hello and welcome to channel seven teams town meeting television i met calley with another in our twenty nine thousand candidate forums on this show williston select board candidates i'm pleased to be sharing the stage this evening with incumbent ter second candidate opening statement followed by a round robin question and answer it's also an opportunity for you our viewing audience to dial an end and ask candidates questions directly that number is eight six two three nine i believe i've brought a significant amount of additional due diligence policy scrutiny and policy development to mostly passive select board and i believe that addition is improve the quality of the select board significantly and i believe i can do this in in a way that that is above that of my opponent and that's why i'm running very good thank you so much another sixty second opening statement from candidate ted kennedy thank you thank you for having us first of all my name is ted kenny i'm running for reelection to the select board because i love my town i have lived in williston hundred nine i am the father of two daughters both have gone through the wilson school systems one is a sophomore at seaview and one is finishing up eighth grade it will list and central i have dedicated a large portion of my civic energy to volunteer for the town i served as a member of the planning commission i was elected to the school board i was a member of the school board chignon south supervisor union board as well  also have been elected to the select board starting in two thousand and five i took a break in two thousand and ten and i got reelected in two thousand and thirteen i'm running because i want to see willesden continue the progress that it's made will just and has a vibrant quality of life we have very good municipal services and we also have the second lowest property tax rate in the county i want to see williston continue on i want to add more services where possible but i also want its budget to be protected and to make sure that we don't rely too much on things like the sales tax from task corners the big box stores whose future is not certain i'm running because i want to be conservative in that way but i also want to see williston thank you thank you for offering this service to the community it's really great that we have this form and we can discuss our town that i think all three of us love very much and the reason why i'm running  when when i had to fill out the petition when you put your name in for the select board you're given a form you have to fill out thirty five lines of people registered in the town and i thought to myself i think i might know thirty five people in the town  but i had the form in my car and i was driving around and i went to the transfer station one day and i pulled in and i met an older gentleman and i noticed his car had a license plate with the american flag and he was a veteran and i thought this was this would be a perfect opportunity this would be my the first my first person to sign a petition and i walked up to him and i said what war did you serve and and he said the korean war and i thanked him for his service and then i asked him would he sign my petition and we talked a little bit about the town he'd been there much longer time he's lived there is whole life i've only been there three years but he signed my petition and he said we need to get more people involved and so that's kind of been the driving factor for me i don't have the same qualifications as terry or ted but i do share the passion for the town and they show that they have very good we're on to our round robin question and answer session at this time and a reminder for you the viewing audience if you have a question of one of the candidates our number is eight six to three nine six six will move right into our question here for each of you will begin with you t what are your top three issues that you're running on that you'd like to see addressed by the thought board short they can be broken down to responsible growth sustainable spending and quality of your life issues i want to see the town continue to balance its protection of the ag world district we still do have operating farms in williston with the need for economic expansion i want to see that the  economic growth in town does do things like have pedestrian friendly development that we encourage environmental conservation and energy policies and things like that in our g but second one is actually it's a pretty boring municipal nuts and bolts issue and that's sustainable spending right now the sales tax the local options tax that we get from the sales and willesden is bringing in a good chunk of money the problem with that actually can be a problem if you become addicted to that i was on the select board when the great recession hit and we the that funding on a then about a ten million dollars budget went down half a million dollars it was massive so we have to be very careful with our spending the third is quality of life issues we've recently added catamount as a willesden town forest that's a great development there are other things that we could probably do better but again a lot of this comes down the nuts and bolts type stuff like making sure the parks and recreation fees are reasonable making sure that bike paths continue to be built and just making sure that will list and is a friendly place where people feel welcome and that they have a voice they're good make you do with your top three issues that you would work on if you're elected to the board so my number one issue is actually the and and the library is just such a wonderful fixture of the of the village and and you know the library is going through some growing pains and this the building where it's a now  it's just not big enough anymore and i sat down and i've spoken with marty our library director about the library and she you know gave me this and she told me about some of the options that that she's facing and  and might possibly be moved out of the village and this would be obviously terrible for my family but it would be an amazing opportunity for the people who live in for example maple tree housing or for the people who are going to be in the new development suffer wrote their dads as moms there who will be able to then walk to the library now that is a long term thing and marty has just started the discussion on that she started a ten year you know discussion about what to do with the library but that's my first my first issue the second issue is is the village itself i feel like there's really tight policies about what businesses can do with their they're building codes when we first moved there there was a restaurant that we're looking forward to going to called explains there and it closed down a month after we were there and it could be due just because they weren't able to get enough customers in the door but it could also be due to certain policies that we can maybe pull back on a little bit to allow more businesses to come into the village so that we have the sort of vibran the the town is looking for for the village and the third thing has to do with what ted was talking about with outdoor recreation the bike paths i use a bike pass all the time with my family the county for me number one would be that in order to do some of the things that make you in ted talk about which i would mimic i would agree with all of their items  that you know we have to have a select board that is active in gauged in leading the discussion and discussing these topics in a forum that drives policy creation and the make up of the current  board quite frankly doesn't do that some might push in my number one and this is the whole reason i'm running is that we need to select board that leads and drives policy in we don't have that today and i think i brought a  flavor of that to the select board over the last two years tremendous input from from the community and i will continue to do that if elected into the three year position my number two is  like to see us work on a again setting policy on budget and again i'm fiscally conservative and i challenge the budget up and down and for the same reasons that some of my opponents talked about and that is you know we're not guaranteed to keep the retail income that we've had for the last so many years since i guess since the recession you know almost a third of our revenue for the general ministration budget comes from rooms and meals and the options tax so that's pretty significant we have a little bit of a buffer for short term recessions because we have quoted what we call i guess  a fund for budget under runs for the last few years that we've built up in that will buffer us and i think i asked and we calculated at the last budget discussion a couple of years least a recession but that's not guaranteed and those are my major those are my major items on that thank you very good reminder if you have questions for our candidates you can dial in at eight six to three nine hundred sixty we're moving on to more questions here make you do with this one is for you do you support the list in town budget for the fiscal year twenty i do yeah i've taken a look at it and i definitely once again do not have the experience that terry have as like board it as well i supported the general budget as well as the three utility budgets with some reservations i think you know to be fiscally conservative i didn't like the addition of some new administrative positions  challenge those pretty heavily but at the end of the day i did i did support the budget we do a very different kind of a budget review in williston that is more of a pure bottoms up than a top down and again a leadership as a leading select board the leading the discussion on the budget we should start with some kind of a tops down you know how do we want to budget salaries and benefits for the town officials because we don't do any of that today and it makes it very difficult to challenge the line item line items on the budget so to keep us fiscally conservative and responsible we should modify and i've made proposals on how to modify the budget review process and the list i'm thank you ted kennedy your thoughts on budget increases about three point something percent over the year before when you consider that next year's inflation rate is going to expected to be about two point two percent that's not much of an increase particularly when you also factor in that williston's population has continued to grow willesden has a really unique challenge has about nine thousand people there are there is full time residents nine thousand people at night but it has over twenty thousand people who are there during the day so the town budget has to anticipate and be ready for the kind of services that twenty thousand people have and we do have the sales tax a local options tax as it's called that does provide about twenty five million dollars of revenue into the to the budgeting process that is a good thing obviously we have use that to keep taxes low and again we have with the second lowest municipal property tax rate in shipment county  that that extra money that comes in from the sales tax is used in a variety of ways to keep those taxes down and keep services up this year there's about four hundred thousand dollars of that money that went into the operating account  municipal property taxes didn't go off the last thing i'd say is this most people in town do not have a four hundred thousand dollar home but the math works out so well this use that as an example if you had a four hundred thousand dollar home  this year your property tax rate is your number you're going to pay for more taxes next year is eight dollars for the whole year for the last three years combined it's forty dollars a year more so we've done a great job holding taxes down and providing the services that the people need very good reminder if you have questions for our candidates eight hundred to three nine six six is the number terry we're going to stick with there are some budget issues here  support the bond issue for the two new fire trucks for the town and more broadly do you think that the public safety department is adequately staffed and fund so this is a complicated question so so let me start by saying i did support the bond issue and and i supported it with reservations though and i also supported it with a caveat that i expect us to continue to look at it and continue to evaluate up until the time we need to spend the alternatives that we didn't fully vet out in the budget process our budget process starts around the december timeframe and runs right up against the the endpoint of when we need to sign off on the budget in fact on the day we had to sign off on the budget i was still grilling the the chief the emergency services fire department chief on the fire department apparatus the two fire trucks he was asking for and what alternatives we had not getting satisfactory answers there i had decided whether to support or not i decided it made sense to support with also the cabby out that we don't actually have to spend the money if we can figure out how to do it cheaper and you know people make this a question about you know this is a good fire department a bad fire department is the chief doing a great job a bad job when we talk about people get very emotional about public safety spending and at the end of the day you know the chief in the in the emergency services department are doing a fabulous job i mean they they wanted a i think ambulance service of the year last year so they're they're a great professional organization it's more a question of do we have the right balance of apparatus and equipment for fire versus ambulance versus you know paramedics in the mts and across the nation this is a problem this is one of the things i research this is kind of what i do on the select board i researched what kind of a problem this is and how it's being solved and it's solved by coming up with the the right mix of equipment you know and just to give you an example last year we had thirty five hundred dollars and fire services kind of revenue we get some revenue from this we had three hundred eighty three thousand dollars of income for ambulance services one hundred times more we had seven structure fires in williston last year and we're talking about buying two million dollars of equipment over the last couple years so it bears some scrutiny it's not because we thing because i think the fire department or the emergency services because we have to be yes this is another issue that was unanimous in this like board nobody voted against it everybody voted for it the reason it needs those is because that light a fire truck has a life expectancy of about twenty years are the two trucks that are coming in are replacing three trucks this is actually part of a plan to reduce the amount of heavy equipment that the town of all this town has in its fire department in two thousand and ten we had seven trucks in twenty twenty five we're go down to for the true two trucks three trucks that are being replaced is a brush truck that doesn't work anymore a ladder truck that is on its way out i think it's eighteen years old that's the one that served saved the church when the steeple was hit by lightning and an engine we're placing them with two trucks that basically do the same thing so these these are great things and ultimately when i looked into it i saw that it were probably actually going to hopefully save money on maintenance and expenses because these are new trucks and we're doing it at exactly the right time because it actually does reduce the number of the amount of equipment that the fire department has but it does a moment when these trucks still have trade in value so when i examine the issue looks like it was right and everybody on the board voted for me to do it it seems kind of strange that we have to spend more money to be more efficient and this is something i talked to rick i got a chance to talk to rick about it as well with the fire trucks and my i can tell you my three year old son is very excited about new fire trucks one of the one of the trucks i learned actually from one of his books my three year old son's books where the track is called the quint and  serves five purposes serves it's a pump so water tank it's a fire hose it's an aerial device and it has ground letters on it as well so yeah our fire chief can is thinking really hard about  serve our community and yes i do support the purchase of the two trucks i'm just going to add something here do we know what these trucks are more fuel efficient and what is currently being operated terry that's a good question i think maybe versus the big ladder truck it might be more fuel efficient it's a smaller truck so it probably has a smaller footprint than your thoughts and it's my understanding they would be just because they're eighteen years twenty years in advance technology versus what it was you know q yeah the children's book didn't mention that we're going to continue kind of on the budget here and it really has to do with the economic development of the town of williston what do you see as the future of these big box stores in the era of the amazon and the q what will begin with you well i just took three of my kids their one year old was down for a nap it took them over to get air which is a new place that you can bring your kids and it's just filled with trampolines i don't know if you've been there yeah it's just filled with trampolines it's amazing place and it's an option i think for what we can do with these box stores we've lost toys r us recently in the  and you know people are looking more for experiences rather than for places to buy things where they can just look on their phone and find the best deal so i think something like good air as well you know we have right behind areas we have a really great very burlington beer company and that's another example in which the town i feel should just like back up a little bit and let these local businesses thrive as much as they can especially a brewery where we have tourists coming in from all of new england coming to try our beers and the town you know gives the v c o a hard time for wanting to expand their their restaurant space and i think it's just something that the town really needs to work with especially our local businesses in providing you know growth business growth for then terry's interests you're a comment on  the economic development makeup of the i actually think we have a pretty good economic development make up in with the mix of retail hotels restaurants with some light manufacturing industrial and a number of breweries as mchugh mentioned and i recently recall us approving some legislation to allow the expansion of breweries for the purposes of tasting and added restaurant space so i think you know we had some of those things come by and i think it's been positive in terms of the impact of amazon i think of amazon gets to the point where they can deliver lumber and toilets to your house you know by helicopter i think maybe that case will have well have some serious issues with amazon but you know i come from michigan originally you know forty forty some years ago and  you know we had a we had a big box centered you know super shopping center every square mile it seemed like and we don't have that in vermont we have luckily they place this big shopping area in the corners  we're reaping the benefits but we don't have them all over so i think we may be a little more sheltered and and buffered from the impacts of today's amazon you know whether we get to a future of amazon delivering things same day i don't know but i think there will always be that need to have you know for people who want to pick in such stuff and buy it immediately and brick and mortar ten kind of your thoughts on the economic development for the what the future of big box stores are i suspect that there will be evolution and pain as often comes with change so but that being said there are some things that the town can  do to mitigate itself and this is what i keep coming back to is we have to have a fiscally responsible budget we have to make sure that as we if we do increase spending on something that is the kind of increase that is worth it and not relying entirely on the sales tax that that's the number one thing the other thing is again continuing to increase the well to encourage other kinds of development in maple tree place i was growing up next door in richm when that was a field i actually hate where ninety nine steak houses now it was an awful job it was not a great guy to work for but that being said you know the town has changed a lot and  pyramid mall was trying to come in in the one nine hundred seventy s that was stopped because it was just a one to one type thing it was you know what if the mall closes down and then the development is gone i think wilson's done a good job avoiding that and i do want to see more light manufacturing recently i was part of the select board had a site visit to get rid of an easement of town part of a town road that was a completely pointless part of a town road it was where the plow truck used to turn around but it didn't need to any more because the road had been expanded and kept going but because that was a town road there was a set back issue a light manufacturing company could not put the number of parking lots parking spaces in and so we  continued that portion of the road these kinds of things i think the psych ward has done a really good job on and i will encourage it to continue that kind of thing ted kennedy were ted kennedy we're going to stick with you here  on this question many vermont towns including williston are facing infrastructure issues here in burlington a water main just recently broke we've seen issues of that this is a ticking time bomb for municipalities across the country i was reading something recently that the the tab is over a trillion dollars throughout the country of what needs to be done your thoughts on the infrastructure will little bit in new word from this because it's relatively new or town if you will can you speak to the infrastructure costs and how to fund some of these improvements or maintenance costs going one of one of the things that wilson does well is has development and impact fees that are completely segregated out and must be spent for things like infrastructure and so that's when the new development comes in it has to pay those fees and those fees are not put in where the slug board could use it to buy basketballs or something like that that's only for infrastructure so that that has to continue and nobody is suggesting that's go change the other thing that the town does and i would advocate continue doing is this is keep that capital reserve fund well funded right now they're about three million dollars  over three million dollars that's probably a little high so if there is a crying need for instance infrastructure or an immediate need that would be something that i think could be spent a bit i know we're talking about roads and bridges and whatnot one of the things that i consider as part of wilson's infrastructure is it's open land it's open space and it will list and does have an environmental reserve fund that it funds pretty well that's why the town could put the money up to buy the catamount land and create the willesden town forest without raising taxes and had that planning not gone and had we not done that years ago we wouldn't be in a position to do it but again all of this is to say that you know with with uncertainty coming in the future but the need for infrastructure growing we really need to shepherd our resources and keep them and keep spending in  will ask question of you it sounds like wilson's got a pretty good handle on the cost for infrastructure improvements and maintenance could that be a model maybe for other municipalities or well i think you know i think we're we're we're fortunate to have an outstanding public works department we do have a fiscally responsible manager as well so we do have plans you know i'm going plans to upgrade roads over time so there's a there's actually a plan we don't wait for the potholes to come we we we have a plan for certain roads at certain times for repaving but when things break we do have reserve funds is my opponent ted mentioned and and we can use those for those costs and we do have utility funds that collect money for long term debt as well as you know  new infrastructure items that need to be done we do put away money for replacing things like fire hydrants that frequently i guess break or get run over or or start to leak so  and again i think it's through the through the work of the public works department again bruce or outstanding public works director that we have has a i think he has a pretty comprehensive plan this year at  a retreat we started to discuss you know the long term improvement of things like water lines and sewer systems but that's an ongoing discussion so i think that does bear some more scrutiny in those areas but i think we've got roads pretty well covered we don't have a lot of bridges bridges usually require usually very big ticket items and usually require a bond vote a significant investment if you do want your thoughts are you happy with the  state of the improvement funding for infrastructure development in the in the town yes i mean we live in vermont so potholes are about as common as you know tulips in this in the spring time so we have a think a million dollars set aside in the budget and really for for road maintenance and yeah and once same as terry said if there's a big project where we need a lot of  money we could always use a bond to pay for it and then that would get it done upfront and then we just pay for it over the years through taxes terri's interests will come back to you here do you feel that the town of williston is will we along with five other towns have contracted the services of the howard center in an outreach program kind of like the outreach the street outreach program that's being used very successfully in burlington and we use this program and will list to identify hopefully identify high risk people that have the potential in this is hopefully be again before they go into into a  situation where they might go into drug abuse and provide them assistance or connect them with services for assistance and this could be you know you could self identify yourself as needing help friends can identify you or identify a person teachers so that's the model for the the howard center program and again with five other towns we've implemented this program and well i think it's a great idea i think we can do more i think we can  we can do some community education you know in community groups because the cost of especially opiates is so high you know you know leading anywhere from  know medical crime and you know eventually leaving you know we have many opiate deaths in the country so i think we can do more i think we can hire some expert services like the howard center to help help moderate and run some of these community forums to educate our teachers parents and in adults too because opiates aren't restricted to kids and and the most amazing thing in dealing with that and i have seen this over and over and over again is that when i realized that when i was talking to him i wasn't talking to the nice young man the great kid that i knew i was talking to the drug and so this this is a huge problem in april i'm blanking on the date but in april the town is actually sponsoring a huge town forum that's going to be at wilson central school please come  dinner will be served and it's for people of all ages and this is this is one of the things that we're doing is that enough no it's not like most people who are dealing with this i can tell horror stories but i'm not exactly sure what the municipality of williston can do to increase that i think you know we have in our can for the police department we do have five mental health workers that are there that are more for mental health than they are for drugs but that does overlap tremendously keep in mind this this isn't other people this is us and it's not just a question of muggings that might happen in the old north end of burlington or something that happens on the streets of chicago i have i have i know about  people who have decided to break into places in nice neighborhoods like mine during the day because the person is a drug addict and this is where the good stuff is to sell this is a real thing for everybody whether you're looking at it ultra listicle or whether you're looking at  besides a select board we also have the wilson rotary and the richmond was in richmond rotary the share rotary there also along with the forum in april they're also doing a lot to to get the word out about this epidemic and trying to find solutions so it's something that is really personal to me it's not dealing with opiates but with drug and alcohol my little brother was driving for drunken driving and so we need people like that as well in our community to come forward and and help teach youngsters you know the you know the terrible things that happen because of drug drug abuse and and alcohol abuse if you do it we're just going to stay on this question here with you one more time the attorney general has joined a lawsuit suing manufacturers do you support that lawsuit i would support them a lawsuit up for the damage that they've done when when you look at the numbers of the number of pills that have been prescribed and the number of people that they would that they would treat and that they would use it's completely out of proportion it's you know my my father passed away from cancer in two thousand and one and he had appropriate prescription for oxycontin person coming in to fit up the hospital bed in his apartment in the last couple of months  stole a lot those drugs and it was you know we dealt with it we have reasonably good basic life skills where we can make phone calls and get replacements and whatnot but it is it is just amazing that these drug i would also support this lawsuit against the manufacturers i recently read that seventy seventy five percent of the worldwide production of painkillers is being used by five percent of the world's population and i can i'm sure we can all guess where that five percent is centered so it's very disappointed that they're pushing the painkillers in the us and we need to stop them ok well we've reached the end of our discussion here this evening it's time now for our closing statements from our candidates sixty seconds each and ted kennedy will begin with you the sixty second closing statement please thank you and thank you again for hosting very much appreciate it i'm running for reelection to the select board because i want to serve and that sounds hokey and everybody says it has it's just true i i love my town i find the challenges that the select board offers to be personally invigorating again willesden is an incredible place nine thousand people at night twenty thousand people during the day we've done a great job balancing the needs that the town has  evolves from one thing to another to another but there's more to do i think that we can continue to increase services for parks and recreation we can continue to do look at responsible development the big box stores close down whether they don't whether williston continues to get a bonanza from its sales and use tax or whether it doesn't i'm asking to apply my experience my leadership and my passion  the job of select board and i'm asking for your vote and i'm thanking you for your time thank you you do when you're a closing comments please well i don't think it sounds hokey at all that you want to serve i think that is something that has been lost especially on the national level for it with politicians you know the idea of serving your community and serving the people it's just not nonexistent  that you are there to serve the people and you listen to them and you find out what they need and you do the best you can to make that available to them and so these two other  candidates terry and ted are wonderful choices well asking you for my vote because i do offer an alternative a new voice for for the select boards thank you terry center it's your closing comment play well it's going to be unanimous we we all want to serve the community we all have strong ties in the community and i respect my opponents very much it takes a lot of time and dedication to do this running is i think i can do a better job i think my record over the last couple years will show this and you know as we can all sit here and say this i think if if if if i can beg a little bit more of your time and i thank you for the  time you're taking now to watch us and watch this forum and matt for running it and channel seventeen an invaluable resource for democracy but if you take the time to watch a few select board meetings from the last couple of years you'll that my participation in my preparedness and my passion for performing due diligence and driving policy at the select board level is your continued service to the town of williston and for your willingness to serve it takes great courage to be willing to put your name on a ballot and face the voters on march fifth to join us at seven pm on march fifth election day for complete election results coverage beginning at seven pm right here on channel seventeen for all of us at c c t v town meeting television i'm not kelly thank you good night