area and that my house would sit on at least three acres. Well, that is incorrect for most of my development. And so there's a flaw in the plan there that it's not taking into consideration all of the houses that are in that area. Another thing that came to my mind was it stated that the water capacity and the infrastructure for sewer and water were going to be targeted to new development. Whereas people who've lived in the town and are in the conservation areas and the agriculture areas, we've lived there for a long time. Those houses have been there or many houses have been there for a long time. And I think there should be some provision to support water and sewer for the homes in those areas. Because for example, my development, we're mostly built even though it's agricultural residential, we're built on ledge. And many people think that as the infrastructure comes out that eventually we'd be connected to the town infrastructure. So I think the town plan should have some provision in there to support the people in case of an emergency. The houses on my development have been there since the early 70s. The rules about septic have changed. I think almost everybody on my street has had to redo their wells at some point to be deeper or to be hydro-factured. So I think the town needs to have some provision for those residents. So that was my first thing. Is there any question from you guys? Made sense? The other thing I noticed in the town plan that I would really like to have is an urgent care center. So I like some thought or provision to be made for where that could be. If you look on Google and you say urgent care near me, everything's in Williston, Burlington, Colchester. And there's really nothing out our direction. So that I think would be a nice add to our town. The other thing that I had, and I know this is probably pie in the sky and you will want to think about it for 10 years or something. But one of the places out in Colorado where my son lived was pretty progressive in their thought. And they actually put in the budget a small amount of money every year to buy recreational areas around their city, whether they were in the city or outside of the city actually. And I think it might be something to consider about our town plan to work with some of the towns around us that maybe we could jointly purchase some big piece of property before it's developed. So I thought I would mention that. But that's my input. Thank you, Leah. You're welcome. Anyone else wishing to speak?  Thank you, Patty Davis, Nine Hillside Circle. This is very productive. I love it. I actually just printed out four pages from the 2016 town plan and highlighted what I like to see. So I'll keep it really short. Basically, for the R2 area, the whole area, not just Sand Hill Road, but so many houses, like 400. They're called Neighborhood Growth Centers on page 94 in the 2016 plan. And I want this paragraph to be a requirement in the 2024 town plan. Because of past policies and regulations, nearly half of all homes and Essex are located on neighborhood streets, all over Essex, obviously, town, as opposed to major roads. The areas immediately adjacent to River Road, Sand Hill Road, Route 15, the town of Essex, Junction Boundary Line, all have historically been town residential growth centers. These neighborhoods help create a sense of community, like the last person said. And future residential growth should be encouraged to maintain that development pattern. But we could also incorporate mixed use because we want all our neighborhoods to be a walkable community. As they say, all of the neighborhood growth centers are located within the town sewer service areas that I'm talking about. But we all want a community. We want it to be walkable. We don't mind mixed use, small human scale development restaurants because we have money to burn. And if we could walk our stroller right across the street, Sand Hill, and have smaller businesses, we could make this town a lot of money. So we also want to say that our schools, adequate streets, sidewalks, sewer, water, and recreation facilities should be maintained. Don't build it unless you can maintain it. The road along Allen Martin is over 35 years old. My husband trips and falls on his face many times because it needs to be repaved. But I'm not just talking about my spot. Just all the places that have residential are to is very important. That is your economic driver. We're the ones with the money.  And those are my two cents. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. We have some more. So, and I'm backed by some wetlands here as well. And I noted when we're working on the ETC plan that the flood map, the wetland maps that we're working on, we're very much out of date. And the state certainly doesn't do a great job of updating. I'm wondering if we coordinate with the state, the updating of the mapping of the wetlands. Whenever we have a delineation that's presented to the planning commission for development, because I think certainly something that the state struggles with. One of my concerns in the quick changes that we've seen here, just off of roof 15 is a huge amount of flooding and water problems that we've never experienced before. And my husband grew up here. So we know what the changes is. I've seen that we've gone up three degrees in 100 years in Vermont. And our growing season is now a month longer than it was in the 70s. We have major changes that are happening that I wonder if we're ahead of the curve behind the curve or on the curve. So one of the important things to me in terms of accounting is we need to know accounting of trees, the flood resiliency and the wetlands, because that all has great impact on that. In terms of what Patty was saying too, I agree. I feel more if we can't maintain what we have. I grew up in a neighborhood in Indian acres and as extension we had zero sidewalks because it was well developed with short streets and main arteries went through extremely smart design, not seeing as much of that type of design being And that's a struggle if we want to keep costs down in terms of not having to have sidewalks even less developed better. And then other things in terms of flood resiliency, speaking to the woman that spoke first, the, in terms of early care, one of the things for walkable communities are to have community health centers. I hope that we're also considering including community health centers as part of our town plan for flood resiliency or when we get cut off because as climate changes, we're going to have to be more and more self reliant. That includes food as well and identifying where we can grow. So anyway, just a couple of thoughts. Thanks guys. Anyone else? We should just speak during the public hearing. I don't see any hands. So then do we close the hearing and then have discussion or how do we, how does this work? Maybe we can mention a couple of things just in case there's any follow up comments. Thank you. This was the comment that was received regarding childcare and it was a good catch by the resident. This is the one you've already fixed though, right? It is not fixed. This just came to our attention. To my attention today, I think it came to you one Friday. So essentially the catch was that the YMCA does not provide after school programming for elementary school kids. The Essex Junction Parks and Recreation Program has been contracted by the schools to provide that. And the Essex Elementary School does host school based creek kindergarten program. So that wasn't in there. The head start program is not at the elementary school. So the suggested edits there you'll see in red. And this one I was suggesting for changes ran this by Ali vile or we collaborated on it and she agreed that this was the right approach. Any comments or questions about that? I was just going to say with kids eight and three of these corrections are absolutely correct and needed. Good work and thanks for the comment from the member of the public. Catherine, is there any response you can we should make to any of the comments that you heard this evening? My overall thought is that for the most part, I think those comments are not necessarily needed in the town plan. I think the R2 area comment by Patty that's already that is still in there. That's she was quoting the old plan. I believe it's in the new plan. I agree with Lorraine about the wetlands updating. I mean, I think we we do talk about the importance of flood resilience and understanding where our problem areas are. So I think that is covered. I think that's a great idea though to try to. I don't know if it might be working with Regional Planning Commission as well and trying to figure out how to be more responsive to to the wetlands. You know, obviously, as Lorraine said, it does during development review. It becomes more apparent where the wetlands are actually somebody goes out from the state and takes a look at them and ground troops them. And without that, that doesn't generally happen. So if there's some way to figure out how to more accurately map those, I support that. I think the town plan does to already urgent care center. I think there is one coming to the asics experience. So it's under construction right now. And I don't know it's opening date, but it will be there. Water and sewer expansion has been pretty firm. The town has been pretty firm against expanding the sewer core. That's not a discussion that came up during the town plan process. I think it's a much bigger discussion to to talk about it. I'm not I'm not sure I would encourage putting that in the town plan at this point. Because we really haven't heard that from from anybody else is what I'm saying. So it's would be I don't think it would be prudent to make a change right now. I expected that any expansion of. There's no really no possibility of expansion of the current waste treatment facility because of the active 50 requirements or the state requirements of whatever they are, whether it's active 50 or whatever is would extremely difficult to write a major expansion. Yeah, and, you know, our policy really has been to try to focus development within our more dense areas. So that's where we want to see more growth. We want to see, you know, maybe even taller buildings, but if not just more, more growth there while we try to keep that outside of town or outside of that core areas world. And that that is really following what the state tells us to do as well. So we're mirroring the land use. So Leah, did you want to come forward to the microphone? First up, I'd like the plan to be corrected. So it doesn't say all the houses have three acres or more, because it's not true. And secondly, previous plans had discussion about the existing infrastructure and extending that. And so I understand that you don't necessarily want to put it in this plan. But I think it's something to have a provision for when people's septic and well water starts to fail what you're going to do. There is more development out where I live. You can just see the houses going up. So at some point there's going to be some pressure. So maybe a study or something. I don't think it's a new idea. Thanks, Leah. So I, yeah, I don't think we've done a survey of all properties in that area to be to confirm that they're certain acreage. Let's look at the property tax records. Well, I'm just saying we haven't. And I don't believe this section was really changed from the last town plan. Yeah. So as somebody who lives in 10 acres zoning and has a four and a half acre law, and I could be totally mistaken, but I had to do a bunch of research on my deed over boundary and something else. Yeah, I don't remember the exact year, but somewhere's in the 90s. They changed the regulation to be this is 10 acres zoning. This is three acres zoning, but any property that was previously subdivided was grandfathered grandfathered into the plan. But like, I know currently to split land up in my area, it's 10 acres. I don't know if it's in that area, still three acres. But I'm also, I'm on Oscar Hill Road, but I'm also agricultural. I'm actually, I'm actually part of my property is agricultural and part of my property is conservation. And then everything behind me is conservation, which is even larger. So I don't know when that exact update is. Like I said, don't quote me on a date, but I do remember when I researched my deed. A deadline that from this day on all subdivisions meet this regulation. Yeah, that's what I was expecting, right? Anything that's existing is already existing and you can't do any new subdivisions. My house was put there in 71 was when it was subdivided. It was a 40, 50 acre fireman at the time. And now it's four and a half. And they put a couple of same identical manufactured houses on three, four, five acre lots. And then they kind of just, everybody else around me has 20, 30, 10, 14. So I don't know. I'm not sure exactly when the change was, but I do know there was some change there. So I don't know in that particular area. It's, I think it's the whole region. Tracy. On page 92, which is 98 in the town plan packet. I'm looking at line 3233. Would it be more accurate to say instead of currently the districts contain some low density residential development on lots no smaller than three acres? Would it be more accurate to say currently the district districts allow for some low density so that future development has to be on at least three acres, but it takes into consideration that existing development may be on less than three acres. I think that works. What line is that again? 3233 3233. Yeah, just to throw a little wrinkle into it. My memory is that the zoning regulations on for planned unit developments which allow for less than three acres owning as long as the overall lot has the average of three acres or more. So it's just one of those nuances that is as loud. I think the deep message and the intent is there, but there might still be these little hangups that are not 100% accurate without nuance after nuance after nuance. I don't have a proposed solution. I just wanted to put that out there. So everyone's aware that they're even in the future, there might be less than three acre lots. Didn't ask when that new act 100 or whatever it was from state that we still don't have all the information on change that. No, that wouldn't change lot size. It could change the number of units on and a parcel, but it wouldn't change a lot size. Okay. I was just going to say, I was just going to say that it's almost like the cart before the horse is there a way that we should we be concerned with having the septic allocation or you're getting on septic, at least in the town plan everywhere, not everywhere like agricultural, but like say residential, because many dense residential are two areas in other towns are allowing mixed use and those little shops, bike shops need septic. They need that connection. I guess my question is after being on the planning commission is the cart for the horse? Isn't it the town plan that gives that option just to have a blanket? Yes, we can have septic in certain areas. And then it's up to zoning to create or the planning commission to create the new zoning regulation to it. That's my question.  But because like Colchester where I grew up, it's so spread out. Like we had the village. We had Malins Bay. I grew up in Malins Bay and we had septic. My dad had his boat business down there. So you've been saying septic. You mean sewer? I mean sewer. Yeah. I'm saying that connection. Like we're on in residential Forestdale. We have, you know, everything is on town, town sewer, town water. You know what I mean? We have all that. And say the industrial wants it to maybe the other areas of residential like ours, we can put in the town plan now that that we have the option to have that in those places too. So that when it's time for zoning and the planning commission to create new regulations, we have it in the town plan because we shouldn't just have one road as the route 15 be the town center. I don't think I think you're going to wait forever for the legislature to okay it. I mean, maybe I'm wrong. But that's my two cents. Anyway, that's all. Can I ask one more question? Yes. Can I ask Aaron a question? Can you ask who? Aaron Myron. Is that appropriate? About sewer? Yeah, sure. Aaron, can I ask you a question? He's going to ask you. It's just my understanding of what I might not know about things, but correct me if I'm wrong, but everything on the north side of Browns River is pretty well secluded from ever being connected to the current system ever. There's too much of a low point be pumping and transferring through trucks that would never be a connection across my understanding. I don't know that I can make that. Right. Is that elevation? No.  You have to pump to get it downhill, but eventually it's all going to go to the city's treatment plant. A lot of those areas are outside our current sewer core. That sewer core here in the town of Essex has been used as a tool to help kind of guide development within the town to kind of, as Catherine was stating previously, to kind of keep the area that is accessible to connection to sewer connection to kind of put all that development in that growth within that, within this area and leave the areas outside of that alone. Now, eventually in the future, I mean, I don't have a crystal ball. Could some of those areas see water? Maybe. I don't know. The likelihood is not very good. Sewer. I don't see it in my lifetime. I just thought it was important that we ask you for your opinion on it, because it is something that I've heard a lot from a lot of people like paving roads that are up there also, but realistically infrastructure and feasibility of actually moving the forwards vice versa. I mean, there's, I think, between the top of the hill here and the top of the hill over there, there's probably 400 feet elevation change. A couple hundred, yeah. And it's all a matter of how much it's going to cost to and what exactly the impact would be to provide sewer service throughout those areas. They're not very densely populated. Then it comes down to a judgment call on how much money is the community willing to spend to sewer the whole community versus the number of connections that are actually connected to it. Because obviously, you stated previously that, you know, everything is zoned and structured by 10 acres. That's the minimum, right? We can put PUDs on there. But how many connections are you actually going to get whether it's a viable solution to try to bring sewer all the way out to those areas in the town of Essex? All right. Thanks, Aaron. Thank you. Okay. I see Sharon Zuckowski's hand up. Sharon. Hi. Hi. To add to this whole sewer capacity thing, right now we don't even have enough sewer capacity within the sewer core for everybody. Because when they did the capacity study, I think in 2004, the way we got it was a lot less complex. So when the study was done, they took all the areas that had good perk. They were called, I can't remember if they were A or B. So anyway, type A areas weren't supposed to get sewer. So they weren't counted. And then type B areas were supposed to get sewer because they needed it. And then somehow along the way, we changed the map. So we just trade the sewer capacity around. And I worry that we're going to run out because we haven't done an official capacity study since 2004. And we're not sticking to the original map of that capacity study. So to go outside the sewer core, we even reduce the capacity more. I'm hoping that someday, we haven't done a capacity study in 20-something years. I think it's time to do that also before we start moving it out of the core anyway. Thank you. Thanks, Sharon. Aaron, did you want to respond to that? Yeah. Capacity study within the core, that's done usually every five to six years. The last one was done in 2018. We're scheduled to get started on the next update here. I'm planning on probably this summer, rolling that out. We're trying to coordinate other things that are going on within the core as part of this capacity study, which we may talk about later on tonight. But yeah, the last update was 2018 within the core, not outside the sewer core. Thanks, Aaron. Okay. Can I ask one more question about the response to that? Sure, go ahead, Sharon. So the capacity study is done by our own public works or by an outside agency of engineers that do that specifically and return to that. Because I wasn't aware that we farmed it out to people that really had the expertise to do capacity study tonight. I'm just curious. Go ahead and pick up, Aaron. Sorry, Aaron. No, you're fine, Sharon. Yeah, it's historically the capacity study, sewer capacity study has been completed by Hamlin Engineering, a local engineering firm here in the city. They are the ones who were the original designers of our sewer system throughout the town of Essex. They've had the most history. And they're the most knowledgeable about our sewer infrastructure within our community.  So it's not like the day on where we just look at it and hope that it's okay. It's actually an official study. I can't speak to that, but I can definitely speak to the sewer capacity. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Sharon. Lorraine, did you have more comment? Yeah, just a quick note. I was thinking Catherine probably has run into this, but Aaron was a town planner at the time, being from an engineering family. The new engineering works that they were doing in the United States was point of view spray water recycling for apartment complexes and condos and things like that. And I'm wondering in terms of sewer capacity and some of our issues with lake overflow and drilling burlintents overflowing, all too often to our likely causing problems with green algae. If that's something that Catherine was aware of that we look at the planning commission level for future use and needing maybe some more extra land if we're going to do a point of view spray water recycling to development and building. Thank you. Definitely the planning commission doesn't look at anything directly to do with water or sewer because it's out of their purview. It's a state permit that is received. I think there's a good idea to be aware of new technology and I think, for example, maybe the Conservation Trails Committee could be addressing this or maybe even the Energy Committee could be bringing it. Yeah, so I think that could be something that they could advocate for, but the planning commission is not going to push that on an applicant because it's outside of their purview. Right, I wasn't talking about on an applicant. I was talking about some planning and planning commission and things that for future resilience and conserving the lake and things like that. Are those things that our planning commission ever saw from what's that? Are there presentations for planning commission for thinking ideas that we're ready for? You know, the changing climate. So I was just not sure if you were aware of that that was Darren and I know Darren's up at the... I think that's the counting problem now. So I don't know if he has one as well at that level too, but I just put it out there because that would require more land in terms of planning when we develop. So anyway, just want to throw it out there. Thanks. Any other public comments? Okay, so do we want to end the public hearing? I make the motion that we close the public hearing on the 2024 Essex Town Plan. Thank you, Don. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Ethan. Any further discussion about closing public hearing? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, say nay. The motion passes 5-0. We've closed the public hearing. Now we can have discussion about what we heard. I know you handed out some proposed changes about childcare. Sounds like everybody was in agreement with including those changes. Do you want to have more discussion about it? We don't need to have another hearing if she goes ahead and makes them though, right? No, they're changing as a result of the public hearing. If the changes were considered substantial to change the meaning of the plan, then you would, but these are not. Any concerns? Just one note, it's Essex Junction Recreation and Parks. Not Parks and Recreation. Oh, yeah, you're right. Good. They put recreation first, don't they? Yes. It's a good slogan. Okay, thought I did not know. Yeah, yeah. But no issue. Are there any other changes that I know, Tracy, you had commented about some language around the question of the three acres and certain portions of the town. Do we want to change any of that language? I was thinking about that a little bit as we're sitting here. We could just take out this on lots, no smaller than three acres. Just take out that phrase. So it would say, agriculture residential district exists to protect lands that have an economic capacity for agriculture. Currently, the district contains some low density residential development on lots, no smaller than three acres, but are otherwise undeveloped except for uses associated with agriculture or forestry.  Okay. Are you okay with that? Okay. Are there any other changes that we'd like to include? There was discussion about sewer car, our expansion of sewer indoor water. Do you want to comment on that? I think that's for the future town plan after all the studies are done. I was going to say, I think that the discussion tonight just highlighted the fact that we, we don't have enough information. We need to talk about capital planning infrastructure. We need to talk to the water sewer district. We need to talk about cost. We need to identify, need one interest in doing so. So I agree with Don. Is there anything in prior plans that aren't, I mean the prior plan isn't included in this one that maybe could be left in? I'm just trying to look now. Okay. So now I, that sewer core hasn't changed for years and years and there hasn't been serious discussion about changing that. Yeah. Okay. Is, is the town involved in any of the wastewater permits for the residents outside of the sewer district? So that's completely with the state, right? Right. So I would just offer that that is the state purview versus the town plan.  That's how I know. $18,000 later. There was some discussion about wetland maps and climate resiliency. Anything that we think we need to address there? I was going to comment on that because the last time the people from CCRC came, they said they were starting a study to update those wetland maps. That was part of their presentation. And right. If they, if they want to do it, I think I'd like to have them do it other than our, I think to know. So, sorry. Oh, I don't think there's anything in the town plan that would stand in the way of any updating of the maps. I'm just, I'm just curious from a little bit of personal experience, but I've done a lot of, a lot of work with the state and, based around agriculture, but with wetlands and, as far as I, I can't find a wetland map in here for whatever reason. If anybody knows exactly what page it's on, but I see the floodplains, the hundred year floodplains, but the state of Vermont has, and maybe it's just the agency that I've been working with, but they have up-to-date maps that are like, drawn daily as they go places, especially with agency of agriculture. But I had some work done on my property on Osgoode Hill and also over on Towers Road.  So I don't know, and like I said, I tried to find the information, I'm not sure where the lapage is with the people doing that kind of field work and the state updating the public record side of it, and then also us receiving that information. I don't know who really keeps that information, but in my personal experience, I have printed a bunch of maps that I can personally find. Maybe I'm not the best with a computer, but they have new imagery that they are not shrinking wetlands, that's for sure. And the wetlands are mapped on state A&R maps, and those are available online. And our GIS coordinator does update our maps that we have locally based on state data. So we're syncing with what the state data is. Nancy, did you want to comment? We did include the wetlands map in the 171 planning commission for the wetlands. So there is one in there. The forest lock. And we have the wetlands, there's a separate one for all the wetlands that's in there. Okay, and that's not from 2006. No, that's from now. I heard 2006, and I was brought back to the agricultural plan from 98, and I was like, they might know what page. 77. 77, thank you. That's the water resources map. I was trying to find it in the hurry, but I couldn't. It's bigger in the other version that you have. Oh, 77 right here. I'm not sure it's, it's not going to be 77 there. 73, no? Yeah, 73. Yeah. The green on green is kind of hired. I can run that by Shannon. I can see them, but I can't see them. Okay, I was just curious because I heard 2006 and I just wanted to make sure that I don't know exactly to make that connection. But thank you for providing that update with the JRS coordinator, because there's more recent. Any other comments about wetland maps or flutter vacancy? So Catherine, is there anything you've heard that we should update in there? I don't think so. Let's see. There was a question about, I think Leah, you had brought up the possibility of having a fund that purchases land. We do have a conservation fund. It's not aimed toward purchasing, necessarily purchasing land for parks, but it could be. I hadn't, I hadn't, we hadn't, I hadn't heard any, well, other than the Winooski Valley Park District, which is a collaboration with other communities to maintain parks along the river corridor. I haven't heard of any discussions about collaborating with neighborhood communities about, I see Betsy's nodding her head, maybe I'm wrong. We indeed looked in Fort Chester Pond, there's about 70 of those, and making those map meets. That's something in the background. On the map, there's a big conservation section. You come closer. On the map, the conservation map, I'm not sure which one it is. There is a big section that was listed as conservation. It's not really accessible from the town of Essex without going to Jericho, but there, there is a lot of space there that could, you know, potentially someday come on the market. Who knows, but if, if you want to do some conservation, maybe you buy something that's on the Westford Essex line or something like that. That makes sense, but it would be good to look forward and see, identify some places that you might want to preserve for the future. It was just an idea. Yeah, and I, I think actually the, the forest block and habitat connector map does a good job of that too. That's what I was thinking, but there's, I mean, if there's an actual road, you could get to it, but. Anyways, I know there's a lot of people that like to mountain bike. There's a lot of people that like to hike. And so making, opening that up and preserving some of it might be helpful. The city I was talking about in Colorado, of course they have a lot more space. They buy areas outside of the city of Fort Collins and there's some really remarkable pieces of property that they preserve that way. And it's more, I think for the future, because as the city gets bigger, it'll be nice to have those big hunts of place. And not, we probably can't do that here, but we could think about it. And I know that there's, there's a little more than a couple of handfuls of properties that greater than 50 acres that have tax agreements with us where if they sell their property, we have right or first refusal for them. So there are some potential large properties that may be available. Excuse me. But then we have to have the money to pay for it. Right, I mean it would be good to plan for it. Yeah, yeah. So then I guess hearing that or that discussion, is there anything that you think needs to be added to the town plan to allow us to do that sort of thing? No, I don't think so. You think that the, okay. The language doesn't seem to prohibit and I think that that 171 force block language is encouraging of that sort of thing. Okay, okay, okay. And also I think some of the agricultural discussion is encouraging of that too. Okay, all right. I'm just trying to look through my notes here and see if there's anything that else that came up. Any other comments from board members or questions? Okay, and so what you're looking for now is a motion to potentially with a couple of edits. Yeah, with the edits, essentially you're wanting to send it on to the voters but your next meeting you'll actually have the, write the language that will be warning for town meeting. And so that's where, you know, again sort of maybe more officially you'll be sending it on to the voters. But I think just an agreement that the town plan is at a place where you're ready to send it for the warning. Okay, so do we need to make a motion tonight? I think you should make a motion to approve the town plan and then you'll be approving the warning on the January 29th. Does that work for you, Catherine? Yeah, so I think approving it for the voters to approve. Okay, and we'll write, we actually can't warn town meeting yet. It's too early to warn something for town meeting. So if there's no more comments or questions from board members, this would be happy motion. Move that the select board move the 2024 town plan for vote by Australian ballot on town meeting day March 5th, 2024, with the minor changes discussed here this evening. Okay, thank you, Tracy. Do I have a second? Okay. Thank you, Ethan. Any further discussion? And just to be very clear, those two changes, one are related to the child care language, including the edit to reverse parks and recreation. And then the other was the change to the... A.R. District. A.R. District description about removing the clause about the three acre plots. I do have a comment really quickly. We did allow other members of public to speak to Lorraine have a comment before we voted. So Lorraine did you... Everybody okay with that? We have a long show. Lorraine, go ahead and make your comment. And you're really hard to understand for some reason, but... Oh, can you hear me now? Yeah. It wasn't... My comment has nothing to do with your vote. I just want to clarify to Ethan about the landsmapping. It's very much hit or miss. It's very accurate and up to date and a lot of it is not. I just wanted to make a comment. And my comment about the 2006 was related to the ETC work. When had a consultant come in. And I had looked at the wetland map because it... It was our land in the back that they were talking about in the Golden Triangle. And that mapping that he was using was from 2006. When we hired that consultant. And I asked the consultant about why we're planning a future thing when we haven't even mapped the wetlands back there yet and he kind of blew off the comments. And I think it's really critical that we make sure that those maps when we were developing areas are up to date with the state. Or that any delineation that happens by private citizens. So there's a way to coordinate that with the state to make sure it's updated. I got word today from the senator, from one of the senators that the state, the state level, they were saying the municipality, they want to consider doing the mapping themselves, which of course would cost a lot of money. I'm not in favor of that. And it's interesting, Don remembered that about the county talking about doing that work, but I'm not hearing those rumblings at the state level. So it's just something to be concerned about when we're planning these big developments in the future town plan, that wetland maps are in the delineation. We're looking at those concentrated areas are up to date. The wetland maps is changing pretty quickly. So just want to make sure everyone's aware of that. Thanks. All right. Any other comments? All those in favor of approving moving the town plan to the voters, please say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Motion passes five zero. Thank you, Catherine. And we'll be likely we'll be discussing whether we want to warn it to the next meeting. Thank you very much. Thanks so much. Okay, moving on. Thank you for your hard work. It is much appreciated. Just want to acknowledge that. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. Moving on to business item six B consider approval of member random understanding for use of VT Vermont alert system. We have a chief like here with us. And largely it's just something that we're looking to move on to as the state system is a little bit of a change. So I asked the chief to be here just in case there are any questions about the system or how it works. Good evening folks. You hear me okay. Okay, perfect. Like the town manager was just saying we're looking at joining the VT alert system and using that here in the town. And in order to do that, the state requires us to have approval from the local select board. So that's basically what we're doing tonight is just looking to get your approval. So that way we can go ahead and get the MOU signed off. VT alert as indicated in your memo. And then the other information that was sent along by Rick Gary is just basically a notification system. If anyone is familiar with the 511 system, you may have signed up for that to get 511 alerts on your phone. Or by text. This is the same system. It's just a separate section of it that is, that is used by the month department of emergency management. And it allows us to send out notifications to citizens when there's something going on. Something that would be of concern such as a weather event or as included in the list that was sent to you all. School closure or something like that could be done, but we would have to get access with EWSD and that would be a, that would be a separate thing. But just making notifications of road closures. If there was a significant event going on that we had going on as a law enforcement event or a fire or something like that, we could notify folks of that in an efficient manner and quick manner. So that way, you know, they could, they could stay away from it. So that's basically what we're looking for. And if anyone has any questions, I'd be glad to answer those. I thought we already belong. So that's how far behind I am. We don't necessarily use the system. We started looking at this a couple of years ago, but since, and we kind of stopped looking at it with the, when the city was part of the town or the merger was starting to happen, we stopped looking at it because the town had it had another internal system that we were looking at. But now that the city has separated, we're looking at a system that both entities can use. And we will be, we, when I say we, the police department would be able to use it for both city issues in, in the town. And everyone would gain the benefits of it. Okay. Any other questions or comments? I'm a big supporter of Vermont Alert, especially for folks that have water leaks and issues like that. I'm just curious about how much staff time you feel it would take and who will be the point person that we'll be putting out the alerts generally? As far as staff time, it's not going to be a lot. Once we get trained. So the folks from, from emergency management have offered to do a special training for us to be able to do it. I've, I've done the training once before it doesn't take more than an hour to learn how to use the system. Once we got going, our main people that would use it are, that would be authorized would be me, myself, Lieutenant Kissinger, Rick Gary in the police department, Charlie Cole, the fire chief, Aaron Martin from public works. And I believe Rob Paluba is on that list initially. So we would want to keep the list fairly short and possibly we would expand that down to our supervisors in the police department, our sergeants. So that way, if there was something going on on the weekend where I wasn't actually working, we could actually get the, get those, those alerts out. I would just follow that up and say a big push should be made for all of the residents to be aware of it. Because I think the towns that have gone to using it, once the residents realize it's available, you get a lot of people that that sign on because it's very, very handy. That's absolutely true. Once we get up and trained, we plan on doing a public blast to try to get folks to join this and make sure that they're subscribed to the Vermont or to the Essex Vermont part. Any other board member questions or comments? Tracy. And just for clarification, even though this would be for lack of a better phrase owned or coordinated between the two municipalities by the police department, this could be used for public health notifications, boil water notices, thinking of the recent water main issues. And just to clarify, it's not just for police events or public safety. It's also for public awareness. Yeah, that's absolutely true. And just to, just to clarify, the city would have to have their own MOU and they would have to establish their own folks who are authorized to use it. So I would assume they would give that to someone in their water department and also from public works as well. And then make us as the police department, one of the authorized users of their system as well. I would think so. Just kind of a follow-up. So the residents of the town of Essex will be able to get only town notifications if they so choose. I believe that is the case. I don't want to 100% say that, but I believe that's the case. Yes. Anybody else? I was just going to say, I have it on my phone already. I was going to check, but I don't think that would be appropriate at this moment. I do. I make the motion. Oh, do we have to open it up? Sorry. I see your hand is up. Did you have a comment or is that pulled over from last comment? Are you, are you going to meet me? Yeah, Lorraine. Yeah. Yeah, I have a comment. I just, Ron, good to see you. Hi Lorraine. You're looking good. You're welcome. Yeah. We had this in New Jersey when I lived there over 12 years ago. I've been here for about 10, 12 years ago. Loved it. It was fantastic. And we had a. Please. Alert come because there was a gentleman running around with a gun in our zone. And it was great because they told us shelter in place. So I'm assuming. That's also appropriate. I just, I loved it. I think that's a great question. If we do go ahead with it. And the, I think that's a great question from Kendall regarding. Whether it can be separated out because I don't know in terms of municipal codes, are they using a municipal code or are they using a zip code to be able to disaggregate? Who gets what, you know, I don't know. I suspect as with everything else that we've done in the last year, we're going to have to be careful in the setup to make sure that we're getting it right. And we're going to get it separated out. Great. Thank you for answering those questions. You bet. All right. Thanks, Lorraine. Any other public comments or questions? Okay. I make the motion that the Essex town select board approve the use of the Vermont alert system for the town of Essex. And that the chair of the select board sign the attached MOU to move. To move start forward with setup process. Anyway, go ahead and set it up. Thank you, Don. I have a second. Thank you, Tracy. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Please say hi. Hi. Opposed say nay. Motion passes five zero. Thank you, Ron. Thank you very much. Moving on to the next business item. Discussion about new municipal facilities and other site development at 80 and 90 upper main street. Great. Great. So as you're aware, the town now owns 80 and 90 upper main street. It was a long process to get there. We can start talking now about what to do with it and how to do that. Start engaging the public and what they'd like to see up there. Obviously, municipal facilities are high on that list, but there's also going to be a lot of other opportunities up there as well, we think your packet includes a lot of history of how we got to this point. That's based on some of the comments we've heard from the public about people just kind of wondering how we got to here, how the town acquired the land, how the money was used and stuff like that. So happy to answer questions or take comments on that. But really the point of tonight is to try to start to talk about and have a public dialogue about what's next. That's a very high overview. Catherine's going to be working on this quite a bit. So she's put together a rough outline and timeline of some of the steps that we intend to take. But happy to take feedback and answer questions and again, start the dialogue about where we're going and what to do with the property. That timeline is in your packet as well without that material. Any comments or questions from board members? Campbell. I have a question. Since the town owns the property now, it is part of the town, is there any access to the property for the residents currently? That's a good question. Because it's a great area. It's part of the town. So you could cross country ski there, walk your dog. I mean, I expect that you probably want to set up some parameters where it is or where you would access it. But it is part of the town network. Yeah, we've not given it much thought. It's a good question. I think we're at the top of my head. Questions would be how to access it, where it's parking. We don't have any trail systems or networks on there. I just wanted to bring that up. Because it is part of the town network now. I mean, there are town properties that don't have public access. You can run into issues if you don't get ahead of the curve, so to speak. I thought of that when I came past it tonight. There's this big open field in the middle that is now part of the town. I thought I would ask the question. Good question. Thank you. Thanks, Kevin. Any other board member questions? Comments? You think? No, everybody can go before me. I don't know anything. You're good? I'm just really interested in hearing from the public on what they envision. I know what I envision, but I would like to hear from the public on how they feel. I could talk all day about what I'd like to say. Me too. I just have one quick comment and that was just going to be for everybody to see in the MOU that the town executed with the viewers that we were giving them the availability to purchase 110 EUs out of the reserve sewer capacity. I thought that should be highlighted. Especially talking about the sewer core tonight. Any other board comments or questions? I saw a hand up in the back of the room. Kevin, come on up. Signorello, town resident. Two things I'll say about at this point so early. A lot of different uses I think that we're all planning to put there. Everything from a fire station to a library to a community center, all sorts of things. It may not be able to do it all at once obviously, so I just suggest that we think about priorities. We're building slowly but with a master plan. Short term. Kevin, those points is a well taken one and here's an opportunity to have it generate some money, day one. Or anytime this next growing season at the very least. Highly in demand community gardens. Highly in demand. They're all used up, the ones that we've had in the cities doing and I'm quite sure that we have no trouble with all the community gardens we could possibly produce. They can be transient, they can be moved from location to location as the plans develop to put a little bit of a parking lot and have parks and recreation get on it and I think that you can start generating some money. Put it into our rainy day, not a rainy day fund, put it into our Arsene's account for building what goes there next. Those are just two things that come to mind for me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Lorenzo. Mark. I looked at Milton for a while. They had a very fabulous community center that handled the senior center basically and also they did child care in there. It functioned very well. I hope that we look at other communities that dying out of our churches on the east coast in New England were one of the least religious states in the union and one of the things that the churches did certainly for communities is great community resiliency and networking which also helped keep services down when we can get to know our neighbors. We don't have great ways to do that anymore. My parents grew up Catholic and went to wide dances as teens. We had places like that for teens and for adults to kind of commune. So hopefully we'll understand and research what a community center does in terms of keeping community services down and cost down. I think it's very important in the state and age of churches dying out especially. I think certainly the community gardens is fabulous. We love orchards in there, and we hope to hopefully bring in revenue as we go into future in terms of rec programs and things like that. Hopefully there will be rec opportunities there as well. And certainly we know we need a new higher house and all the other things that we need in terms of the campus to be efficient. Hopefully that's a few ideas that will be helpful. And also in the future if we do ever have a new home under the pool as well for revenue bearing for children parties and things like that. There's certainly ways that we could consider revenue as we build and keep that in mind so that some of this could be self-supporting and keep the taxes down. Thanks. Thanks, Lauren. Any other comments from the public? I don't see any hands. So Catherine, what are the next steps? I am working on the P to send out to inquire for consultants for the work, the planning work which is a big part of the memo or the timeline. So that should be going out in the next couple weeks. Once we get some responses we'll hire the consultant and begin the work. Obviously public engagement is really high as a priority in that process. So we'll start right near the beginning. We'll start reaching out to the public and talking and dreaming and planning. Do you have a date for expectation for beginning that public engagement or is there a way to say? I was thinking depending on when the RFP goes out, I would say by April we'd be starting the process. Any other comments or questions? Ethan. Shouldn't we get some sort of consensus from the public before we go and hire a firm and start planning all these buildings that we don't even know that the community wants to build? So what's the consultant going to be doing? Well it's site planning for the whole site. So thinking about what the uses would be what the layout would be if there would need to be any changes which were already suggested by the ETC NEXT plan. So I think it would be in line with that. I think also thinking through more specifically about the town facilities and conceptual plans for what that could look like. I'll talk about phasing or building it all at one time. Part of the uses would include potentially paths around the wetlands that are in the back. Great. You can know that what Catherine said and I think that this is the consultants are going to help with that process. We've done a little bit of work which we can start to spend some more time on and dig into a little bit deeper about what these facilities might look like what the town needs are how much space that's going to take and sort of be able to go into this process with okay the town is going to plan to need to go into the planning process with the public can start to weigh in with okay where should that be on the site what are the uses should be on the site how does that whole site look with those municipal facilities put on it as part of where that we're going to get that to put from the public. Is there like a rough cost that we're this consulting? Not at this point. My only concern is that was brought up earlier was we don't believe I shouldn't say we okay let me restart there was comments about the struggles to transition to a DRB and there was also suggestions of hiring a consultant so my only concern is is how much money is this going to cost in the interference that's going to have with the opposite because I understand a certain dollar figure amount doesn't have to be approved by the select board but if we have two of those a thousand dollars under the threshold you know that's that's a lot of money to be in consulting so I just didn't know if this is going to be something that come to the select board and say hey we want a hundred and fifty thousand dollars you know and this is our goal of this not designing buildings but public outreach and maybe we can do that for under I don't know I just I don't see I don't see a plan of how we plan on moving forward sure try to gather my thoughts before I respond because there's a lot in there as far as you brought up the DRB piece and yes that is the work loading capacity is a big issue right now and I think we haven't done much with the DRB to this point because we've had zoning changes because we've had the town planned Catherine and Comdev and the planning commission have been busy with those things now we likely have a deadline assuming the charter changes get approved January 1st 2025 we're planning on that we expect that that also comes at a time when Catherine and the planning commission and community development department are going to be working on upper main street are going to be working on the zoning changes recommended by ETC next there is a lot in there I think that's something for the select board to consider for staff to consider for me to consider as I delegate for the public to consider where are those priorities to some extent especially if the charter change gets approved that's law we're going to have to be in the transition you know the idea of a consultant for the DRB I think it warrants some more consideration Catherine and I have very briefly talked about this one thing that jumps to mind is the regional planning commission they're going to be pretty affordable they know that transition they know the roles responsibilities as well as anybody I think we wanted we want to do it right we've heard and seen that Essex Junction has made a transition pretty quickly they have I don't think it's been 100% smooth without hurdles there's been a learning curve there's been changes we can make a transition and put a DRB into place I'd like to see it transition so that it's up and running and ready to go and same thing with the planning commission the new form of that so I think it doesn't quite answer your question about the cost but I think that's probably not a huge expense if I had to guess you know a couple tens of thousands of dollars tops would be my guess I'm really ballparking out for the site no no I'm talking about if we were to hire a consultant for a DRB I don't think we need one I think the idea of having the regional planning commission help and reaching out to other towns to see how they especially at 6 Junction I've worked in towns that have a DRB so I'm pretty familiar with it I don't think it's rocket science I'm glad to hear that because I've heard the opposite for two years so I'm glad to hear that it's not going to be easy it's not going to be flipping the switch it's going to overwhelm I don't think it's going to be to some extent to the back to the prioritization I think we can kind of do concurrently but a large part of the Catherine's work load and the planning commission and the zoning board's work load is going to be the DRB for the next year and so that means there's going to be less time on some of this stuff so that's also part of why you hire a consultant to help and take the lead on a lot of that planning piece just to throw some markers out there the ETC NEXT plan which was a much bigger process much bigger scope much bigger land mass all different types of zoning recommendations changes, density, design that was I think about $100,000 so it was before Catherine's time I kind of was involved with the start of it and then less so as it went on I want to say that was about $100,000 and that was a multi-year process the Saxon Hill visioning process which was a much smaller scope or focused on a still large but more comprehensive cohesive parcel smaller property this was I was not involved with that as much off the top of my head and this was before Catherine's time I want to say it was in like the $20,000 range don't hold me to that but that low tens of thousands which again is still money but we have money in the budget there's money in the planning budget each year for zoning there's money in the planning reserve fund we still have some ARPA money left over we're applying towards this property so I think the money is there it will cost something I don't think it's going to be a ridiculous amount of money but to put a number on it right now I don't know low tens $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 and that's just for public outreach it's the whole scope that's where I take the and to come up with what is the scope of work so master plan Catherine can speak more to the RFQ but it's to come up with a plan for that property with a lot of public input I think we'd also be looking at potential funding sources for development for infrastructure really looking to what we would see as everything we need to move it to the next phase for development I had I had it pulled up earlier but when I turned my computer back on I must have died because all my links were gone but and nobody has to agree with me it's perfectly fine that's what we're here for but in our year scope of work that we set up nowhere in there was designing a new municipal center it was purchasing any future development municipal center was very low priority so I'm just confused as to when this became a high priority item my computer's died on me too and I don't have it I was looking at it I was looking at it not too long ago and I'd forget the exact words but it was either high or medium high priority to continue plain acquisition and site planning and utilities planning and all that all in one line I'll double check I'm just curious that's another conversation if everybody else is good but I think there's a lot of public outreach that needs to be done before we say that's with the intent of the consultant but these pictures of a library that's twice the size of the town hall I think that's a much larger discussion of having to make design those buildings than asking the community what they want that's two different things that's two totally different things I got two drawings here of which doesn't show the road actually going where the road's gonna go these are the concept plans that are in the packet very much concept I understand but that's your concept of what you're gonna have somebody researching they're gonna bring their thing to us so what's this? just for fun? just an old proposal that was used I think in a big part to just give an idea to be trans what we were thinking could be on the site it wasn't really showing the exact layout but we were trying to show where there were access points would be where roads would be the level of development that we could see on the site Tracy do you have a comment? I just wanted to sort of say the same thing but clarify what the RFP process actually is it's like those maps and the site conceptual totally conceptual but the RFP is you essentially tell the vendor community if you will this is what we're envisioning this is what we need these are our requirements as far as public outreach, conceptual drawings to then put a price to that we get to look at those plans and by we I mean the town as a whole get to look at those select which one we want to go with that puts a price to it you don't want to put a price on it before RFP because you're gonna get proposals that come in at that cost if the vendor community knows what you've budgeted but then at that point we choose a proposal that's going to meet the needs that we've specified for public outreach to identify what we want to share how all of those things this is just the very first step in the process in order to come back with ideas costs to start that ball rolling down it that's kind of a really bad way to put it but to start that entire process just to get into some technical and more logistical stuff to the purchasing policy the town approved purchasing policy we don't have to go out to bid unless it's something that's expecting to be there's a more we're supposed to in the area that we're expecting this roughly expecting this to cost it's definitely going to be in the I think ten thousand dollars or five thousand dollars anything above that you're supposed to solicit quotes when we have a big project like this that's very public facing it's more than just your standard town operations we often will do it whether it's a request for proposals or a request for qualifications to provide the vendors in the area to get some feedback proposals is more you do have kind of a ballpark number you're putting it out there and you hope that people come back within that budget request for qualifications is a little bit more open-ended as far as cost but you can then choose somebody who doesn't just necessarily come in with a lower price but somebody is skilled and qualified enough to do it to do the work that's how we get I just want to put it out there it might still come in under that forty thousand dollar threshold in which case the manager I have already said to assign that if it comes in above forty thousand it comes back to the select board I just want to put that out there now just depending on what comes back I would just note that this could be a very exciting project for both the consultant and the town because it's a blank slate and by bringing in a consultant like that especially one that involves robust public engagement your app to end up with a product in the end that is way better than everybody envisions to start with so I would support a consultant okay so you're not looking for any kind of decisions it's just a discussion to say where we are make sure we allow the public opportunity to comment on it all of the materials are out there there's four hundred eleven pages of content in the packet on this topic I just want to see all the detail that went behind the decision and uh so alright let's move on to the next business item which is a discussion about FY twenty twenty five budget adjustments for public hearing on January 29th so it's my understanding that we've got new information about a couple of line items yes good evening everyone so earlier at the previous meeting you warned a budget totaling $16,106,421 in looking at the budget overall and knowing that we have some county tax information to reconsider we've made an adjustment well we're proposing an adjustment here of $12,576 to the line item for the county tax and then there's also related health and human service grants to end up matching the total for that 1% match that's necessary for the overall budget that would be $626 really at this point it's just to inform the board since you've already warned that number previously so those are the two items noted here so not looking for action tonight just wanted to make you aware of it we'll present this again at the public hearing on the 29th decision point then we'll be do you stick with the number that was warned for the public hearing in which case we have more information now than we did a couple weeks ago our staff recommendation would be if you want to keep that number we can delay the start date of the admin assistant and or trails coordinator if you wanted to wrap this in and keep the start dates of July 1st the budget number would go up a little bit just wanted to give you heads up the public a heads up but we do have some options after the decisions after the 29th the county meets for their final budget session I can't remember if it's on the 20th or the 27th it's on a Saturday but it will be before the 29th so we should have a final final final number before our next meeting we may still have much more hope we can have that discussion up or down I have no idea what we were given was last year they didn't recognize as the conjunction separated so they just sent one number and we said hey wait a minute by separate agreement with the city we paid 59% they paid 41% so the total got paid but we had to negotiate ourselves the difference was this year when they put out their preliminary budget they did separate it but they gave half to each of us and what happens is they get a new they get a a CLA number I think from the state at the beginning of January which then allows them to set the number based on grand list and so we think it might be around 59% the total of those two numbers but it may be slightly different we'll see I know actually any questions or comments on any of that it's a discussion we can have after the public hearing about whether to adjust up or down or keep the number the same we're adjusted up upward Ethan do you have any other comments or comments around this alright so let's move on to the next one which is consider approval adjustments to fiscal year 2023 balance assignments Stan again? yeah it's me so in kind of wrapping up the audit process in discussion with the auditors last week they kind of informed me that I had made a mistake in terms of the fund balance assignments that we had discussed previously at other meetings so I had overstated by 600,000 and there's another 20,000 dollars of unearned grant revenue that affected the capital project balance or the overall fund balance that affects the overall fund balance available for assignment so what I've done here is updated this memo to reconsider the elimination of some of the capital items that were approved on previously and getting back in line with the audit draft which we're reviewing a final copy of that came in on Friday afternoon I don't know if you need me to go through each of the steps of it but we were looking to eliminate items for our fire department vehicles public works major equipment and the municipal complex that had previously been approved and also reducing the road reconstruction allotment from 200,000 to 50,894 looking to keep the salt shed piece since that's a near-term pending project at 100,000 so the overall effect is to the capital project section of this the capital transfers section of this memo reducing that down to 150,894 total and on the third page of the memo it reflects all of the totals as kind of previously elaborated on any questions or comments? you know I have a lot of comments you're pulling almost $400,000 right out of the public works budget the main reason that we looked at this and I approved the budget was that we're going to finally start catching up or at least keeping even with our capital needs staff comes to us and says they need a number of things and finally we agree with what the staff requests administrative assistant or such when staff comes to us with the request and provides all of this information about how important a capital fund is and where it's looking to go way down and staff presents it I don't understand why we don't approve that as well it's very clear and I just $600,000 I know it was a mistake but we could make that up the current budget is subsidized by a significant amount of fund balance and interest money with new things we've got to do something about our capital we've got to fund it will there be an opportunity to talk about putting an increase to the capital tax I know that we tabled that because we were going to put a bunch of capital into the budget so in our next meeting we'll be warning what's going to be voted on at a town meeting I guess that would be the time that that would be the time we could have discussion about it we could certainly have discussion of what we didn't warn that we were going to discuss potential change of the capital tax but we could do that and then we would need, we'd have to warn we don't have to have a public hearing about capital tax doing I'm trying to remember what we did last year let us do some research I think we're okay to just if you want to have the discussion on the 29th have that discussion before you finalize the town meeting morning if we do need to do a public hearing we might have to have a special meeting so let's do some research into that can you track it down is there anybody else who would want to have a discussion about I guess before we go down the path of potentially having a special meeting we want to consider increasing the capital tax because of this error uncovered by our audit it's money we don't have so I guess Kendall what you're suggesting is that we could either increase the budget by having additional capital transfers or we could ask for a larger capital tax yes and there is actually a third option that I would suggest is that I asked about articles that you could come up with some articles to ask the residents during town meetings something like shall the town fund public works to make sure all roads and sidewalks are maintained in the winter should the town establish a policy that puts 2% of the budget or some X number into capital funds every year like we do with the money that we get through charities and such that's 1% of the budget asking if they'd like to put 2% of the budget every year towards capital or some number like that I also would like to talk about shall the town establish a local option tax such revenue to be put directly towards capital expenses just something ask the voters so that it doesn't always just kind of stew right here in the board because I know we're sure on funds I mean 600,000 isn't something you can just snap your fingers and come up with it it's a percentage increase to the budget so those would be the three options that I would ask to talk about Ethan I have a fourth option via our policy that says we can keep no more than 15% of the budget in fund balance I would suggest that we spend the money that is currently in our fund balance to fund as it was privately proposed for 200,000 to the fire department 100,000 170,983 for major public works equipment and the 200,000 for road reconstruction so that would deplete our emergency funds by a third by a third 3.3 million that's a third that's $300,000 no the 15% is not 3.3 million the current unassigned would be 2.31 million so you'd be 300,000 okay I was using the 600,000 number so you're using a different number yeah I'm just saying so the way I look at that is that if an emergency arises and the fire department needs a new truck then we use our emergency funds I would not take emergency funds and put them and transfer them to capital and give us their potential they do need a new truck to buy one we're taking the money away from them we're we have a car 10 which is a Tahoe we're about to bid for that we have the money for that and the next big purchase in fire is not until 2029 fiscal year 2029 is the next large engine purchase so the 24 listed in here there's money for that I'm going to go back to the other page I just saw I mean 300 $300,000 isn't going to set the town on a substantial disadvantage when we're going to have that money back come the end of the year we could have the money back at the end of the year we'll get our fund balance next year you can't count on that well we can't count on that except for historically the last 12 years yes but there's a significantly different situation right now where we have an almost full roster of police officers and we have to share any fund balance generated by our major historic source of fund balance with the city and so we cannot count on large fund balances going forward we have no idea where it's going to end up this year so we can't assume that we're going to understand and we have to have $2.3 million set in the bank we have to have no more than 15% of the operating budget am I saying that correctly? yeah of the current year's operating budget so with a lean budget and funding of the police department sharing any surplus that's left over from the police portion of the budget it's unlikely that we would have the amount of fund balance that we historically have coming back at the end of the year right and we're going to based on what was presented at the last select board meeting we will spend $40,000 on one piece of equipment in the year 24 25 money that we have already no we're going to spend that money not money that we have it's money that's in the budget for a wide variety of things specifically I'm talking about public works but you spent it last year on the same piece of equipment that's only getting older you're guaranteed to spend that money again take the money out all you want but you're putting yourself at a disadvantage and you will lose that money and that equipment will not get replaced and you're going to sit on $2.3 million are they going to replace that piece of equipment if we make this decision differently if they don't have any money they're not going to replace that equipment I don't know how to so we're talking about whether to adjust this fund balance and I have no information about the specific vehicle that you're talking about I got the public works director to give us information on it in the last meeting there was about 25 pages provided thank you Aaron for all of your hard work everybody blinked their eyes and thought it was just another day it was the repairs of a vehicle that will need to be replaced that needs to be replaced and not just that one vehicle it went more into the trucks that were on a year plan that you have substantial maintenance going into trucks of over $10,000 on individual vehicles you've made this point many times can I finish speaking please and we are taking all of the money away from public works major equipment which is $170,000 all of the money that we assigned at the last meeting we're not taking money away from them we're removing money that was assigned that they don't have in their pocket so we don't have that money that money doesn't exist we could as you said but I don't recommend it if there's an emergency vehicle they should come the public works should come to the select board and say we would like to dip into the emergency funds to replace this vehicle and we would likely approve it but that's the discussion isn't about this one specific vehicle I'm talking about funding the public works and you keep reverting back to that I was just explaining why when I was asked the question thank you any other comments from anyone I would just note taking money out of your emergency fund to fund that is still a band-aid of the problem is that you don't have enough money to do what's required the reason they're spending $40,000 on that piece of equipment is because Aaron doesn't have it in his capital with the money to replace the equipment on an eight year schedule or so and that's what we're trying to get to so I would I would still stick with the original three versus using the emergency fund Don, you got any comments? you comfortable with the recommendation? I am so is the road reconstruction more important than the equipment? because how are we going to fix the roads without the equipment? they're all costs and it's dollars the road reconstruction it's something we try to keep up with same with the vehicle equipment we have the approved vehicle replacement schedule I think to Andy's point if we reach the point where we think we need to deviate from that schedule and come to you and say that we're putting more money than we think we should into a piece of equipment then we'll bring that and come up with a conversation and make recommendations of how to fund that whether it's from fund balance, the emergency fund balance taking out of road reconstruction holding off on that for a year it's all stuff we weigh there's also an un-designated capital bucket that it could come from as well it has happened many times in my tenure on the select board that the various departments have come and said this is something that we need to replace now ahead of schedule and we've never denied it happened recently with the car department where was it 12 car 12 I think so I mean ultimately we have a lot of discussion about it but maybe if you ask the residents in some form I mean if they say no we don't want to fund it we like the way it is working now and we don't they don't approve it that's one thing but logically capital is your biggest bang for your buck we are functioning now on the backs of the people that came before on the board that did an excellent job putting rich of Essex in this position where we have a fund balance and we have a robust capital program that is almost there I just think we need to take that step and finish it I fully recognize that looking forward we are likely unfunded for capital and we do need to revisit the question we did have this discussion a year ago and the discussion was to wait until after reassessment we can reconsider that decision we are not bound by any prior decisions that we made but we are still in that same position and unfortunately right a year from now we will still be in that position because we still won't have the new grand list so yeah it's a challenging spot to be in and this particular issue is related to this $600,000 error which is an unfortunate error and we in our last meeting assigned $600,000 more of a fund balance than we had so this is an adjustment to what we did in our last meeting and suggestions to take that money from other places isn't a fund balance discussion it's a capital plan or other so the question before us is whether or not to accept this recommendation for a modified fund balance assignment given the reality of the amount of funds we have to assign you know we could argue to shuffle the numbers around more but what's the direct impact going to be on the town if we approve it continued uncertainty about the future of the capital funding the capital plan and if we don't change what we've approved we've got essentially allocated funds we don't have so we have the funds though I think Andy phrased it well it's a fund balance discussion we have $150,000 roughly of excess fund balance how do you want to use that and putting you in this situation and the mistake that we made in the oversight and that is on us we're learning from it it's not going to happen again but I think for tonight forget three weeks ago the question for tonight is you have about $150,000 of fund balance to assign we've made a recommendation do you support that recommendation or would you like to assign it elsewhere and I think that's the question before you tonight so I would say that I support the fund balance allocation as the staff has presented it and I would just ask that at some point we have a discussion about the $600,000 capital is not funded at a future meeting I can accept that any other board member comments or questions Tracy silver lining I'm glad that our controls are working in such that we've found the mistake and by we I mean staff and that we did so before we had warned the budget for the ballot and before we had an approved budget that was $600,000 short so just a little silver lining there any comments or questions from the public I'm not seeing any hands someone like to make the motion I will make a motion that the select board assign the fund balance as follows $50,894 to road reconstruction and $100,000 for new solid for a total of $158 $194,000 capital transfer from fund balance for a second somebody's jumping ahead that's supporting it I'll second that thanks Kendall does that adequately address what we need? yes that encompasses all of the changes within it so what we've defined are changes relative to what we assigned last time because there's also other assignments that we made last time yeah there's other assignments last time none of those have changed this is only taking that $600,000 applying it to fiscal year 24 the current year property taxes and then reducing the capital transfers as elaborated on in this memo okay so so the ones that were referenced in the motion are is the total for the capital transfers all of the rest of the property will be the same correct yes so we're okay with the way the motion was worded to do that okay just want to make sure we're not suddenly deleting a bunch of other assignments that we've already made as well any other discussion of the board all those in favor of approving the fund balance assignments modified fund balance assignments I say nay thank you Dan thank you Greg okay now moving on to the next item which is the the fact that we just changed those capital allocations also impacts the capital plan that we had previously approved and so because we've removed those items from the fund balance those those transfers will not happen into the capital plan as it was previously improved so making the adjustments there we also need to consider making those same changes in the capital plan any comments or questions because all of those previous numbers were wrong we've just changed them but since the capital plan is a separate document I have a question for Dan so I'm just curious I know as it sits right now before this is approved right now the public works major equipment is negative $71,215 so I see the $40,000 additions capital tax budget and then I see the $200,000 both of those are still correct yes so the $200,000 is within the operating transfers within our fiscal year 25 budget which we've spoken about briefly before and that $40,000 piece is the piece that we've allocated based on the anticipated capital tax that we would collect at the current three cent rate for fiscal 25 yeah I'm still on a hard time wrapping my head around it but that $200,000 is coming from the overall so it's part of the $470,000 piece that we have continued to have in our operating budget as transfers to capital projects so it's coming from the general fund budget and that is I'm just trying to figure out how the $105,000 total comes about so within that line item you've identified the $71,000 balance anticipated to conclude fiscal 24 the two revenue items total $240,000 and then there's an anticipated or an estimated spend of $273,816 in the second to last column so the net activity at fiscal year 25 is negative $33,816 so adding that to the $71,215 turns into that $105,000 that you're seeing at the projection as of the end of fiscal 25 in February. Can you catch that candle? Negative $105,031 as soon as we approve this No, I mean we need to fund more we need more Any other board member comments? Any comments from the public? Do you make a motion? If I may, if you make a motion we haven't warned the public hearing yet for capital we're getting ready to do that so if you could just if you make a motion to approve the amended capital plan also ask staff to re-warn the capital hearing for January 29th the updated information says this was just a recommendation only I wasn't looking for a motion am I looking at the wrong part? sorry guys Tracy I move that this left board approve the capital budget amendments in conjunction with the fund balance assignment changes and the public hearing on that topic Thank you Tracy you have a second I'll second that Any further discussion? All those in favor of approving the amended capital plan and warning the public hearing we say aye aye those say nay I think I heard three to two aye motion passes three to two alright thank you next item I'm going to hand over to Tracy to thank you Dan I'm sorry for creating this mess too I know Greg's taking it for me but that's my fault and I apologize to all of you for that thanks thank you for owning it and the prompt attention to it I'm going to hand it over to you Tracy accepted are you going to stay here? do we make you go to the can we just they're going to grill you fair question fair question at our last meeting Hubey Norton was in front of us for appointment as the sx representative to the Chittenden County communications union district warned on that agenda was not warned on that agenda was the alternate position our own Andy Watts has been serving as the alternate and has agreed to continue but we felt it was pertinent to bring him in front of us as this is an appointed position for an interview and a conversation so at this point I'll open it up to board member questions to Mr. Watts I'm just curious for alternates you don't have to advertise like you do for the commissioners right? it's pretty much just go ahead I shouldn't answer we have it's sort of an in-between area such as I'm the alternate to the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission Board I was appointed before the new process you'll remember when Hubey was here since there was a discrepancy in the timeline for their operating procedures and our appointment we chose to appoint Mr. Norton without going back out for a full advertisement for that position so it's my own interpretation that this would follow suit along with that and then for the next term we would do an advertisement as usual that's my interpretation but obviously up for discussion at a future date that answers my question question why do you want the job? why? why do you want the job? I don't know very simple yeah that's a good question yeah it's a right it's the my last job I had at Global Foundries was with fiber optics so it's something I have some knowledge of at least the signal processing end of it very interested to learn about the transport I guess is the right word to say of the signals from here to there and getting all the connections together the other thing is somebody's got to do it I was actually well I was the alternate you were that's right I was doing it and you were the alternate there were a number of meetings that I did attend yeah when I was a maternity it was interesting to get the new entity off the ground and get it rolling like to see it continue on to see what it can do thank you Ethan questions? Kendall any questions for Andy? well no I would just note that my vote will reflect the process and not the person and I should have said that when I did the vote for Mr. Norton as well you answered the questions I had experience on the committee and attended meetings and your interest in any communications knowledge background so is the intent of the board to make a motion at this point or enter into executive session absent Mr. Watts I intend to make a motion I recommend that the select board appoint Andy Watts as the S6 alternative representative to the CCCUD for one year for the term ending December 31st 2024 is there a second? second thank you Don thank you Ethan any further discussion further discussion on the motion? the entity gets to vote right? yeah he does I have to vote according to our policy otherwise I have to leave the room before the discussion happens alright but if you're the interested party yeah it's confusing I was going to bomb the vote but I remembered that it's similar to if you're voting when you're electing chair vice chair yeah that makes sense I think you can vote in your own appointment thank you for that that just kind of sent me down a rabbit hole in my brain all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed nay aye motion passes for one I will hand the gavel back over to you Mr. Chair I mean I can alright move on I consent I make the motion and we accept the consent agenda as presented thank you Don do I have a second? second thank you Ethan further discussion about consent I would just note for transparency's sake that I asked Erin Martin our public works director to give me some data on the click time so the board is aware of that okay can we ask Erin if he has any concerns about these things both the force main replacement or the route 15 water line upgrade any concerns? I think he'd bring them to us if he had concerns okay I mean he's sat here all night I think he should have the opportunity to tell us just in case I'm just glad that the water line has been a project that's been out there for quite some time that's spent a lot of time in right away and designs so we can see it finally come to construction candle would this be the time of the consent agenda where I could ask a couple questions about the sand hill road traffic study? it is in the consent agenda I believe we can't have a big discussion about it because it's in consent just a couple questions Patty Davis brought up that I believe she has some documents that state that originally the developer was supposed to complete Thompson extension I had him come up so that's my only specific question I think that would relate to the study if the developer was originally supposed to complete the extension to route 117 that I can't speak to I know over the years since I've been here there's been conditions of approval for that whole industrial park and the build out and when that connection is made I know there was another development that's now a solar array in that area that was supposed to interconnect obviously solar panels are there now? they're not going to be building any new buildings or infrastructure there so I don't have an answer for that I think bringing on a consultant at this point third party to that's not the town to come in and do a comprehensive study in that whole area of town our industrial zoned area and the truck traffic in and out of it I know there's going to be a significant public outreach component to that the community will be heard and hopefully this study can kind of come up with a solution to some of the concerns that the residents do have out there that we could implement as either the select board or as part of any conditions of future growth out there in the industrial park okay that was my question I haven't had a chance to digest this since you just came in tonight looking at it quickly it looks like at least part of this was an act 250 application versus a local town permit again I haven't had a chance to digest and see what that means the only thing to remain to this was if it would affect the sand hill road study and it doesn't appear that it will so that was all I needed to know it's always been my understanding that as the properties are developed the road would get extended and didn't ownership change too somewhere along the way I think so I can't remember where when or what thank you any other questions or comments about consent? Ethan? I just have a board member comment really quick but as a anybody we have an approved consent oh sorry I have a board member approving consent please say aye okay consent is approved now board member comments thank you I was just curious because we've heard a lot about sand hill in the past couple of weeks months I should say has anybody from town staff reached out to anybody about that road? like planning or Greg or yes but so I guess I can tell you what we've done and see if that answers your question so followed up with the residents who attended that meeting everyone who put down their email address as much as I could decipher it I think I didn't get a couple of them totally accurately but followed up with them once Aaron and once public works and Comdev put this application together let them know that it was going to be out there a couple of residents reached out who had spoken at the meeting we sat down with them it was Aaron myself and Kent Johnson our town planner I spoke to them to sort of hear their concerns tell them where we were going explain the this UPWP application followed another follow-up email to the email list of residents that I have we're going to be working at creating a web page to keep all these documents on there direct people to that page different questions come up that's what we've done I'm not sure if that's what you were I was curious about that too but I was also curious on I don't know if it's anything you want to answer but the other road that would be connected to this actually Thompson Drive that's been mentioned a lot yeah I don't know if there's anything that was on there ideas and planning said yeah to my knowledge we've not reached out to anybody about that yet one of the pieces of information that Public Works pulled together to complete that road is about a four or four and a half million dollar cost so we haven't gone much beyond putting a cost on it at this point that wouldn't have to be a town driven you're not going to be the developer I think that's just curious I know we were focusing on standing up anybody was thinking about the alternative I know that those other details are other discussions but thank you anything else for member comments I was going to ask a question about the town meeting up Senator Doyle used to put out a question here just general question has Essex anything like that just a general some of the questions going around town kind of like a question so yeah we've done we've done surveys we should do a paper one I think Tammy did a online on recent last year right we did um paper and online I think yeah for several years we did a paper one this was pre-COVID and nice one page we handed out to people who walked in had explanation of what is town meeting Robert's rules the basic summary of it and there was a three question questionnaire that people could fill out I think if you remember what you asked it was what is your like what is your not like first year we had about 33 responses the second year we got two oh really and then the following year we didn't get any nobody nobody filled it out and we did do an online one we started that I think we've done it the past two years and that's been more successful we do it after town meeting and after the after the town meeting day votes so we asked people you know how'd you vote if you voted no what were your concerns that type of thing okay just curious try to get some feedback it's good to know what people are thinking and if we ever get to the point where we need to hold a re-vote on something for some reason we'll hopefully have a step up and a leg up as to where direction to take any other comments or questions I'll end it one more just to let parks and rec know that if they can come up with a proposal for a pool like the lady put in there that is a moneymaker for I asked one really quick question then we can all go because the national championships on but remember when we all took different turns and handed out information packets like sporting events and things like that and I don't know if this is okay on the merger stuff yeah but don't tell me if this is totally wrong but could we do not exit polling but could we hand stuff out as people exited the polls if we volunteered your surveys is that okay you can't impede the voter going to or from or from I thought it was just to know because another group impeded them leaving last time so now it's either way either way that's too bad that's a good way to get information out but I was just curious I knew Don would tell me but we did town meeting last year and 90 some odd people came you could hand them out at that expo thing you do at the beginning and here's your admission to the town meeting like that let's start and then use that in your online stuff five six hundred people go to the polls during the day we did hand them out at the we were doing it previous years and they just get scattered on the floor yeah we even looked at them Tracy did you have it I changed my mind you sparked something for me you bring up a good point of when the select board members would go out to the event and hand out information that I think it happened around the time we were talking about merger but it wasn't just about merger it was about town meeting it was about informing people about the budget any items that are on the ballot it was all part of a packet we handed out right and I think you did it last year a little bit is that something you wanted to do again this year we can put that on a future agenda to take a look at stuff any information to hand out last year I did one there what did one of the senior centers anything that can help public engagement sounds like there's a we'll try to pull together a schedule of options and get it to you in the next meeting or two yeah we're running out of time it's crazy to think about all right any other board member comments okay we do not need to go into executive sessions so I think the motion we adjourned we did the reading file that was it board member comment I had to wait okay people I make the motion we adjourned thank you Don, thank you Ethan non-devedo all those in favor of adjourning please say aye okay motion passes 5-0 thank you so much